HARMFUL PET MYTHS

A number of myths continue to float around
and spread poison, although all of these are
false. Among them: "A rising tide lifts all
boats," "the free market creates wealth,"
"government cannot create wealth," "health
care is already available to everyone," and
"we can rid the world of evil."

To take the last first, it should be pointed
out that evil comes in many shapes and
sizes. Much of it must be ignored. For in-
stance, China is destroying Tibet, its cul-
ture and its people. That's been going on
for years, and we've ignored it for just as
long because there's not much we can do
about it. Darfur is a similar case where
little has been or can be done. We ignored
the genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia
even though something could have been
done to save a lot of people, had we been
interested in doing that. A couple of mil-
lion people have been slaughtered in Con-
go in recent years without much notice
from the rest of the world.

So Mr. Bush's campaign to rid the world
of evil is not going well in spite of his wide-
spread use of lying, cheating, torture and
illegal imprisonment without legal recourse.
Scripture tells us to depart from evil, but
nowhere does it tell us that evil can be
banished by human effort. It tells us to
resist evil, and that the prudent man for-
sees it and hides from it. We are told
three times in the New Testament "to re-
turn evil for evil to no man." But I
guess Mr. B. has missed that one as well!

The Free Market Myth


There is supposedly a "free market" that is
all-knowing and all-powerful and that auto-
matically distributes goods and services with
unerring wisdom and fairness, thus creating
great wealth. It's a fairy-tale. Wealth is cre-
ated by labour applied to various resources.
In much of the world that labour is organ-
ized around slavery, in one form or another.
When this country finally ended chattel
slavery, it switched to bringing in foreign
workers at subsistence level wages. Chinese
labor built the railroads in the west, for the
most part, and today is building much, if not
most of the shoddy goods coming into this
country for sale in Wal-Mart.

As for the supposed "free market," it doesn't
exist except in the fertile imaginations of
retrograde economists and politicians. It's
a myth, like Santa Claus: There is no such
thing! There are markets (plural), to be sure,
and none of them are "free." All have re-
strictions in one form or another, such as
tariffs, embargoes, boycotts, and laws govern-
ing imports, and exports.

Try to buy Cuban cigars in the U. S., or Cuban
sugar, for that matter. It won't happen. There's
your free market! We subsidize many crops in
the U. S., including especially corn and sugar.
In fact, we are spending $16 billion of taxpayers'
money on agricultural subsidies. Is that free
market? In fact there is hardly an industry in
this country that isn't getting some kind of
federal help.

So while there is no market (singular) and
hence no "invisible hand" (a la Adam Smith),
there are certainly market forces of many kinds
and influences, good and bad. But none are
free by any stretch of the imagination. That's
all bunk, but widely disseminated and believed,
just the same.

Another damaging myth that often accompanies
the free market baloney is the "government
creates no wealth" nonsense. It's a favorite of
such over-paid blowhards as Rush Limbaugh.
We can't call Rush a liar (on this one) because,
like his big fan George Bush, he's just ignorant.
He doesn't know about TVA or BPA or the inter-
state highway system, or the G. I. Bill. TVA
transformed the poorest part of rural America
into a thriving industrial and recreation hub
that continues to produce vast wealth to this
day. Ditto for the inter-state highway system
built under Pres. Eisenhower with mostly fed-
eral money. It led to the rapid growth of su-
burbs, motel chains, fast food outlets, and the
modern trucking industry (among many other
things.)

As important as the inter-state system was in
creating post-WW II prosperity, Peter Drucker,
the famous management guru, said there was
another government program even more causi-
tive of that prosperity: that was the G. I. Bill.
It enabled millions of high school grads to go
on to college and develop their highest poten-
tial. I and my five brothers came from humble
circumstances and all of us graduated college
with the G. I. Bill. Two became lawyers, one a
professor, one a city planner, and one a federal
judge. The G. I. Bill was an escalator that lifted
millions of young people into the middle and
professional classes. It enriched the nation
beyond measure.

Another myth: "A rising tide lifts all boats."
Actually, it sinks the boats with holes in their
bottoms. What of the folks who can't afford
a boat? They'll soon have water up their noses,
and are treading water.

