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in August!
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Worth of Difference:
Beyond the
Lesser of Two Evils
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Today's
Stories
August 14 /
15, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
War
on the Poor: "A Risk No Sane Person Would Take"
M. Shahid Alam
The Civilizing Mission: Some Economic Results
Saul Landau
God and Botox
John Ross
Echoes of Mexico City, 1968
Katherine Lahey
"Uh!
Ah! Chávez No Se Va!": Democracy and Venezuela
Medea Benjamin
Hugo Chavez and the Poor of Venezuela
Yves Engler
The Media and the Venezuela Referendum
Justin Podur
The NYTs and Chavez: More Than the Usual Bias
Eric Drooker
Gaza Stripped
Dave Lindorff
A29 Could be a Very Slow Day
Rebecca Brigham
The Aftermath of Guatemala's Strike: Promises Still Unfulfilled
August 13,
2004
Lee Sustar
Report
from Caracas
Mickey Z.
McProtests R Us: Why are the Dems Trying to Gag Anti-War Protesters?
Stan Goff
There
He Goes Again: Kerry's "Energy" Plan
Norman Madarasz
Thoughts on Najaf: How Could the US Ever Be Considered a "Terrorist"
State?
Victor Kattan
Press Freedom, Censorship and the War on Terror
Oscar Heck
Is Mendoza Off His Rocker? Chavez Opponents Pledge to Post Results
Online Before Polls Close
CounterPunch
Wire
Military Families File "Stop Loss" Suit
Milan Rai
Najaf: Bush Started It
Website of
the Day
The Yes Men
August 12,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
How
Bush Got (and Lost) His Wings
Lenni Brenner
Take
It on Faith: Kerry's See-Through-Monk's Robe
Lee Ballinger
The Coors and the Kerrys: Drink Up, Kids!
Tariq Ali
The
Handover Fiction
Yves Engler
What's at Stake in Venezuela
William S.
Lind
Seeing
Through the Other Side's Eyes
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Bush's Goat
Website of
the Day
The Sucker Puncher
August 11,
2004
Ceylon Mooney
Who
Woke Up Sen. Joe?: Watchers of the NJ Turnpike
Voices in the
Wilderness
Hands
Off Najaf
Ray McGovern
Porter
Goss as CIA Director?
Robert Jensen
US
Supports Anti-Democratic Forces in Venezuelan Recall
Annie Higgins
In Memory of Nick Pretzlik: As Good as It Gets
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
v. Kerry: Not Even a Dime's Worth of Difference
Website of the Day
Nick Pretzlik
August 10,
2004
William A.
Cook
Silencing
the Voice of the People
Todd Chretien
California Greens at the Crossroads: Will It Be Nader or Cobb?
Dave Lindorff
Chicago on the Hudson?
Richard Gott
Loathed
by the Rich: Why Chavez is Headed for a Big Win
Toni Solo
Bluebeard's
Castle: Disappearing the Right to Development
Dave Zirin
Carl Eller's Plea
Rep. Ron Paul
Police State, USA
Patrick Cockburn
If the Chalabis Were Corrupt, They Weren't Alone
Website of
the Day
The Surveillance-Industrial Complex
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
August 9, 2004
Tito Tricot
Pinochet
Must Still be Tried: a Murderer and a Thief on the Loose
Ron Jacobs
In
Memory of Deep Throat: the Day Nixon Was Gone
Norm Dixon
Crisis in Sudan: Oil Profits Behind West's Tears for Darfur
Kurt Nimmo
The Politics of Entrapment
Elaine Cassel
Welcome to Bush's America
Gary Leupp
Why
Iraqi Christians are Moving to Syria
August 7 /
8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
August 6, 2004
Joshua Frank
David
Cobb's Soft Charade: the Greens and the Politics of Mendacity
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Stan Goff
Mike Whitney
The
Arbitrary Imprisonment of Jose Padilla
William S. Lind
Corruption in the Marine Corps
David Price
In
the Shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
August 5, 2004
Mike Ferner
The Kerry Show: When Peace is Off
Message
Bruce Anderson
Two
Rejections
Robert Fisk
The Tale of Saddam's Cameraman
Todd Chretien
Florida
Comes to California: the Democrats' Plot Against Nader
Peter Linebaugh
Doing Time for Political Crime:
Paul and Silas, Bound in Jail
August 4, 2004
Mickey Z.
Two
Traditions: WMD and Disinformation
Justin Huggler
The Hunt for Bin Laden
John Ross
Mexico's
Dirty War Never Ended: Inside Puente Grande Prison
August 3, 2004
Uri Avnery
The
Oligarchs
Ray McGovern
The 9/11 Commission Chimera
Jack McCarthy
Sexual Politics in Jeb's Florida
Eric Ruder
Meet Barak Obama: the Democrats' New Liberal Star
John L. Hess
Crying Wolf: Orange Alert!
Elaine Cassel
Civil Liberties Elections: 1800 v. 2004
Jules Rabin
The Man Who Didn't Walk By
Website of the Day
No Wall
August 2, 2004
Robert Jensen
Kerry's
Hypocrisy on the Vietnam War
Joshua Frank
Greens, Kerry and the Politics of Mendacity
Mike Whitney
The 9/11 Commission and Civil Liberties: "We Need an American
Police State"
Gary Leupp
Beyond
Good and Evil: Some Thoughts on Invasions
July 31 / Aug.
1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Kerry:
He's the (Any) One
Merlin Chowkwanyun
Five Questions with Noam Chomsky: "The Savage Extreme of
a Narrow Policy Spectrum"
David Lindorff
The Shame of the DNC
John Chuckman
The
Disturbing Words of John Edwards
Brian Cloughley
All Slam and No Dunk; All Blame and No Responsibility
Christopher Brauchli
"Being Poor is a State of Mind": the Frowning Face
of Compassionate Conservatism
Fred Gardner
A World of Pain
Michael Donnelly
How Big Pharma Bilks the Elderly
David Nally
Genocide in Darfur?
Joshua Frank
Forest Battles Escalate in Oregon
Sam Bahour
Colin Powell and My Grandmother
Diane Farsetta
The IMF and the Indonesian Elections: The Invisible Hand in the
Voting Booth
Harold Gould
Was Iraq a Mutual Charade?
Van Bergen / Stephens
Election 9/11: Surreal Political Theater
Lee Sustar
A New Model for the Labor Movement?
Ron Jacobs
The Lost Art of Hitchhiking
M. Junaid Alam
An Interview with Palestinian-American Rapper, The Iron Sheik
Poets Basement
Albert, Ford, Krieger, St. Clair
Website of
the Weekend
Cross Cultural Poetics
July 30, 2004
Kolhatkar /
Ingalls
Shattering
Illusions: Kerry's Speech Tells Anti-War Activists They're Not
Wanted
Dave Lindorff
Murder
Not So Foul?
Bruce Jackson
Walt Whitman on the Sound of Wolf Blitzer's Voice
Fidel Castro
The
Pathology of George W. Bush
Maximilien Robespierre
Memo to Kerry and Bush: Why They Resist
Saul Landau
Bush
Charges Castro with Sex Tourism; JFK Rolls Over in His Grave
July 29, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
Hail,
the Conquering War Criminal: What Kerry Really Did in Vietnam
Frank Bardacke
What
Michael Moore Left Out of F9/11
Tom Barry
Shallow and Formulaic: Kerry's Latin America Plan
Ron Jacobs
Kerry
and Lennon: Hawking the CounterCulture
Robert Fisk
The Unreported War
Lichtman /
Kellis-Borok
What Kerry Must Do to Win (But Probably Won't)
William S. Lind
The 9/11 Commission Report: Cashing in on Failure
CounterPunch
Wire
Doonesbury Onto John Kerry in 1971!
Website of
the Day
Jabbing JibJab: Copyright Madness
July 28, 2004
Robert Fisk
The
Occupation at 114 Degrees: Baghdad is Swamped in the Smell of
the Dead
Kevin Mink
Kerry's Misperception of Palestine
Ray McGovern
Israel and the Iraq War: How the 9/11 Report Soft-Pedals Root
Causes
United for
Peace & Justice
An
Open Letter to John Kerry: Winter Soldiers and Summer Patriots
Mike Ferner
Vets Demand End to Occupation: "Pull the Troops or Face
Impeachment Mvt."
Imraan Siddiqi
Turning Tricks with Ann Coulter
Alexander Cockburn
Candidate
Kerry
Website of
the Day
Iraq Vets Against the War
July 27, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Why
the Democrats Deserve Nader
Dave Lindorff
Back to the 19th Century: Globalization's Coming!
Mike Whitney
Control Room: Inside Al Jazeera
Ali, Anderson, Bello, et al.
If We Were Venezuelan, We'd Vote for Chavez
Stefan Wray
Texas Plan to Grab Los Alamos Takes Hold, as DOE Shuts Down Labs
Louis Proyect
Reflections on Nicaragua: First Came the Contra Butchers, Then
the Sweatshops
Rick Giombetti
Faith in Freedom: the Challenge of Thomas Szasz
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
The
9/11 Report and Its Weak-Kneed Consensus: Dogding Israel/Palestine;
Blinkered on Causes of Terrorism
July 26, 2004
Todd Chretien
Green
Resistance: a Reply to Normon Solomon & Medea Benjamin
Robert Fisk
Terror
by Video
Richard Forno
Security
Theater in Boston: Security Expert Harrassed by DHS for Exposing
Flaws at the Fleet Center
Mitchel Cohen
Report from a Boston Demo: Arresting the Curious
Richard Moreno
Rockers
for Justice: an Interview with Tom Morello and Serj Tankian
Alexander Cockburn
Boston
Awaits a Dead Party
July
24 / 25, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
The Democrats and Their Conventions:
Part One
Dennis
Hans
Those 16 Words Still Smell, Mr. Bush
Patrick
Cockburn
The Struggle for Iraq is Only Beginning
Josh
Frank
The War Path of Unity: Dems Reject
the Peace Movement
Justin
E.H. Smith
Christianity and the Left: the Latin
American Experience
Tariq
Ali
What's at Stake in Venezuela
Fred
Gardner
The Politics of Pot: Year of the
Antagonist
Mark
Scaramella
There's Dope and There's Dope
Ron
Jacobs
The Weather Underground's Prairie
Fire Statement...35 Years On
July
23, 2004
Lee
Sustar
Revolution in Nicaragua: 25 Years
On
Dave
Lindorff
Battle for NYC: Bush 1, Protesters
0
Saul
Landau
Zaniest President in US History: Bush
Beats Reagan
Mike
Whitney
The 9/11 Whitewash: Blaming No
One
Mickey
Z
Get On the Bus: 150 Years After Elizabeth
Jennings
Gary
Leupp
The 9/11 Commission and the Looming
War on Iran
July
22, 2004
M.
Junaid Alam
Ten Ways to Build a Better Democrat
Brian
McKinlay
Rusted On Down Under: Howard, Bush and Sharon
Jason
Leopold
Cheney Lobbied for Easing of Sanctions on Terrorist Regimes While
CEO of Halliburton
Chris
Floyd
Mob Rule: Ripping the Lid Off of America's Pious Myths
Uri
Avnery
Chirac v. Sharon
July
21, 2004
Paula
J. Caplan
The Emotional Casualities of War:
Psychologists Can't Heal All the Damage
Joshua
Frank
Nader Sleeping with the Enemy? Let's
be Fair
Ron
Jacobs
American Exceptionalism
Reza
Ghorashi
The Elections, Iran and al-Qaeda
Amy
Martin
Will Congress Rearm the Guatemalan Generals?
John
Ross
Bush May Lose, But His Wars Will Go
On and On
July
20, 2004
Stan
Cox
The Bush / Kerry War Ticket
Chris
Randolph
An Open Letter to Dr. Ehrenreich: It's Over, Barb!
Forrest
Hylton
The Ghosts of Gonismo: "Popular
Patricipation" and Bolivia's Gas Referendum
Mark
Scaramella
It's Official! Mendocino County is Crazier and Fatter Than the
Rest of California
Sam
Bahour
The World is Knocking on Israel's Door
George
Reiter
A Defense of David Cobb
John
Ross
Burying Iraq, Burying Bush
John
L. Hess
Girlie Stuff: Media Tolerance of Arnold & Co.
Website
of the Day
This Land is Your Land
July
19, 2004
Uri
Avnery
Marie and the Ghosts: the Hoax of
Paris
Col.
Dan Smith
What Has Been Accomplished?
Mike
Whitney
Allawi: Our Puppet with a Pistol
Karyn
Strickler
Just Marriage, Not Gay Marriage
Robert
Fisk
The Crisis of Information in Baghdad
David
Swanson
Media Blackout of US Labor Opposition
to Iraq War
Jennifer
van Bergen
The Death of the Great Writ of Liberty
July
17 / 18, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Apocalypse Now: Why the Book of Revelations
is Must Reading
Ghada
Karmi
Vanishing the Palestinians
Lenni
Brenner
When Cattle Unite, Lions Go Hungry: Notes for Ralph Nader
Ben
Tripp
Man on a Bridge: a Ghost Story
Brandy
Baker
What Would Elizabeth Cady Stanton Make of John Kerry?
M.
Shahid Alam
Israel Builds Another Wall
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
Nuclear Hypocrisy: Israel, Iran and the IAEA
Patrick
Bond
The George Bush of Africa
Fred
Gardner
Politics of Marijuana: Cannabiniod Therapuetics
William
Blum
Bush and Thucydides
Ben
Terrall
Carter and the Indonesia Elections: "I Don't See Anything
Wrong with a General Running the Country"
Tom
Barry
John Lehman on the War Path
David
Vest
Dylan Without the Music
Phyllis
Pollack
Return to Sin City: Keith Richards Does Gram Parsons
Ron
Jacobs
Smearing Muhammad Ali: Bob Feller Strikes Out
Joshua
Frank
Kerry to Edwards: "Let's Lose!"
David
Nally
A Call for Sudan: Our Georgraphical Blindspot
Toni
Solo
Bolivia's Gas Referendum
Landau,
Hassan, Prashad & Lindorff
Three Reviews of Moore's F911
Poets's
Basement
Ford, Smith and Albert
July
16, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Adonal Foyle: Master of the Lefty Lay-Up
Shervan
Sardar
Dershowitz, the ICJ and Jim Crow Laws
Ron
Jacobs
The Lil' Engine That Couldn't: Kucinich Surrenders on Anti-War
Plank
Robert
Fisk
Iraq, According to Edgar Allen Poe:
Coffin Bombs in Baghdad
Greg
Moses
The Forts of Iraq
Mickey
Z.
Ad Infinitum?: Presidential Campaigns in the Age of TV
Dan
Bacher
A Landmark Win for Salmon and the Tribes
Dave
Lindorff
The Mumia Case: Support from NAACP,
But a Movement in Shambles
Paul
McGeough
Did Allawi Shoot Inmates in Cold Blood?
Website
of the Day
10 Reasons to Fire Bush (and 9 Reasons Kerry Won't Be Any Better)
July
15, 2004
Heather
Williams
McMissing
the Point: Supersize Me Crashes on Its Message
Werther
Iraq: Follow the Money
Tom
Crumpacker
The Birds of Guantanamo
Brian
Cloughley
What Does the Bush Regime Object To?
Bill
Christison
Reorganize the CIA? Of Course,
But...
July
14, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Chronicle of a Nomination Foretold:
the Green Deceivers
Neve
Gordon
Of Socrates and the Apartheid Wall
Diane
Christian
The Priesthood of Death
Stefan
Wray
Who Benefits from Missing Data at Los Alamos Nuclear Lab?
Josh
Frank
The Nader / Dean Debate
Conn
Hallinan
Divide and Conquer as Imperial Rules
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Bring My Brother Home!: Class, War
and Education
Website
of the Day
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of US Empire
July
13, 2004
Ray
McGovern
The CIA and Iraq: an Intelligence
Debacle...and Worse
Mark
Donham
The Sierra Club's Inexplicable Treatment of Cynthia McKinney
Ben
Tripp
Politus Interruptis: With Friends Like
These, Who Needs Electorates?
Mark
Gaffney
Slipping Towards Armageddon: Israel
in Iraq
Dave
Lindorff
Osama Wins! Election Postponed!
Chris
White
Double Think: the Bedrock of Marine
Indoctrination
July
10 / 12, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
The Problem with Neutrality Between
Palestinians and Israel
Janine
Pommy Vega
Trail of the Comet: a Gathering of the World's Poets Against
War
Sherry
Wolf
From Maverick to Party Attack Dog: Howard Dean Gay-Bashes Nader
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassen
A Transfer of Power, Sort Of
Michael
Donnelly
How to Steal an Election: the Green Version, 2004
Stanton
/ Madsen
Iraq Survey Group: Rumsfeld's al-Qaeda?
Richard
Lichtman
The End of Innocence: Reflections on American Pathology
Gila
Svirsky
Thank You, Your Honors: a Legal Blow to the Wall
Kurt
Nimmo
Clinton's Life
Toni
Solo
Empire-Speak: What Roger Noriega Really Means
Ron
Jacobs
The Black Panthers and the Rest
Camelo
Ruiz Marrero
Gene Warfare in Oaxaca: Genetic Mutation of Mexican Maize
Omar
Barghouti
Wither the Empire: Rise of a Global Resistance
Poets'
Basement
Curtis and Albert
July
9, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Carlos Delgado on Deck: Blue Jays Slugger
Stands Up Against War
Justin
Delacour
Wishing Kerry Would Shut Up About
Latin America
Robert
Fisk
Iraq in Reverse: Martial Laws Fuel Insurgency
Boris
Kagarlitsky
Two Congresses and a Funeral
William
S. Lind
The October Surprises
Sibel
Edmonds
Our Broken System: John Ashcroft's War on Truth
Ron
Jacobs
Reading Tea Leaves: What Vietnam Tells Us About Iraq's Future
Gary
Leupp
The Lie That Will Not Die: Cheney and
the Iraq/al-Qaeda Link
July
8, 2004
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Inexplicable John McCain
Toufic
Haddad
Protesting Israel's Apartheid Wall:
a Letter from the Hunger Strikers' Tent
Dave
Lindorff
Liberation as Martial Law
Joshua
Frank
The Fall: How Beltway Dems Sank Howard
Dean
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush & Cheney Play the Hitler Card
James
Petras
The Truth About Jimmy Carter
July
7, 2004
John
Chuckman
Kerry's BBQ: a Deafening Silence
of Meaning
Virginia
Tilley
A Line in the Sand: Azmi Bishara's
Hunger Strike
Susan
Martinez
A Letter to Bill Cosby
Mickey
Z
Elie Wiesel's Strange Parade
Michael
Donnelly
Our Own Private Wilderness: Trusting the Land in the Inland Empire
Sean
Donahue
Boston Social Forum: the Dems aren't the Only Show in Beantown
Diane
Christian
Sovereignty and Freedom in Iraq
July
6, 2004
Lisa
Viscidi
Fleeing Guatemala: Central Americans
Risk Lives to Reach El Norte
Marc
Norton
The Felonious Five Ride Again: the
Supreme Court and Enemy Combatants
James
Brooks
Chemical Warfare on the West Bank?
Ray
McGovern
Porter Goss as CIA Director?
William
Cook
Legacy of Deceit: If Dante Knew of Bush and the Neo-Cons...
July
5, 2004
Forrest
Hylton
US Imperialism in Latin America: Sept.
11, July 4 and Systematic Torture
Chris
White
A Former Marine Sgt. on the Meaning
of Independence Day
Joe
Bageant
Cranky Reflections on the 4th of July
Robert
Jensen
Stupid White Movie: What Michael Moore
Misses About the Empire
Kathy
Kelly
"Two Days an' a Wake-Up"
July
3 / 4, 2004
Elaine
Cassel
Bush's Police State and Independence
Day
Stan
Goff
ABC of Opportunism: "Progressive"
Latin American Leaders Support the Coup in Haiti
Snehal
Shingavi
"We Want Real Justice for Bhopal": Two Survivors Speak
Out
Bruce
Anderson
The Cheney-Leahy Metaphor and the Greens
Sharon
Smith
Twilight of the Greens: the Chokehold of "Anybody But Bush"
Josh
Frank
Ralph Nader's Revolt: an Interview with Greg Bates
Robert
Fisk
Pentagon Tried to Censor Saddam's Hearing
Joe
Bageant
Sons of a Laboring God: Leftnecks Unite!
Brian
Cloughley
Fortress Bush and the One Law Doctrine
Justin
Delacour
The Anti-Chavez Echo Chamber: Venezuela's Media Tycoons
William
S. Lind
Saudi Spillover
Linda
S. Heard
A Joke Called "Justice"
Greg
Moses
"It's Illegal, But It's Our Right": Korean Labor Won't
Back Down
Ron
Jacobs
"Ain't You Proud to be White on Independence Day?"
Toni
Solo
Weary of Indigenous Resistances? Just Pretend They're Not There
Dan
Nagengast
Chicken Manure as Cattle Food: Safe, But Do We Want to Eat It?
Stew
Albert
Brando, a Personal Recollection
Dave
Zirin
From the Black Panthers to Sacheen Littlefeather: a Eulogy for
Our Brando
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Progressive Case for Dodgeball
Steven
Rosenthal / Junaid Ahmad
The Problem is Bigger Than the Bushes: a Review of F911
Poets'
Basement
Kearney, Ford and Davies
Website
of the Day
Global Peace Solution
July
2, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Suicide Right on the Stage: the Demise
of the Green Party
Douglas
Valentine
Fahrenheit 911: Mocking the Moral Crisis of Capitalism
Gary
Leupp
"Just Because I Could": On Obscenities and Opportunities
Lee
Ballinger
Illegal People: Kerry Opposes Immigrant Rights
Robert
Fisk
Saddam in the Dock: Confused? Hardly
CounterPunch
Wire
"What Law Formed This Court?": a Transcript of Saddam's
Arraignment
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush's Drug Card Lottery: the Price Ain't Right
Saul
Landau
Buzz Words and Venezuela
July 1, 2004
Katherine
van Wormer
Bush's Damaged Mind: the Madness in
His Method
Joe
Bageant
Is Our President a Whackjob? Does It Matter?
William
James Martin
The Dogma of Richard Perle
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Evacuation Moment
Robert
Fisk
Bread and Circus Trials in Iraq
Alan
Maass
Green Party in Reverse
Website
of the Day
Michael Moore and Israel: Blind or a Coward?
June
30, 2004
Kurt Nimmo
Nicholson
Baker's Checkpoint: a New Kind of Anger About Bush
Tariq
Ali
Getting Away with Murder in Iraq
Jennifer
Van Bergen
Bush and the Detainees
Douglas
Valentine
Apotheosis of the Psychopaths: Instead of Fahrenheit 9/11, Rescreen
The Quiet American
David
Price
Fahrenheit 9/11 Through the McCain-Feingold Looking Glass
Roger
Normand
America's Criminal Occupation of Iraq
Stan
Cox
Sanitized for Your Protection: Ashcroft's
War on Art
Henry
David Thoreau
On the Futility of Bush v. Kerry: All Voting is a Kind of Gaming
Ben
Tripp
Who Dast Call Him Liar: a Rebuttal to Nicholas Kristof
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
Weekend
Edition
August 14 / 15, 2004
"A
Social Risk No Sane Person Would Take"
The
War on the Poor
By
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Today John Kerry grovels to
Wall Street and gives working people the back of his hand. Meet
his teachers, the men who invented "triangulation",
the art of doing all the things Republicans would be scared to
take on. Like ending welfare or privatizing social security.
Think John Kerry wouldn't do things like that? Here's a reality
check, excerpted from our new book, Dime's
Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils, hot
off the presses.
In November of 1994 two years of ramshackle
government, breached pledges and the Clinton administration's
frequently manifested contempt for its traditional base, exacted
their price. In the midterm elections Republicans seized control
of both the House and the Senate for the first time since the
Eisenhower era. The rout extended to governors' mansions across
the country, where the Republicans captured the majority of governorships
for the first time in a quarter-century. Newt Gingrich, the new
Speaker of the House, became the nation's political wunderkind.
Yet for Bill Clinton the Democratic
defeat held its paradoxical allure. The old-line Democratic Congressional
leadership no longer held sway on the Hill. Tom Foley and Dan
Rostenkowski were gone altogether--one back to the Inland Empire
of the Pacific Northwest and the other to a federal penitentiary.
The White House no longer had to dicker with hostility to its
agenda from New Deal-oriented Democrats. Without the threat of
a presidential veto to lend clout to their resistance, the liberal
Democrats on the Hill were impotent against the Republicans flourishing
their Contract with America. Thus unencumbered, the Clinton administration
could cut deals with the Republican leadership.
All this strategy needed was
a name, and soon after the election Bill Clinton summoned in
the man who would introduce "triangulation" into the
lexicon of the late 1990s.
Dick Morris, a man of elastic
political scruple, had enjoyed a fluctuating relationship with
Clinton. He'd bailed out the young governor of Arkansas after
the latter's first comeuppance at the hands of the voters in
1980. Since then Morris had served many masters, ranging from
the millionaire socialist from Ohio, Howard Metzenbaum, to Bella
Abzug of New York, to Trent Lott of Mississippi ("I love
his feisty, shit-on-the-shoes style") and Jesse Helms of
North Carolina. Morris worked as a consultant for Helms in 1990,
in a particularly foul campaign against the black Democratic
challenger, Harvey Gantt.
Morris came to the White House
with the purpose of providing new ideas and a new strategy. He
says Clinton told him, "I've lost confidence in my current
team." Morris commenced his mission of refreshment under
conditions of secrecy, code-named Charlie, his function at first
known only to the Clintons. His advice: steal the Republicans'
thunder, draw down the deficit, reform welfare, cut back government
regulation and "use Gore's reinventing government program
to cut the public sector's size." The president should demonstrate
toughness, Morris counseled, with decisive action overseas.
As the new Republican leadership
took over in January of 1995, Clinton summoned Gore to the Oval
Office, disclosed the hiring of Morris and instructed the vice
president to work with him. "Charlie" then laid out
the new agenda for Gore. Morris later wrote, "He grasped
what I was saying at once and offered his full supportGore told
me that he had been increasingly troubled by the drift of the
White HouseHe said he had tried, in vain, to move the administration
toward the center, but the White House staff had shut him outGore
said, 'We need a change here, a big change, and I'm hoping and
praying that you're the man to bring it.' We shook hands on our
alliance."
Soon Morris, Gore and Clinton
came to two fateful decisions. As part of the strategy of stealing
the Republicans' thunder, Morris urged an intensive fundraising
drive, aimed at amassing "soft money" for TV spots
designed to boost the new Clinton agenda, trump the Republicans
and detour the old-line concerns of the Democrats at the other
end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Soft money earns that much-abused
name because it can be raised in amounts not limited by campaign
spending laws; it can be procured directly from corporations,
labor unions or other institutions so long as the money is used
to promote "issues" rather than specific candidates.
That at least is how the law supposed soft money would work.
Morris knew very well that the issue ads would be identified
directly with Clinton, because they would sound themes Morris
himself had prescribed. To execute these ads Morris and Gore
turned to the latter's longtime media consultant, Bob Squier.
Down the road lay many
a funding scandal, not least the Buddhist temple imbroglio that
found Al Gore on the receiving end of thousands of dollars in
contributions from monks and nuns supposedly ennobled by the
spiritual distinction of poverty. But such things were still
a year away.
The time had come to go public
with the new line. Morris drafted a speech for Clinton in which
the president would announce that he was ready to work with the
Republicans. It laid out the grounds on which the President was
prepared to meet Newt Gingrich. Within the White House there
was a storm of protest, led by Leon Panetta, Clinton's chief
of staff and onetime California congressman, who was aghast at
what he correctly perceived to be the betrayal of his former
colleagues on the Hill.
As Panetta presented his case,
Clinton began to tilt toward his position. Morris sensed crisis
at hand. At the crucial moment, so he relates, Gore, who had
been silently following the debate, made a decisive intervention.
"I agree with Dick's point, that we need to emerge from
the shadows and place ourselves at the center of the debate with
the Republicans by articulating what we will accept and what
we will not in a clear and independent way." It was music
to Morris's ears, and he cried, "Bravo!"
For Morris, as for his employer,
polls were everything. He developed what he called a "neuro-psychological
profile" of the American voter, and established an iron
rule that no initiative could be undertaken by the White House
unless polling showed an approval rating of 60 percent. By constant
polling he concocted what he called a "values agenda".
At the top of the list was affirmative action. "Mend it,
don't end it" was the mantra, which meant, in practice,
destroy affirmative action from the inside while professing support
for the general principle.
Next came TV violence. Intimidate
the networks, Morris advised, into adopting a "voluntary"
system of ratings for TV shows and movies. Soon media executives
were summoned to the White House for a session with Clinton and
Gore. Simultaneously Clinton pushed for installation of the so-called
V-chip in all new TV sets, which would allow parents to block
all offensive material. Next came teen pregnancy, an issue pounded
on by the Clinton White House, even though the rate had been
falling. Education: go after tenured teachers, an attack increasingly
popular in Morris's focus groups, and demand that at least they
be tested. Youth: advocate school uniforms and curfews for teens.
Gay marriage: on Morris's advice Clinton and Gore embraced the
Defense of Marriage Act, a purely grandstanding piece of legislation
which preemptively bars gay marriages from recognition under
federal law for any purpose. Immigration: the poll numbers were
off the chart, and the Clinton White House duly set a goal to
double the number of turn-backs by the Immigration and Naturalization
Service--among other things, enlisting the Labor Department to
help speed the pace and breadth of workplace raids. Taxes: Morris
believed that Main Street America was now playing the market,
so that a 20 percent reduction in the capital gains tax rate
would be hugely popular.
But there were two issues that
towered above the rest in Morris's assaying of public opinion:
welfare and crime. In the 1992 campaign, Clinton had pledged
to "end welfare as we know it." In 1993, Gore had urged
Clinton to declare war on welfare as part of the first 100 days
and had implored the president to let him lead the charge. After
all, Gore argued, he was one of the few Democratic senators to
have supported a welfare-to-work law narrowly approved in 1988,
forcing states to require parents getting welfare checks to work
at least 16 hours per week in unpaid jobs. But Hillary thought
an attack on welfare would divert energy from her health care
package, and Gore lost the battle.
By 1995 the welfare rolls were
shrinking, from a peak of 18 million in the recession of 1991
to about 12.8 million. Defenders of the system in Clinton's cabinet,
Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Donna Shalala of Heath and Human
Services, argued that the total budget for Aid to Families with
Dependent Children was a tiny fraction of the federal budget;
indeed, it was only 14 percent of the amount devoted to Medicare,
a middle-class entitlement. The real problem, they argued, was
lack of training for the chronically underemployed and unemployed.
Reflexively hostile to welfare
and fortified by Morris's polls, Clinton pressed ahead. The administration
began granting waivers to states to implement their own onslaughts
on welfare, feature "workfare" requirements, time limits
and "family caps", a punishment for women who dared
to have more than the approved number of children the government
would help support. Through 1995 and early in 1996 the Republicans
had passed and sent to Clinton two bills to dismantle the federal
welfare system. He vetoed both, but in his veto messages he stressed
that he agreed with much of their content in principle. Peter
Edelman, a high level official at HHS, described this as "the
squeeze play", whereby Clinton would reap approval from
Democratic New Dealers for standing up for poor kids while at
the same time signaling that in the long run he'd throw the mothers
of those kids off the rolls altogether.
As they approached the Democratic
convention in the summer of 1996, Clinton was floating on Morris's
magic carpet. Assisted by staggering blunders by Gingrich and
a lackluster opponent in Bob Dole, Clinton was ahead by no less
than 27 percent in the polls. The Republicans were eager to wrap
up their legislative work before the conventions in July and
August. They pushed through a welfare bill arguably worse than
the ones Clinton had vetoed previously. Many Democrats on the
Hill believed that Clinton would veto this bill too. But Senator
Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York had more sensitive political
antennae. He warned, "I've heard that the leaders of the
cabinet recommended a veto but that the president remains under
the sway of his pollsters."
On July 30, 1996, Clinton mustered
his cabinet to hear arguments on whether or not he should sign
the Republicans' bill. One by one his advisers said he should
not. No's from people like Shalala and Reich came as no surprise.
But similarly disapproving were not only Leon Panetta but Laura
Tyson, his chief economic adviser, Henry Cisneros of HUD and
even Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who said that too many
people would be harmed by the bill and that it show an act of
political courage to veto it.
Not trusting Shalala's department
to produce objective assessments of the consequences of the bill,
the White House staff had commissioned a survey from the Urban
Institute, a DC think tank. The numbers were dire. The bill would
push 2.6 million people further into poverty--1.1 million of
them children. In all, the Institute predicted that 11 million
families would lose income. That was the best-case scenario.
In the event of a recession (which would come in 2001), the numbers
would be far, far worse. In that fateful cabinet meeting Rubin
invoked this study, and the numbers seemed to find their mark
with Clinton, while Gore remained mute.
The meeting came to an end
and Clinton, Panetta and Gore headed for the Oval Office for
a private session. All accounts agree that, first, Panetta again
made the case for a veto, laying particular emphasis on an appalling
provision in the bill that would deny legal immigrants federal
assistance, such as food stamps. Finally Gore broke his silence
and urged Clinton to sign.
Clinton, Morris and Gore prepared
a press statement, delivered by the president later that same
day. Clinton admitted that the bill contained "serious flaws"
but went on to say, "This is the best chance we will have
in a long time to complete the work of ending welfare as we know
it." No one at the press conference quizzed Clinton on this
curious claim. After all, the election was only about three months
away. By early fall of 1996 it was clear The Democrats had a
chance of regaining the House. Would not that recapture afford
a better chance of crafting a welfare bill not compromised by
Gingrich and the others?
To this day many Democrats
in Congress become incensed on the topic of what Clinton and
Gore did. One the eve of a Democratic convention, with Gingrich
already ensconced in the national imagination as the Bad Guy,
Clinton had just made common cause with him, thus undercutting
all plans to campaign against the Gingrich Congress. As for Al
Gore the consensus was that he was looking ahead to a possible
challenge in 2000 from his old rival Dick Gephardt. With Morris's
polls showing that an attack on welfare scored well over the
60 percent bar, Gore would have the advantage over Gephardt or
any other liberal challenger.
Suspicions about Gore deepened
as the fall campaign proceeded. The president and vice president
argued that it was crucial that they be re-elected so that they
fix the problems with the welfare bill they had just signed.
The problems here concerned not the welfare bill itself but the
denial of federal services to legal immigrants and a slash in
the food stamp program. In October of 1996, with the presidential
election no longer in doubt, Democratic candidates came to the
Democratic National Committee urgently seeking infusions of cash
to help them in the crucial final weeks. Finally, Senator Christopher
Dodd of Connecticut, then the general chairman of the DNC, organized
a meeting with Clinton and Gore. Dodd explained that the two
were home safe and there was a chance to recapture the House.
Clinton seemed amenable to a release of funds. Gore adamantly
disagreed. On one account, Gore was the only person in the White
House to oppose this transfer of funds from the presidential
campaign to congressional races. It's a measure of how a number
of Democrats view Al Gore that some participants in that meeting
felt that the only explanation for his conduct was that he did
not want the Democrats to re-take control of the House because
victory would elevate Gephardt to Speaker of the House.
The cynicism may not have stopped
there. Why did Clinton and Gore decide to sign on to that third
Republican welfare bill? The only major difference from the previous
ones came in the form of the denial of federal services to legal
immigrants and a $2.5 billion cut in the food stamp program.
It's likely that these two Republican add-ons were what allured
the White House, because (as noted above) Clinton could then
turn to the liberals saying they needed him to be re-elected
so he could repair part of the damage wrought by the very bill
he had just signed. In fact the White House probably could have
insisted the riders be dropped, because Dole desperately wanted
a legislative victory under the Republicans' belt.
The welfare bill ended a federal
entitlement that had been a cornerstone of the New Deal. It caps
the federal contribution to welfare programs at $14.6 billion
a year and hands the money over in block grants to the states
to distribute as they see fit. The main requirement is that the
states agree that welfare recipients can spend no more than a
total of five years in their lifetime on welfare. It allows states
to adopt even harsher standards. Finally, under the old system,
welfare money came to the recipient as cash. Under the new system,
the money can be given to intermediaries, for possible conversion
to other services such as housing or food. Al Gore particularly
liked this provision. In Atlanta in May of 1999, he told an audience
why: "It allows faith-based organizations to provide basic
welfare services. They can do so with public funds--without having
to alter the religious character that is so often the key to
their effectiveness. We should extend this approach to drug treatment,
homelessness and youth violence prevention. People who work in
faith-and values-based organizations are driven by their spiritual
commitment. They have done what government can never do: provide
compassionate care. Their client is not a number but a child
of god." In other words, treat welfare payments like school
vouchers. Gore had just laid out the welcome mat for Bush's faith-based
initiatives.
Not long after Clinton signed
the welfare bill, judgment came from Senator Moynihan, who had
begun his service to the state back in the sixties with sermons
about the "pathology" of the black family and now,
bizarrely, was defending the system he'd denounced for years.
Even this man of all seasons and all masters was shocked: "It
is a social risk no sane person would take, and I mean that.
If you think things can't get worse, just wait until there are
a third of a million people on the streets It's not welfare reform;
it's welfare repeal."
Hugh Price, president of the
National Urban League, called the bill "an abomination for
America's most vulnerable mothers and children" and accused
Clinton, Gore and the Congress of defecting from a war on poverty
and "waging a war against poor people instead."
Within weeks three high-ranking
officials in the Department of Health and Human Services had
resigned: Mary Jo Bane, Walter Primus and Peter Edelman. That
was it. Across the length and breadth of the Clinton administration,
only these resignations were tendered in principle against this
abandonment of the New Deal and the shafting of America's poor.
Since that time Edelman has missed no opportunity to denounce
the bill as a punitive strike against defenseless people. "The
bill closes its eyes to all the facts and complexities of the
real world and essentially says to recipients: find a job."
The edict "find a job"
was central to the bill and to the mythology nourished by opponents
of welfare-that freeloaders with jobs available to them were
abusing the system. Of course, there is always some abuse, but
study after study had shown that most welfare recipients had
looked for jobs and couldn't find a suitable one or had been
on welfare for a limited period, then found a job and got off
the rolls. In 1999 a University of Michigan study making an assessment
three years after the welfare bill went into effect found that
the welfare population faces "unusually high barriers to
work: such as physical and mental health problems, domestic violence
and lack of transportation." More than 30 percent of the
families on welfare are constrained by disability, a sick child,
no child care or an infirm relative. Those that want to find
work are faced with narrow options even in an economy hyped as
in mid-boom. In 1996 the Congressional Budget Office offered
some bleak realities about the reserve army of the unemployed.
With an official unemployment rate of four percent (the unofficial
rate is roughly twice that, since government figures don't count
frustrated people who have given up looking for work), there
are still three to five people needing work for each available
job. In the Bush recession, this ratio rose to more than 10 to
one.
In urban areas the job market
is even more constricted. A 1998 study in Harlem showed just
how brutally competitive the low-wage job market is. Over a five-month
period, an average of fourteen people applied for each job opening
at a local McDonalds. A year later researchers from the University
of Chicago found that 73 percent of those same job searchers
still hadn't found even minimum wage level work.
In many states, there's the
last resort of workfare, which compels welfare recipients to
accept public jobs, such as highway clean-up or garbage picking
with the Parks Department, in return for benefits. Nationally
the average benefit for workfare jobs is $381 per month, which
works out to $4.40 an hour, or 80 percent of the minimum wage.
But in some places it's much worse. Mississippi, for example,
requires single mothers to work twenty hours a week at $1.38
an hour, and a two-parent household to work fifty-five hours
at 50 cents an hour.
On top of this the people in
the workfare labor force are denied such basic rights as collective
bargaining, unemployment insurance, the earned income tax credit
and Social Security credit. States are finding it to their budgetary
advantage to fill job vacancies with these "slavefare"
workers. A Senate study in 1996 estimated that the consequences
of welfare reform would depress the wages of the working poor
by 12 percent.
Allowing the states to freelance
their welfare programs has resulted in some particularly cruel
policies and inequities. Minnesota spends $50 million a year
on child care for single mothers receiving welfare benefits who
are working or looking for work. New York spends $54 million
to serve a population six times as large. Clinton and Gore repeatedly
touted the approach taken by Indiana, where welfare reform was
instituted by a Democratic governor, Evan Bayh, and his successor
in the governor's mansion, Frank O'Bannon. The pair presided
over the shrinking of the welfare rolls in the Hoosier state
by 30 percent. There's no way to know if those people actually
found work. It's possible that the conditions of supervision
of welfare recipients simply became unbearable and they left
the program and perhaps the state. Under Indiana's scheme, one
missed job-training course means the loss of a welfare check
for two months. A second infraction means loss of benefits for
a year. A third strike and you're out for good.
The Clinton welfare bill also
includes a provision that allows states to begin drug testing
welfare recipients. In theory the provision was aimed at people
suspected of having drug problems. Oregon, for example, initiated
a testing policy but soon reversed course when recipients began
dropping out of the welfare program to avoid testing. The state
found that it was better to stop drug testing, keep people in
the program and steer addicts into treatment. Michigan took a
different approach. In 1999 the state adopted a mandatory drug-testing
policy for all welfare recipients, which prompted a lawsuit by
the ACLU. A federal judge ruled in 1999 that the policy was unconstitutional.
He noted that in the five weeks of the program's operation there
were positive drug tests in only eight percent of the cases,
and all but three of those were for marijuana.
In his 2000 campaign, Al Gore
pushed for what he called "Welfare Reform 2", saying
that more remained to be done to weed out cheats and freeloaders.
He was particularly vehement in attacking dads behind on child
support, vowing that he would make it easier for credit care
companies to deny credit to such fathers. This would have come
on top of a program, initiated by Janet Reno in her Florida years,
whereby fathers behind on their payments get their driver's license
lifted, meaning that they can't drive to work. In 1995, Clinton,
Gore and Morris put into operation a program that saw these father's
mug shots put up in Post Offices, their federal benefits garnished
and the IRS sent on their trail. This pattern of inflicting administrative
conviction outside the court system and due process is integral
to the Clinton/Gore philosophy on crime.
The Clinton crime bill of 1994
introduced mandatory life imprisonment for persons convicted
of a third felony in certain categories. It maintained the 100-to-1
disproportion in sentencing for crimes involving powder and crack
cocaine, even though the US Sentencing Commission had concluded
that the disparity was racist. It expanded to fifty the number
of crimes that could draw the death penalty in a federal court,
reaching even to crimes that did not include murders--the largest
expansion of the death penalty in history. Pell grants giving
prisoners an avenue to higher education were cut off. Federal
judges were stripped of their powers to enforce the constitutional
rights of prisoners and the power of states to set sentencing
standards for drug crimes was greatly diminished.
The curtailment of states'
rights went further. Grants for new prisons contained the provision
that receipt of the money was dependent on the states ensuring
that prisoners served at least 85 percent of their sentences.
These inmates, remember, had been convicted in state, not federal,
courts so this was simply federal blackmail to curtail parole
at the state level. The Clinton administration also pressed the
states to try juvenile offenders as adults. Gore articulated
the administration's position: "When young people cross
the line, they must be punished. When young people commit serious,
violent crimes, they should be prosecuted like adults."
Nonviolent offenders were to be sent to boot camps. Not, it should
be noted, his own kids, who evaded punishment for nonviolent
infractions such as smoking pot and having an open alcohol container
in the car.
The Clinton/Gore administration
was particularly assiduous in its assaults on the Fourth Amendment,
protecting citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures.
In 1994, they successfully pressed for a bill providing all communications
providers to make existing and future communication systems wiretap
ready. They also pushed hard for the so-called Clipper Chip,
an encryption device that makes it easy for law enforcement and
intelligence agencies to snoop on private messages.
The high-water mark in the
Clinton administration's attack on the Bill of Rights came in
1996 with the Counter-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act,
which among other horrors allowed the INS to deport immigrants
without due process, and denied prisoners the right to appeal
to the federal bench based on habeas corpus petitions. "When
historians write the story of civil liberties in the twentieth
century," said Ira Glasser, head of the ACLU, "they
will say that the Clinton administration adopted an agenda that
has everything to do with weakening civil rights and nothing
to do with combating terrorism."
In May of 2000, Gore outlined
his campaign posture on crime and drugs in another speech in
Atlanta. The erstwhile dope-smoker from Tennessee evidently feared
that the man who refused to discuss cocaine use in his early
years, George W. Bush, had the edge on the crime issue. Gore
proclaimed he wanted to swaddle communities in "a blanket
of blue". He swore that the minute he settled in the Oval
Office, President Gore would call for 50,000 more cops (i.e.,
more half-trained recruits like the ones who shot Amadou Diallo
forty-one times in the Bronx) and would allow off-duty cops to
carry concealed weapons (which they almost all do anyway).
Gore promised prisoners what
he called a simple deal: "Before you get out of jail you
have to get clean. If you want to stay out, then you better stay
clean. We have to stop that revolving door once and for all.
First we have to test prisoners for drugs while they're in jail".
Gore was so blithe in his disregard for elementary rights that
he was unable to see a distinction between a prison sentence
fully served and a further punitive add-on: "We have to
insist on more prison time for those who don't break the habit".
Even after prisoners are released the eye of the state would
still follow them: "We should impose strict supervision
on those who have just been released--and insist they obey the
law and stay off drugs".
Another feature of Al Gore's
prospective war on crime was the especially vigorous targeting
of minority youth. "I will fight for a federal law that
helps communities establish gang-free zones with curfews on specific
gang members, a ban on gang-related clothing and the specific
legal authority to break violent teen gangs once and for all".
Both parties have eagerly conjoined
in militarizing the police, extending police powers and carving
away basic rights. Often the Democrats have been worse. It was
Republican Representative Henry Hyde of Illinois who led the
partially successful charge in 1999 against the seizure of assets
in drug cases. It was Democrat Senator Charles Schumer of New
York who played the role of factotum for the Justice Department
in trying to head off Hyde and his coalition.
The rise of the Jackboot State
has marched in lockstep with the insane and ineffective War on
Drugs. This has been an entirely bi-partisan affair. Its consequences
are etched into the fabric of our lives. Just think of drug testing,
now a virtually mandatory condition of employment, even though
it's an outrageous violation of personal sovereignty, as well
as being thoroughly unreliable. In an era in which America has
been led by three self-confessed pot smokers--Clinton, Gore and
Bush--the number of people held for drug crimes in federal prisons
has increased by 64 percent.
No-knock raids are becoming
more common as federal, state and local politicians and law enforcement
agencies decide that the war on drugs justify dumping the Fourth
Amendment. Even in states where search warrants require a knock
on the door before entry, police routinely flout the requirement.
The Posse Comitatus Act forbidding
military involvement in domestic law enforcement is rapidly becoming
as dead as the Fourth Amendment. Because of drug war exceptions
created in that act, every region of the United States now has
a Joint Task Force staff in charge of coordinating military involvement
in domestic law enforcement. The involvement has now expanded
to include anti-terrorism investigations.
In many cases, street deployment
of paramilitary units is funded by "community policing"
grants from the federal government. The majority of police departments
use their paramilitary units to serve "dynamic entry"
search warrants. The SWAT Team in Chapel Hill, North Carolina,
conducted a large-scale crack raid of an entire block in a predominantly
black neighborhood. The raid, termed Operation Redi-Rock, resulted
in the detention and search of up to 100 people, all of whom
were black. (Whites were allowed to leave the area.) No one was
ever prosecuted for a crime. In Albany, New York, not long before
the change-of-venue trial there of the four white cops who had
killed Amadou Diallo in the Bronx, police in camouflage uniforms
went on a ransacking spree in the black neighborhood of Arbor
Hill, beating down doors house-to-house in search of a black
suspect.
Where there is no social program,
there's always a violence program. For the Clinton/Gore administration
welfare reform and expansion of the police state were not only
means to trump the Republicans; they were also essential to economic
policy. Intense competition for jobs at the lowest rungs would
depress wages, pit poor and working-class people against each
other and, where workfare recipients displace municipal workers,
weaken labor unions. The spectre and reality of incarceration
would have the traditional effect of suppressing the dangerous
classes, at a time when the wage gap between the rich and the
poor grew w |