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Today's
Stories
October 21,
2004
Lisa Britto
and Lucía Suarez
Bolivia:
a Year After the October Insurrection
October 20,
2004
Yitzhak Laor
"Did
You Two Squabble?": a Bullet Fired for Every Palestinian
Child
Jason Leopold
Sinclair
Broadcasting's Air War: a Long History of Journalistic Deception
Jesse Sharkey
A
Teacher's Account of How Military Recruiters Prey on High School
Students
Col. Dan Smith
Choking
Free Speech About the Draft
Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Using My Religion
David Vest
If
Bush Wins, Blame Me
Jack Random
The Jackson 17: Reflections on a Mutiny
Ron Jacobs
Time
to Kick It Up a Notch
James Brittain
Plan Patriota and the FARC: a Change in the Countryside?
Christopher
Dols
Bombing Madison: Michael Moore's Fright Fest
Dave Lindorff
First They Came for the Nurses...
Website of
the Day
Banana Republican Catalogue
October 19,
2004
Jeff Taylor
Confessions
of a Swing State Voter
Matt Vidal
American
Myopia: "More Money in Your Pocket"
Victor Kattan
"It's Not Who You're Against; It's Who You're For":
Palestine Takes Center Stage At Euro Social Forum
William Loren
Katz
What Goes Around Comes Around
Sean Carter
O'Reilly Should Shut Up About Extortion Claiims
CounterPunch Wire
Who's Really in Bed with Republican Funders: Kerry or Nader?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Party
Favors: the Political Business of Terry McAuliffe
October 18,
2004
Saul Landau
Facts
and Lies; Slogans and Truth
Dave Lindorff
Bulletin
on the Bush Bulge
Diane Christian
Sheep
and Goats: On the Language of Goodness
Greg Bates / Dave Lindorff
Betting on War: a Wager on the Fallout of a Kerry Presidency
Uri Avnery
Ariel
Sharon's Philosophy
Peter LaVenia
Leaving the Greens So Soon? a Response to Josh Frank
Mike Whitney
O'Reilly at the Whipping Post
Elaine Cassel
The Other War: Civil Liberties Three Years After 9/11
October 16
/ 17, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Free Speech Movement and Howard Stern
Leslie Brill
Unmerciful Judge, Merry Executioners: the Death Penalty as the
True Measure of Bush's Character
Jules Rabin
Reckoning Deaths in an Agitated World
Dave Lindorff
About the Bush Bulge: Was There a Pucker in That Jacket or Was
the President Just Glad to be There?
Peter Linebaugh
Judging Judges: a Few Pages from The Mirror of Justices
Gary Leupp
Iran and Syria: How to Effect Regime Change and Expand the Empire
M. Shahid Alam
America, Imagine This!
Ron Jacobs
Trying to Cross Lake Champlain
Fred Gardner
The Flu Vaccine Question: How Bush Blew It
Jenna Orkin
The Toxic Legacy of 9/11
Dave Zirin
Name the DC Baseball Team: Contest Results
David Hamilton
Alone and Exposed: Bush as a Strong Leader?
Ralph Nader
Criticizing Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Doug Giebel
Thinking the Unthinkable
Mark Engler
Crimes in Freedom's Name: Dick Cheney's El Salvador
Derek Tyner
Blacks Didn't Get the Vote by Voting: an Interview With Clarence
Thomas on the Million Worker March
Evan Jones
Gimme That Ole Time Religion: Cash and "The Mind of the
South"
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Klipschutz and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
No More Bush Girls
October 15,
2004
Paul Craig
Roberts
Where
Did These "Conservatives" Come From?: The Brownshirting
of America
Laura Carlsen
Wal-Mart
vs. the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon
Greg Bates
Empire of Insanity: Kerry's Iraq Troop Numbers
Michael Donnelly
News from a Swing State: Does Anyone Here Have a Spine?
Katherine Lahey
The Venezuelan "Threat": Why Do Kerry and Bush Fear
Hugo Chavez?
Robert Jensen
/ Pat Youngblood
Election Day Fears
Leah Caldwell
From
Supermax to Abu Ghraib: the Masterminds of Torture and Abuse
Website of
the Day
An Anti-Billionaire Policy? Why That Would Be Economic Racism
October 14,
2004
Darcy Richardson
The
Other Progressive Candidate: the Lonely Crusade of Walt Brown
Willliam A.
