The Hightower Lowdown
The "Prosperity Dividend," Bush's Energy Fraud, and the War on Colombia
By Jim Hightower, Fri., Feb. 16, 2001
We Need a Real 'Prosperity Dividend'
Bush the Second wants to give a fat tax cut to America's wealthiest families, including his own -- an elite class of people who have grown enormously wealthier in the Wall Street boom of the Nineties, and who have the least need for a giveaway from Uncle Sam. But these are the people who put Little George in the president's chair and, by gollies, they're the people he's going to serve, including doling out about a trillion dollars to them in this tax windfall.
The excuse he's using is that the economy is in the doldrums and needs a stimulus. Yet, enriching the rich is a notoriously ineffective way of goosing up consumer spending, plus a tax cut wouldn't take effect until next year -- too late to help this year's economic downturn.
This is why I like the better idea being put forth by a couple of common-sense economists, Richard Freeman of Harvard and Eileen Appelbaum of the Economic Policy Institute. Noting that all of us worked to create both the economic boom of the Nineties and the federal surplus that Bush now wants to tap for his friends, they're calling instead for a "Prosperity Dividend" that would pay $500 to every man, woman, and child. Bush's CEO buddies would get their 500 bucks, but so would you, your spouse, and your children, and the dividend would mean the most to those who need it the most.
For a typical family of four, this would be $2,000 -- enough to make a real difference for the workaday majority that has not seen their incomes go up in the Nineties, despite working harder and longer. These folks are likely to spend it all on needed goods (or to pay down credit card debt), not only improving their situation, but also giving the economy the quick stimulus it needs.
The "Prosperity Dividend" is fair, it's simple, and it would work -- which is why Washington won't like it. To learn more about it call the Economic Policy Institute: 202/775-8810.
Bush's Energy Fraud
Memo to George W. Bush, who recently said in response to the energy calamity in California that he was "deeply concerned": Try to avoid applying the term "deep" to any of your thoughts or actions.
In fact, in the California case, Bush's thoughts and actions were so shallow you could see right through them. He used the real harm that is being done to real people out there as an excuse to do what he does best: carry water for the oil industry.
Bush kissed off the people of California, saying that they had to take care of their own problems. But he jumped at the chance to exploit their energy problems as a rationale for lending a presidential helping hand to BP Amoco, ARCO, Exxon, and the other oil giants who had run a pipeline of cash into his presidential campaign. He declared that California's electrical crunch pointed up "a long-term issue as well, and that is, How do we find more energy supplies?"
He answered his own question by tearing a page right out of the oil lobby's Washington wish list: Let the corporations rip into the ecologically sensitive Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, setting aside environmental restrictions so Bush's oil buddies can roll in there with their big rigs, punch holes wherever they want, then build some pipelines across the refuge to haul their bounty out. Little George then said he would act "boldly and swiftly" to enact his plan.
His plan, of course, is a fraud. Piping oil out of the Alaskan wilderness will have zero impact on electric supplies in California or elsewhere.
To try to pull off this fraud, George appointed a new energy "task force" to serve as a PR front for the industry's agenda. Guess who chairs it? Dick Cheney, the president-in-fact, who was an oil-industry CEO before taking over at the White House.
End the War on Colombia
The sheer loopiness of our country's drug war has taken another twisted turn, and more innocent people are caught in the loops.
In this case, it's impoverished farm families in two southern provinces of Colombia who're paying the price for our own country's addiction to cocaine. United States politicians, wanting to appear tough, have dealt with this homegrown addiction not by confronting the U.S. buyers, treating their addiction as the health problem that it is, but by waging an endless, exorbitant, and unsuccessful "war" against the suppliers.
This policy has now led our military deep into the jungles of Colombia, where thousands of acres of coca plants are raised -- a crop that ends up in some of the finest U.S. homes, enriching drug kingpins, bankers, and politicians along the way. Instead of focusing on the rich and powerful, however, our drug war is focused on eradicating the Colombian coca fields -- oblivious to the fact that even if they succeed (which they are not), the crop will simply move elsewhere to continue supplying the insatiable U.S. demand.
Like trying to swat a fly with a sledgehammer, the crop eradication program in Colombia is based on a crude military weapon: defoliation. So far, we've sprayed herbicides over 66,000 acres. Sure enough, this has killed many coca plants -- along with the corn, yucca, plantains, and other crops that farmers legally raise there. It has also stripped bare the natural environment, not to mention putting a film of poison on the water, animals, and people of the region.
American officials insist that this herbicide causes no harm to people or animals -- a lie they also used when spraying Agent Orange in Vietnam. Meanwhile, the Colombians we're so blithely fumigating find themselves suddenly sickened with headaches, diarrhea, skin rashes, and other symptoms of pesticide poisoning.
It's time to get the USA out of Colombia.
Jim Hightower's latest book, If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates, is available in stores everywhere.
Got something to say on the subject? Send a letter to the editor.
