This Week:

Quote of the Week

The Bush Budget Cuts, What Got Hit, Part I

“The Economy” Doesn’t Vote; The People In It Do

Greetings,

As I was putting together the details on the cuts proposed in the 2005 federal budget, I realized how depressing many people would likely find it to be. Fortunately, earlier in the week I read a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal that I found immensely hopeful. I wasn’t planning to write about that, but I think it balances nicely the budget article. So, this week is a “Good news/Bad news” issue of Nygaard Notes.

Several people wrote to ask me who wrote the poem I published last week. I wrote it, and I should have made that clear. Sorry!

That’s all I have room for this week. Thanks to those of you who have recently renewed your pledges of support for Nygaard Notes. I couldn’t do this without you!

Until next week,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

This is from the Wall Street Journal of March 15, in a front-page article that I review elsewhere in this issue of the Notes:

“John Bodonski, who retired three years ago after 31 years as a clerical worker at Weirton Steel, has been living on a pension of $1,122 a month, plus full health care. As the company works its way through bankruptcy proceedings and a sale, both are being cut.

“Mr. Bodonski, 56, works nights cleaning up the local union hall and says he's looking for other cleaning jobs. ‘What upsets me is I did everything I was supposed to do—worked hard and educated my two daughters,’ he says. ‘And what do they do? They take my pension and send $87 billion to Iraq.’”

The Bush Budget Cuts, What Got Hit, Part I

As I started out to write this summary, a very interesting thing happened: I saw references to the fact that “The Bush [budget] would eliminate 65 programs and cut back 63 others.” So, I thought it would be a good idea to look at what those 128 programs are, and try to see if there were any patterns to the cuts. Seems like a simple thing, right?

So, I spent the better part of an afternoon trying to find an actual list of those programs, and it wasn’t a simple thing. In fact, I never could find it. I found plenty of references to the list. I found articles in the media saying that “The White House...released a list,” and all sorts of other mentions of the fact that such a list exists. But I could never find the list. And I am, if I do say so myself, pretty good at this searching business. I guess I could have read the entire budget (all 402 pages – yikes!) and extracted some sort of list, but, really...

So, I won’t do the list. What I will do instead is to present some of the results of a scan I did of the nation’s newspapers from early February, right after the “President” released his budget. My hope is that the overall effect of seeing them together in one place begins to give a hint of the scale of the assault on the Popular Government that is underway.

EDUCATION, from the NY Times, Feb 4: “...the administration's list calls for eliminating or cutting back more than a dozen...education programs. Among other actions, it would eliminate $34 million spent to help pay for secondary school counselors; $30 million for a program in schools to combat alcohol abuse; $38 million for projects to provide employment services to people with disabilities; and $18 million for a national writing project.

ENVIRONMENT: USA Today, Feb 3: “Environmentalists were...perturbed to see the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) targeted for a cut 7% below what Congress gave it last year. ...the EPA also cut a fund that provides money to states and local governments for building sewage-treatment plants.”

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL: “Last week, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta delivered a speech calling for a ‘Next Generation Air Transportation System’ to prevent gridlock in the sky. This week, he delivered a budget proposal that would cut or delay several of the programs that the government was hoping would become that next generation. The Federal Aviation Administration's budget for new air-traffic-control systems was reduced by 16.5% to $2.5 billion.”

POLICE, FIRE, FIRST RESPONDERS: New Orleans Times-Picayune Feb 3: “Among [the programs that the Bush budget proposes to cut] is an initiative from the Clinton administration providing money to help local police agencies hire officers and add equipment. Financing would drop from $481.9 million to $91 million.”

POTPOURRI: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Feb 3: “Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl reacted to President Bush’s $2.4 trillion budget Monday by singling out shortfalls in six programs... The programs Kohl cited as losers in the budget are: Start-up funding for school breakfast programs; The Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which gives farmers technical, educational and financial assistance for enhanced conservation practices; The Upper Mississippi Environmental Management Program, which is intended to improve the river's ecosystem; The Low-Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program, which helps the poor pay heating bills; Title I funding for schools serving low-income students – funding was authorized at $20.5 billion, but Bush has proposed $13.34 billion; Special-education funding – Congress committed to paying 40% of the costs when it passed the legislation in 1975 to share such costs with school districts. Although the Bush budget increases special-education dollars, the government would pick up just less than 20% of the tab...”

USA Today, Feb 4: “President Bush's 2005 budget proposal asks Congress to cut or eliminate 128 federal programs (there’s another reference to that mysterious list). Here are [some of them]: Money for new election equipment: $1.4 billion (96% cut); First-responders funding: $805 million (18% cut); EPA funding not requested by White House: $511 million (would eliminate all that funding); Close Up Fellowships for low-income students and teachers: $1 million (would eliminate the program); Excellence in Economic Education (promotes economic and financial literacy): $1 million (would eliminate the program); Rehabilitation services for migrant and seasonal farm workers with disabilities: $2 million (would eliminate the program); Recreational programs for disabled people: $3 million (would eliminate the program)”

To be continued...

“The Economy” Doesn’t Vote; The People In It Do

“In the mid-fifties, a Latin American general, when asked about economic development in his country, responded with words that still capture so much of the present reality in third world so-called success stories like Brazil and Mexico: ‘The economy is doing great, but the people in it aren’t.’”

