| Number 33 | June 11, 1999 |
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This Week:
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Congratulations to the “winners” of the free one-year subscription to Z Magazine. You know who you are, but I will divulge that your names are Pat, Gail, Kathy, MaryEllen, and Heather. I don’t know when you’ll start receiving the sub, but I sent off the info a while ago, so whenever it starts, it should continue for a year. Actually, I felt kind of bad about only offering 5 subs. So here’s another offer: I could give 5 more people a subscription to Z if they would send me $5 each. It normally costs $30, so hey! But don’t send me money; send me an email indicating interest, and if I get 5 of them, then I’ll collect the money and get the subs. This is your last chance on this one. Maybe next time I’ll give away a car or something. Who knows? ‘Til next week, Nygaard |
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As all you readers know, I was part of the Minnesota contingent on a trip to Washington, D.C. last weekend, where we joined several thousand others from around the country for a protest against the NATO bombings in Yugoslavia. All in all, about 30 of us intrepid souls got on the bus at 7:30 am on Friday, June 4th. The event seemed well-organized, with the Minnesota group’s trip coordinated by the Coalition Against the U.S./NATO War in Yugoslavia.For details on the trip itself, the best report is on the website of the International Action Center, the primary organizer of the event. Find their report at: http://iacenter.org/65tentho.htm. Also, this week’s edition of the Pulse, the free Twin Cities weekly (June 9-15 issue), has an interview with Meredith Aby, who was one of the organizers of the busload of Minnesotans. She did a great job. Look for it on page 9. For perhaps the best perspective on the meaning of riding on a bus for 48 hours to march around in the nation’s capital, check out the current (June) edition of Z Magazine, page 2. The article, entitled “Demonstrate: Why and How,” gives a good overview of the value and purpose of taking to the streets in protest. If you don’t have a subscription yet, you blew your chance to get one free a couple of weeks ago, y’know. If you check out the above three sources for information, I don’t think I have much to add about the trip. Just trying to put my body where my mouth is. I’ll have my photos back this afternoon, so you can ask me to show them to you. I might have a word to say about the event later when I’ve had time to ponder a few questions that came up. |
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Hey, all you TV-watchers out there in Nygaard Notes-land, here is a chance to put those endless hours in front of the tube to good use. Nygaard Notes needs your help. Here’s the deal: A group calling itself the "Committee for Good Common Sense" (I’m not making this up) just recently announced “a nationwide campaign to force Congress and President Clinton to enact ‘just, moral, and timely’ Social Security reform.” What they mean is that they want to destroy Social Security and replace it with a mandatory system of individual private accounts. This is a genuinely bad idea, as I have stated quite clearly in Nygaard Notes #s 6, 9, 11, 13, 15, 20, and 21. In my capacity as founder of the Social Security Project of Minnesota (http://www.freespeech.org/sspm/), I would like to know whether or not this group’s ads will be running in YOUR area, wherever you are around the country. What you can do As you are watching The Simpsons, or 20/20, or Jerry Springer, or whatever you watch, and you see an ad about Social Security put on by this group, please send me an email telling me the approximate time you saw it, which show you were watching, and, if you want to, your comments. (Type “Propaganda Watch” on the Subject Line) If you help me out in this way, then I can try to tune in to the same show next week and see if I can view the propaganda for myself. Maybe nobody will see any of them, because they might only run in Idaho for all I know. But if they are around, I’d like to see them. Good Common Sense Just so you know what to look for, here are a few words taken from the website of the Committee (www.goodcommonsense.org):
For those of you who do not spend your time decoding the writings of the reactionary right wing, the phrase “economic freedom” translates into “profits before people,” and the rest of the list follows suit. My personal favorite is “Establish a pro-business public policy atmosphere.” That’d be a big change, eh? The Committee lists their “Links to organizations with similar goals,” and there we find such groups as the libertarian “Reason” organization, the pro-big business “Center for International Private Enterprise,” the right-wing Heritage Foundation, and two of the loudest (and wealthiest) richest voices pushing for Social Security privatization, The CATO Institute and Economic Security 2000. At the risk of further disillusioning the few remaining Americans who think that there remains some meaningful difference between our two major parties, I should point out that the Committee for Good Common Sense is made up of both Republicans and Democrats. |
