Number 54 January 14, 2000

This Week:

Quote of the Week
A More Complex Martin Luther King
Colombia: Here We Go Again
Hunger and the Horse Race

Greetings,

Years ago, when I worked as a counselor with troubled families, I learned to listen to them carefully when they talked. But I didn’t listen only to what they said; I also listened to how they said it, who they said it to, and what they were trying to accomplish by saying it. This is how I now listen to our presidential candidates (when I can stand listening to them at all).

This week, in “Hunger and the Horse Race,” I listen to the candidates, and their partners the media, in much the same way. One of these days I will publish my step-by-step guide of “How to Follow the Campaign.” I haven’t decided yet if it will be a serious piece or another inside joke for Nygaard Notes readers. Should be interesting either way.

Next Thursday, the 20th, all over the Americas and on parts of other continents, there will be a total eclipse of the full moon. This could be great viewing, weather permitting. In Minnesota, the event occurs between 9 pm and midnight on the night of the 20th. Check it out to be reminded that the universe is a huge and amazing place, and we humans are just a small part of it.

Welcome to new readers. I like you already, and many of you I’ve never met!

Hasta la proxima,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

“The [anti-poverty] programs of the past all have a common failing - they are indirect. Each seeks to solve poverty by first solving something else. I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective - the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely-discussed measure: the guaranteed income.”

-- Martin Luther King, from his 1967 book “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?”

A More Complex Martin Luther King

It’s true, all you youngsters out there. Such ideas as a guaranteed national income (also called a “social wage”) actually were being talked about by lots of people in the 1960s. And this is not baby- boomer nostalgia for the hippie days of our youth. There really was a different political climate back then, as illustrated by this next quote from Martin Luther King in 1967:

“Earlier in this century [my proposal for a guaranteed income] would have been greeted with ridicule and denunciation as destructive of initiative and responsibility. At that time economic status was considered the measure of the individual's abilities and talents. In the simplistic thinking of that day the absence of worldly goods indicated a want of industrious habits and moral fiber.”

Hmm... imagine that.

As we celebrate Martin Luther King Day on January 17th, it’s important to remember that Dr. King was not simply concerned with civil rights for the “Negro” (as was the current term) in America. Like Einstein, Martin Luther King was a complex man whose thinking evolved over time. Toward the end of his life he began speaking out not only against the Vietnam War from an anti- imperialist perspective but also, as the above quotes illustrate, about poverty and the proper response of society to the have-nots that are an inevitable part of a capitalist economy.

While the popular media will once again attempt to freeze Dr. King on the steps of the Capitol telling us that “I have a dream today!” (which really was a great speech for our times), Nygaard Notes readers will hopefully carry with them a broader and more activist understanding of his legacy. Dr. King did indeed have a dream, but he also had a sophisticated analysis, a strategy, and a militant political organization.

I’ll end with this quote from Dr. King, speaking of his proposal for a guaranteed income:

“This proposal is not a ‘civil rights’ program, in the sense that that term is currently used. The program would benefit all the poor, including the two-thirds of them who are white. I hope that both Negro and white will act in coalition to effect this change, because their combined strength will be necessary to overcome the fierce opposition we must realistically anticipate.”

Read a longer excerpt on the issue of a social wage at: www.progress.org/dividend/cdking.html

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Colombia: Here We Go Again

Back in October I talked about the extremely dangerous situation in Colombia (“Colombia and the War on Democracy,” Nygaard Notes Number 51). I said that Clinton was planning a huge increase in the amount of aid to that country. Indeed, this week he proposed a $1.6 billion aid bill that would, the President said, “help stem the production and export of illegal narcotics, while supporting economic development and improving human rights in Colombia.”

We’ve had a “drug war” in Colombia, and in the United States, forever, but cocaine use in the United States hasn’t gone down for years. Why would more of the same be expected to change things? And the overwhelming majority of human rights abuses in Colombia are committed by paramilitary groups closely linked to the government. So why would the giving of more aid “improve” human rights? Here’s a relevant quote on the subject from a Reuters news report from a couple of weeks ago: “Colombian President Andres Pastrana vetoed a bill on Thursday that would have set mandatory jail terms for heinous crimes, saying it could lead to the prosecution of soldiers fighting the country's civil war.” That kind of says it all.

There’s no time to mince words here: The President’s justification for this aid package is simply farcical and dangerous propaganda. Contact the CISPES Anti-War Committee, 610 W 28th Street, Minneapolis, MN 55408, Phone 612/872-0944; E-mail actioncolombia@hotmail.com Their website is: http://www.angelfire.com/mn/cispes/

More on this next week.

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Hunger and the Horse Race

On Christmas eve the New York Times offered us an article entitled “Democrats Criticize Bush as Out of Touch on Poverty,” with the subhead “Political flak from a response to a federal study on hunger.” Naturally this captured my attention, as I am far enough out of the mainstream to actually be concerned about poverty and hunger.