Cook
Turning
Myths into Truth
Laura Santina
Water, Women and War
Evelyn Pringle
Free Speech Banned by Big Pharma: What You Can't Say About Drug
Importation
Alan Farago
Lessons
from Nature
Rep. Maxine Waters
A Letter to Colin Powell on Haiti
Nicole Colson
Maimed
for Oil and Empire
October 13,
2004
Bishop Thomas
Gumbleton and Bill Quigley
Aftermath
of a Coup: The Other Disaster in Haiti
Sharon Smith
Barak
O-Bomb-a?: Democrats Target Iran
Christopher Brauchli
God and the Bush Administration
Mike Whitney
The Real Meaning of the Hamdi Case
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: a False Beacon?
Website of
the Day
Operation
Truth
October 12,
2004
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
"Indian
Country"
Greg Bates
The Year of Voting Dangerously: a Survey Request of Nader Voters
in Swing States
Steven Conn
Progressives as Pawns: Kerry's War on Nader
Jason Leopold
Under Cheney, Halliburton Helped Saddam Siphon Billions from
UN Oil-for-Food Program
Security Scholars
for a Sensible Foreign Policy
Time for a Change of Course
Timothy J. Freeman
Dying for a Mistake
Pierre Tristam
Deconstructing Bush
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The 2nd Debate: the Blurring of Act and Audience
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Israel as Sideshow
Website of the Day
John Kerry's Personal Off-Shore Tax Shelters
October 11,
2004
Robert Fisk
Iraq:
Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises
Kevin Pina
The
Untold Story of Aristide's Departure from Haiti
Patrick Gavin
Rethinking
Columbus Day
Chris Floyd
Tribes with Flags in the New Afghanistan
Daniel Wolff
Radioactive Money: Entergy, Political Cash and America's Most
Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Walter Brasch
The Only Ones Who Believe Saddam Had WMDs are Bush, Cheney...and
40% of All Americans
Mike Whitney
The Phony Afghan Elections: Ballot of the Disappearing Ink
Ari Shavit
"He Talks to Condi Rice Every Day": an Interview with
Sharon's Lawyer
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Debates and the Big Lie
Website of the Day
Dylan's Greatest Recording?
October 9 /
10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
"There
Are No Innocents"
Paul de Rooij
Northern Ireland is Still the Issue: a Conversation with Gerry
Adams
M. Shahid Alam
Making Sense of Our Times
Laura Carlsen
Protest and Populism in Latin America
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: ASA Goes to Court
Col. Dan Smith
Bush's Credibility Gap
Paul Craig
Roberts
Faith-Based Economics
Greg Bates
What If Nader Critics Get What They Demand?
Joshua Frank
Cobb, the Greens and the Collapse of the Left
Felice Pace
Wilderness, Politics and the Oligarchy: How the Pew Charitable
Trust is Smothering the Grassroots Environmental Movement
Walter A. Davis
Of Pynchon, Thanatos and Depleted Uranium
William A.
Cook
The Agony of Colin Powell
Phyllis Pollack
Twas No Crank Call Love Affair: London Calling, 25 Years Later
Poets' Basement
Klipschutz, Albert, Ford
Website of the Weekend
Abu Ghraib: the Taguba Annexes
October 8,
2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
The
Israeli Invasion of Gaza
Moshe Adler
Edwards' Gambit: He Hoped No One Would Notice the Similarities
David Swanson
Media Blackout: Press Continues to Ignore Labor's Opposition
to Iraq War
Dave Zirin
CounterPunch Contest: Let's Name the New DC Baseball Team!
Rep. Ron Paul
The Draft is a Form of Slavery
William S. Lind
Keeping Our SA Up
Samar Assad
Kerry v. Bush: No Difference When It Comes to Israel / Palestine
Jim Ingalls
and Sonali Kolhatkar
The Elections in Afghanistan
October 7,
2004
Dave Lindorff
All
Out of Volunteers: A Draft is in the Air
Masha Hamilton
Fear in Kandahar
Christopher
Brauchli
Master of Corruption: the Ripening Scandals of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Is There Still Time to Impeach Bush?
