|
July 29, 2002
David Vest
A Blind Mule and
a Box of Medals
July 28, 2002
Bob Geary
Our Dinner
with Fidel Castro
July 27, 2002
Ian Daoust
The New
Mahler, Seattle Style
Gavin Keeney
Zizek
and Lenin
Ralph Nader
Citigroup
Heal Thyself
M. Shahid Alam
American
Presidents (Poem)
Mokhiber / Weissman
Push Back: Women Take
on the Corporate Beasts
July 26, 2002
Jerre Skog
American
Dictatorship:
It Couldn't Happen...Could It?
Philip Farruggio
Lie,
Rob and Steal
Rep. Ron Paul
Monitor
Thy Neighbor
Ron Jacobs
Thinking
About the
Weather (Underground)
Walt Brasch
Ashcroft's War on Bookstores
July 25, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Paul
Krugman's Howl:
Populism, War and
the Melting Economy
Gavin Keeney
Van Morrison: In September
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
War
on Terrorism or
Police State?
July 24, 2002
Gary Leupp
An Islam Primer
July 23, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Battle
for Zuni Salt Lake
Ansar Ahmed
Am I with You, George?
Bill Christison
The
Disastrous Foreign Policies of the US: Oppression Abroad Means
Repression at Home
July 22, 2002
Rick Giombetti
Glaxo Raises White Flag
in Paxil Case
Wayne Madsen
Forbidden
Truth
The Press, Bush, Oil
and the Taliban
July 21. 2002
Francis A. Boyle
The Rogue Elephant
Jennifer Harbury
Why are
the FBI & CIA Targeting Me?
Joan Claybrook
Time
for a Special Prosceutor
for Thomas White
Gloria Bergen
The Struggle
of Workers
in Palestine
Dave Marsh
Mr. Big Stuff:
Alan Lomax, Great White Fraud
James T. Phillips
"I'll
Tell You No Lies"
The Human Rubble of War
July 20, 2002
Gavin Keeney
The Grave
New Urbanism
World Trade Center Burlesque
Jacob Levich
"I
Was Schooled in Hate"
Confessions of a
Summer Camp Terror Tot
Thomas Croft
Augusta,
GA
Growing Up in the Deep South
Alexander Cockburn
The
Market Hogwallow:
Popgun Populism Isn't Enough
July 19, 2002
Abe Bonowitz / SueZann
Bosler
A Discussion
with Jeb Bush on the Death Penalty
Jonathan Power
No Need
for War Against Iraq
Rick Giombetti
Qwest
Death Watch
Kurt Nimmo
Of Mice,
Bullets & Bombs
M. Shahid Alam
Through
Racist Eyes:
Is Eurocentrism Unique?
July 18, 2002
Mokhiber / Weissman
Business
As Usual
Jerre Skog
I Spy: Now
Let's be Fair,
the USA Ain't East Germany
Ralph Nader
The CEO
Crimewave:
Corporate Socialism
Mahbubul Karim (Sohel)
The Rising Tensions
Between Spain and Morocco
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel
and Squawk:
Can the Times' Jeff Gerth
Save the White House?
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
July
29, 2002
Hypocrites
in the House:
Corporations
Win Again with Midnight Passage of Fast Track
by Tom Stephens
On Thursday, July 25, 2001, the people of the
United States were still reeling from the tales of corporate
corruption on Wall Street, and their intimate genetic relationship
to the rise of George W. Bush. Congress passed so-called "landmark"
legislation against insider trading, accounting abuses, and other
Wall Street shenanigans that have recently helped threaten to
transform American political economy. But as the New York Times
wryly observed in a July 27 editorial regarding the subsequent
banker-friendly overhaul of bankruptcy laws, "It was probably
expecting too much to think that Congress's stand-up attitude
to big business would last until the weekend."
In the wee midnight hours of late Friday,
July 25 and Saturday morning, the same House of Representatives
that claims credit for battling corporate corruption (while it
rewrites the bankruptcy code to benefit giant credit card companies),
passed an even greater legislative gift to crony capitalists.
They slipped "fast track," or presidential trade negotiating
authority for the Bush/ Harken/ Cheney/Halliburton oil administration,
through the House in the dead of night. The vote was 215-212,
with 25 Democratic representatives acting like "independent"
Enron board members and going along with Bush Corp. Less than
48 hours after their orgy of self-congratulation for supposedly
doing something to stop corporate crime, a narrow House majority
hypocritically reopened the corporate "free trade"
candy store, with Dick Cheney presiding at a secure location
behind the ringing cash register.