Foolish me. The headline should have told me that the article would be about neither poverty nor hunger, but rather about wealthy presidential candidates trying to embarrass each other. Nonetheless, it was an interesting article for a number of reasons.

There actually was an important report on hunger in the United States issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in September. Entitled “Measuring Food Insecurity in the United States,” the report gave hunger data on each state (with Texas having the second-highest hunger rate in the Union). I confess I would have missed the report completely if the New York Times had not incidentally mentioned it in their story on the presidential horse race. So, thank you, New York Times (I guess). Was I alone in my ignorance? Probably not, as neither the New York Times nor the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) made any mention whatsoever of the report when it came out. Except for the article in question, they still haven’t mentioned it.

The Candidate...And the Man

Recall, if you will, last week’s Quote of the Week from George W. Bush, in which he said, “I saw the report that children in Texas are going hungry. Where? You’d think the governor would have heard if there were pockets of hunger in Texas.” Mr. Bush made a couple of other statements that tell us a little bit about, as they say, “the candidate...and the man.” Mr. Bush said, first of all, that “I’m sure there are some people who are hungry. I don’t believe 5 percent of the children in my state are hungry, and if they are, we’ll fix it.”

Another gem of a quote was elicited by reporters in New Hampshire who asked whether the candidate had been surprised by the hunger report. Bush responded, “Yeah, I’m surprised. I’m surprised all of a sudden a report floats out of Washington, D.C. as I’m launching my campaign for president. There seems to be a lot of reports coming out of Washington, D.C. these days.”

Idiot? Or liar? That’s a tough call, but let’s look a little closer at what he said.

He seems to be saying, number one, that he doesn’t believe the numbers produced by the USDA. If he had bothered to look at some numbers produced by his own administration in Texas, as I did, he could have seen evidence to support the USDA numbers. For now, let me just cite some testimony by nutrition policy analyst Celia Hagert of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, a Texas- based non-profit public policy organization. Speaking last February before the Texas legislature, Ms. Hagert stated that “Hunger afflicts one in ten Texans under the age of 12, while 15% of families in Texas are hungry or at risk of hunger.” The feds say 5% of Texans are hungry; a state expert says 10%. Whatever. George doesn’t believe either one of ‘em.

As for Mr. Bush’s paranoid delusions about the United States Department of Agriculture “floating” a report on hunger for the purpose of embarrassing him, there is one obvious point to be made: There is no reason for anyone to expend energy to embarrass someone who is so good at embarrassing himself.

But just to cover all the bases, I contacted the USDA to ask them if their was any basis to Mr. Bush’s not-so-subtle charge that the timing of the report was politically motivated. (I was actually sort of embarrassed to do this, but it’s part of my job.)

Mark Nord, co-author of the report, told me that he would not respond directly to the political charges, but could give me some factual information about the report. It turns out that the report which “all of a sudden” came out in September is actually one of a series of annual reports on hunger and food security carried out by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the USDA, as required by law. What law? you ask. Well, the National Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research Act of 1990, signed into law on October 22nd, 1990 by none other than President George Bush, the father of the current candidate.

The first data were collected in 1995 and were first published in 1997, long before anybody even knew George Bush would run for President. An advance summary of the 1999 report came out in July, barely one month after George W. announced his candidacy. That report is the result of four years of research. It’s release was timed to coincide with the opening of the first National Summit on Community Food Security held in Chicago in October. All of the information supplied by Mr. Nord can be found on the USDA’s website.

For a response to Mr. Bush’s political charges, I spoke with Shirley Watkins, Under Secretary of Agriculture for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services. After reiterating much of what Mr. Nord had told me, she expressed dismay that “some people would perceive that this report would be aimed at one particular person.” She emphasized that the report was mandated by law, and was not “political” in any way. “It only gets political when we don’t do anything about hunger,” said Ms. Watkins. Well said, Under Secretary Watkins.

The Land They Live In

In his 1999 song “The World Isn’t Fair,” Randy Newman sarcastically sings that “I’m glad I’m living in the land of the free/Where the rich just get richer/And the poor you don’t ever have to see.”

This is the land in which George W. Bush lives, and it is the land in which the editors of the New York Times spend most of their waking hours. There is no conspiracy to embarrass Mr. Bush, just as there is no conspiracy to deprive the public of important information about hunger and poverty in the United States. What we have here is something that might be called “selective vision,” which is a symptom of a more profound disease called elitism, from which both Mr. Bush and these high-powered editors suffer. At the parties that Mr. Bush and the newspaper editors attend, which subject do you think is more likely to be discussed (choose one): Hunger in America? or The presidential horse race?

So, it’s quite possible that Mr. Bush does not know how many hungry people there are in Texas. As for our daily newspaper editors, there are two equally plausible explanations for their failure to report on hunger. They may never have heard about the USDA’s report, or they may have heard about it and just couldn’t find room for it in the newspaper. That doesn’t indicate a conspiracy. That indicates how class influences our view of the world.

Next week: What’s in this hunger report, anyway?

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