Bruce K. Gagnon
Bombing the Panhandle: Fighting the Pentagon in Rural Florida
Meredith Kolodner
Where
is the Urgency?: The Anti-War Movement's Election Year Challenge
October 6,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
"Please,
Dude, Can I Take Them Out?": Targeting Civilians in Fallujah
Ron Jacobs
Going
Nuclear: the Ghost of Edward Teller Lives
Michael Colby
The National Flip-Flop: Suddenly Bush is Unfit to Lead?
Tarif Abboushi
More of the Same: Israel Wins the Debates
Matthew Behrens
Canadian Firms Profit from Iraqi Blood
Mike Whitney
Rethinking WMDs
John Pilger
Stealing Diego Garcia
Ben Tripp
Kerry's "Triumph"
Kevin McKiernan
Cheney's Poison Lab: Wrong Time, Wrong Target
Patrick Cockburn
Elections
Will Not End the Fighting in Iraq
Website of the Day
Is There an Islamic Problem?
October 5,
2004
Anthony Loewenstein
Rupert
Murdoch and the Marginals: "Personally Creating Outcomes"
Mark Clinton
and Tony Udell
The
Suicide of an Iraq War Veteran
Greg Bates
Trading
Idiots: an Open Letter to Eric Alterman
Dave Lindorff
What's
the Frequency, Karl?
Norm Dixon
Why Washington Won't Save Darfur Villagers
Larry Kearney
God Talk and Burning Children
Bill Linville
Dirty Politics in the Land of "Clean" Government
Gary Leupp
What
Edwards Should Ask Cheney
Website of
the Day
A Guide to Halliburton for Tonight's Debate
October 4,
2004
Diane Christian
The
Gates of Hell
Joshua Frank
An Interview with David Cobb
Doug Giebel
Incurious George: What If Bush Didn't Lie?
John Chuckman
Strange Victory: Sen. Obvious and the Pathetic Lump
Ramzy Baroud
Reverse the Picture: Anatomy of a Palestinian Outrage
Julia Stein
Remembering Mario Savio and the FSM
Sean Donahue
Outsourcing
Terror: Kerry and Special Forces
Website of
the Day
Mapping
Mt. St. Helens as She Rocks
October 2 /
3. 2004
Paul Wright
John
Kerry on Criminal Justice
Kathleen and Bill Christison
An Exchange with Israeli Historian Bennie Morris
Kathie Helmkamp
My Son Trent: a Marine Who Doesn't Want to Kill
Phillip Cryan
Indigenous Mobilization in Colombia
Lenni Brenner
The First Ex-Catholic Saint: Memories of Mario Savio
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: In Case You Missed "Montel"
Ron Jacobs
It Did Happen Here: When Neo-Nazis Terrorized Olympia
Ben Tripp
Sticker Shock
William S.
Lind
The Grand Illusion: Iraqi Security Forces
Dave Zirin
The Swindle of the Century: Baseball Comes to DC
Dave Lindorff
Lies from the Great Debate
Luscon Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Elections: a High-Tech Sham is Underway
Zoe Moskovitz
& Sasha Kramer
Separating Lies from Truth About Haiti
Nelson P. Valdes
Habana Night vs. Latin American Scholars in Vegas: 61 Banned
Cuban Academics
Alan Farago
The "Ownership Society" and the End of the Everglades
Nancy Haley
What is the Historical Jesus Trying to Tell Us?
Alex Billet
Long Live The Clash: London Still Calling After 25 Years
Steve Fesenmaier
Save and Burn: The War on Libraries
Poets' Basement
Smith, Holt, Albert
October 1,
2004
Steve Breyman
Kerry's
Missed Opportunities
Rose Gentle
My
Son Died for a Lie
Lee Sustar
Iran
in the Crosshairs
Ralph Nader
What
We Didn't Hear at the Debate: Where's the Exit Strategy?
Walter Andrews
We Are Less Secure Now Than Ever
Mike Whitney
Pandora's
Government
Mickey Z.
Debate
This
Saul Landau
The
Iraq Invasion: Lessons from the Pinochet Cases
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
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October 21, 2004
What the Left
Doesn't Get
The
Small Business Lobby's Big Issues
By
STAN COX
During an economic summit with French
President Jacques Chirac, George W. Bush turns to an aide and
mutters, "The problem with the French is that they don't
even have a word for 'entrepreneur'." The butt of this
well-worn urban legend is, of course, Bush himself, and not his
belief in America as a land of economic pioneers. In this country,
small business is no joke.
Everyone knows that Americans
don't wait around to take orders from Big Government or Big Business.
Patriotic Democrats, Republicans, Greens, and Libertarians all
get out there, start companies, and change the world for the
better. Small business is the breeze that keeps Old Glory waving
-- isn't it?
The United States Small Business
Administration classifies companies with fewer than 500 employees
as "small." There are more than 5 million such businesses
that have payrolls, and they employ about half of the nation's
private-sector workers. Of those 5 million firms, 4.3 million
have fewer than 20 employees each. The small business owner's
reputation as underdog and risk-taker is a hard-earned one.
Every year sees 600,000 to 800,000 companies start up, just as
500,000 or so go under.
Big corporations have platoons
of lobbyists who roam Washington and state capitals, targeting
specific bills and regulations that affect their shareholders.
Individual small businesses generally can't afford their own
lobbyists, and with millions of diverse enterprises out there,
from ice cream parlors to furniture factories, it would seem
that no organization could claim to represent them all. But,
whether they like it or not, small businesses do have a voice
in the halls of Congress.
Among the national groups that
lobby in the name of small business, the National Federation
of Independent Businesses and the National Small Business Association
are the largest. They provide member services like discounts
and health-care plans, and they push state legislatures to cut
taxes, keep wages and benefits low, and suppress union activity.
They also lobby for hard-Right legislation at the national level,
with consequences for all of us.
For instance, the 600,000-member
NFIB wants to make permanent all federal tax cuts passed during
the Bush administration, including those that benefit corporations
and the richest 1% of Americans. And it is pushing hard for
final repeal of taxes on wealthy estates (which, following the
lead of Congressional Republicans, its lobbyists refer to as
"the Death Tax.")
How does NFIB know what its
members want? Michelle Dimarob, NFIB press secretary, says,
"We're a grassroots-driven organization. We send out an
issues ballot three times a year to members, and that determines
our position on legislation. We also do monthly surveys and
get a lot of feedback by phone."
The NFIB gives its members
a lot of advice about that "feedback", as it herds
them to the to the right with mailings and website articles.
One example: Historically, Republican presidential candidates
have polled about 60% among small-business owners, but in the
2004 race, which features two candidates with deep corporate
biases and bad
attitudes toward small business, NFIB has made sure that
its members do a little better for the GOP. Taking its own poll
in August-September, NFIB asked its members to read a brochure
entitled, "Bush or Kerry -- Who Will Be Your Best Small-Business
Partner?" before sending in their votes. As a result, Bush
beat John Kerry by 95% to 4% - a tally one might expect to see
in the old Soviet Union, not in a land of fiercely independent
entrepreneurs.
According to Dimarob, 85% of
NFIB members file with the IRS as individuals, and a typical
member's net income is $40,000 to $50,000 per year. That's right
around the national median income. She says, "We support
the 2001-2003 tax cuts because they have helped our members re-invest,
purchase equipment, and expand their businesses."
If small business owners can
manage to do all that on $1000 a year (a typical Bush tax cut
at the $50,000 income level), their reputation for resourcefulness
is well-deserved indeed. The Congressional Budget Office has
confirmed that the bulk of benefits from the tax cuts are going
to the wealthiest 20% of families (with incomes averaging $183,000).
That raises some questions: Couldn't the tax cuts for individual
incomes above $200,000 be taken back (as Kerry has pledged to
do), with no ill effect on most small businesses? And since
the estate tax affects only the richest one to two percent of
families, why is NFIB so intent on killing it?
Ms. Dimarob said she would
have to ask the NFIB "tax policy folks" to provide
answers to questions like those. Despite repeated reminders,
no response was forthcoming. (Both Bush and VP Dick Cheney claimed
in the recent debates that 900,000 "small businesses"
would be hurt by restoration of taxes on $200,000+ incomes.
