The Positive Voices

Here’s some free advice: Never buy shares in a goldmine from a guy operating out of a house trailer. Likewise, never buy a story from the Pentagon about an incredible discovery of gold in Afghanistan. From out of nowhere, a recent news report excitedly tells us that a Pentagon taskforce has discovered an astonishing trillion dollars’ worth of untapped mineral deposits in that war-ravaged, impoverished country. Gold! Copper! Iron! And more! “An economic boon is seen,” declares a newspaper headline. “There is stunning potential here,” exclaimed General David Petraeus, the top commander of America’s war operations in Afghanistan. Hmmm... not so fast, Slick. Isn’t it at least curious that this “discovery” comes when the war is going so badly for us and both the public and Congress are questioning why we’re there? Suddenly, the Pentagon gives us a trillion reasons to keep spending American lives and tax dollars: There’s money in them thar hills. Unmentioned in the Pentagon’s economic assessment is the fact that Afghans have known about these mineral deposits for centuries and have long been mining many of them, albeit on a small scale. The Soviets even mapped the extensive deposits in the 1980s during their occupation of Afghanistan, and our own geologists have known about the mining potential at least since 2004. Still, even if the Pentagon has hyped up this story to prolong America’s commitment to the war, it actually could have the opposite effect. We’ve been told again and again how poor that nation is, with a total GDP of only $12 billion and its chief product being opium, so our commitment of 90,000 troops is essential to help impoverished Afghans building a modern economy and a stable government. But if they’re now a fabulously wealthy nation, they don’t need us. So...let’s leave.

Deficit hawks are on the fly in Washington, madly screeching that America can no longer afford...well, the American people. Having slashed taxes for the wealthiest 1 percent of our society, having lavished gabillions of dollars on unnecessary wars that enrich politically connected government contractors, having laid out trillions of dollars to bail out Wall Street’s casino banksters who crashed our real economy--Washington’s brave fighters for extending more of our nation’s wealth to the already-rich have suddenly turned into born-again budget whackers. Are they cutting back on any of the above elites, you ask? What a joker you are! No, no--it’s regular folks who must pay the price for the decade of excess that these politicos lavished on the rich. In recent weeks, for example, Republican senators have repeatedly blocked an extension of jobless benefits for America’s hardest-hit families. They’ve also denied aid that would keep states and cities from firing hundreds of thousands of teachers, police officers, and other essential public employees. “Can’t afford it,” bellow these newly minted spendthrifts, even as their failure to act is intentionally increasing unemployment and economic pain across our land. Governors are also running the same sort of budget scams on their people. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, for example, recently dealt with his state’s deficit by slashing spending for public health, higher education, the elderly, and the disabled. He then vetoed an income tax on his state’s richest people, declaring that this effort to balance the budget and share the pain was “nonsensical.” Likewise, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is terminating state workers while vetoing a tax hike on millionaires, calling the wealth tax “irresponsible.” So, students, the lesson here is that public spending is only sensible if it goes to the moneyed elites, and budget cuts are only good when applied to the rest of us.

  As an old TV ad used to say: "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature." Monsanto Corp., however, still has not taken Mother's advice. This giant chemical maker became a veritable Frankenstein in the 1990s, genetically engineering new organisms in an effort to fool Mother Nature for fun and profit. But Momma got mad--and now she's kicking Monsanto's butt all across the country. Here's the background: Monsanto marketed a weedkiller labeled "Roundup" to farmers. But the weedkiller also tended to kill the crops. Thus, Monsanto's mad scientists artificially manipulated the genes of corn, cotton and soybean seeds to produce crops that--hocus pocus!--could absorb mega doses of Roundup without croaking. These patented seeds, called "Roundup Ready," helped Monsanto sell oceans of weedkiller. But Mother Nature's weeds are smarter than the Frankensteins in Monsanto's labs, and they've quickly evolved into tenacious superweeds that Roundup can't kill. There are now 10 resistant species of these superweeds infesting some 10 million acres in 22 states--and spreading. Monsanto sold its Roundup Ready seeds as a miracle crop, charged far more for them, and scoffed at concerns that the weeds would adapt. But there they are, and farmers now have to use extra-toxic herbicides to kill the aggressive mutant weeds that have invaded their fields. The result is higher costs for farmers, lower crop yields, more poisoning of land and water, and a rising chorus of farmers saying, "Some miracle, Monsanto--thanks for nothing!" All of this because one arrogant, profiteering corporation thought it could fool Mother Nature. As an Arkansas farm leader says of Monsanto's creation of the spreading superweed crisis: "It's the single largest threat to production agriculture we have ever seen."  

