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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Infoshops and the infoshop movement's LiveJournal:
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| Saturday, September 19th, 2009 | 8:51 am
[luminais]
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A little monetary solidarity?
Hey! I'm involved with a teeny collective that's opening a worker-owned infoshop in Portland, Oregon next year. To move us a little closer to our fundraising goal, we launched a mini donation drive on this website called Kickstarter. Please check it out, and please please please drop us a few bucks. We'd infinitely appreciate it, and will promptly pay you back with free coffee when our doors open next year. <3 | | Monday, May 11th, 2009 | 12:04 pm
[luminais]
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| | Thursday, April 16th, 2009 | 5:44 pm
[prettyvacunt]
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| | Monday, April 13th, 2009 | 7:17 pm
[luminais]
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Greetings from Portland, OR.
Hey All - I'm in a teeny collective that's working to open a new worker-owned infoshop in Portland, OR. We're currently callings ourselves the Axiom Collective, but we're probably going call the infoshop something different when we open. We formed last November, and after spending the last five months brainstorming and articulating what we want to do with the infoshop, we're moving on to fundraising. We hope to open in the spring of 2010 with $28,000. If that sounds like a ridiculous amount of money, there's a reason: that figure is meant to cover all of our start-up costs plus six months worth of operating expenses. A lot of spaces open without enough money, and then close a few months later (while running up a ton-o-debt). We want to avoid that. We're designing the infoshop to be totally financially self-sustainable. When creating our "business plan", we intentionally sought out ways to make a profit -- which will be used to support the space, it's workers, and radical projects in town. Our mission, as it's written now, is "to act as a hub for radical projects and movements in Portland. We seek to cultivate and support projects that promote community independence, autonomy, and mutual aid." We will fulfill our mission through... Money.Giving mini-grants of $100 - $500 to projects that promote community independence, autonomy, and mutual aid. Advice. - Assembling a team of volunteer advisors -- community organizers with a diversity of experiences, backgrounds, and approaches -- who will provide ongoing support to our clients by sharing experience, contacts, resources, and more. - Publishing a series of "One Page Guides' on a variety of problems that frequently plague collectives. Topics will include decision making, fundraising, outreach, and more. Support.- Maintaining a comprehensive and up-to-date list of resources for collectives in Portland. Everything from computer help to publicity opportunities, and much more. - Hosting meetings and events. - Offering low-cost photocopies for fliers, pamphlets, and more. That's us in a nutshell. Any thoughts? Advice? Critiques? We'd love to hear it. To learn more about us, visit our MySpace (real website coming soon!). - Shanti | | Sunday, December 28th, 2008 | 1:31 pm
[penguingod]
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Shut Down T. Don Hutto! Urgent Action Needed!
This was originally posted as a MySpace bulletin from CrimethInc.; all CrimethInc. writings are subject to an anti-copyright. As in, anybody can post them anywhere for any reason at all. I did not write this.In May 2006, the Department of Homeland Security opened its first prison for immigrant families 30 miles north of Austin. It is the first family detention center in the country to be based on the penal model, though plans were quickly made to build more. The T Don Hutto facility holds men, women (some pregnant), children, and infants, none of whom have a criminal past. Administered by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the country's largest for-profit corrections company, Hutto lacks proper licensing and medical facilities, and has been proven to traumatize families. WCCC Judge Gattis on TD Hutto vote: "Unless something jumps up and bites me, I will vote to renew" Bite him. Before this Tuesday's vote! Contact WCCC members and tell them to vote NO Hutto Renewal (See contact info below) Their offices will be closed by now, but flood their voicemail and email boxes tonight! Imprisoning people charged with no crime, while they await decision re. applications for citizenship and asylum, is NOT effective immigration policy, does NOT secure our borders, and has NOTHING to do with patriotism. It is a corrupt means to enrich an already wealthy corporation by exploiting the weakest among us! As partners in the contract for the most expensive method to effectively assure that non-criminal immigrants appear at their hearings, the Williamson County Commissioners Court (WCCC) exhibits a disregard for fiscal