The Chris Moeller Archives

Disaster Capitalism

President Obama should—but won’t—channel this famous line from Michael Corleone in "The Godfather, Part II" during budget negotiations in Washington. Remember this one: “You can have my answer now, if you like. My final offer is this: nothing. Not even the fee for the gaming license, which I would appreciate if you would put up personally.”

There should be no compromise on Social Security and Medicare. None. No raise in the age requirement for entitlement benefits. No give whatsoever. Working people have sacrificed enough during this economic fiasco that has destroyed the country they built. They bailed out the “too big to fail” banks and the perpetrators walked off with billions. We’ve sent our sons and daughters, not the sons and daughters of the rich, to die for corporate investments and profit overseas. According to a retired Pentagon official speaking on NPR, taxpayers are ponying up more than $20 billion annually in Iraq and Afghanistan-- on air conditioning alone! That one line item in the defense budget is bigger than the entire annual budget of the space program. What we’re witnessing is a philosophy in action called “disaster capitalism,” and it was exposed in all of its vulgar detail by Naomi Klein in her 2007 book “The Shock Doctrine,” the most important non-fiction book published in the English language in the new century.

It's a strategy implemented by the oligarchs in Chile, in Argentina, in Indonesia, in Russia, in Poland, in China, in Sri Lanka, in South Africa, and in a myriad of other countries. The global corporatists wreck the national economies with “top-down” strategies of deregulation and the decriminalization of financial “reforms” they know to be bogus-- slashing taxes for the rich, hijacking elections, and suppressing populist dissent. Their promise of increased corporate freedom is more jobs, but the jobs do a vanishing act instead. The economic policies are actually designed to fail. They’re implemented over the will of the people so that social protections like health care, unemployment insurance, and aid to women and children can be gutted.

Now these policies of the Milton Friedman apostles have come home. They shifted into high gear in the States with the bailout of the Wall Street banks in 2008 and 2009. The looters made off with millions, none of the top bank executives were forced to stand for their crimes, and no new safeguards came into law, allowing innumerable future fleeces to take place. The resulting debt crisis allows the political henchmen to strip us of our necessities.

The “bipartisan” panels being promoted as saviors are full of shit. They're packed with "moderate" politicos vetted by Wall Street. The screaming monkeys of our corporate media are full of shit too. Their proverbial bread is buttered on one side. America’s crisis of debt and economy will not be solved by “compromise.” The rich caused this. The rich—and the rich only—should fix it. End the tax loopholes. Double or triple the tax rates on $100,000 and more in individual annual income. If the corporate Republicans and Democrats won’t back this, shut the whole thing down. Be willing to take this to the voters in 2012, and see if the plutocrats are willing to do the same. Stand up for Social Security and the public protections that comprise the legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Then watch vote-eligible majorities, for the first time ever, race to the polls.

Alas, as I said earlier, this won’t happen. President Obama already extended the Bush tax cuts without a peep, and now has reportedly offered to raise the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare benefits during the current negotiations. We need a fighter willing to go toe-to-toe. Instead, we get this. Obama's role is as a congenial, photogenic puppet to more powerful men running his party and his presidency. Men who, bizarrely, see compromise as not only the means, but the end itself, and don't care at all for what's being weighed in any potential budget compromise. Men who can’t see, or choose not to see, the larger picture of the corporate destruction of a nation because they’re being simultaneously compensated for their indifference via their personal net worths. They promise us that we'll make it through these hard times just fine, and they're quite right-- if by "us," they mean them.

posted by CM @ 8:32 PM