There It Is . org

[ This is a July 20, 2006 letter to Senator Russ Feingold from Alexandra Dadlez. --BL ]

Senator Feingold,

Several years ago, probably around the time of the Iraq War Resolution, I wrote an e-mail to you strongly urging that you run for president of the United States.

This is to let you know: Never Mind. I have seldom been so disappointed in my life.

You are quoted in the The Jewish Week as follows:

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), expected to run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination on an anti-war platform, said, ?I stand firmly with the people of Israel and their government as they defend themselves against these outrageous attacks.?

In an interview with an Iowa newspaper, he linked the issue to his opposition to the Iraq war.

?What we have done by becoming mired in Iraq, and by deciding to change the balance of power in that region, is enable Iran and Syria to be much more open in tormenting Israel, the United States and our allies,? he said in a Journal-Sentinel interview.

Senator Feingold, when you were contemplating your response to the current crisis in Lebanon, when you and your advisers were determining the most politically advantageous position for you to assume, did you for ONE DAMN MOMENT consider the plight of the Lebanese people?

“…Iran and Syria (are) tormenting Israel, the United States and our allies…”

Senator, who is bombing an innocent people? Who is destroying the infrastructure of a country that was just beginning to recover from years of violence? Who has killed well over 200 civilians, including many children? Who is tormenting whom, Senator? The numbers do the talking. Somewhere around 27 Israelis, approximately half of them military, to close to 300 Lebanese, most of them civilians. And another half million displaced. If it’s torment when the victim is an Israeli, what is it that an Arab suffers, Senator?

?I stand firmly with the people of Israel and their government as they defend themselves against these outrageous attacks.?

Senator, it is you who are outrageous. Who do you think you are kidding? Do you even believe what you say? It’s just politics, isn’t it? But in this case, what you are saying to promote your campaign is contributing to the deaths of innocent people. That is more than disappointing, Senator Feingold. It is unforgivable.

I await your response.

Alexandra Dadlez

19 July 2006 | Greg Palast . com

Don’t check the casket. I know he?s back. When I saw those lights flickering out at La Guardia Airport yesterday and heard the eerie shrieks and moans in the dark, broiling subway tunnels, I just knew it: Ken Lay’s alive! We can see his spirit in every flickering lightbulb from Kansas to Queens as we head into America’s annual Blackout season.

It wasn’t always so. For decades, America had nearly the best, most reliable electricity system on the planet and, though we grumbled, electricity bills were among the planet’s lowest. It was all thanks to Franklin Roosevelt and the Public Utility Holding Company Act which allowed for tough regulation of the power monopolies. They were told what they could charge, the maximum profit they could take and — what I think about when the lights dim — exactly how much they had to invest to keep the juice flowing.

But then, in 1992, a Texas oil man, George H.W. Bush, ordered to evacuate the White House by two-thirds of the US electorate, gave his Houston crony, Ken Lay, a billion-dollar good-bye kiss: Bush’s signature authorizing deregulation of electricity.
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3 July 2006 | AlterNet

by George Lakoff

Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush’s plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush’s “failures” and label him and his administration as incompetent. For example, Nancy Pelosi said “The situation in Iraq and the reckless economic policies in the United States speak to one issue for me, and that is the competence of our leader.”

Self-satisfying as this criticism may be, it misses the bigger point. Bush’s disasters — Katrina, the Iraq War, the budget deficit — are not so much a testament to his incompetence or a failure of execution. Rather, they are the natural, even inevitable result of his conservative governing philosophy. It is conservatism itself, carried out according to plan, that is at fault. Bush will not be running again, but other conservatives will. His governing philosophy is theirs as well. We should be putting the onus where it belongs, on all conservative office holders and candidates who would lead us off the same cliff.

To Bush’s base, his bumbling folksiness is part of his charm — it fosters conservative populism. Bush plays up this image by proudly stating his lack of interest in reading and current events, his fondness for naps and vacations and his self-deprecating jokes. This image causes the opposition to underestimate his capacities — disregarding him as a complete idiot — and deflects criticism of his conservative allies. If incompetence is the problem, it’s all about Bush. But, if conservatism is the problem, it is about a set of ideas, a movement and its many adherents.

