Krugman Pegs Bush’s Speech

[kerrygoddess]

Krugman Pegs Bush’s Speech
September 16th, 2005

Paul Krugman pegs Bush’s speech and lets the cat out of the bag…

Now it begins: America’s biggest relief and recovery program since the New Deal. And the omens aren’t good.

It’s a given that the Bush administration, which tried to turn Iraq into a laboratory for conservative economic policies, will try the same thing on the Gulf Coast. The Heritage Foundation, which has surely been helping Karl Rove develop the administration’s recovery plan, has already published a manifesto on post-Katrina policy. It calls for waivers on environmental rules, the elimination of capital gains taxes and the private ownership of public school buildings in the disaster areas. And if any of the people killed by Katrina, most of them poor, had a net worth of more than $1.5 million, Heritage wants to exempt their heirs from the estate tax.

MORE & LINKS - http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=575#more-575

[Journeyman]

1. Link to the entire article. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/16/opinion/16krugman.html?hp

[thefloyd]

4. Iraq Lab?

What Economic policies have conservatives tried in Iraq?

[punpirate]

6. The CPA, under Bremer...

... sought to completely privatize the country virtually overnight. And, apparently, it was the plan, all along, since there's a 100-page State Dept. document written prior to the invasion floating around somewhere which outlines the entire process.

The reaction against the occupation has sort of put a bullet into that plan, but there are still reflections of it in the Iraq constitution.

If you look at the orders issued by Bremer, you'll get a sense of what they tried to do (one of them which sticks in my head was the order that said Iraqi farmers were barred from saving seed from year to year--that meant they had to buy seed each year, thus paving the way for firms like Monsanto to control the agricultural seed market).

[KT2000]

7. free market policies

Paul Bremer was supposed to implement free market economic policies in Iraq. An example had to do with the farmers being required to use GMO seeds instead of their traditional seeds.
Lots of other goodies with the oil and banks.
I will look for an article.

[1932]

18. The new constition makes nationalization of oil industry virtually imposs-

ible.

[Miss Chybil]

16. Here's your answer... "Bagdhad Year Zero"

http://harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html

Now, I guess it's "New Orleans Day One."

[KT2000]

22. Thanks for this!

I was searching madly for an article not half as good as this one.

[WiseButAngrySara]

27. So funny! I read the post above, and went to find the link to this

article, which I'd not yet noticed that you had already posted. It's THAT GOOD! (that we should both post the same article out of many possibilities) I think she has written a new article on Why NOLA should rebuild itself, but I can't find that link.

http://harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html

Baghdad Year Zero

Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia

Posted on Friday, September 24, 2004. Originally from Harper's Magazine, September 2004. By Naomi Klein.

<snip>
That, in essence, was the working thesis in Iraq, and in keeping with the belief that private companies are more suited than governments for virtually every task, the White House decided to privatize the task of privatizing Iraq’s state-dominated economy. Two months before the war began, USAID began drafting a work order, to be handed out to a private company, to oversee Iraq’s “transition to a sustainable market-driven economic system.” The document states that the winning company (which turned out to be the KPMG offshoot Bearing Point) will take “appropriate advantage of the unique opportunity for rapid progress in this area presented by the current configuration of political circumstances.” Which is precisely what happened.

L. Paul Bremer, who led the U.S. occupation of Iraq from May 2, 2003, until he caught an early flight out of Baghdad on June 28, admits that when he arrived, “Baghdad was on fire, literally, as I drove in from the airport.” But before the fires from the “shock and awe” military onslaught were even extinguished, Bremer unleashed his shock therapy, pushing through more wrenching changes in one sweltering summer than the International Monetary Fund has managed to enact over three decades in Latin America. Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate and former chief economist at the World Bank, describes Bremer’s reforms as “an even more radical form of shock therapy than pursued in the former Soviet world.”

The tone of Bremer’s tenure was set with his first major act on the job: he fired 500,000 state workers, most of them soldiers, but also doctors, nurses, teachers, publishers, and printers. Next, he flung open the country’s borders to absolutely unrestricted imports: no tariffs, no duties, no inspections, no taxes. Iraq, Bremer declared two weeks after he arrived, was “open for business.” One month later, Bremer unveiled the centerpiece of his reforms. Before the invasion, Iraq’s non-oil-related economy had been dominated by 200 state-owned companies, which produced everything from cement to paper to washing machines. In June, Bremer flew to an economic summit in Jordan and announced that these firms would be privatized immediately. “Getting inefficient state enterprises into private hands,” he said, “is essential for Iraq’s economic recovery.” It would be the largest state liquidation sale since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But Bremer’s economic engineering had only just begun. In September, to entice foreign investors to come to Iraq, he enacted a radical set of laws unprecedented in their generosity to multinational corporations. There was Order 37, which lowered Iraq’s corporate tax rate from roughly 40 percent to a flat 15 percent. There was Order 39, which allowed foreign companies to own 100 percent of Iraqi assets outside of the natural-resource sector. Even better, investors could take 100 percent of the profits they made in Iraq out of the country; they would not be required to reinvest and they would not be taxed. Under Order 39, they could sign leases and contracts that would last for forty years. Order 40 welcomed foreign banks to Iraq under the same favorable terms. All that remained of Saddam Hussein’s economic policies was a law restricting trade unions and collective bargaining.

