SENSE AND NONSENSE – INVASION OF THE PRIVATE SECTOR
From the editor: As a card-carrying member of the pre-baby boomer club, I remember the classic horror film “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” first released in 1956. That movie has proven to be a perfect fictional metaphor for the most pervasive sociological trend of the 21st Century – the imposition of the profit motive into government and non-profit entities now infected with a loyalty to stockholders rather than the community-at-large. The plot line of the movie eerily parallels the consequences of greed: “The Pod People are indistinguishable from normal people, except for their utter lack of emotion. The pod people work together to secretly spread more pods – which grew from ‘seeds drifting through space for years’ – in order to replace the entire human race.” (Wikipedia).
Government agencies such as the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are just three among literally hundreds of examples, where the prophets of privatization have attempted to redirect the mission of government agencies from safety and protection into de-regulated funding sources for the private sector where profit reigns supreme.
For example, this past week (Nov. 26, 2007) Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed a joint declaration that lays the groundwork for extended military presence in Iraq. According to the Los Angeles Times, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, Bush’s top White House adviser on Iraq, “refused to close the door on the possibility of permanent military bases, saying it would be the subject for future negotiations.” Not surprisingly, these bases would be strategically placed to protect American interests in Iraq’s oil reserves. Military victory in “Operation Iraqi Freedom” was declared on May 1, 2003. Bush got to “play” soldier on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier. A sign strung high over Bush’s head on that naval vessel declared “Mission Accomplished.” The war was over. The occupation began. And the purpose of that occupation is to grab the land that is necessary for U.S. companies such as Halliburton and Bechtel to control the profits generated by mining the Iraqi oil and gas reserves – among the most plentiful in the Middle East
In her book, “The Bush Agenda,” writer Antonia Juhasz summarizes the agenda:
“Chevron, Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, and Bechtel represent three key pillars of the Bush Agenda: oil, war and building the infrastructure of corporate globalization.”
She continues with a description of Dick Cheney’s shell game:
“For example, while Cheney was secretary of defense for George H.W. Bush, his Defense Department paid the Halliburton Corporation $9 million to study whether the military’s logistics services should be privatized. After Halliburton determined that the services should be privatized, it was awarded the first privatization contract. Three years later, Cheney became CEO of Halliburton…As vice president, he has ushered the country into war against Iraq, while Halliburton has received U.S. government contracts in Iraq worth nearly $11 billion to perform services privatized under Cheney’s watch.”
The author points out that, “for the first time in American history, the president, the vice president, and secretary of state are all former energy company officials, and the only other U.S. president to come from the oil or energy business was George W. Bush’s father.”
The illegality of the Iraq war aside, the question that is rarely, if ever, asked by corporate media is: “At what cost do we maintain a presence in Iraq?” As of Friday, Nov. 30, 2007, at least 3,881 members of the U.S. military have died since the invasion of Iraq in March, 2003. Tens of thousands have been wounded, some of whom are now being asked to return their “signing bonuses since they were not able to fulfill their full time on “active duty.” Hundreds of thousands Iraqi citizens have been killed in a civil war, and many more refugees have fled the country in fear. These lives have been irreplaceably lost or wounded physically and/or mentally for life. American and Iraqi lives have been destroyed and disrupted while U.S. corporations in Iraq pursue profits. Obviously, in the eyes of such corporations, the almighty dollar is more valuable than freedom, national security, democracy and human life.
By Maynard Chapman
Editor, The Compass Newsletter
DISASTER PROFITEERING IN MISSISSIPPI
From Bill Moyers’ Journal: Bill Moyers recently sent the National Public Radio show’s producer, William Brangham, to do a follow-up story on the Katrina disaster in Mississippi. Following are excerpts from the transcript of that Nov. 16, 2007, broadcast.
“WILLIAM BRANGHAM: This is what you see when you’re not on the official tour of Mississippi. Houses that were flooded sitting empty and unrepaired. People still living cramped inside those FEMA trailers. Across this state, tens of thousands of people are in similar circumstances. For these places, the heralded recovery in Mississippi seems to have skipped on by.”
