A novel approach to politics
By
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship Read Spanish Version
From
Truthout.org
ABC
News’s political blog, "The Note," points out this week
that Paris Hilton is issuing policy statements while John McCain
nominates his wife for a topless beauty contest. The world’s turned
upside down. Who could blame a person for thinking that chronicling
such oddness is beyond the skills of simple journalists? This is a
job for the novelists.
Here,
for example, is something straight out of Tom Wolfe’s "Bonfire
of the Vanities." Are you ready for this? The Wall Street
Journal reports that, "At a time when scores of companies are
freezing pensions for their workers, some are quietly converting
those pension plans into resources to finance their executives’
retirement benefits and pay. In recent years, companies from Intel
Corporation to CenturyTel Inc. collectively have moved hundreds of
millions of dollars of obligations for executive benefits into
rank-and-file pension plans. This lets companies capture tax breaks
intended for pensions of regular workers and use them to pay for
executives’ supplemental benefits and compensation." Everyone
knows we’ve been living through one of the great redistributions of
wealth in American history — from the bottom up. But this takes the
cake, because our tax dollars are subsidizing this spectacular round
of robbing the poor to pay off the rich. Sad to say, it’s not
fiction.
And
how about this: On the campaign trail, John McCain has been sounding
like Sinclair Lewis’s Elmer Gantry, preaching the gospel of oil
drilling. Sure enough, like all other evangelists, who promise heaven
and pass the collection plate, the offerings roll in. The web site
Campaign Money Watch reports that companies lusting to drill offshore
have been raining dollars on McCain ever since he saw the light.
Earlier this summer, John B. Hess, of Hess Oil, no less, convened his
cronies at the ritzy 2l Club here in New York City and collected
$285,000 for McCain and the Republican National Committee. And you
thought those rallies recently staged in Washington for more oil
drilling were just spontaneous gushers of affection from politicians
who give billions in subsidies to … big oil companies. Edna Ferber,
those strike-it-rich Texas tycoons in your novel "Giant"
would feel right at home.
Barack
Obama’s more the Horatio Alger dime novel type, with his
rags-to-riches backstory and his emphasis on the little people who’ve
funded his campaign. But not so fast. This is one little David who’s
got a lot of corporate Goliaths on his side, too. Big oil has greased
the wheels of his campaign machine — albeit far less than John
McCain’s — and a third of his contributions have come from donations
of $1,000 or more. That translates into 112 million bucks — more, in
fact, than John McCain has raised from his rich pals. And although he
boasts that he won’t take cash from lobbyists or political action
committees registered with the feds, two-thirds of Obama’s high
rollers come from sectors with a keen interest in what government can
giveth and taketh away — entertainment, real estate, law and
securities and investments. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Lehman
Brothers; Obama’s been ringing some platinum-plated doorbells.
Finally,
here’s one to send Ayn Rand spinning: The White House projects next
year’s federal budget deficit at a record $482 billion, and that’s
not counting a possible $25 billion bailout of mortgage banks Fannie
Mae and Freddie Mac. Or the total costs of fighting in the Middle
East, largely kept in the bottom drawer where they’re hard to find.
Yet this week, our Government Accountability Office issued a report
concluding that by year’s end, the Iraqi government — the regime in
power because we put them there — may have a budget surplus as high
as $79 billion.
Iraq,
as in "war-torn" Iraq. A surplus! Seventy-nine billion
after we’ve poured $100 billion a year into that country and more
than 4,100 American lives — so far.
Seventy-nine
billion based on the record prices we’re paying at the gas pumps, and
they’re not spending it on rebuilding, on getting their electrical
systems back on the grid, constructing schools and hospitals and
housing, making sure everyone has food and clean water. Between 2005
and 2007, the GAO report says, only 10 percent of the Iraqi budget
went toward reconstruction of their own country, which means that,
once again, American taxpayers have been picking up the slack — $48
billion U.S. allocated for reconstruction costs since we rolled into
Baghdad more than five years ago.
By
the way, that includes $33 million for a new hotel, office complex
and shopping mall at the Baghdad airport. Admittedly, a lot of those
billions doubtless line the pockets of American contractors who’ve
done little if any of what they were hired to do — and endangered
Iraqis and our own troops with shoddy, dangerous workmanship. But
remember what former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told
Congress back in 2003, before the war? "We’re dealing with a
county that can really finance its own reconstruction," he said,
"and relatively soon."
Remember,
too, what Colin Powell told President Bush before we invaded Iraq —
you break it, you buy it. Julius Caesar came, saw and conquered.
George W. Bush broke and bought, and we just keep paying, in money
and blood, while billions of oil profits pile up in Iraq as
"surplus."
Bill
Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the
weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday
nights on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at
www.pbs.org/moyers.
