| Number 203 | May 2, 2003 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, A great big Thank You! to all of you who have sent in your pledges of support for Nygaard Notes. It is always important to support a truly independent media project. During difficult economic times, as at present, it involves a greater sacrifice than usual, and I am well aware of this. So I very much appreciate those of you who were able to find it in your hearts at this time to support this newsletter and its values of Democracy, Compassion, Solidarity, and Justice. Thank you for helping to keep it going! Please do not imagine that it is not somewhat embarrassing to publish the things you see in this week’s “2003 Praise for Nygaard Notes.” It is, but it’s all part of Pledge Drive Mania, and can’t be helped. I refer this week to two different faces of government, the Popular Government and the Business Government. For a fuller explanation of these concepts, visit the Notes website and read “The Two Types of Government,” found in issue #189. Welcome to all the new readers this week! I haven’t said anything about Iraq for a couple of weeks, but I’ll have more to say soon. The “President” officially declared victory last night (May 1). We’ll see about that. Nygaard |
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The New York Times (“All The News That’s Fit To Print”) of April 28th, in a story headlined “For Muslims, a Mixture of White House Signals,” referred to a man named Grover G. Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform. The Times categorized ATR as “a conservative advocacy group.” The Times points out that Norquist also helped found something called “the Islamic Institute” which is supposed “to promote the idea that Muslims are natural conservatives on social and economic issues.” In this context, the Times went on to make the following comment:
Crucial. Indeed. |
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Issue #203 will be the last week of the Spring 2003 installment of the Nygaard Notes Pledge Drive. I promise. If you haven’t yet contributed to the Notes, I must ask you one more time to consider doing so. I am quite sincere in saying that no reader of the Notes is required to donate—I insist that this community resource be available to anyone who wants to read it. However, I really do need as many of you as possible to donate some amount of money to support me in doing the research, talking, thinking, networking, and writing that makes it possible to produce something like the Notes. As I said two weeks ago, while it is not necessary for each individual to donate to Nygaard Notes, it IS important that many of you do. That’s because this project is supported entirely by voluntary donations from readers. There is not, nor will there ever be, any advertising found in these pages. In addition to being a pleasant break from the rest of your life where you are constantly bombarded with ads, I think this absence is absolutely essential if an independent media source wishes to remain truly independent. That’s why I’m so stubborn about this. I wish I didn’t have to do a Pledge Drive. But I do have to do it in order to keep the project going. Can you afford to donate the equivalent of one or two hour’s wages for a whole year of Nygaard Notes? If you can, please send your check to:
OR: THANK YOU to all who have already donated. You’re a part of independent media history. Some inspiring quotations appear next... |
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Many Nygaard Notes readers send in positive comments with their pledges of support. Not only are they wonderful morale-boosters, they are often quite eloquent statements about the importance of good, independent journalism. I started thinking, Why should I be the only one who sees them? It’s important for all of you Nygaardians out there to know that you are not alone in your strong feelings about the Notes. Small and humble though this project may be, it continues to grow and, with your support, who knows where it will lead? So, in that spirit, here are some of the comments received recently from your fellow readers of Nygaard Notes. Maybe these words will inspire you to contribute to the project, or maybe they will simply inspire you. Either way, they’re good to read. So, here they are (I identified the writers by first name only, since I didn’t ask anyone’s permission to reprint!): Here’s an excerpt of something St. Paul labor organizer and Notes reader Todd sent out on February 18th to rank-and-file union members who were looking for alternative sources of information:
On February 10th, reader Sharell wrote to me, saying:
Also in February, reader Bob in Northfield, Minnesota, sent this note along with his pledge:
Reader Katharine in Kansas City, Kansas sent this note with her pledge of support on February 13th:
Writer, reviewer, and long-time book industry insider Pat Holt out in California (Hi, Pat!) publishes an important newsletter from the Bay Area that she says is “a place for critical commentary about the publishing and bookselling industry.” It’s much more than that, however. For example, in last week’s issue she ran a feature called “Websites with Genuine News,” and she said some pretty nice things about the Notes. She told her readers,
Find her online newsletter, including subscription information, at http://www.holtuncensored.com/index.html. Finally, back on January 10th, reader Shelley wrote:
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There is a class war going on in this country, and the mainstream media has chosen to side with the wealthy and powerful on the propaganda front. The following analysis of a pair of charts published by New York Times (“All The News That’s Fit To Print”) on February 4th provides an example that illustrates the point quite clearly. The charts in question appeared inside a big box on page A20 in the Times, accompanying an article on the Bush tax plan that the “President” is continuing to try to sell to the people of this country. (Now that Mr. Bush has declared the “war” in Iraq to be “over,” all we’ll hear about for a while is these tax cuts, so get ready.) The February 4th charts purported to show “The Big Picture: Raising $1.92 Trillion; Spending $2.23 Trillion.” Actually, there were two charts. One was labeled “Where The Money Comes From,” and it listed four sources, the first one of which was a grouping of “Social Security, Medicare and other payroll taxes,” that made up 39.8 percent of the total. The other chart, “How It Is Spent,” grouped together “Social Security, Medicare, and other entitlements,” and that group made up 55.4 percent of the total. This certainly makes it look like we have a problem, doesn’t it? After all, how can we spend 55 percent of our money on certain things when taxes are only bringing in 40 percent of the necessary funds? This is likely how the “problem” appears to those (probably a majority, I’m guessing) who look at this chart without an understanding of a very key fact, which is this: Despite appearing in both cases alongside “Social Security and Medicare,” those “other entitlement programs” are not paid for by those “other payroll taxes.” What are payroll taxes? Most individuals who get regular paychecks have two payroll taxes withheld from their checks (in addition to state and federal income taxes). These two taxes are Medicare and Social Security taxes, and they are dedicated to paying only for those two programs (which they are doing quite well at the moment, with money left over). The other payroll taxes are not paid by the worker; they are paid by the employer, and are mostly worker’s compensation and unemployment taxes, also dedicated to specific purposes. (The employer also pays one-half of the other two taxes.) So, these add up to the first line in the first chart, “Social Security, Medicare and other payroll taxes.” How about those “other entitlements?” What Are “Entitlement Programs”? The key fact here is that there is a very broad range of entitlement programs that are not paid for with payroll taxes. Instead, they are paid for out of general revenues, most of which (53 percent) come from individual and corporate income taxes, the very taxes that Mr. Bush is proposing to drastically cut. In some people’s minds, the word “entitlement,” has a bad ring to it, but I think many so-called “entitlement” programs actually have quite wide support. Here’s a partial list of those programs (Figures are as of 2000; some may have been eliminated in the meantime, for all I know. Who can keep up?): Medicaid; the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-CHIP; The Low-Income Energy Assistance program, or LIHEAP; school lunches and breakfasts, Head Start, veteran’s benefits, food stamps, housing assistance, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC; the Child and Adult Care Food Program; the Child Support Enforcement Program; various welfare programs, child care benefits, child protection services, and on and on and on. In addition, the states themselves receive “entitlement” funds from the federal government to do things like preventing child abuse, increasing the availability of child care, and providing community-based care for old people and people with disabilities. There are also a whole bunch of entitlement programs which have to do with being exempt from taxes or otherwise indirectly being entitled to more money due to needs around retirement, health, poverty, employment, disability and so forth. Consider the Source I thought it was kind of odd for a liberal newspaper like the NY Times to come up with such a misleading pair of charts. Then I read the fine print at the bottom of the box that contained the charts, which said: “Source: Office of Management and Budget.” As it turns out, the Office of Management and Budget is headed by the Indiana ideologue Mitch Daniels, who reportedly “has developed a close relationship with the president.” Mr. Daniels is one of the main—if not THE main—architects of the $1.3 trillion dollar tax cut plan which these charts supposedly help to explain. Both he and Mr. Bush have an interest in obscuring the direct relationship between these proposed tax cuts and the real-world program cuts that will be a necessary consequence of those cuts. So it is not surprising that these charts do, indeed, obscure that relationship. Here are a few facts that are obscured by charts like these and the reporting that flows from them:
The fundamental point that is obscured by such reporting is that the decisions that the Bush administration is proposing the Congress make about how to tax and spend are—at their very roots—political decisions and not economic ones. The cutting of taxes and the privatizing and limiting of (i.e. the attack on) ALL entitlement programs by the Bush administration and its allies are really two parts of the same program. That program is to decrease the size and power of the Popular Government—the part of the government that provides entitlement programs, redistributes wealth, and regulates the activities of the powerful—while preserving and strengthening the size and power of the Business Government—the part of the government that serves the wealthy and powerful. Class warfare? It’s plain to see in the mainstream media. If you know how to read it. |