| Number 247 | March 12, 2004 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, I don’t publish too many poems in Nygaard Notes; don’t know what got into me this week. I hope you enjoy it. The week’s piece on the 2005 federal budget proposed by George W. Bush is the introductory “theory” piece in a planned series. Some people have a hard time with these theoretical pieces, I think, but some people love ‘em. Anyhow, Context, context, context! is the Nygaard Notes motto, since all the facts in the world mean little without a framework into which they fit. So, please bear with me if you are the “nuts & bolts” type of reader; the details on the numbers within the budget will come next week and in subsequent issues of Nygaard Notes. Every now and then I have the urge to explain one or another of the oddball little quirks that repeatedly pop up in the pages of Nygaard Notes. Since I’ll be talking about George W. Bush quite a bit in coming weeks, and since I always call him “President” Bush, I thought a little clarification here would be in order. One of the functions of quotation marks in journalism is to identify words or phrases as not the choice of the journalist, but the choice of someone else. Another function is to mark a commonly-understood term as one about which the reader should be suspicious. (See, there are even theories to explain why you see quotation marks around certain things!) Both of these reasons cause me to continue to place quotation marks around the word “President” when referring to George W. Bush. I do this to underline the fact that this man, as far as we know, did not receive the majority of the popular vote in the 2000 election, so I do not consider him to be the legitimate holder of that office. I want Nygaard Notes readers to keep that in mind when they consider the policies emanating from the White House. I hope to see you all at the state capitol on March 20, unless you’re going to Washington DC. In solidarity, Nygaard |
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From the Children’s Defense Fund report of February 6th, entitled “Robin Hood in Reverse: Bush Administration Budget Choices Take from Poor Children to Give to the Rich:”
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March 20 is the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Untold numbers of people around the world will be turning out once again to participate in a Global Day of Protest against the vision of endless war that is symbolized by the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Protests are planned in more than 50 other nations around the world. In this country, perhaps the largest demonstration will be happening in New York City, but there will be several large regional demonstrations around the country, and innumerable local and state-wide events—most likely including one in your town! Anyone can support these events, either by donating money (it costs a lot to put these things together, even with largely volunteer workers!), time (you could BE a volunteer worker!), or a little of both. If you can’t do anything else, at least try to show up on the day. People in the U.S. have a special responsibility to make their voices heard, since it is our government that is leading the way toward the more violent, “might-makes-right” future that is expressed so clearly by the so-called Bush Doctrine. (See “What is the Bush Doctrine?” in Nygaard Notes Number 165.) In Minnesota, people of good will shall come together at 1:30 on the 20th under the slogan, “The World STILL Says NO to war!” We will then march to the state capitol for a 3:00 rally. Endorsing organizations include community peace groups, student groups, religious groups, socialists, communists, women’s groups, you-name-it. Find out more at the site of the Anti-War Committee at http://www.antiwarcommittee.org/ or call 612-379-3899. Outside of the Twin Cities, look for information on events in your
area at the websites of the national groups United For Peace and
Justice and International A.N.S.W.E.R. Contact them at: |
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In my recent series on health care I gave many links to activist groups at the national level. Here in my own state of Minnesota there is a group called the Minnesota Universal Health Care Coalition. They’ve been meeting on the second Monday of the month at the offices of Minnesota COACT in St. Paul. Here is some information about the group from MUHCC chair Rhoda Gilman and others. The coalition presently includes MAPE (Minnesota Association of Professional Employees), the Minnesota Nurses Association, Physicians for a National Health Plan, the Gray Panthers, the Green Party, the Minnesota Farmers Union, the Minnesota League of Women Voters, and the Minnesota chapter of the National Association of Social Workers. The group has a liaison with UHCAN (the Universal Health Care Action Network), but is not directly affiliated. MUHCC will be lobbying in support of a couple of legislative initiatives in the upcoming session. One is a bill proposed by Sen. John Marty, S.F. 979, which would put in place a working group to design a comprehensive universal health care system for Minnesota that would cover preventive measures, long-term care, mental illness, and chemical dependency, and would not be tied to employment. (In other words, a single-payer system, although the bill never uses that term.) A companion bill—H.F. 1411—has been introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Neva Walker. The other bill, S.F. 339, is the single payer bill offered by Senator Leo Foley. That bill has been offered every year for “about six years,” according to Gilman, but former MUHCC chair Val Swenson says that “Because single payer is getting better press now, the coalition is hoping for some mileage this time round.” Whether you live in Minnesota or anywhere else, it’s important to support state efforts at health care reform. After all, the much-reviled but quite successful Canadian system of national health care was started by a single province—Saskatchewan—back in the 1960s, where it proved so popular and successful that it spread to other provinces and eventually became the law of the entire land. So, it can happen here, once any state shows the way. You can contact the Minnesota Coalition by emailing chair Gilman at rhodagilman@earthlink.net, or calling her at 651-224-6383. The address where the coalition meets is in the conference room of the Strommen Building, 2469 University Ave., St. Paul, MN 55114. |