responsibility with taxpayer dollars during a national economic crisis. This prison is exempt from any governmental regulation and has no government oversight—and a continuing record of abuses. With the lapse of the only outside (court-ordered) oversight of this facility in August of 2009 those risks are greatly elevated in renewal. ( Article in March 2008 New Yorker provides a good chronicle) Partnering with Corrections Corporation of American, with its less-than-admirable record of management, is a bad business practice and exposes Williamson County taxpayers to financial risks from poor management, bad employees, and external lawsuits—all of which are beyond their capacity to control. (See attached "Letter to WCCC re CCA Business Practices.) Williamson County's reputation has been damaged as a result of a number of specific offenses relating to the operation of the facility, as well as its very existence. Contract renewal would affirm WCCC's approval of the disgraces of T Don Hutto and further damage our image locally, nationally, and internationally. Evidence presented at the September public forum (which WCCC boycotted) stated that T Don Hutto's operation is probably a deterrent to future, clean, economic development in the area; renewal would send a very bad signal for the future of such growth; it is actually anti-economic development! This proposal fails the simple "risk vs. benefits" of any business undertaking. The less than $16,000 monthly maximum that Williamson County collects under this contract cannot be reasonably argued to compensate for the negatives that exist. WCCC has had a very rough record re. contracts to date; re-entering this partnership does nothing to convince citizens that WCCC has been learned anything from those previous costly contract mistakes. Please Contact : Judge Dan Gattis: ctyjudge@wilco,org (512) 943-1550 Commissioner Lisa Birkman: lbirkman@wilco.org ( 512) 733-5380 Commissioner Cynthia Long: clong@wilco.org (512) 260-4280) Commissioner Valerie Covey: vcovey@wilco.org (512) 943-3370 Commissioner Ron Morrison: rmorrison@wilco.org (512) 846-1190 Phone, email, by end of business Monday and tell them NO to Hutto! Current Music: Les Savy Fav - Fading Vibes | | Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 | 2:07 am
[angstypenguin]
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Know any queer rural zines? x-post (if this doesn't belong/breaks rules, sorry; tell me&I'll delete)
Sorry if this doesn't belong here, but my friend Jenna (a.k.a. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) trashcan_chica) needs some help: "does anyone know of any queer zines about living in rural areas or going to rural areas?
any help/pointing in the right direction would be amazing. i went through the whole Queer Zine Archive and couldn't really find anything.
thanks!
jenna b
p.s. i just got a wordpress site, sassyfrasscircus.com!"Her (AIM) away message also says: "is looking for zines about/by members of radical queer ANTI-URBAN communities, so if you know of any..."So please comment if you can help at all; thanks. :] -Beth Current Mood:  hopeful | | Saturday, December 6th, 2008 | 2:04 pm
[beautyofsilence]
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An Introduction!
Hey yall! I just joined this group and wanted to introduce myself and the lending library that I live in. The library is a house with one (kind of two?) downstairs rooms mostly dedicated to the library aspect of the house. We are trying to re-open by Jan. Part of this includes cataloging everything in the library, including over 500 zines. Yikes! The library has been pretty under utilized in the past few years so we're really trying to get the word out that yes, there is/are a radical space(s) in Richmond, VA! www.myspace.com/theflyingbricklibrary (A short version of the libraries history is on our blog if you care to read it, I will also provide it here, under a cut.) I'm really glad this (LJ) community exists. There is so much I'd like to discuss on the topic of info shops and radical spaces. (Don't worry, I wont try to fit it all into this post!) Right now I am really looking for event ideas for the library in 2009. Our goal is to have a good, fairly busy (but not too crazy) event calender to hopefully encourage more use of the space. I guess a specific question I can pose at the moment that has been puzzling me, is this: -The kind of check out system that other lending libraries have and what works and what doesn't. What do you do when people don't bring back books or continue to be late returning them, damage them, etc.? I know there is only so much you can do but I'm interested in hearing other peoples ideas on the matter. So, if anyone has any suggestions for awesome things to host, people/groups to bring here, etc. please please let me know! Also open to tips, articles, books, etc. that are kind of basic pointers for running a space like this. Sorry if this was too long winded, and thanks! ( Read more... ) | | Saturday, October 11th, 2008 | 6:27 pm
[pika_pik]
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slingshot organizers