The above words appeared in the publication Monthly Review a couple of years ago, and I thought of them when I saw an article about the “Third World-ization” of the United States. The headline in the Wall Street Journal — lengthy and cumbersome, as usual — appeared on the front page of the March 15 edition: “New Equation: Improving Economic Signals May No Longer Deliver Votes; Nagging Anxiety on Jobs, Pay Haunts Bush Re-Election; View From Swing States; President Cites 'Transition'”

I found this Journal article immensely encouraging, and I’ll explain why at the end of this piece. Perhaps you’ll be encouraged, too, as we go along.

The Journal never mentioned the “Third World-ization” of the United States, but that’s what the article was about. The basic “angle” of the article was presented, oddly enough, in paragraph 8: “The equation used to be simple: If the economy was growing strongly, the incumbent had a huge edge. By that measure, Mr. Bush should be cruising to easy victory. Gross domestic product grew at an eye-popping 6% annual pace in the second half of 2003, and should expand at a brisk 4.7% rate through 2004...”

The Journal Is “Perplexed”

The article pondered a “a widely held and spreading...dissatisfaction” with the “President” among many in “the pivotal swing states of the industrial Midwest and Northeast.”

This puzzled The Journal: “The dissatisfaction with Mr. Bush is a bit perplexing, since by many measures the American economy is rebounding smartly.” This is true “even in places such as West Virginia [the article is datelined Weirton, W. Virginia], where, despite all the attention to bad news, the unemployment rate has fallen by a full percentage point over the past year. At 5.2%, it is well below the national average.”

That was in paragraph 5. In paragraph 6 we read that “Many of the new jobs in Weirton pay $10 to $12 an hour, compared with well over $20 for the old ones.” This was the first of many points in the article that indicated the profound disconnect between “the economy” and the people who live in it.

In paragraph 11 we read: “New technology, higher productivity and broader globalization have made American businesses more efficient, profitable and dynamic, and the past year's rapid growth dramatically lifted the stock market.” In other words, as the Latin American general would say, “The economy is doing great!” So, what about the people in it? Here’s paragraph 12: “Yet that dynamism has done little to generate new jobs overall and contributed to a heightened state of anxiety for millions of Americans who feel less confident about the size and certainty of their piece of the pie.”

Facts and Feelings

It’s typical of the business press—and the mainstream press in general—to see the performance of “the economy” as a real, measurable thing, while the experiences of “the people in it” is subjective, just opinions, really. As this comment from the Journal illustrates:

“In sum, basic changes in the way the economy works have created a new political equation this year, loosening the old links between prosperity and a president's popularity. The result is a disconnect between what the statistics say about the economy, and what some Americans feel and perceive.”

Despite the obvious denigration of the legitimate “feelings” and “perceptions” of real people living in the real world, we do have statistics to indicate what’s really happening “out here.” And the Journal cites them, repeatedly. Here’s another example:

“In February, the number of workers on...U.S. payrolls was 2.2 million less than when Mr. Bush took office in January 2001. The weak job market has in turn depressed wages, salaries and benefits for those still employed. Over the past year, average wages have risen just 1.6%, the slowest rate in the four decades for which data are available, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.” Note the citation of damning facts, which then must have a little suspicion cast on them by citing the source as “left-leaning.”

This Is Not “Perplexing”

So, the “dissatisfaction with Mr. Bush” is not mysterious, nor is it “perplexing,” really. When The Media tells us that “the American economy is rebounding smartly,” and that we’re in a period of “prosperity,” more and more people are coming to understand what they mean by “the economy.” They mean the wealthy folks who own the businesses that are “more efficient, profitable and dynamic.” And more and more people are beginning to notice that “President” Bush always talks of his tax-cut and budget plans as being intended to spur “economic growth,” which is quite different than “economic well-being.”

In Nygaard Notes #216 I quoted an international aid activist, speaking of the U.S. agenda of promoting “economic growth” in the Third World, who said “The wrong kind of growth can exacerbate inequality and leave poverty rates untouched or even worsened.” And that cruel agenda is increasingly being pursued here in the domestic economy, which is why I refer to the “Third World-ization” of the United States. (Plus, as always, I do it in part simply because I like the sound of “Third World-ization.”)

Near the middle of the article, the Journal reports that “[L]ast week's Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showed the nation split—48% to 48%—on whether Mr. Bush deserves re-election, with economic concerns the largest reason for the low support. And 47% of those surveyed said they worried that various elements of today's economy—from the shrinking availability of health care and pensions to intensified job losses from foreign competition—mean that ‘America no longer has the same economic security it has had in the past.’”

Now here is why I find this article—and others like it—immensely encouraging: It shows the tremendous capacity of people to resist indoctrination. (And, as the Journal article indicates, that includes people who voted for Bush in 2000.) Despite being told numerous times every day that everything is fine, that everything is getting better all the time, people are not falling for it. Even mainstream polls, with all their limitations, indicate that people understand that “the economy” is more than profits, and more than Wall Street.

This bodes well for the capacity of the population to withstand the $150-million campaign propaganda blitz from the Bush administration that has already begun. And, while we are a long way from creating a truly just, a truly fair economy, it looks like people are at least prepared to vote “No” on the economic policies of the Bush administration. That’s pretty hopeful, don’t you think?