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On or before the first Monday in February, the President is required to submit to Congress a detailed budget request for the next federal fiscal year, which begins on October 1. Mr. George W. Bush did so last month. For the next few months, the Congress will be dealing with this monstrosity and, if history is any guide, the media will be reporting on it in bits and pieces, making it all but impossible for the non-fanatic to step back and see the big picture of the world that this budget aims to bring about. In view of that likelihood, I’d like to present this week some thoughts about the context and the meaning of the federal budget that the “President” proposed last month, and also on the larger political program of which it is a part. “The Government” and “The Market” In the United States of America we have two great institutions that affect the creation and distribution of wealth. One is the financial markets—or, simply, The Market. In his book Wall Street, the brilliant financial analyst Doug Henwood says
The other great American institution is The Government. While it certainly can also act to redistribute wealth upwards, The Government, unlike the financial markets, is not required to do so. While The Market, by its very nature, rewards wealth with more wealth, Government can decide to distribute wealth and resources in any direction it chooses. This is a crucial difference. The fact that The Market MUST and WILL serve to concentrate wealth and power and that government MAY NOT is the fundamental reason why those with wealth and power hate “government” so much. And, the more democratic a government is—that is, the more it responds to the needs of the majority instead of the wealthy minority—the more despised it becomes by that wealthy minority. Despite the libertarian anti-government rhetoric that fuels the “less government is better” push by Bush and his allies, elites do not really despise The Government—they just despise the parts of government that work against their interests. And here’s where a class analysis is essential to understanding the apparent contradictions of the Bush program: people with a lot of money—the elites, or what Henwood calls the “creditor-rentier” class—have different interests than those with less money. In the cases where you believe that “people like you”—that is, people of your class—will benefit from the actions of The Government, you will want The Government to be strong in that area. When you believe the opposite, you will want The Government to be weak. Elites are no different than anyone else in this respect. The difference is simply in the power they have to strengthen or weaken the parts as they wish. Back in Nygaard Notes #189 I spoke of “The Two Types of Government,” the Business Government and the Popular Government. As I pointed out, the role of a Business Government is to protect the power and wealth of the lucky and corrupt few who hold most of both by A) Staying out of the way of the functioning of The Market, and B) Keeping workers and other non-wealthy people from interfering with the market-based distribution of wealth and, more importantly, power. The Popular Government, on the other hand, is the one that attempts, through laws or programs or other functions of government, to address some of the injustices brought about by our wealth-oriented Free Market system. For example, sometimes government actually works to redistribute wealth in a way that reduces inequality, such as when The Government raises revenue with a progressive income tax and spends it on programs that aid poor people. (A “progressive” tax is one where people with more income pay a higher tax rate.) It’s clear that these two Governments often work at cross purposes. To the extent that our government is open and responsive, and to the extent that we have functioning democratic institutions that can influence our elected leaders, the Popular Government will serve the interests of the majority. To the extent that our government is closed and unresponsive, and to the extent that our most effective institutions are corporate, non-democratic ones, the Business Government will be the dominant one, and our elected leaders will serve the interests of the wealthy and powerful. The Bush Program Every elite understands the relationship between power and wealth: if you have power you can always get wealth; but if you don’t have power, then your wealth could be taken from you. That’s why, if forced to choose, the intelligent elite will be willing to give up some wealth if that’s what’s necessary in order to retain power. That’s why we have Social Security, unemployment insurance, and many other things—at the time of their passage, elites understood that if they didn’t voluntarily consent to the taxes and other costs of such programs, the public was sufficiently inflamed that there was a real risk of having some of their power taken away from them as the country moved more rapidly towards socialism. Many of our most popular social programs began as concessions by elites in exchange for maintaining the basic capitalist power relations in the U.S. In the current political environment, elites, rentiers, the owning class (whatever you want to call them, the ones so well-represented by the Bush administration) apparently think the power relations in both the country and the world are unbalanced enough that there is little need to concede much of anything. Based on this belief, they are pursuing a two-part program. Part One seeks to distribute wealth upwards, through tax cuts and increasing government debt, as well as the reduction of “costly” programs that benefit the poor. Part Two—the less well-reported part of the program—seeks structural changes that are intended to make it permanently more difficult for the popular will to be expressed through democratic processes. The program seeks not only to weaken the programs of the Popular Government, but to weaken the Popular Government itself; to not only grab the wealth, but to consolidate the power. Starting next week I will give some details as to how the Bush budget attempts to push forward both parts of this program. |
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He spent his first two decades ashen-white His friends, while close, can’t see behind his eyes Starting alone, and ending who-knows-how, Now loss and hope, and every blessed thing |