“DERRICK EVANS: When Hurricane Katrina hit, legislators went to Jackson in their pajamas and immediately enacted legislation to allow casinos to rebuild on land, so as to not lose any of them and to increase their number. In the meantime, it took the governor’s commission weeks to realize that in addition to tourism infrastructure and finance, they needed to have a committee on housing, affordable housing, to deal with the fact that over 70,000 houses were destroyed, rendered uninhabitable by Hurricane Katrina. So, housing was not anything that was on their mind.”
“SISTER MARTHA MILNER: When I ride down those streets, it’s a terrible sadness. It is like a ghost town. I take people on tours, I keep saying over and over again, ‘And this area was house after house after house after house after house.’ A person who didn’t have a guide wouldn’t understand the dense population that was in these areas. It’s like your memories are erased. And, what’s in place of them is sort of a twilight zone.”
“REILLY MORSE: What people still don’t get two years after the hurricane is that tens of thousands of Mississippians and people in other states across the Gulf Coast still are displaced. They’re not in their own homes. They’re not in a new, permanent residence of some form or another. People are stuck in limbo and there doesn’t appear to be a solution to them returning to a normal life in sight.”
“WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Mississippi’s governor Haley Barbour has received a lot of money to rebuild homes. Congress gave the state over $3 billion (not million) dollars specifically for housing. Federal rules required that half that money ($1.5 billion) be given to lower income families.”
“But governor Barbour wanted to loosen those federal rules. He argued he could do a better job if Washington wouldn’t tell him how to spend the money.”
“In his former life, Haley Barbour was one of the most powerful corporate lobbyists in the country. He was also chairman of the Republican National Committee, so he has friends in Washington. When Barbour asked for waivers of those federal rules, he got them.”
“Mississippi was the only state granted this kind of freedom with its recovery funds.”
“The Steps Coalition (an advocacy group for replacing housing that was destroyed by the hurricane) argues that the governor has either excluded poor families from his recovery plans, or put them to the very back of the line. Here’s what happened: Katrina hit in the summer of 2005. Eight months later, Phase I of the governor’s housing grant program starts. Over a billion dollars goes out mostly to affluent families. But it took more than a year after the storm for Phase II to begin – that’s the program specifically targeted to lower income families. And now, two years on, not even half the people who’ve applied for Phase II have received grants.”
“The prominent research group the Rand Corporation echoed the Steps position. Rand reported that the recovery of affordable housing was lagging in Mississippi.”
“State officials told us they know the recovery feels too slow to people. But they say there was no textbook showing them how to respond to a disaster as big as Katrina. But two months ago, those same recovery officials did something that astounded the Steps Coalition – they announced there were going to redirect $600 million dollars from housing funds to the state port. The money would be used to repair and improve the port’s shipping and container facilities – a move which could also open up space for cruise ships and more casinos.”
“Governor Barbour is now denying that this is a diversion of money from the housing fund.”
“BILL MOYERS: Last year, Haley Barbour was awarded GOVERNING magazine’s “Public Official of the Year” for his stewardship of Mississippi in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And last week, he easily won re-election for a second term and is now being talked up as the Republicans’ vice presidential nominee next year.”
A CORPORATE RAID ON THE NATIONAL TREASURY
From the Washington Post: Following are excerpts from an article written by Robert O’Harrow Jr. in the Nov. 2, 2007 issue of the Washington Post.
“Concurrent Technologies began two decades ago doing metalworking research in Pennsylvania’s struggling rust belt. In the years since, the Johnstown, Pa., company has become a federal contracting chameleon.”
“It is an intelligence adviser, an environmental consultant and a software engineering specialist. Missile-defense research is part of its portfolio. So is the development of special armor for combat vehicles in Iraq and ‘solid waste technology’ in Florida.”
“And it is a nonprofit charity.”
“Behind the rise of Concurrent is Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the House Appropriation Committee’s defense subcommittee, who helped arrange funding to launch the organization in 1988. Murtha has since arranged millions of dollars more in directed congressional appropriations called earmarks. Now Concurrent has nearly $250 million in annual revenue and 1,500 employees.”
“According to Concurrent’s chief financial officer, Edward J. Sheehan Jr., the Internal Revenue Service approved Concurrent as a charity because it ‘lessens the burden on governance’ and helps ‘the federal government and American industry to perform more effectively through the use of emerging technologies.”
The Compass Society Newsletter
Maynard Chapman, Editor
Copyright © 2007, The Compass Society