anyone know if the 2009 organizers are being distributed by the slingshot collective this year? Their email, on their website, hasn't worked for the last couple times I emailed them. Is there a more direct way of getting in touch with them? Or does anyone know what's up? | | Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 | 4:42 pm
[prettyvacunt]
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| | Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 | 6:25 pm
[prettyvacunt]
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Be Yr Own Hero Fest Submissions // Wilmington, NC 2008
Be Your Own Hero Festival Now Accepting Submissions[Wilmington, NC] The 2nd Annual Be Your Own Hero (BYOH) Festival will be taking place in Wilmington, North Carolina September 2008. The locations and exact dates will be announced at a later time. Submissions for workshops, info sessions, skill shares, and musicians are currently being accepted until July 31, 2008. Volunteers are also needed to help out on the day(s) of the event and/or to join the BYOH Fest Planning Squad. Please send workshop submissions to herofest@gmail.com with your name, email, phone, organization/collective (if applicable), proposed workshop title & short description, materials needed, and time needed. All other ideas, volunteer availability, and inquiries may also be sent to herofest@gmail.com. We welcome all subjects and we encourage all people to apply, especially those who do not fit neatly into the status quo! In 2007, Wilmington NC was home to the first Be Your Own Hero Festival, an all day radical Do It Yourself (DIY) Festival held at the Soapbox Laundro Lounge. The Festival included a Really Really Free Market, potluck, workshops, info sessions and live music. 2007’s workshops included: DIY parenting (a radical concept), Basic Bicycle Repair, Truth in Recruiting / Promoting Peace, Social Activism & the Info-Radical Menstruation, Food Politics, Trans 101: Becoming an ally to transgender people, Unconventional Action: Organizing against the DNC/RNC, and DIY DJ Workshop. Bands included: The Brothels, The Nothing Noise, Gator Country, Prize Winners Collective, NED, and Ghost Mice. For more information on the Be Your Own Hero Festival and Collective, visit beyrownhero.com, myspace.com/beyourownherofest, or contact herofest@gmail.com. _______________________ Be Your Own Hero Fest Workshop Submission FormEmail to herofest@gmail.com by July 31, 2008 NAME: EMAIL: PHONE: ORGANIZATION / COLLECTIVE: PROPOSED WORKSHOP TITLE: DESCRIPTION: MATERIALS NEEDED: TIME NEEDED: choose from 45 minutes, or 1 hour and 45 minutes ***If you have any questions regarding this post or even the festival, please feel free to leave a comment. | | Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 | 3:27 am
[albanachdemon]
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| | Sunday, September 30th, 2007 | 2:51 pm
[bluegreen_lens]
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| | Saturday, September 15th, 2007 | 10:15 am
[lovableatheist]
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Friends of Exile
Dear supporter, The EXILE Infoshop invites you to become a “Friend of EXILE”!!! The “Friends of EXILE” programme asks that individuals or organisations contribute $5/month ($60/year) to EXILE in order to help us diversify the ways in which we receive income. In return, “Friends” will receive some yet-to-be-determined homemade stuff (t-shirt, patches, stickers, warm thank yous) and, more importantly help EXILE branch-out and rely less on the selling of things. Support EXILE and help us: * Expand our radical library * Help us focus on community organising * Maintain and upgrade our computers and internet space * Ensure our shop remains as accessible as possible * Keep the shopping out of the Shop and help us avoid becoming dependent on selling stuff * Increase our monkey-wrenching and political sabotage One of the primary objectives of EXILE’s collective is to maintain a focus on organising. We would like to focus on developing action groups focused on specific issues, organising more events, and supporting the work of other groups and individuals. Increasingly, we consider our space as more of an organising/free space - as opposed to a bookstore or some other kind of commercial space. Instead of selling books, EXILE wants to emphasize its lending library; an excellent and growing collection of radical lit. So, we ask that you consider a donation of 5$ per month (60$ per year), payable in whatever way (except credit card or interact) you would like. For info please email friends@exilebooks.org, or call the shop at 613.237.9270 Peace, Love & Anarchy, The EXILE Infoshop Collective | | Monday, July 9th, 2007 | 4:55 pm
[pika_pik]
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how do people generally raise money to pay for costs? | | Tuesday, February 13th, 2007 | 5:17 pm
[zerovixen]
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NVB Divetribe
NVB (Norfolk/VA Beach, VA) Divetribe (dumpster diving) is looking for members! Please join!