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There are essentially only two ways to make money in America these days. One way is to do something. The other way is to own something. If you get money for doing something, that is called wages or salary. Sometimes we call this “earning” money. The other way to make money doesn’t require you to do anything. All you have to do is own something. Stocks and bonds, for example. If you buy some stock for $1,000 and sell it for $1,200, that extra $200 is a “capital gain.” Other capital gains come from things like interest on your bonds or savings accounts, profits from currency trading, real estate appreciation and sale, and so on. Income Taxes and Capital Gains Taxes Most Nygaard Notes readers, in fact most Americans, make almost all of our money from working, and we pay income tax on that money. To us, taxes on capital gains are more or less irrelevant. But a few people make a lot of money from capital gains, and so they really want to see the taxes on capital gains reduced. 2% of Americans make more than $200,000 per year. But those few pay about 77% of the capital gains taxes. Another 6% of Americans make more than $100,000 a year and, between the two groups, this 8% of Americans pay about 91% of the capital gains taxes. Most capital gains taxes, then, are paid by people who make more money than the bottom 92% of Americans. It does not seem to be stretching the point, therefore, to say that the capital gains tax is basically a tax on the wealthy. If we believe in the idea of progressive taxation, capital gains should be taxed at a high rate. They are not. Currently, the top income tax rate is 39.6% (down from 91% in the 1950s). The capital gains tax rate is only 20%. That’s bad enough, but many in Congress are calling for further reductions in this already-too-low tax. Now you know what they’re talking about: the rich want to get richer. |
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Cargill and the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) |
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The farm crisis continues. Small farmers are being driven out of business because the prices they are getting for their grain and livestock are less than the costs of producing them. Cargill, Inc. is the nation’s largest privately-owned company, and it’s based here in the Twin Cities. The official line from Cargill is that “the company isn’t profiting from low commodity prices at the expense of farmers.” This company line was regurgitated without comment in the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) on April 20th, only three days after that same paper published a report saying exactly the opposite. (In these words: “Cargill Inc., benefitting from low prices of livestock and grain, will report [in late April] that earnings for its third quarter climbed about 53 percent to $192 million.”) I reported on this a couple of months ago in NN #26 (“Reporter, read thy paper!”). The earlier report, based on a confidential internal Cargill memo leaked to the Wall Street Journal, explained exactly how Cargill profits from low commodity prices. When prices for grain and livestock are low, Cargill can buy those commodities at bargain prices and then turn around and sell the products they make from them - flour, cereal, sausages, and so on - at high prices. Small and medium farmers lose, Cargill wins. On the same weekend that the report on this confidential Cargill memo was published, 600 farmers from 12 states came to Minnesota to make this very point to a representative from the Justice Department’s anti-trust division. The Star Tribune put that protest on the front page. I bring this up now because Cargill is in the news again this week due to the fact that they have just appointed a fresh CEO, 30-year Cargill veteran Warren Staley. His appointment was the occasion for a very prominent profile on the front page of the business section of the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) for June 7th. (I love the business section.) The profile was mostly a puff piece, referring to Mr. Staley as a “very private person,” who “loves the kind of work we get to do here.” Still, I read the whole thing, because that’s the kind of guy I am. I was rewarded with the following: Reporter Jill Barshay, in describing the job facing Mr. Staley, commented that the new CEO has “navigated hyperinflation in overseas markets during the 80s, the reverse of Cargill’s current dilemma: a collapse in commodity prices that have hammered it’s profits.” As we have seen, Cargill’s own internal confidential memo says that the collapse has increased its profits, not “hammered” them. Family farmers throughout the Midwest say the same thing. Yet the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) continues to repeat the self-serving company public relations line. In fact, to the best of my knowledge the Strib has never even commented on the apparent contradiction. Given that Cargill has recently been attempting to acquire agribusiness giant Continental Grain (which is what brought the anti-trust people to town in April), it would seem to be an ideal time to devote some investigative resources to the workings of this home-grown colossus. As Ms. Barshay put it in her recent article: “The decisions made by Staley and his executive team will not only shape the future for Cargill’s 5,000 Minnesota employees and 80,000 worldwide, but also profoundly affect the nation’s farm economy and its dinner tables.” Not to mention everyone who eats food. In and of itself, there’s probably nothing wrong with publishing a fawning profile about Cargill’s new “very private” chief executive. But the Newspaper of the Twin Cities also has a responsibility to help Minnesotans understand just how this local agribusiness giant works. Exactly how does Cargill manipulate farm prices for profit? How is that driving family farmers out of business? And why does Cargill deny that any of this is happening? |