Asleep At The Switch (cont')

Last time I suggested that the false god "Profit"
has been used to justify (and rationalize) a long
list of social and political evils. And I listed some
of those. I also quoted Peter Drucker's sage
contention: "There is no such thing as 'profit.'
There are only costs: costs of the past (which
the accountant records) and costs of an uncertain
future. And the minimum financial return from
the operations of the past that is adequate to the
costs of the future is the cost of capital." (p. 81,
The Post-Capitalist Society).

Some of costs of the future are the $10+ trillion
we owe in national debt, and the even greater
pile of private debt. In the crazed pursuit of
profit, we have allowed much of our productive
capacity to be moved overseas, and too many
good-paying jobs have gone with them. Increa-
singly, the jobs left have been low-paying service
jobs. People can't earn a living and support a
family on these jobs, let alone afford health care
or health insurance!

If you'd like to start to understand some of what
has been happening, and why, you might get a
new book by Thomas Frank: The Wrecking
Crew. The subtitle is "How Conservatives Rule."
Let's face it folks, the people in charge for most
of the last 30 years hate government and its
regulations. Remember what Reagan said?
"Government is the problem." So they have
been diligently dismantling the enforcement
agencies set up by law to protect clean air and
water, worker safety, investors, the poor and
their children, natural resources, and on and on.
Now these are folks who, taking their oaths of
office, vowed to obey and enforce the laws! If
you think I am overstating, read Frank's book.
He spells it out in chilling detail the who, why
and how of this deliberately destructive and
disastrous process.

Another helpful book is Bad Money by Kevin
Phillips. He is the author of American Theocracy
and several other important books, like The
Politics of Rich and Poor. This one is about
"Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, And the
Global Crisis of American Capitalism. It just came
out this year, before the current meltdown, but
he saw it coming, and explains in layman terms
what has been going on. It goes along with The
Wrecking Crew in that it shows how our financial
system has been trashed, robbed, and ruined by
our national leaders in Washington and on Wall
Street. "Bad money" results from fraud, cheating
workers and consumers, and swindling stock hol-
ders, as well as wild gambling with other peoples'
funds!

Another "must read" is The Shock Doctrine, by
Naomi Klein. It's subtitle is "The Rise of Disaster
Capitalism." If you only read one of the books I
have mentioned, make it this one! Arundhati Roy
has said of it: ". . . a brilliant, brave and terrifying
book. It's nothing less than the secret history of
what we call 'the free market.' It should be com-
pulsory reading." Chalmers Johnson said: "Naomi
Klein's expose of neoliberal economics is certain to
be sensational. She rips away the 'free trade' and
globalization ideologies that disguise a conspiracy
to privatize war and disaster and grab public pro-
perty for the rich few. Klein's is a long-needed
analysis of our headlong flight back to feudalism
under the guise of social science and 'freedom.' "

Klein points out that there are always people who
benefit from disasters. And some of them have a
hand in creating disasters, for personal gain. I know
that sounds ridiculous, but she shows it happening
over and over, and proves her thesis without
question! You and I know, for instance, that there
are people who benefit from train wrecks. Those
would be undertakers, hospitals and medical people,
ambulance owners, scrap dealers, track repair folks,
and etc., etc. (These examples are mine.)

Alert individuals have already reaped millions from
Katrina, and billions from Iraq. Klein explains how
Iraq was deliberately planned to be much more de-
structive of Iraqi life, property and culture than it
needed to be, in order to make possible a complete
remake of that society and its institutions along Wes-
tern (that's neoconservative) lines. That's not
happening, of course. The geniuses planning this
debacle had no idea of the lion and tiger cages they
were opening when they removed Saddam. He was
the animal trainer that kept that circus together.

Back to our domestic situation here: if Klein is cor-
rect in her analysis of the shock doctrine and the
way it worked in Chile, and New Orleans, and the
tsunami that hit Indonesia, we can expect the ex-
tremely wealthy people who typically move in on
the heels of disaster to buy valuable properties at
a fraction of their book value, to prevail on their
stooges in congress to put our nation's priceless
natural treasures on the auction block to meet our
current financial crisis. I'm talking about public
lands, including national forests, national parks,
federally owned beach properties, national grazing
lands, etc. etc. The justification will be, in addition
to the current crisis, the coming breakdown of
Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. We will
be told we have no choice, just like in the present
bailout of Wall Street. We did have choices once,
but that time is long gone. We slept too soundly.
Sorry. Go back to sleep.
to know what was going on!
It's dynamite!