Nygaard Notes #386‏

Nygaard Notes Independent Periodic News and Analysis Number 386, September 30, 2007 On the Web at http://www.nygaardnotes.org/ ****** This Week: Social Security, Climate, Nukes, War 1. “Quote” of the Week 2. Social Security in Crisis! The (False) Story That Won’t Go Away 3. A Nation of Laws (But Only the Ones We Like) 4. “Mistake” in Minot... Or Was It? 5. Iran Is the Biggest Threat! Where Have We Heard This Before...? ****** Greetings, This week it’s a little o’ this and a little o’ that. Next week is WEEK ONE of the biannual Nygaard Notes Pledge Drive. Such drives—besides giving readers new and old a chance to show their support for the Notes—gives me a chance to back off of monitoring the daily news stream and reflect on some of the lessons learned and the goals of this independent media experiment. I have something exciting in mind for next week. Some of you have sent in your Pledge renewals without even needing to be reminded. Thank you so much! Not only does it save me a stamp or two, it shows me that you value this service and that you want it to continue. All of your comments and tips show me the same thing. Thanks a million! See you next week, Nygaard ****** 1. “Quote” of the Week >From the September 6th New York Times, in a piece headlined “Big Gifts, Tax Breaks and a Debate on Charity,” comes this week’s “Quote.” The main point of the article was that “For every three dollars [rich people] give away, the federal government typically gives up a dollar or more in tax revenue, because of the charitable tax deduction and by not collecting estate taxes.” And these tax breaks are one of the reasons rich people give away any money at all. Good for the Times for putting this on the front page. “Roughly three-quarters of charitable gifts of $50 million and more from 2002 through March 31 [2007] went to universities, private foundations, hospitals and art museums, according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. The article added that “few gifts of that size are made to organizations ... whose main goals are to help the poor in this country. Research shows that less than 10 percent of the money Americans give to charity addresses basic human needs, like sheltering the homeless, feeding the hungry and caring for the indigent sick, and that the wealthiest typically devote an even smaller portion of their giving to such causes than everyone else.” Then they quoted H. Art Taylor, president and chief executive of the BBB Wise Giving Alliance, who got to the anti-democratic heart of the matter: “Donors give to organizations they are close to. So they give to their college or university, or maybe someone close to them died of a particular disease so they make a big gift to medical research aimed at that disease. How many of the superrich have that kind of a relationship with a soup kitchen? Or a homeless shelter?” ****** 2. Social Security in Crisis! The (False) Story That Won’t Go Away There they go again. The “they” in this case is the Bush administration, and specifically the Bush Treasury Department. On September 24th that department released “the first in a series of issue briefs that the Treasury will release on Social Security reform topics.” The first one—“Social Security Reform: The Nature of the Problem”—is 12 pages of almost-pure propaganda, which appears to have been faithfully and irresponsibly reported by a large number of news services and newspapers. Coverage in the corporate media focused on four main points, which the Associated Press worded this way: 1. “Social Security, the U.S. public pension system, is facing a $13.6 trillion shortfall.” 2. “delaying needed reforms is not fair to younger workers;” 3. “some combination of benefit cuts and tax increases will need to be considered to permanently fix the funding shortfall;” and 4. “Bush remains opposed to raising taxes.” I won’t take the space here to tear to shreds this entire amalgam of nonsense, but I will comment on the one “fact” that appeared to get the most notice: The $13.6 trillion dollar “shortfall.” First of all, does anybody understand the meaning of a number like 13.6 trillion? That is, 13,600,000,000,000? Does the average reader know that the Gross Domestic Product of the United States is roughly that amount... every year? ($13.2 trillion in 2006) What this means is that the “shortfall” in Social Security comes to about 1 (one) percent of the nation’s economy over the period in question. OK, stop me now! I’ve written about this so extensively I can’t go on! The good news is that massive popular mobilization stopped in its tracks the plan to destroy the Social Security program, which was the top domestic priority of the Bush administration in his second term (they call it “reform,” of course). So, the Bush plan is not going to go anywhere in the last 1 year, 3 months, 26 days, 15 hours, 12 minutes, and 17 seconds (as I write these words) of the Bush administration. That’s the good news, but the bad news is that these people don’t give up easily. The AP reports that “Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Bush's point person on Social Security reform, said he has had a number of discussions with members