The idea that Bush is incompetent is a curious one. Consider the following (incomplete) list of major initiatives the Bush administration, with a loyal conservative Congress, has accomplished:

• Centralizing power within the executive branch to an unprecedented degree
• Starting two major wars, one started with questionable intelligence and in a manner with which the military disagreed
• Placing on the Supreme Court two far-right justices, and stacking the lower federal courts with many more
• Cutting taxes during wartime, an unprecedented event
• Passing a number of controversial bills such as the PATRIOT Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, the Medicare Drug bill, the Bankruptcy bill and a number of massive tax cuts
• Rolling back and refusing to enforce a host of basic regulatory protections
• Appointing industry officials to oversee regulatory agencies
• Establishing a greater role for religion through faith-based initiatives
• Passing Orwellian-titled legislation assaulting the environment — “The Healthy Forests Act” and the “Clear Skies Initiative” — to deforest public lands, and put more pollution in our skies
• Winning re-election and solidifying his party’s grip on Congress

These aren’t signs of incompetence. As should be painfully clear, the Bush administration has been overwhelmingly competent in advancing its conservative vision. It has been all too effective in achieving its goals by determinedly pursuing a conservative philosophy.

It’s not Bush the man who has been so harmful, it’s the conservative agenda.
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24 May 2006 | TurhtOut.org

by Dean Baker

The New York Times had an article today that inadvertently revealed a huge amount about how wages are set in the US economy (“US Plan to Lure Nurses May Hurt Poor Nations,” 5-24-06; A1). We all know the official story – wages are supposed to be set by the market, our old friends supply and demand. When certain skills are in short supply, the wages for workers with these skills are bid up. This leads more people to acquire the skills and may also reduce the demand. Eventually, supply increases and demand falls by enough to establish a balance in the market.

In this wonderful market world, the people who end up with high wages (e.g. doctors, lawyers, accountants, economists) have skills that are in high demand and difficult to master. The people with low pay (e.g. custodians, retail clerks, child care workers, dishwashers, etc.) are ones who have skills that are relatively plentiful.

That is a nice fairy tale. It has about as much relationship to the real world as the tooth fairy, as the Times article showed.

The article reports on a provision in the Senate immigration bill that removes the cap on the number of nurses who can enter the country each year. The problem, as described in the article, is that the country faces a large and growing shortage of nurses. In a market economy, a shortage means that wages should rise. This will cause more students to enter nursing schools (presumably creating more incentive to establish nursing schools), and will induce many part-time or retired nurses to work more hours as nurses. It may also curtail the demand somewhat, as some tasks that are performed by nurses can presumably be performed by less-skilled workers.

But, that is not the way things work in the world of the conservative nanny state. The people who set economic policy in this country don’t want to pay nurses higher wages. They have a different solution – bring more nurses from developing countries into the United States. These nurses will be very happy to work for the current wages received by nurses in the United States, which are far higher than what nurses in places like the Philippines or India earn. (Never mind the impact that this drain of nurses has on developing countries.)

Before anyone claims that free immigration is part of a free market, it is important to remember that the United States does not have free immigration in general, it only allows free immigration in occupations where it is trying to depress wages. While it is far cheaper to educate nurses in developing countries than in the United States, it is also far cheaper to educate doctors, lawyers, accountants and economists. The gains from having free immigration for people working in these professions would be enormous. We could even share these gains by reimbursing the countries of origin.

This would be an enormous win-win scenario. By making our education and licensing requirements fully transparent and opening the door to foreigners in the most highly paid professions, we would be able to drastically reduce the cost of health care, college education and many other goods and services. This would mean higher living standards and more jobs for people in the United States. This is the gains-from-trade story that economists like to tell in other contexts. We could share these gains with developing countries, paying them 3 or 4 times the costs of educating these professionals, so that they can educate more professionals for their own countries, and also redistribute some of this income.

Incidentally, this form of free trade would also lead to a more equal distribution of income, improving the situation of those at the middle and the bottom and the expense of those at the top. Of course this is the reason why Congress is not about to remove the barriers that protect our highly paid professionals from foreign competition.

The key to the story is that our political leaders think that free trade and competition are good only for manufacturing workers, nurses, and other workers lower down the social ladder. They want the nanny state to protect the highest-paid workers from international competition. The huge gap in wages between those at the top and those at the bottom is not because of the market, it’s because those at the top got Congress to rig the game.

Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer (www.conservativenannystate.org). He also has a blog, “Beat the Press,” where he discusses the media’s coverage of economic issues. It can be found at the CEPR website, www.cepr.net.