Re: RAT FWD: Commentary from the Guardian

[Laura Winton <fluffysingler@prodigy.net>]

The prefacing comments weren't mine.  I didn't really leave them in to
"bait" anyone.  I was simply forwarding an email article that someone had
sent to me.

The person who sent me the email, however, has a legitimate point about
"radical" politics being made more palatable in order to advance "the
cause".  Many people who joined and founded the Greens 10 years ago were
radicals.  And as the Greens and Green Parties become more respectable and
viable, there is always an issue of losing the radical edge and becoming
something just a little bit better than the Dems and Repubs.

That said--any comments on the Guardian article itself???

------Original Message------
From: schedlinski <schedlinski@yahoo.com>
To: rat-list@whirl-i-gig.com
Sent: August 25, 2000 1:10:57 AM GMT
Subject: Re: RAT FWD: Commentary from the Guardian


I've been telling myself for two days that I wouldn't
bite on this (particularly since the preamble makes it
clear that it is a taunt meant to draw us into biting)
but the other voice won this time.

I started reading the political debate on the RAT list
as a Nader supporter, and even wrote an email or two
in favor of him early on. I mainly feel that I have
advocated for civil debate instead of name calling, no
matter what the topic, but it seems that such hope is
in vain. I now believe that the demaagoguery and lack
of willingness for debate in the Nader camp rivals
only that of Buchanan among the five candidates.

A maximim wage 10 times that of the minimum wage is
not a bad idea because it would stifle innovation
(although it would); it is a bad idea because it would
completely wreck the US economy. Imagine that the
minimum wage were to be raised to a more reasonable
$10/hr, and thus the maximum wage would be $100/hr.
Not only would it be unconstitutional (not to be
deprived of the right to earn that much, but to be
deprived of the right to pay someone that much --
which is a form of free expression), it would force
drastic changes in the labor and investment markets
(how do you pay, for example, actors, who may only
rarely work and who therefore rely upon being paid a
very high hourly wage? How do you deal with a family
business -- must he close his store and not sell
anything after he has made $200,000 {about what a
40-hour week would provide in the above}). The stock
markets would of course collapse as wealthy investors
saw their ability to make much money in them stripped,
and the collapse would devastate the pension funds of
everyday workers. American companies (run by the rich
executives) would move their headquarters to other
countries so they could pay executives more, etc. etc.
etc.

It's not that such a point shouldn't be brought up or
debated. It's that the hubris of using a phrase like
"dumbing down" to refer to adjusting policies to
include anyone but the proper-thinking would-be
mandarins in the debate. Imagine a Forbes supporter
saying how he would hate to have to give in from
flat-tax to progressive tax because it would be
"dumbing down" the idea "to bring in more people."

I'm just sick of hatred and derision being used as
tools of the left. (I'm also sick of lying -- 40% of
Americans are not without healthcare -- the number
cited by Bill Bradley was 44 million, which is more
like 14% -- still terrible, but lying hurts your
case).
When the robsepierres and stalins of the green party
manage to kill their dantons and trotskys, we'll be
worse off by far than if even gwb were to win. I'm off
to check out john naigler's website.