of Congress from both parties over the issue of fixing the problems in Social Security...” The media hasn’t told us anything about these “discussions,” but it might be a good idea for Nygaard Notes readers to ask your elected representatives if they have been involved in any of them. Before you do so, you may wish to go back and re-read Nygaard Notes Number 15, “Economics of Social Security for Beginners,” or any number of other pieces I’ve written on Social Security. Nygaard Notes numbers 294, 295, and 296 are good ones. I hesitate to recommend that people read the actual Treasury Department report, because it is so filled with wrong ideas and ideologically-driven premises that it might screw up people’s thinking permanently. Still, if you want to see the full 12-page report, go here: http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/reports/post.pdf ****** 3. A Nation of Laws (But Only the Ones We Like) George W. Bush, on May 15, 2006, said of the United States, “We’re a nation of laws.” The headline in the New York Times of September 24, 2007, Page 11, said: “Bush to Skip U.N. Talks on Fighting Global Warming.” The article was about a UN meeting that was held that day to talk about how to deal with global warming. About 150 countries attended (there are about 190 countries in the world), with about 80 of them represented by their head of state. George Bush “skipped” it, although he did go to the dinner. As the Times put it, speaking of Bush, “His focus instead is on his own gathering of leaders in Washington later this week, a meeting with the same stated goal, a reduction in the emissions blamed for climate change, but a fundamentally different idea of how to achieve it.” “Mr. Bush’s aides... say that Mr. Bush hopes to persuade the nations that produce 90 percent of the world’s emissions to come to a consensus that would allow each, including the United States, to set its own policies rather than having limits imposed by binding international treaty.” “Binding international treaty” means “law.” The U.S. Constitution, in fact, says that “treaties... shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” The president's chief environmental adviser, James L. Connaughton, told the Times that “It’s our philosophy that each nation has the sovereign capacity to decide for itself what its own portfolio of policies should be.” This position is entirely predictable. As I pointed out in Nygaard Notes Number 373, “For poor people, their power is increased when they work with others. For wealthy and powerful individuals, working with others has the effect of decreasing their power, since they have to share it.” And so it is with nations. The U.S., as the most powerful nation in the world, sees multilateral, democratic processes as a threat to its power. After all, we wouldn’t want to be “bound” by the wishes of the rest of the world—that is, “laws”—would we? If the U.S. were in fact a “nation of laws” our leadership would support a law—that is, a “binding international treaty”—that is agreed to by the majority of the world’s people’s to deal with a crisis that threatens us all. Instead, as the Times reiterated that “senior [Bush administration] aides emphasized that each nation should decide for itself how to reduce emissions.” That is, that there should be no “law” in this area. In an example of one nation “deciding for itself” on policy in this area, the Associated Press reported on September 13th—11 days before Mr. Bush’s conference—that “The [U.S.] government's climate change research is threatened by spending cuts” imposed by the Bush administration. ****** 4. “Mistake” in Minot... Or Was It? On August 30th, six cruise missiles with nuclear warheads were carried on a B-52 bomber from North Dakota’s Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. “The Air Force has not permitted its bombers to overfly U.S. territory since the late 1960s when a series of nuclear weapons accidents involving the U.S. Air Force in this country and abroad created embarrassing scandals,” says the Center for Defense Information. Still, despite the fact that there have been literally hundreds of “nuclear weapon incidents” in the past 40 years, military folks are calling the Minot/Barksdale expedition “one of the biggest mistakes in US Air Force history,” according to The London Independent. But was it simply a “mistake?” Hard to say, but it’s unlikely we will learn much from the official investigation that was launched by the Air Force to look into the matter. For one thing, any organization’s investigation of itself should be suspect. For another thing, the Los Angeles Times reports this week that “the government's investigation is continuing and classified.” Perhaps in response to suspicions of this secret, in-house “investigation” by people more influential than Nygaard Notes, “Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked for an outside inquiry” of the “accident,” the Associated Press reported last week. The “outside” inquiry will be led by “a retired general who once commanded the strategic bomber fleet.” This is what the military calls an “outside” investigation, apparently, and this elicited no comment from the corporate