p.s. If there is a problem with this post I will delete it. Current Mood:  dirty | | Friday, November 24th, 2006 | 12:25 pm
[thedashcat]
 |
We recently landed the space necessary to establish a collectively run bookstore in Corpus Christi, TX. (Greetings from Portside Books, on that note.) We're still trying to figure out what the best way is to declare ourselves for tax purposes, though. What sort of tax ID (EIN) do most radical bookstores and collectively-run shops apply for? We suspect it's probably best to file as an LLC, but we definitely need more input on this one. Thanks, DC | | Sunday, November 12th, 2006 | 4:42 am
[loveandequality]
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Free Rent Community is now accepting zine, VHS and DVD submissions for review in a zine and podcast
 Dear friends around the world working for a better world, Free Rent Community is now accepting submissions for Review. Free Rent Community is a printed zine, online zine and an online radio station/podcast. It is dedicated to everything which is directly, indirectly or barely related to love, activism and/or creating a better world. Free Rent Community reviews zines (with no ISBN's or Bar Codes) and VHS and DVD videos (20 minutes or less) which are directly, indirectly or barely related to love, activism and/or creating a better world. We will not review anything that includes (or promotes) racism, sexism, homophobia, politicians, porn or long poetry (extremely short poetry is welcome). We welcome everything else including, but definitely not limited to, perzines and experimental creations. Please include the form found on the website. www.FreeRentCommunity.org - Mail reviews to the mailing address found on our website. Love, Solidarity and thanks everyone. Current Mood: cheerful | | Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006 | 7:04 am
[netninja1]
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Understanding the Middle East Conflict
Israel is having more and more trouble putting down this popular revolution over the Occupied Territories. The repression of the Palestinians and the Lebanese is not qualitatively different right now from what it was 40 years ago -- it's just that it's escalated in scale sincee the Palestinians and the Lebanese started fighting back. For the Palestinians it started during the Intifada. So the brutality you see occasionally on television has in fact been going on for the last 40 years, and it's just the nature of a military occupation: military occupations are harsh and brutal, there is no other kind [Israel seized the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights from Jordan, Egypt, and Syria during the Six Day War in 1967, and has controlled them ever since]. There's been home-destruction, kidnappings, torture, collective punishments, expulsion, plenty of humiliation, censorship -- you'd have do go back to the days of the American South to know what it's been like for the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. They are not supposed to raise their heads -- that's what they say in Israel, "They're raising their heads, we've got to do something about it." And that's the way the Palestinians have been living. Well, the United States has been quite happy supporting that -- so long as it worked. But in the past few years, it hasn't worked. See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence. If violence is effective, everything's okay; but if violence loses its effectiveness, then they start worrying and have to try something else. In fact, the occupation's beginning to be rather harmful for Israel. So it's entirely possible that there could be some tactical changes coming with respect to how Israel goes about controlling the Territories. Outside the United States, everybody knows what the solution for resolving the conflict in the region would be. For years there's been a very broad consensus in the world over the basic framework of a solution in the Middle East, with the exception of two countries: the United States and Israel. It's going to be some variety of two-state settlement. Look, there are two groups claiming the right of national self-determination in the same territory; they both have a claim, they're competing claims. There are various ways in which such competing claims could be reconciled -- you could do it through a federation, one thing or another -- but given the present state of conflict, it's just going to have to be about the modalities -- should it be a confederation, how do you deal with economic integration, and so on -- but the principle's quite clear: there has to be some settlement that recognizes the right of self-determination of Jews in something like the state of Israel, and the right of self-determination of Palestinians in something like a Palestinian State. And everybody knows where that Palestinian state would be -- in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, along roughly the borders that exsisted before the Six Day War in 1967. All of this has been obvious for years -- why hasn't it happened? Well, of course Israel's opposed to it. But the main reason it hasn't happened is because the United States has blocked it: the United states has been blocking the peace process in the Middle East for the last twenty years -- WE'RE the leaders of the rejectionist camp, not the Arabs or anybody else. See, the United States supports a policy which Henry Kissinger called "stalemate"; that was his word for it back in 1970. At that time, there was kind of a split in the American government as to whether we should join the broad international consensus on a political settlement, or block a political settlement. And in that internal struggle, the hard-liners prevailed; Kissinger was the main spokesman. The policy that won out was what he called "stalemate": keep things the way they are, maintain the system of Israeli oppression. And there was a good reason for that, it wasn't just out of the blue: having an embattled, militaristic Israel is an important part of how we rule the world. ( Read more... ) | | Sunday, August 20th, 2006 | 3:25 am