"Fast track" grants power for
Bush and his cronies to negotiate corporate power instruments
in the name of "trade." They don't have to deal with
annoying democratic processes, or even any meaningful debate
involving the working families at home and abroad whose interests
will be most directly threatened by the international corporate
casino economy, misleadingly labeled "free trade."
These unconstitutional powers granted by Congress to the First
Nepotist in the White House will perpetuate and strengthen the
same corporate abuses that have so recently appalled America.
For the past ten years the supporters
of corporate-managed "free trade" have been advocating
deregulation of business and privatization of essential public
services under the WTO, NAFTA, and the future FTAA (Free Trade
Area of the Americas). The General Agreement on Trade in Services
(GATS) would render all the financial, auditing, pension, and
social service sectors, including water distribution, health
care, education, communications, social security, and virtually
everything else people need to live in prosperity and govern
ourselves democratically, completely freed from regulation. That's
what free trade is all about. George W. Bush and the hypocrites
in Congress act as if that were a good thing for all the obvious
reasons dishonesty, greed, and the mountains of corporate
cash funding their political careers.
The deregulation, speculation, environmental
and human rights violations, insider rip-offs and other downsizing
of jobs and democracy associated with the recent scandals of
Enron, MCI/Worldcom, Global Crossing, and the other corporate
behemoths have their political and economic roots in the so-called
"free trade" system of corporate-dominated market fundamentalism.
Congresspersons who are trying to pass themselves off as legitimate
representatives of the American people, while voting for scams
like "fast track," have absolutely no shame. None whatsoever.
The ongoing corporate corruption scandal
that Congress supposedly addressed last week is in reality part
and parcel of the whole "free trade" era. It is not
just a matter of a few crooked accountants at Arthur Andersen.
"Free trade" agreements and "fast track"
powers for the President are not about tariffs and import/export
quotas any more. In the 21st century, they affect every
aspect of our lives, including food safety, labor rights, environmental
conservation and health, public services, and even the vigor
and effectiveness of democracy itself. Such issues have increasingly
given way to corporate domination via "free trade"
policies of the last twenty years, empowering giant multinational
corporations to swing the deals that rocked our world after the
Enron explosion late last year. These fundamental issues of public
policy are far too important to leave to the likes of George
W. Bush, "Kenny Boy" Lay, and the other corporate titans
who funded Bush's string of disastrous business deals and extremist
right-wing political maneuvers for decades.
We live in a nation and world where giant
multinational corporations unjustly dominate our political and
economic lives. Our dim-witted boy president revels in that sad
fact. Indeed, it is precisely what made him into what he is today,
finally holding an actual job after his father's associates repeatedly
shoveled money into his pockets through one business flop after
another and he always came up roses. The "free trade"
era of market fundamentalism and deregulation of the global casino
economy is based on the same market absolutist policies that
empowered a rising class of mega-corporate pirates to steal the
rest of us blind, and also sponsored Bush's improbable rise to
power. Now "fast track" even further empowers Bush
and giant corporations to undermine democracy, the constitution,
workers' rights, the environment, and the public interest.
This latest "fast track" legislation
previously passed the House of Representatives in December 2001
by a single vote, mostly based on claims that it was necessary
for national defense to support the president in time of war.
Since then we have learned how inattentive and even grossly incompetent
the top security and intelligence officials of this administration
really were before the crimes of September 11. Moreover, we have
been appalled at their shameless use of war for partisan political
purposes, issuing new and vague warnings of anticipated attacks
when it suits their purposes to distract Americans from problems
with their policies. And we know that this administration is
a wholly owned subsidiary right down to whatever incorporeal
property interest it may have that passes for a "soul"
- of the exact same corporations whose shady dealings have recently
done so much to undermine Americans' trust. The Enron/Andersen
sector of American politics simply cannot be trusted with the
undemocratic powers that "fast track" gives them. The
215 Congressional representatives who can't see that obvious
fact need to be privatized immediately.
Come November, it's time to flush them
out of Congress. Democrats who opposed "fast track"
should use every opportunity to denounce their opponents who
passed this scam, by making the link early and often between
the corporate corruption scandals and "fast track/free trade"
economy of greed. Greens should put all available resources into
targeting the 25 Democrats who provided the margin of victory.
Until these hypocrites are swept out of office on a tide of real
reform and globalizing justice, all talk of Congress cracking
down on corporate corruption will be pure hot air, with nothing
to back it up.
Tom Stephens
lives in Detroit. He can be reached at: lebensbaum4@earthlink.net
Today's Features
David Vest
A Blind Mule and
a Box of Medals
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|