As Lily Tomlin has said, “No matter how cynical you get, it’s almost impossible to keep up.” She could’ve been referring to Sen. Mitch McConnell and other top Republicans in Congress, whose cynical hypocrisy either makes you want to either throw up or fall down laughing. McConnell recently announced that the entire GOP delegation was (big surprise) dead set against the Wall Street reform proposal put forth by Senate Democrats. It’s too weak, declared the multimillionaire peer of America’s corporate establishment, ludicrously striking a populist pose as the public’s defender against more handouts to greedy Wall Streeters. Unfortunately for Pitchfork Mitch, word quickly leaked that he had been schmoozing and plotting with the very greed-heads he supposedly was opposing. Just four days before his grandstanding announcement, Mitch quietly held a private tête-à-tête with a couple dozen hedge-fund honchos and other banking big shots. The purpose of his discreet meet-andgreet with Wall Street powers was twofold. One, McConnell assured them that Republicans would work to kill the tighter regulations that big banks oppose. And, two, he pointed out that since the GOP is Wall Street’s best hope for killing reform, bankers should shower the party with campaign funds to help elect more soft-on- Wall-Street Republicans. Just to make clear that this was a two-way scratch-my-back deal, McConnell brought along John Cornyn, the banker-hugging senator from Texas who just happens to be head of the Senate Republican fundraising arm. In fact, Cornyn has been making regular trips to Wall Street in recent weeks seeking its support. So let’s review: Mitch-the-the-prairie-populist is publicly pretending to be fighting Wall Street, while Mitch-the-bankers’-buddy is privately shaking them down for campaign cash in exchange for being on their team. Who could be cynical about that?

Sallie Mae isn’t one of those girls who're made of "sugar and spice and everything nice." Well, she is filled with sugar, but it comes from you and me, thanks to a longtime sweetheart deal she has from the federal government. Sallie is the largest of several corporations that make student loans--this giant issued $22 billion worth of them last year. The sweet part is that all of the loans issued by Sallie Mae and other private lenders are absolutely risk-free for the corporations, because they are fully guaranteed by the feds. When a student defaults, the government steps in and makes the lender whole. No fuss, no loss--it’s a heck of a business to be in. But, if you think that's sweet, get ready for a sugar-induced toothache, because Sallie and company also get a taxpayer subsidy for every college loan they make. Yes, a subsidy for taking no risk. And it's no token giveaway, for it totals some $8 billion a year going straight into the corporate coffers. Gee, isn't there a better way? Of course there is. Get rid of the ripoff middlemen (or, in Sallie's case, middlewoman) and have the government make direct student loans through the colleges. Among many benefits, this would free up that $8-billion-a-year corporate subsidy, which can then be put into grants to help middle and low-income students go to college. This is precisely what President Obama has proposed. It's an idea that makes all kinds of sense and serves the public good--so, naturally, Sallie and her corporate ilk are lobbing furiously to kill it in Congress, hoping to keep the sweet taste of billions of dollars in subsidized profits flowing their way. Sallie Mae alone hired $8 million worth of lobbyists last year to try to defeat the reform. To help cut off Sallie's sugar addiction, contact U.S. PIRG: www.uspirg.org.