If these policies sound familiar, it’s because they are the same ones multinationals around the world lobby for from national governments and in international trade agreements. But while these reforms are only ever enacted in part, or in fits and starts, Bremer delivered them all, all at once. Overnight, Iraq went from being the most isolated country in the world to being, on paper, its widest-open market.

[1932]

17. Here's an MP3

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2632

It has a good summary, IIRC.

[WiseButAngrySara]

28. See post #27 for an excerpt from an excellent article...n/t

[ladylibertee]

2. The Heritage Foundation

So thats who he meant when he said he would use some of the funds to reimburse faith based groups that let evacuees live in their homes.What about the average citizen who did it because they were being kind.? hmmmmmmm

[kerrygoddess]

26. Here's a link to their plan...

http://www.heritage.org/Research/GovernmentReform/sr05.cfm

[ReadTomPaine]

3. The GOP's solution? Profit center disaster recovery.

Push that agenda no matter the situation. Can't get something out of Congress? Climb atop the dead and do it anyway. If they are dead democrats, well all the better for the GOP it seems.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. The other half: "faith based" recovery: "reimburse" churches.

[Wordie]

23. Strategy: Bush delivers the money; the churches deliver the Repub votes.

A symbiotic relationship if there ever was one. Creepy.

[radfringe]

8. my immediate impressions of bush*'s speech

if his 9-11 speech, while standing atop rubble with his arm around a fireman, was his "bullhorn" moment -- then standing outside a church in New Orleans was his bullsh*t moment.

-- the "casual" look, not an accident, no one forgot to dress him before he appeared swaggering across the lawn. Shirt sleeves, no tie and no jacket were to give the impression of someone ready to get to work, a regular guy ready to shovel out the muck, grab a hammer and start building

-- he begin by giving a list of heroic efforts and actions. Poor choice for a lead off - all this did was to remind people how much WASN'T done by FEMA

-- the 800#, :eyes: , sounded like he was pitching zirconia jewelry for the homeshopping network

-- most disturbing was the pitch for a power grab, we've seen what putting all the departments in one bag has done, and now he wants to stuff more into the bag.

-- investigation - unless it's free of bush* cronies and kool-aid drinkers - it won't mean a damn thing

I've printed out the transcript and will be reading it more closely -- meanwhile 4 out 5 cats in my home left the room during the speech, 1 gave it 2 hairballs, 2 out of 3 dogs gave it a fart, and the other dog snored

addendum (on edit) all those references to god, faith-based this and that, funerals etc -- the only thing missing was the back-up choir shouting out the "amens"

and did you catch the "talking point" - connecting katrina to 9-11. I know he's made this "connection" in the past few days in other statements -- HOWEVER, this is going to be the "new improved theme" instead of 9-11 changed everything, it will be Katrina changed everything

[MADem]

13. Brian Williams nailed it

This morning on Imus he wondered "What was he doing behind that statue before they cued him to come out???"

They spent ten minutes talking about shirtsleeves, not much on the speech itself. They concurred that the contrition should have been the first two paragraphs, not buried in the speech, and opined that he just does not know how to say sorry to anyone for anything.

I thought it was dreadful. No people, the backlit blue cathedral that matched his shirt, if he was going for a "rebuilding moment" it didn't cut it--he looked like the last guy to leave Disneyland--fucking Goofy, indeed.

[Justice]

9. Sean Hannity said should waive estate tax for families of victims,

in talking with Jack Kemp on his radio show. What an idiot, if the Katrina victims are poor people, none of them would pay an estate tax.

[OneTwentyoNine]

11. Oh Sean,your SUCH a caring person.......

Your a bag of SHIT Hannity. You USING this disaster to try and push through the elimination of the estate tax for the filthy rich.

In 2006 individuals can inherit up to 2 MILLION 100% TAX FREE,it DOUBLES for two or more. Oh I'm sure out of the NO residents that there are just loads of them that have estates WELL over $4 MILLION....

Your a worthless piece of CRAP Hannity....

[CitrusLib]

12. What an ignorant jackass.

[thefloyd]

20. God

Unfreakinbelievable.

[Mz Pip]

21. Trent Lott would

benefit from that, as would all the rich Repugs who had summer homes on the gulf. Wouldn't matter much to people who don't have estates in the first place. :eyes:

Mz Pip
:dem:

[Jacobin]

31. None of these people would have an inheritance tax liability

Not a single fricking one.

