| Number 43 | August 27, 1999 |
|
This Week:
|
|
Greetings, Three short pieces this week, about money, war, and hypocrisy. You can’t beat that, can ya? I didn’t get any new subscribers this week, so if you have a friend or co-worker who might like Nygaard Notes, send me their E-mail address. I feel lonely if I don’t get a few new subscribers every week. Thanks, as always, for the thoughtful comments on last week’s issue. They’re always read and always appreciated. Minnesota residents: Don’t miss the Jesse Ventura portraits in the Crop Art section of the Horticulture Building when you go to the State Fair! Next time, Nygaard |
|
"Lingerie reflects who we are and how we live, experts say.” -- found on the front page of the Metro Section of the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) of August 25th, in an article reprinted from the Los Angeles Times, “Bra straps once were faux pas, now they're fashion.” |
|
There has been a lot of talk around the country recently about public money being spent for sports stadiums. Minnesota is no exception. Our professional baseball team, the Twins, say they need a new stadium, but most Minnesotans would rather not see their tax money spent on this sort of thing. To resolve this dilemma, our Governor recently had the brilliant idea of setting up a special Minnesota Twins stadium account into which state taxpayers can voluntary send their recently-received tax rebate money. (For my opinion on tax rebates, see NN #42, “Taxes and Budget Surpluses: Myth and Reality.”) “We're all set to go,” the Governor says, “If you're interested in helping pay for a new stadium, send your money in. If you're not, don't. This is the perfect way to include people who want in without forcing anyone to help finance a sports facility.” Leave aside for the moment the fact that Minnesota Twins owner Carl Pohlad, who is worth about $1.3 billion, could finance the entire stadium by himself and still have about $700 million (yes, MILLION) left over. Let’s focus on the philosophy behind the Governor’s idea. Last week I said “I don’t think any democratically-minded person should object, in principle, to paying taxes.” To what principle was I referring? The principle of public spending for public benefit. When we democratically decide that our community (or state, or nation) would benefit from building something like, say, a bridge, then a democratically-minded person should not mind being required to chip in. As Jim Hightower puts it, “Everyone’s better off when everyone’s better off.” To the extent that such decisions are made in a truly democratic manner, reflecting the interests of the majority of the citizens, the associated requirements will be perceived as fair and collection will be relatively easy. And to the extent that the contribution demanded of a citizen is related to one’s ability to pay, as it is in a progressive tax system, then there is even less reason for citizens to complain about being required to contribute. Contrast this with our Governor’s idea, in which public projects get funded only if people voluntarily contribute. If you accept the premise that the interests of different classes of people are often different, then the problem quickly becomes apparent. Let’s take Carl Pohlad and myself as prototypes. Let’s say that Carl wants the state to build a ballpark. And let’s say that Jeff wants the state to build low-income housing. Each of us donates a modest one percent of our wealth to what we believe to be an important state priority. Carl donates his $13 million, and Jeff donates his thirty bucks. Get it? But do different classes of people really have such different interests? Yes, I think so, especially when it comes to taxes and spending. For example, I mentioned last week that my Minnesota tax form is laughably simple, while the tax forms that the wealthy must complete are, apparently, quite complex. That’s a trivial example, but there are loads of more substantial issues in which one can generally use class as a predictor of political positions. A few examples would be:
Governments do some things that benefit everybody, of course, such as pollution control, road maintenance, garbage collection, and so on. But that doesn’t alter the main point here. That point is that a formal system of voluntary contribution for public good would move us further from being a democratic society and closer to a divided society of winners and losers. Given the power that corporate America currently has to avoid taxes and receive government subsidies, it’s clear that we have already traveled some distance along that road. But in a Governor Ventura administration, such tendencies would be more than simply bad ideas; they would be the law. Now I seem to be having the same debates about Governor Ventura that I used to have about President Reagan: Does he not understand that his vision of government can only lead to a less fair, more polarized society? Or, is that what he wants? Or, is he merely a figurehead in an administration where the real policy decisions are being made by others? |
|
I always take off work the first day of the Minnesota State Fair and spend the entire day there. When I was there yesterday, I got into a conversation with a woman who was working at the booth for the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. This is the department in the state of Minnesota that is responsible for enforcing non- discrimination in housing, employment, public accommodations and services, education, and so on. They also monitor and document compliance or non-compliance with state affirmative action laws. I asked the very helpful woman how the Department had fared in the state legislative session completed last May. She hesitated, then said, “Well, we stayed about the same.” I re-phrased my question: “I know that the governor had originally called for $60 million dollars in budget cuts, but only 7% of those cuts were finally approved by the legislature. Did the DHR get its funding cut? In other words, did the Department get enough money to effectively carry out its responsibilities during the next budget period?” “Well,” she said with a sad smile, “we only had to lay off one-and- a-half people instead of nine.” Meanwhile... Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura was boasting this week about increased funding in an area that he apparently considers more important than human rights: getting a drivers’ license. In a story in the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) of August 25th entitled “Ventura, Weaver say more examiners cutting road-test lines,” the Governor and Public Safety Commissioner Charlie Weaver announced an additional $1.8 million in funding for the Department of Public Safety, to be used to hire 18 new drivers’ license examiners around the state. It seems that people who pop in to examining stations to take the road tests for their drivers’ licenses have been forced to wait in “long lines.” Those lines are a thing of the past now, according to our daily newspaper. “People will look at this as money well spent,” Ventura said at a news conference at the Arden Hills exam station. At that same news conference, the Star Trib reported that the Governor claimed that this action was evidence of his administration making government more “customer-friendly.” True enough, I guess, unless the “customer” happens to be a person of color, a person with disabilities, a non-Christian, a foreign-born person or a recent immigrant, a woman, a poor person, a gay man or a lesbian, an older person, or any of the other people that the Department of Human Rights is charged with protecting from discrimination. |
|
“U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam PETE PETERSON. He's a former Florida congressman and a former P.O.W. during the Vietnam war. He spent almost seven years as a prisoner of war. Now every day, living in Vietnam, he passes by the Hanoi Hilton, the building that held him. Peterson is the subject of a new PBS documentary, ‘Assignment Hanoi,’ which will air on many PBS stations September 7th.” The above quote was the “teaser,” or commercial, on National Public Radio encouraging people to tune in to Terry Gross and her nationally-syndicated NPR talk show, Fresh Air, this past Tuesday. On the way home from my softball game that night I did tune in, briefly, in the car. What I heard does not speak well of the moral climate in our nation these days. 160 Words On The History of the Vietnam War It is important to remember that, counter to what many people seem to believe, the United States was the aggressor in the Vietnam war. The United States paid 80% of the costs for the French when they attempted to reconquer Vietnam after WW II. Failing that, the French decided to clear out in 1954. The United States then proceeded to subvert the Geneva agreement of that year which had called for free democratic elections to be held in Vietnam in 1956. As the 1950s turned into the 1960s, the U.S. pursued the course of supporting the corrupt and very violent Diem regime, despite the fact that the nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh enjoyed the support of the majority of the population and would undoubtedly have won any fair election that might have been held. This fanatical “anti-communist” course was pursued until it inexorably led to our outright attack on that country by the Kennedy Administration in 1961. This was then followed by more than a decade of the most vicious war that a major imperial power has ever waged on a small Third World country. Back to Terry Gross and her guest: Ambassador Peterson noted that the issue of U.S. MIAs (missing in action) from the war in Vietnam was and still is the primary issue in United States relations with that country. He pointed out that there remain approximately 1,500 U.S. citizens MIA from the Vietnam war. He then pointed out that there are approximately 300,000 Vietnamese who are MIA from that war. Mr. Peterson failed to even attempt to put these numbers in perspective. It is obvious that the Vietnamese have 200 times as many MIAs as the United States, but when one looks at the numbers in proportion to the population the meaning of those numbers becomes more clear: If the United States had proportionally the same number of people missing in action relative to it’s population as does Vietnam, American MIAs would number more than ONE MILLION today. This would be almost the entire number of active U.S. military personnel and, if true, would likely be having a profound effect on American politics. I will state for the record that each and every one of these MIAs is a crime, and the families of each and every one of these people deserve understanding and sympathy. But this essay is not about those families. This essay is about the people and institutions who were, and are, responsible for not only the existence of these MIAs, but the untold suffering of the nation of Vietnam that was wrought by our country, and continues today. Given that the Vietnam War occurred in Vietnam, it follows that virtually all of our MIAs became MIAs in relation to their role in our attack on that country. Responsibility thus lies at the feet of the United States government, not the Vietnamese government. Nor is it the political or moral responsibility of the people of Vietnam, who were acting in self-defense in the face of armed attack, in full accord with international law (specifically, Article 51 of the United Nations Charter). For the United States to complain to Vietnam for the existence of MIAs is analogous to punching someone in the mouth and then complaining when they bleed on you. In promoting the documentary “Assignment Hanoi,” which PBS says “chronicles Peterson's extraordinary odyssey from prisoner of war to America's ambassador to Vietnam,” Mr. Peterson said “I want to heal the wounds between the United States and Vietnam. It's a tragic history that we've shared as two peoples.” Having made these comments, it was all the more outrageous that Terry Gross had no apparent comment to make when Mr. Peterson stated that the American MIA issue is the primary issue between our two nations. It is difficult to fully appreciate how outrageous this omission is, but I would guess that many listeners in the United States were far from outraged upon hearing this interview. Few Americans think about Vietnam at all any more, and fewer still ever thought of that country as the victim of international aggression by the United States. It would be a rare American, indeed, who today considers that Vietnam might in fact be morally entitled to billions of dollars of reparations from the U.S. in light of the above facts. It’s much more likely that Americans, when they think about the Vietnam War at all, think in terms of individual heroism Why are so few Americans capable of seeing, let alone understanding, the major moral and political issues raised by America’s attack on Vietnam? There are undoubtedly many reasons, and the failure of national commentators like Terry Gross to bring these issues to our attention is surely one of them. |