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NEWS & LETTERS, December 2004EditorialBush agenda: the clock is tickingThe clock is ticking. George W. Bush and his ultraconservative allies in Congress are in a hurry to consolidate their powers and institutionalize a regime of religious ideology and unrestrained capital accumulation. Why the rush? Ahead are social and economic crises which, in fact, are already underway, making the razor-close presidential election the most hotly debated in a generation or more. The Bush agenda now means not just more of the same, but faster and harder. High up on the Bush agenda is the grab for the hard-earned national pension fund, also known as Social Security. With the help of the new, larger Republican majority in Congress, the administration is pondering how to put a happy face on what would be a bonanza for financial capitalists. While critics rightly point to that, including moderate conservatives, less understood is capitalismís objective need for a hearty injection of funds into investments, so foundering is the economy. Bush and his team are not as worried as the public about the $1-2 trillion it will take to honor legal obligations to retirees while diverting new earnings into the markets. Whatís left of Social Security will be a shell. Even the Bush administration predicts benefits will be reduced. OCEAN OF DEBT BORN BY WORKERS The humongous sum for the Social Security makeover will jack up the obscene deficit already in place, thanks to the 2001 and 2004 tax cuts. Besides larding the bank accounts of the rich, they flushed more dollars into investment markets. The promise of achieving a balanced budget depends on eliminating more so-called discretionary spending: transportation, law enforcement, veterans, agriculture, housing, health research, space exploration and national parks. Ending these could never fund the Social Security makeover, much less bridge the budget deficit. The same Big Lie is behind so-called tax reform, in particular enthusiasm among ultraconservatives for implementing a flat tax. While the tax burden will shift further away from the rich with a single tax rate, the desired effect will be to wash more dollars into investments. Furthermore the minimum hourly wage, frozen at a paltry $5.15 buys two-thirds of what the minimum wage could buy in 1968. Such is the huge contribution by the working poor to capitalism at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries, never to be paid back. They more than anyone are hurt from the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which do not figure into the rosy predictions of a balanced budget by the end of the decade. The part of the national wealth which is not made of sweated labor, our natural resources ensconced in forests, seas and skies, has been marked for appropriation by capital. In the works now are draining oil reserves and felling timberlands in Alaska, while curbs on industrial air pollution are to be slackened along with reins on the profits of the polluters. And barriers to storing nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, Colo., are coming down along with ramping up nuclear energy production. CONGRESSIONAL CO-CRIMINALS Bushís accomplices in Congress have already shown they are up to the task of carrying out his agenda. In its post-election session, the current Congress passed a spending bill with a host of sleepers, most egregious being a new curb on abortion that brings women, especially the poor, a step closer to earlier times of repression or death from unwanted pregnancies. This is but the curtain raiser on a raft of judicial appointments to the Supreme Court, and fights over them, as justices retire or die during Bushís second term. Sen. Arlen Specter was subjected to a loyalty test by the Christian Right when, as a condition of chairing the Judiciary Committee, he had to pledge to bag his longstanding position and not contest anti-abortion nominees. This was but a proxy for the litmus test the Bush administration will do on future candidates for federal benches, in other words, making certain of their commitment to overturn Roe v. Wade and every pro-choice right thatís challenged before the courts. If the Specter affair seemed totalitarian, it is a preview for where the ultra-rightwing is willing to take this so-called representative democracy. Since the seating of Congresses at the beginning of the country, the voice of the minority party has always been protected through devices such as the filibuster. More than a procedural tactic to put into check the majorityís legislative program, it permits the minority to publicly speak its position. Republicans in the upcoming 104th Congress have unveiled plans to abuse their 55-45 majority over Democrats plus one independent and eliminate the filibuster. The name applied to this move, the "nuclear option," aptly described the gravity of neutering the opposition, loyal as it may be. And it should be no surprise in a "democracy" with one stolen election and another being contested in the courts that House Republicans voided their own chamber rules and lifted the ban on seating indicted members. This will allow Majority Leader Tom DeLay to retain his seat even as an indicted for vote-buying and using his position and federal money to interfere with the Texas legislature. This only lends a cynical edge to the drive by the Republicans to achieve a single party state. In light of this aggregation of power, Bushís cabinet appointments are ominous. To the post of secretary of homeland security, Bush appointed Bernard Kerik. The choice of a career cop with a portfolio of repression, including administering New York Cityís jail houses of horror, looks inward at domestic "enemies" more than future 9/11s. White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez, the nominee to replace top cop John Ashcroft, credentialed himself as author of a policy of torture against internees in the U.S.ís detention camps, a policy ready to take root in police stations and squad cars across the land. NEXT GENERATION OF REACTIONARIES Waiting to take their Senate seats are a collection of rogues as sinister as any fascist ideologues of the 20th century. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma has suggested that Blacks are genetically disposed toward shorter life spans. In Floridaís primaries, Mel Martinez called his REPUBLICAN opponent "the new darling of homosexual extremists" for his support for a hate crimes bill and stem cell research. Jim DeMint of South Carolina holds that homosexuals and pregnant women with live-in boyfriends should be banned from teaching in public schools. John Thuneís campaign in South Dakota featured racist imagery of Native Americans and illegally threatened Native voters. And Louisianaís David Vitter has been called "a polite David Duke." Not all is assured in carrying out the Bush agenda. None other that Newt Gingrich has spoken out against killing the filibuster procedure. And within the ruling brain trusts, there is dissent, most publicly by Francis Fukyama, over the exercise of absolute power by the worldís hyperpower. The fear is that the international political fabric and domestic social stability, as frayed as they are, will be torn beyond repair, and beyond control. And the nationís working class is on the brink of getting an economic haircut as contending blocs in capital make plans to stop backing the U.S.ís debt burden. CAPITALISMíS TIME IS UP We can hardly rely on the bourgeoisieís internal contradictions to base our need to create an alternative to their crises. A vote for Kerry last month most likely was a vote against Bush and his Iraq occupation. A plurality of people believe the war was a mistake. More and more military families are seething over their role as grist for Riceís imperial vision and Rumsfeldís military rebuilding. Seniors and their families are about to get the bill for the Medicaid prescription bill and they wonít be happy. Nothing says "no future" to young people more than the Bush agenda. Many are ready to reach for an alternative to this inhuman and dehumanizing system. A society where we reclaim the "envisioned self," as South African revolutionary Stephen Biko put it, is ours if we put our minds to it. For that reason, News & Letters will reconstitute itself in 2005, its 50th anniversary, to put our shoulder to the wheel of envisioning a new, human society. We invite you to be a part of putting our minds to that goal, with your participation in classes on "Beyond Capitalism: Marx's Marxism as Ground for a Liberatory Alternative," and by subscribing to, reading, and writing for News & Letters. |
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