media who reported this less-than-amusing charade. By the way, Barksdale Air Force Base is a primary staging point for Middle East operations. And nuclear weapons are going there? Hmmm.... Is there any media outlet in the country that will use its resources to try to unearth the facts about this incident? It could be serious, we just don’t know. That, theoretically, is why we have a news media. Isn’t it? It doesn’t look like it’s going to happen, so if any of you readers hear anything about this mysterious and troubling “accident,” please let me know. ****** 5. Iran Is the Biggest Threat! Where Have We Heard This Before...? “THE IRAQIS; U.S. SAYS HUSSEIN INTENSIFIES QUEST FOR A-BOMB PARTS.” That was the front-page headline in the New York Times five years ago, on September 8th 2002 (and, yes, it was a banner headline, with all capital letters). The claim was that “Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb.” That was according to “Bush administration officials.” Here is a list of the other sources cited in that incendiary article: “American officials” “officials” “An Iraqi defector” “a senior administration official” “an administration official” “Gary Samore, a staff member on President Clinton's National Security Council” “a senior administration official” “American officials” “A former UNSCOM inspector” ( UNSCOM was the UN weapons-inspection team) and “a senior government official” That’s a pretty limited list of sources, so it is not a huge surprise to see that all of the claims in the September 2002 article—which included claims about chemical and biological weapons as well as nuclear—turned out to be false, as the world now knows. That 2002 article was co-authored by the infamous propagandist Judith Miller and one Michael R. Gordon. Mr. Gordon, in fact, authored several front-page articles on this subject during the month of September 2002, a month that (history now shows) marked the start of the Bush administration’s propaganda blitz to build support for the planned invasion of Iraq. Seven months after the claims of Iraqi nuclear plans were published the U.S. used these claims, among others, as justification to launch an illegal and immoral attack on Iraq. In retrospect it is reasonable to say that Gordon was used—willingly or unwillingly—as a conduit for war propaganda. As In 2002, So In 2007? Now we skip ahead to last month, specifically to August 8th, 2007. Here is the front-page headline for that day in the New York Times: “U.S. Says Iran-Supplied Bomb Is Killing More Troops in Iraq.” The author is, once again, Michael Gordon, and here are the sources for this story: “the American military” “American military officials” “Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the No. 2 commander in Iraq” and “Ryan C. Crocker, the American envoy in Iraq.” Is Gordon being used once again to build support for a planned attack against another “official enemy”? Well, let’s just say I would be skeptical of any articles with his byline. It’s not just Gordon, of course. This particular Bush administration propaganda has been widely reported throughout the U.S. and foreign media. Meanwhile... Another news story came out on August 6th, just a couple of days before Gordon’s scare story about “Iran-supplied bombs” that are “killing troops in Iraq.” It didn’t come out in the Times, though, it came out in the Washington Post, and here’s the lead paragraph: “The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to a new government report, raising fears that some of those weapons have fallen into the hands of insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.” So, to summarize: The U.S. military claims that “U.S. Says Iran-Supplied Bomb Is Killing More Troops in Iraq,” and this news gets front-page treatment in the nation’s Newspaper of Record. Yet an official government report (25 pages, heavily documented) showing that “U.S.-Supplied” weapons are likely to be “killing more troops in Iraq” gets no coverage at all in the news pages (there was an editorial in the Times, but no news stories). The explanation? I think the most plausible explanation is that one story fits into the propaganda needs of those in power at the moment, while the other does not. ********** If you have received this issue of Nygaard Notes from a friend, or by accident, or through some other bizarre quirk of inexplicable fate which leaves you with no useful return address, be aware that you can receive your own free subscription by asking for it in an E-mail sent to Nygaard Notes at Or visit the Nygaard Notes website at http://www.nygaardnotes.org/ I would like to continue to provide this service for free. You could help by making a voluntary contribution (anything you can afford, whether $5.00 or $500.00) You can donate online by going to the Nygaard Notes website at http://www.nygaardnotes.org/ Then just get out your credit card and follow the instructions. Of course, you can always just send a good old check through the mail. Make checks payable to “Nygaard Notes” and send to: Nygaard Notes, P.O. Box 14354, Minneapolis, MN 55414. Thank you! -- Jeff Nygaard National Writers Union Twin Cities Local #13 UAW Nygaard Notes http://www.nygaardnotes.org