[netninja1]
|
Peoples Democratic Socialist Republics
One of the issues which has devastated a substantial portion of the left in recent years, and caused enormous triumphalism elsewhere, is the alleged fact that there's been this great battle between socialism and capitalism in the twentieth century, and in the end capitalism won and socialism lost-and the reason we know that socialism lost is because the Soviet Union disintegrated. So you have big cover stories in The Nation about "The End of Socialism," and you have socialists who all their lives considered themselves anti-Stalin saying, "Yes, it's true, socialism has lost because Russia failed." To even raise questions about this is something you're not supposed to do in our culture, but let's try it. Suppose you ask a simple question: namely, why do people like the editors at The Nation say that "socialism" failed, why don't they say that "democracy" failed?--and the proof that "democracy" failed is, look what happened to Eastern Europe. After all, those countries also called themselves "democratic"--in fact, they called themselves "People's Democracies," real advanced forms of democracy. So why don't we conclude that "democracy" failed, not just that "socialism" failed? Well, I haven't seen any articles anywhere saying, "Look, democracy failed, let's forget about democracy." Ant it's obvious why: the fact that they called themselves democratic doesn't mean that they were democratic. Pretty obvious right? Okay, then in what sense did social fail? I mean, it's true that the Soviet Union and its satellites in Eastern Europe called themselves "socialist"--but they also called themselves "democratic." Were they socialist? Well, you can argue about what Socialism is, but there are some ideas that are sort of at the core of it, like workers' control over production, elimination of wage labor, things like that. Did those countries have any of those things? They weren't even a thought there. In the pre-Bolshevik part of the Russian Revolution, there were socialist initiatives--but they were crushed instantly after the Bolsheviks took power, like within months. In fact, just as the moves towards democracy in Russia were instantly destroyed, the moves towards socialism were equally instantly destroyed. The Bolshevik takeover was a coup--and that was perfectly well understood at the time, in fact. So if you look in the mainstream of the Marxist movement, Lenin's takeover was regarded as counter-revolutionary; if you look at independent leftists like Bertrand Russell, it was instantly obvious to them; to the libertarian left, it was a truism. But that truism has been driven out of people's heads over the years, as part of a whole prolonged effort to discredit the very idea of socialism by associating it with Soviet totalitarianism. And obviously that effort has been extremely successful--that's why people can tell themselves that socialism failed when they look at what happened to the Soviet Union, and not even see the slightest thing odd about it. And that's been a very valuable propaganda triumph for elites in the West--because it's made it very easy to undercut moves towards real changes in the social system here by saying, "Well, that's socialism--and look what it leads to." Okay, hopefully with the fall of the Soviet Union we can at least begin to get past that barrier, and start recovering an understanding of what socialism could really stand for. | | Sunday, July 23rd, 2006 | 3:44 am
[netninja1]
|
Healthcare and the Social Security Non-Crisis
The rapidly escalating costs of health care are threatening a serious fiscal crisis, along with immeasurable human costs. Infant Mortality in the U.S. is one major index. The UN Human Development Report 2005 reveals that "since 2000 a half century of sustained decline in infant death rates [in the United States] first slowed then reversed." By 2005 the rates had risen to the level of Malaysia, a country where the average income is one-quarter that in the United States. The report also reviews the effects of government programs. In the United Kingdom, for example, the rate of child poverty rose sharply during the Margaret Thatcher years, then reversed after the Labour government adopted policies to halve child poverty by 2010. "fiscal redistribution has played a central role in strategies for meeting the target," the report concludes: "Large increases in financial support for families with children," as well as other fiscal programs, "boosted the incomes of low-income working families with children," with significant effects on child poverty. The financial crisis is surely is no secret. The press report that 30 percent of health care costs go for administration, a proportion vastly higher than in government-run systems including those within the United States, which are far from the most efficient. These estimates are seriously understated because of the ideological decision not to count the costs for individuals- for doctors who waste their own time or are forced to misuse it, or patients who "enter a world of paperwork so surreal that it belongs in one of Kafka's tales of the triumph of faceless bureaucracies." The complexities of billing have become so outlandish that the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, the president's senior adviser, says when he gets a bill for his four-year-old child, he "can't figure out what happened, or what I'm supposed to do." Those who want to see government bureaucracy reaching levels that even Kafka might not have imagined should look at the official ninety-eight-page government handbook on the Medicare prescription drug plan, provided to Medicare participants to inform them of their options under the bill passed by Congress in June 2004, with the help of an army of lobbyists from pharmaceutical companies and health maintenance organizations (HMOs). The idea, the Wall Street Journal informs its affluent readers, "is that patients will be encouraged to bargain-hunt for medical care" and may even save money, if they can hire enough research assistants to work through the many private options available, and make lucky guesses. Health Savings Accounts, also welcomed by the editors, have similar properties. For the wealthy and the corporate beneficiaries the exciting new programs will be just fine, like health care in general. The rest will get what the deserve for not having ascended to these heights. The Bush administration response to the health care crisis has been to reduce services to the poor (Medicaid). The timing was again impeccable. "As Republican leaders in Congress move to trim billions of dollars from the Medicaid health program," the Washington Post reported, "they are simultaneously intervening to save the life of possibly the highest-profile Medicaid patient: Terri Schiavo." Republican majority leader Tom DeLay, while proclaiming his deep concern forSchiavo and his dedication to ensure that she has the chance "we all deserve," simultaneously shepherded through the House a budget resolution to cut $15 billion to $20 billion from Medicaid for the next five years. As if the exploitation of the tragedy of this poor woman for partisan gain were not disgraceful enough, DeLay and others like him were depriving her, and who knows how many others, of the means of moral values and concern for the sanctity of life. The primary method devised to divert attention from the health care crisis was to organize a major PR campaign to "reform" Social Security--meaning dismantle it--in the pretext that it is facing an awesome fiscal crisis. There is no need to review the remarkable deceit of the administration propaganda, and the falsifications and misrepresentations repeated without comment by much of the media commentary, which cooperated in making it the "hot topic" in Washington. Exposure has been carried out more than adequately eslewhere. The steady drumbeat of deceit has been so extreme as to drive frustrated analysts to words rarely voiced in restrained journals: that Bush "repeatedly lied about the current [Social Security] system," making claims that were demonstrably false and that his staff must have known were false(New York Times, Paul Krugman, 15 Aug, 2005)." It is not that the system has no flaws. It surly does. The highly regressive payroll tax is an illustration. More generally, an OECD study found that the US system "is one of the least generous public pension systems in advanced countries," consistent with the comparative weakness of benefits in the United States. The alleged crisis of Social Security is rooted in demographic facts: the ratio of working people to retired people is declining. The data are accurate, but partial. The relevant figure is the ratio of working people to those they support. According to official statistics, the ratio of working people to dependents (under twenty, over sixty-five) hit its lowest point in 1965 and is not expected to reach that level through the projected period (to 2080). The Propaganda image is that the retirement of the "baby boomers" is going to crash the system; as repeatedly pointed out, their retirement has already been financed by the Greenspan-led increase in payroll taxes in 1983. That aside, the boomers were once children, and had to be cared for then as well. And we find that during those years there was a sharp increase in spending for education and other child care needs. There was no crisis. If American society was able to take care of the boomers from ages zero to twenty, then there can be no fundamental reason why a much richer society, with far higher output per worker, cannot take care of them from ages sixty-five to ninety. At most, some technical fixes might be needed, but no major crisis looms in the foreseeable future. Critics of Bush's efforts to chip away at Social Security by various "ownership society" schemes have proclaimed success because public opposition was too high to ram