You can knock us Americans down, but you can't keep us down.For example, the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City were crashed to the ground on 9/11. But now, a new tower is rising from those very ashes – a soaring steel and glass monument to the American spirit, a powerful symbol of our national resiliency!Well – except for the glass. A company named Beijing Glass got the government contract to provide the window panes that'll cover the first 20 stories of the tower. Yes, the monument to our national spirit is being sheathed with made-in-China glass.What? Can't American's make glass? Of course – but our biggest corporations, like Corning and Guardian, have been quietly and quickly moving their production and our jobs to China. In just the past nine years, 30 percent of these jobs have been lost. "Those who're looking through the rearview mirror waiting for the glass industry to come back," snorts the chairman of Guardian, "should know it isn't going to come back." Indeed, Guardian now employs more workers in its 36 foreign plants than it does here.Well, chirp the usual flock of free trade economists, it's all about China providing "economies of scale" for manufacturers. Hogwash.The glass industry's rush abroad is all about getting cheap labor and massive subsidies from the Chinese government. For example, shipping heavy glass from Beijing to Manhattan would be prohibitively expensive – except that China subsidizes the transportation.This is not free trade, it's a raw deal. There should be a stiff tariff on all subsidized glass coming from China – and the new World Trade tower is so symbolically important that every inch of it should be American made. For more information, contact the United Steelworkers glass industry department: www.usw.org.

With some notable exceptions and a great deal of grumbling in its ranks, Congress seems to be going right along with Obama’s Afghan plan. Such as it is. Washington will add some 30,000 U.S. troops to the war, practically none of which will be loved ones of White House staffers, lawmakers, Pentagon officials, and the war contractors who are behind the push. This latest escalation means 100,000 of our troops will soon be on the line there, facing trauma, maiming, and death. America’s money goes with them—the cost of maintaining each soldier in this faraway land is roughly a million dollars a year. For what? We’re told that the goal is to build up the Afghan army and central government of President Hamid Karzai so they can, someday, secure their own divided, war-torn country. Whether that’s really in our national interest, much less worthy of the sacrifice of American blood and treasure, is doubtful. But one thing is not in doubt: Continuing to prop up Hamid Karzai is a disgrace. His inept and thoroughly corrupt presidency, assured only by bribes and massive electoral fraud in his recent re-election campaign, is not worthy of a single American life or dollar. Obama claims that Karzai will end the corruption—or else. Or else what? No one says. Meanwhile, at a recent anticorruption dog-and-pony show in the Afghan capital, Karzai made a terrible showing. He made a point of defending the city’s mayor, who’s already been convicted of misusing public funds and is facing more charges of embezzlement and abuse of power. Karzai called him a “clean person” and pushed to reverse his conviction. Washington keeps telling Karzai to get rid of all the corrupt officials in his government. But wait—it’s his government. He’s the chief of corruption! Why should anyone else die for this guy? Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and winner of the 2009 winner of the Nation/Puffin Prize. He’s also editor of the populist newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown. MinutemanMedia.org

  Tauzin, a longtime Congress critter who became a lobbyist, is an old school wheeler-dealer. He reminds me of a New York politico who always skated on the thin ice of ethics, candidly explaining that, “I seen my chances, and I took ‘em.” Elected to the U.S. House 30 years ago as a Democrat from Louisiana, Tauzin rose to become chairman of a powerful committee, where he was a faithful servant to industry interests. In 1994, Republicans took over the House of Representatives. Billy’s star was about to fade. Seeing his chances, he cut a deal with the GOP to switch parties in exchange for becoming chairman of the House committee that handles legislation affecting drug corporations. From that position, Tauzin engineered a Medicare boondoggle in 2004 that gives the drug giants a fat subsidy costing taxpayers billions of dollars every year. Grateful for the windfall profits, Big Pharma asked Billy that very year to get hitched. Seeing his chances, Tauzin became the drug industry’s chief lobbyist, drawing an annual paycheck of $2 million. Using his insider connections, he’s been effective at killing various proposals that would’ve stopped the rip-off prices that drug companies make us pay for our medicine. Last year, however, Billy cut one deal too many. He agreed to support President Barack Obama’s health-care reform in a tradeoff that really didn’t please anyone, especially his own industry leaders--so they rather rudely dumped him. Now Tauzin’s out of work, but don’t forget him. Next time you’re gouged by the drug giants, remember: It wouldn’t happen without the work of self-serving hucksters like Billy. Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and winner of the 2009 winner of the Nation/Puffin Prize. He’s also editor of the populist newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown.