Web Letters: All of Them Must Go

I would dearly love to see all elected officials kicked out on their ample keisters after one term. Perhaps if they were not campaigning 24/7 they would do the job they were sent to Washington to do.

People need to get over the idea that government can provide them anything. All government can do is take from those who are earning their own way, take their (generous) cut, then give what is left over to those with their hands out. Redistributionism is good if you want others to pay your way, not so good if you are the one doing the paying. Hark, work is still the best way to get ahead. Try it, you might even like it.

Find a business that operates the way government does and I will show you a business that will soon be bankrupt.

Mark Sear

Lakewood, CO

From my viewpoint as an American, I wonder if the world's financial elites (a k a, the "capitalist Internationale") had enough of us long before we had enough of them. Did the USA exist, in their eyes, just to defeat a nation (the Soviet Union) and an ideology (Communism)? Once the "market" triumphed in the late '80s, were they ready to lower the Stars and Stripes, if for no other reason than to take that distasteful democracy thing down a peg or two? As long as the USA remained economically powerful, there was always the chance that Americans might feel cocky enough to live up to their ideals, Affluence plus peace is liberating and therefore a threat to elite control. Having dealt quickly with the threat of peace after the collapse of the Soviet system, the elites are now in the process of banishing the spectre of affluence. And the American people, who fought the wars and paid the taxes for the military-industrial complex, and who were rewarded with crummy schools and the worst conceivable medical and transportation systems in return,... what about us? Since the days of Reagan, we've been "rode hard and put away wet." If we were horses, we'd be dogfood by now.

Mark Didrickson

Vancouver, WA

I really wish I could believe the sentiment Klein has expressed. If it truly existed, our politicians wouldn't dare continue the financial bailout. But after thirty years of framing economic and political discourse the American people have no idea what to protest or what to put forth in response. Yes, they'll be upset, but we simply don't have a political tradition of affirmative political action. The sixties are ancient history. A comparison to Argentina or Latin America or France is inapplicable. These comparisons fail to acknowledge our passive political culture, the sophisication of the media supporting the power structure and, frankly, the ignorance of our population.

Paul Spanos

Chicago, IL

It would be nice if some of the terms used in this article were clarified. First off, "free trade" was a tenet advanced by the first Communist International; it is hardly capitalist in origin. Furthermore, when countries sign bilateral (free) trade agreements, what they invariably do is structure them in a way so that the existing monopolies in both countries benefit to the detriment of their actual domestic competition. This is not "free market" economics in any sense of the word; "old boy" or "gangster capitalism" would be a better name for these practices.

If members of the media would deign to open up a dictionary or a history book from time to time they could put these terms in a more honest context for their readers. Instead, mucking up the language as is seen here tends to reinforce the overall plans of the ruling establishment: to create an artificial crisis, exacerbate it, then ramrod a pre-planned solution requiring greater state control of private property and individual rights in order to "save" the public from the "menace."

That is exactly what is happening today, just as Thomas Jefferson foresaw it: "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."

Ali Sugerman

St. Petersburg, FL

We have already entered the Great Republican Depression 2. We only need to wait for the government to confirm in August 2009 that it indeed started in September 2007, after which Bush allowed it to tank the following summer.

I think US meddling in the economic affairs of other countries will come back to haunt us. The US will be widely resented by many people in the countries (Poland, Argentina, Chile, Latvia, Iceland, etc) that got screwed by the University of Chicago/Friedman laissez-faire regimentation and IMF policies: destroying the unions, cutting back the social safety net of pensions and unemployment insurance, privatizing resources (oil companies) and utilities (phone companies), reducing government and infrastructure spending, etc.

That is, during the long recovery from the Great Republican Depression, American businesses are going to find few friends in these countries and will probably face nationalization of their assets. They will wish that they should have been good corporate citizens, not exploiters and greedy opportunists. There is already indignation by foreigners regarding our crappy investment assets that caused dramatic drops in their liquidity and credit.

Ron Bell

Stockton, CA

It's time for the good citizens of Iceland to send us their pots and pans. We need them!

From Reagan's presidency through that of Bush II, the GOP used government power to create the Second Gilded Age in America, at the expense of common men and women.

Give trillions of dollars to the super-rich and big business, with minimal stimulation and no accounting. Run up multiple enormous unsustainable deficits and debts.

Bankrupt America both morally and financially. Plant the seeds for the GOP Great Depression II.

Deregulate, deregulate, deregulate.

Screw generations of the unborn by making them pay for everything. Take the money and run.

And now--in this historic moment of hope--Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi seem most interested in appeasing the GOP and the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.

Are we nuts?

James A. Swanson

Los Altos, CA

I am a child of the '60s. I remember that then the popular chorus was also "All of them must go!" It seems that the wheel has turned, and here we are again. At long last, I might add!

I remember the pain and frustration we felt, when we attempted to express our dissatisfaction with the then-status-quo in regard to political empowerment, civil rights, the Vietnam war... and we were confronted with the dinosaur of Washington politics and the conservatism of Wall Street thinking.

Yes, for our efforts, we got the Peace Corps, the Voting Rights Act, food stamps and as much of the Great Society legislation as the national mind-set could tolerate. We even succeeded in removing a discredited president.

The point is, there was a revolution of sorts at that time, but it was only partially succesful. And here we are again: a national-global crisis of monumental proportions, with the prospect of a revolutionary solution.

The same sort of conditions prevail, now as then: a conflict between entrenched, discredited ideals and practices, versus the possibility of new, more relevent solutions. And the same sort of resistance prevails, now as then.

To my mind, I don't see much credibility in the solutions being offered by the establishment--another '60s sentiment.

"Bailouts" of failed financial institutions, "restructuring" of failed corporations, even the noble gesture of "bipartisanship" seem doomed to failure in the face of petty partisan bickering in DC and a fundamental misunderstanding of the true nature of the problem.

Our current difficulties are obviously not "business as usual," and the solutions are not, just as obviously, going to come from entrenched and failed ideology and policy.

There's no need to overthrow the government, as long as the government acts in the best interests of the people--the "little people," the ones who sooner or later will have to pay for the current mess, with their taxes. However....

All the while, the wealth generated by all that nonsense has been unequally distributed: what is it? 1 percent of the people got 90 percent of the benefit? Something like that, whatever. That's not right, and that's not sustainable.

It is, in my opinion, high time to consider more "radical" solutions, some of which our newly-elected president has proposed--and some that he hasn't.

It doesn't make any sense to me that we should attempt to subsidize and/or revitalize financial institutions that are failing because they got it wrong. They dreamed up some crazy schemes, sold them to a gullible public, made a fortune in the short term, and then the house of cards all fell to pieces. The entire world economy is now hamstrung by these nearly worthless derivatives.

Let the "banks" fail. There is a mechanism already in place to deal with that: the FDIC. There's no need for further legislation.

(1) The banks must honestly value the "junk" on their balance sheets; (2) the banks must declare their true "worth." If they are insolvent, then the FDIC steps in; (3) the stockholders and bondholders take their losses; (4) the banks are "reorganized" and resold in a sustainable position.

What is needed is immediate relief for the victims of this debacle, in the form of mortgage relief, extended unemployment benefits, subsidized healthcare, food stamps, etc.

Then we can talk about a long-term "stimulus" plan. That plan should include all the things that President Obama initially proposed: infrastructure projests, healthcare reform, education funding, incentives for a "green" future, a reconsideration of our current tax structure, etc.

Please, before we have a contemporary reformation of the Weather Underground, let's all of us get with the program here, and do something right--something that will benefit us all, something that we can be proud of.

Paul Kidd

Rohnert Park, CA

Some of the politicians leading the governments might lose their jobs, but the forces behind neoliberal policies are not likely to disappear any time soon.

grant marlier

Boston, MA

People are not clamoring for economic stimulus (except for the special interest groups that it will subsidize). Klein should up on her language skills and rephrase her comments so they relay the following: people are clamoring for government programs to help them through the current economic crisis. These may be provided for in a stimulus bill (among other things), but the primary goal of a stimulus bill is to stimulate the economy and get the over-leveraged populace back on the hamster wheel.

Robert Karasek

Washington, DC

Sounds like disaster leftism to me.

David Rossie

HeroesofCapitalism.com
Chicago, IL

The BBC covers a lot of these reactions to "free trade," though they seem to accept it as the Holy Grail. Great Britain has massive unemployment, and the government gave a contract to a foreign company that employed foreign workers to do some construction work on power plants. There was a strike called by the unions, and Brown, a Labor prime minister, supported the foreign workers. It will be interesting to see how he does in the next election.

China has 20 million workers out of work because of the downturn in global trade. One relatively sane pundit remarked that China needs to take care of their internal market and have less exposure in foreign trade. This was good advice! If ordinary Chinese had higher wages and more disposable income, the profits from their internal market would dwarf the money they made in foreign trade. They are going to have serious social unrest unless they pay attention to internal development. Today the BBC reported, that there was a serious drought in the northwest of China that could seriously effect their food supply. There is no doubt in my mind that "free trade" will take the world deeper into a depression and chaos will result.

Pervis James Casey

Riverside, CA

Welcome back, Ms. Klein. Where ya been? How about a discussion panel on the economy via C-SPAN? Here are some names: Paul Krugman, Robert Reich, Naomi Klein, Sheila Baird, Jaimie Galbraith.

JAMES PINETTE

Caribou, ME