the legislation through. But the celebration is premature. The campaign of deceit achieved a great deal, laying the basis for the next assault on the system. Reacting to the PR campaign, the Gallup poll, for the first time, included Social Security among the choices for "top concerns." Gallup found that only "the availability and affordability of healthcare" is a larger concern for the public than Social Security. About half of Americans worry "a great deal" about it, and another quarter a "fair amount," more than are concerned about such issues as terrorism or oil prices. A Zogby poll found that 61 percent believe the system faces "serious problems" and 14 percent think it's "in crisis," though in fact it is "financially stronger than it has been throughout most of its history, according to the Trustees' [President Bush's] numbers," economist Mark Weisbrot observes. The campaign has been particularly effective among the young. Among students, 70 percent are "concerned that the pension system may not be there when they retire." These are major victories for those who hope to destroy Social Security, revealing once again the effectiveness of a flood of carefully contrived propaganda amplified by the media in a business-run-society where institutionalized deceit has been refined to a high art. The propaganda success compares well with that of the government-media campaign to convince Americans that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to their survival, driving them completly off the spectrum of world opinion. There has been some discussion of the curious fact that the need to reform Social Security became the "hot topic" of the day, while reforming the health care system in accord with public opinion is not even on the agenda, an apparent paradox: the very serious fiscal crisis of the remarkably inefficient and poorly performing health care systems not a crisis, while urgent action is needed to undermine the efficient system that is quite sound for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, to the extent that Social Security might face a crisis some time in the distant future, it would result primarily from exploding health care costs. Government projections predict a sharp increase in total benefits relative to GDP, from under 10 percent in 2000 to almost 25 percent in 2080, which is as far as the projections reach. Through this period Social Security costs are barley expected to increase beyond the 2000 level of 5 percent. A slightly larger increase is predicted for Medicaid, and a huge increase for Medicare, traceable primarily to extreme inefficiency of the privatized health care system. Sensible people will seek differences between the Social Security and Health care systems that might explain the paradox. And they will quickly find critical differences, which are quite familiar in other domains: the paradox mirrors closely the "schizophrenia" of all administrations that underlies the "strong line of continuity" with regard to "democracy promotion," to take one example. Social Security is of little value for the rich, but it is crucial for the survival for the working people, the poor, their dependents, and the disabled. For the wealthy, it is the "major source" of retirement income, and the most secure. Furthermore, as a government program, it has such low administrative costs that it offers nothing to financial institutions. Social Security helps only the underlying population, not the substantial people. It is therefore natural that it should be dispatched to the flames. The medical system, in contrast, works very well for the substantial people, with health care effectively rationed by wealth, while enormous profits flow to private power for superfluous bureaucracy and supervision, overpriced drugs, and other useful inefficiencies. The underlying population can be treated with lectures on responsibility. There are other sound reasons to destroy the Social Security system. It is based on the principles that are deeply offensive to the moral values of the political leadership and the sectors they represent--not those who vote for them, a different category of the population. Social security is based on the idea that it is a community responsibility to ensure that the disabled widow on the other side of town has food to eat, or that the child across the street should be able to go to a decent school. Such evil ideas have to be driven from the mind. They stand in the way of the "New Spirit of the Age" of the 1850s: "Gain Wealth, forgetting all but Self." According to the right thinking, it isn't my fault if the widow married the wrong person or if the child's parents made bad investment decisions, so why should I contribute a few cents to a public fund to take care of them? the "ownership society," in contrast, suffers from none of these moral defects. Returning to the November 2004 elections, we learn a little of the significance from them about popular attitudes and opinions, though we can learn a lot from these studies that are kept in the shadows. And the whole affair adds more to our understanding of the current state of American democracy--with most of the industrial world trailing not too far behind, as privileged and powerful sectors learn and apply the lessons taught by their leader. |
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