These people are so corrupt it make my head hurt

[Douglas Carpenter]

10. very important article---recommended

[randr]

14. Sounds like they have these plans ready about as fast as they

had the "homeland Security" plan.
Could pre-planning for neocon implementation of a reconstruction had any premeditated effort(or lack of effort)in creating such a situation?
Would a timely response lessened the disaster? Sand bags ready et al.

[Helga Scow Stern]

15. Yes! "The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," complete with own office

See Naomi Klein's article in The Nation:


Last summer, in the lull of the August media doze, the Bush Administration's doctrine of preventive war took a major leap forward. On August 5, 2004, the White House created the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, headed by former US Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual. Its mandate is to draw up elaborate "post-conflict" plans for up to twenty-five countries that are not, as of yet, in conflict. According to Pascual, it will also be able to coordinate three full-scale reconstruction operations in different countries "at the same time," each lasting "five to seven years." Fittingly, a government devoted to perpetual pre-emptive deconstruction now has a standing office of perpetual pre-emptive reconstruction.

Gone are the days of waiting for wars to break out and then drawing up ad hoc plans to pick up the pieces. In close cooperation with the National Intelligence Council, Pascual's office keeps "high risk" countries on a "watch list" and assembles rapid-response teams ready to engage in prewar planning and to "mobilize and deploy quickly" after a conflict has gone down. The teams are made up of private companies, nongovernmental organizations and members of think tanks--some, Pascual told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in October, will have "pre-completed" contracts to rebuild countries that are not yet broken. Doing this paperwork in advance could "cut off three to six months in your response time." <<


snip>>
As in other reconstruction sites, from Haiti to Iraq, tsunami relief has little to do with recovering what was lost. Although hotels and industry have already started reconstructing on the coast, in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and India, governments have passed laws preventing families from rebuilding their oceanfront homes. Hundreds of thousands of people are being forcibly relocated inland, to military style barracks in Aceh and prefab concrete boxes in Thailand. The coast is not being rebuilt as it was--dotted with fishing villages and beaches strewn with handmade nets. Instead, governments, corporations and foreign donors are teaming up to rebuild it as they would like it to be: the beaches as playgrounds for tourists, the oceans as watery mines for corporate fishing fleets, both serviced by privatized airports and highways built on borrowed money.

In January Condoleezza Rice sparked a small controversy by describing the tsunami as "a wonderful opportunity" that "has paid great dividends for us." Many were horrified at the idea of treating a massive human tragedy as a chance to seek advantage. But, if anything, Rice was understating the case. A group calling itself Thailand Tsunami Survivors and Supporters says that for "businessmen-politicians, the tsunami was the answer to their prayers, since it literally wiped these coastal areas clean of the communities which had previously stood in the way of their plans for resorts, hotels, casinos and shrimp farms. To them, all these coastal areas are now open land!"

Disaster, it seems, is the new terra nullius. <<





http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050502/klein/1

[Lowell]

19. Meanwhile the Mumbling Moron from Midlands

mouths more promises he can't keep. His plan is going to price the home market completely out of reach of the poor who have been displaced by this catastrophe. Him and the congress promise billions of dollars they don't have without requiring any sacrifice or cutbacks. Its time we spent our tax dollars where they are needed, here at home.

It is odd that he can assume responsibility for Katrina, an act of god, and claim none for the debacle that is Iraq.

[Jack Rabbit]

24. Krugman hits this nail on the head

President Bush subscribes to a political philosophy that opposes government activism - that's why he has tried to downsize and privatize programs wherever he can. (He still hopes to privatize Social Security, F.D.R.'s biggest legacy.) So even his policy failures don't bother his strongest supporters: many conservatives view the inept response to Katrina as a vindication of their lack of faith in government, rather than as a reason to reconsider their faith in Mr. Bush.

[Cha]

25. When I read stuff like this

it's reminiscent of something out of hitler's manifesto.

What's it gonna take to get them the fuck outta power?

[Serial Mom]

29. Eliminate capital gains tax?!?

:wtf:

Most the victims didn't have enough money to buy gasoline, IF THEY EVEN HAD A CAR to get out and they think stopping this tax will help the poor?

And eliminate the victims heirs from estate tax? Everything any victim had is gone!

These think tanks are nothing but a bunch of toadys making policy that only helps them under the guise that this is what intelligent people think!

No economist, no experts or professors of domestic or foreign policy would recommend this!

[Raster]

30. If this doesn't make your head spin...

"Is there any way Mr. Bush could ensure an honest recovery program? Yes - he could insulate decisions about reconstruction spending from politics by placing them in the hands of an autonomous agency headed by a political independent, or, if no such person can be found, a Democrat (as a sign of good faith).

"He didn't do that last night, and probably won't. There's every reason to believe the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast, like the failed reconstruction of Iraq, will be deeply marred by cronyism and corruption.
_______________
Paul is Delphi on the Hudson. Cronyism and corruption are virtually assured. the pResident has his best man on it, kkkarl rove.