But they were using a definition that makes any high-income individual
who has non-wage, non-salary business income a "small business
owner." As Kerry pointed out, that would include Bush and
Cheney themselves.)
The National Small Business
Association, representing 150,000 firms, takes positions similar
to those of NFIB. While working to keep the Bush tax cuts in
place, NSBA goes farther and declares an eventual goal of repealing
the 16th Amendment (which established the federal income tax)
in favor of a severely regressive national sales tax. Rob Yunich,
NSBA director of communications, declined to discuss how the
organization's members will benefit economically if its lobbying
efforts are successful.
NSBA's president testified
in Congress this spring against raising the minimum wage. And
NFIB is lobbying hard against a proposal by Senator Ted Kennedy
to increase in the federal minimum wage to $7.00 per hour. That's
no big surprise; to a small business owner, wages are an expense,
not a means of survival. But inflation continues to eat away
at the already-meager minimum wage, which, at $5.15 an hour,
has fallen in value by 13% since 1997. A single parent with
two kids now requires a wage of $7.70 per hour, 40 hours a week,
simply to get up to the 2003 federal poverty threshold. The
current minimum wage provides about half as much income as the
"living wage" standard in many cities.
Some small-business owners
pay their employees as much as they can afford, while others
pay as little as they can get away with. The big lobbyists have
thrown their weight behind the worst of the lot, defending those
owners' right to pay below-subsistence wages.
Not all national lobbying groups
take the hard-Right line. The National Association of Socially
Responsible Organizations also works on behalf of small businesses,
but rejects its big-time competitors' help-the-rich, soak-the-poor
philosophy.
Robert Gaw is president and
founder of NASRO. He explains the positions taken by goups like
NFIB and NSBA this way: "Unfortunately, many small business
owners live on the hope that someday they will be very rich and
will need those tax breaks. Liberals and the left share part
of the responsibility for the policy disconnect with small business
and the self-employed. Liberals tend to ignore small business,
lump them together with big corporations, and never fight for
gut issues that small business can get behind. They frequently
come to small business owners at the last moment in election
or policy campaigns and ask them to get behind an agenda of social
issues and vague economic programs that have nothing to do with
them."
Gaw sees it as yet another
example of the Right's superior powers of persuasion: "When
it comes to public policy, conservatives and the Right do a far
better job of connecting with these folks. They take issues
that are marginal to small business and blow them up into something
that seems important."
Small business owners are no
more likely than Wal-Mart and Halliburton to band together as
a progressive political force. But it is in their interest to
take a long, hard look at the efforts of big-time lobbyists like
NFIB and NSBA and ask whether it's America's small businesses
or its big-money elites who are really being served.
Stan Cox is a plant breeder and writer in Salina,
Kansas. He can be reached at: t.stan@cox.net
Weekend
Edition Features for October 16 / 17, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Free Speech Movement and Howard Stern
Leslie Brill
Unmerciful Judge, Merry Executioners: the Death Penalty as the
True Measure of Bush's Character
Jules Rabin
Reckoning Deaths in an Agitated World
Dave Lindorff
About the Bush Bulge: Was There a Pucker in That Jacket or Was
the President Just Glad to be There?
Peter Linebaugh
Judging Judges: a Few Pages from The Mirror of Justices
Gary Leupp
Iran and Syria: How to Effect Regime Change and Expand the Empire
M. Shahid Alam
America, Imagine This!
Ron Jacobs
Trying to Cross Lake Champlain
Fred Gardner
The Flu Vaccine Question: How Bush Blew It
Jenna Orkin
The Toxic Legacy of 9/11
Dave Zirin
Name the DC Baseball Team: Contest Results
David Hamilton
Alone and Exposed: Bush as a Strong Leader?
Ralph Nader
Criticizing Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Doug Giebel
Thinking the Unthinkable
Mark Engler
Crimes in Freedom's Name: Dick Cheney's El Salvador
Derek Tyner
Blacks Didn't Get the Vote by Voting: an Interview With Clarence
Thomas on the Million Worker March
Evan Jones
Gimme That Ole Time Religion: Cash and "The Mind of the
South"
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Klipschutz and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
No More Bush Girls
/
|