rm schedlinski
> Many people felt that to impose a maximum
> wage would cause people to
> be less innovative and one person suggested it was
> demagoguery. I am
> becoming less and less enchanted with the electoral
> process if it means
> dumbing down the ideals of the organization just to
> attract more people.
>
> MJ
>
> From the guardian unlimited website
>
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,357499,00.html
>
>
> The lesson from America is that Europe is our only
> hope
>
> The United States has become insufferable as it has
> grown
> all-powerful
> Polly Toynbee
> Wednesday August 23, 2000
>
> The land of the free now wields an absolute power,
> free of
> responsibility, such as the world has never known.
> The rest of the globe
> watches its elections with renewed anguish as
> powerless spectators and
> demi-subjects. The two conventions displayed all
> that is most repugnant and
> alien in a political system corrupted beyond
> recognition in the democratic
> world.
>
> The $100m campaigns lift off in an obscene haze of
> sanctimonious, lachrymose
> religiosity, oozing family unction and lies. With 77
> days to go and
> contenders neck and neck in the polls, George W Bush
> says that Jesus is his
> guiding influence, Al Gore and Joe Lieberman share a
> prayer with reporters
> and both campaigns promise instant gratification and
> no sacrifice for
> anything or anyone ever. Dishonest fantasy politics
> turn
> America into an out-of-control, self-absorbed,
> infantilised monster.
>
> The richer, stronger and more globally unaccountable
> America
> becomes, the more self-centred its politics grows.
> The end of the cold war
> should have brought great psychological dividends.
> Generous in global
> victory, free of paranoia and with wealth beyond
> imagining, here at last was
> its chance to become what it has always believed
> itself to be - the brave,
> the beautiful, the free and so on.
>
> The high-flown rhetoric of the conventions is echoed
> in
> every high school valedictory speech, in every
> rotary and church, pledging
> allegiance to a constitution that has lost any
> vision of society beyond the
> pursuit of happiness. God's chosen people, uniquely
> blessed, nurture a
> self-image almost as deranged in its profound
> self-delusion as the old
> Soviet Union. The most advanced, knowledgeable,
> educated, psychoanalysed,
> therapised nation on earth knows nothing of itself,
> irony-free and blind to
> the world around it.
>
> This is the indictment:
>
> * Global warming: both poles are now melting and the
> process
> can never be stopped or reversed without America.
> The US federal government
> report on climate change itself predicted a 5-10C
> heat increase this
> century, with attendant fires, droughts and floods.
> A quarter of the world's
> population consumes 80% of its energy, most in the
> US. At Kyoto the US
> agreed to a very modest 7% cut in emissions by 2010.
> Congress refused to
> ratify it and since then America's emissions have
> increased by over 20%.
> The Republicans deny the cause of global warming,
> Democrats
> say nothing of cuts. As a result other countries are
> now sliding out of
> Kyoto promises, finding loopholes. Why should
> politicians in France or
> Germany take huge political pain in demanding cuts
> from their voters when
> the monster across the Atlantic goes on guzzling?
> With global power should
> come global responsibility to lead, but it doesn't.
>
> * Defence: Congress's refusal to sign the
> comprehensive test
> ban treaty last October virtually urges others to
> acquire their own weapons.
> The Bush camp talks of tearing up the 1972
> anti-ballistic missile treaty.
> Both parties are committed to the insane national
> missile defence system,
> putting the US under an umbrella protecting it from
> imaginary threats by
> "rogue" states that might lob a missile across,
> presumably unafraid of
> retaliation. It will end the old mutually assured
> destruction policy by
> which the world survived the cold war. Costing
> $60bn, it works even less
> well than the smart bombs of recent wars but still
> arouses fear and anger in
> China and Russia. Zbigniew Brzezinski calls it the
> mentality of the
> "internationally gated community".
>
> Such isolationism will make the US role as a good
> global
> police force less likely: already political
> cowardice at losing any US
> soldier's life damaged its moral credibility in a
> genuinely
> unself-interested intervention in Kosovo.
>
> * The third world: the US promised $600m towards the
> relief
> of third-world debt, with 25 countries partly aided
> by the end of this year.
>
> Not a penny has been paid because Congress refused.
> The rhetoric was good -a
> recent US poll showed half the population thought
> the problem already solved
> - but even Uganda, the exemplary "good" poor
> country, has still received
> nothing.
>
>
> Following US parsimony, the EU and Japan have been
> dragging
> their heels too. If the world's richest country,
> whose GNP has risen by a
> third in five years, hasn't paid, why should anyone
> else? Then there are the
> world trade negotiations, wrecked instead of saved
> by US political
> selfishness.
>
> * Poverty: a nation that does next to nothing about
> its own
> poor is unlikely to offer much to other countries.
> While US stock market
> values have increased five-fold in a decade, with
> half of all shares owned
> by 1% of the people, welfare has been cut to a
> five-year lifetime limit.
>
> With 40% of the people not covered by medical
> insurance, Medicare for the
> elderly is being cut by $115bn - and the Republicans
> promise far worse to
> come.
>
> Virtually all the income gains of the last five
> years have
>
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Laura Winton
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