Another popular myth: "No one goes without
health care." This is one of Bush's favorite
bromides. He echoes the dummies who par-
rot: "they can always go to the emergency room."
As Paul Krugman observes in the N. Y. Times
(8/29/08): "The truth, of course, is that visi-
ting the emergency room in a medical crisis is
no substitute for regular care. Furthermore,
while a hospital will treat you whether or not
you can pay, it will also bill you --- and the bill
won't be waived unless you're destitute. As a
result, uninsured working Americans avoid
visiting emergency rooms if at all possible, be-
cause they're terrified by the potential cost:
medical expenses are one of the prime causes
of personal bankruptcy." And as a matter of
fact, nearly 2 million a year are forced into
bankruptcy by medical expenses. Many are
refused care if they have outstanding bills at
that hospital, and have to find another one
post-haste that will take them. People die
in transit while searching frantically for
some place that will admit them without
insurance. It's not as simple as Bush/McCain
believe. They just have no idea what they
are talking about. They are repeating what
they heard on Fox News, perhaps.

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

HELPLESS AND HAPLESS IN THE
CAUCASUS

The Russians are chess players. They
don't move without weighing where, why,
and what is to be expected to happen. It's
called strategy. Mr. Bush? Not so much.
He plays checkers, thinking that if he jumps
enough people, someone will surely King
him! He jumped on the Taliban, and is
bogged down there as we speak. The
Taliban is growing steadily, and controls
much of the countryside. It now threatens
Kabul. This is the real endless fight that
McCain keeps talking about, though he
hasn't a clue what it's all about. Or who's
on first. Bush also jumped on Saddam,
and is bogged down there as well. He has
threatened Iran, a Russian business part-
ner who is developing nuclear technology
with Russia's help. Russia is obligated by
a long-standing treaty to help Iran if they
are attacked.

Upon the fall of the Soviet Union the U. S.
proclaimed itself "the lone superpower."
It wasn't and isn't, of course, as is clear
from events in Georgia. We certainly have
the military hard and software to crush
most if not all comers. But we have neither
the wit nor the will to employ that power
effectively. Speaking of the way we bullied
Russia when it was weak, Immanuel Waller-
stein has written: "There was only one prob-
lem with this: The United States was not the
lone superpower; it was no longer even a
superpower at all. The end of the cold war
meant that the United States had been de-
moted from being one of two superpowers
to being one strong state in a truly multi-
lateral distribution of real power in the
interstate system. Many large countries
were now able to play their own chess
games without clearing their moves with
one or two erstwhile superpowers. And
they began to do so."

Still quoting Wallerstein: "Two major
geopolitical decisions were made in the
Clinton years. First, the United States
pushed hard and more or less success-
fully, for the incorporation of erstwhile
Soviet satellites into NATO membership.
These countries were themselves anxious
to join, even though the key Western
European countries --Germany and
France -- were somewhat reluctant to go
down this path." Tom Friedman, in the
N. Y. Times wrote on 8/20/08 concerning
this: "I was among the group -- led by
George Kennan, Sen. Sam Nunn and the
foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum
that argued against expanding NATO at
that time. It seemed to us that since we had
finally brought down Soviet communism
and seen the birth of democracy in Russia
the most important to do was to help Rus-
sian democracy take root and integrate
Russia into Europe. . . .this was especially
true because, we argued, there was no big
problem on the world stage that we could
effectively address without Russia -- parti-
cularly Iran or Iraq. Russia wasn't about
to re invade Europe. And the Eastern
Europeans would be integrated into the
West via membership in the European
Union. No, said the Clinton foreign poli-
cy team, we're going to cram NATO ex-
pansion down the Russian's throats, be-
cause Moscow is weak and, by the way,
they'll get used to it. Message to the Rus-
sians: We expect you to behave like Wes-
tern democrats, but we're going to treat you
like you're still the Soviet Union. The cold
was is over for you, but not for us."

"'The Clinton and Bush foreign policy teams
acted on the basis of two false premises,'
said Mandelbaum. 'One was that Russia is
innately aggressive and that the end of cold
war could not possibly change this, so we
had to expand our military alliance up to its
borders. Despite all the pious blather about
using NATO to promote democracy, the be-
lief in Russia's eternal aggressiveness is the
only basis on which NATO expansion ever
made sense -- especially when you consider
that the Russians were told they could not
join. (emphasis mine.) The other (false)
premise was the Russia would always be too
weak to endanger any new NATO members,
so we would never have to commit troops
to defend them. It would cost us nothing.
They were wrong on both counts.'"

"The humiliation that NATO expansion
bred in Russia (back to quoting Friedman
now) was critical in fueling Putin's rise
after Boris Yeltsin moved on. And Ameri-
ca's addiction to oil helped push up energy
prices to a level that gave Putin the power
to act on that humiliation." That's what's
happening now in Georgia. The stupid
chickens always come home to roost.

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net