Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
February 28,
2005
Diana Johnstone
Censorship
and the Empire
February 26
/ 27, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
An
American Jew Laments Decline in Jewish Influence
Noam Chomsky
Nuclear
Terror at Home
Rev. William E. Alberts
Rhetoric in the Air; Reality on the Ground
Fred Gardner
AARP Gets Pot-Baited
Gary Leupp
Bush and Camus on Freedom
Saul Landau
An Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon (Part 3): the Miami
Mafia
Robin Philpot
Second Thoughts on the Hotel Rwanda
Yitkhak Laor
In Praise of the Facts
Ben Tripp
Out of Sight; Out of Mind
Justin Taylor
Zizek Seen Over the Handlebars
Jack Random
The Wounds from Wounded Knee
Rafael Renteria
Ward Churchill and White America
Jim B.
Reflections on the Eve of Fatherhood
Seth DeLong
Land Reform in Venezuela: More Like Lincoln Than Lenin
John Chuckman
A Season of Depressing Political Reruns
Alison Weir
Relativity, LA Times Style
Richard Oxman
Political Solitude: From Garcia Marquez to Maria Full of Grace
Dr. Susan Block
It Always Rains in California: All About Female Ejaculation
Poets' Basement
Landau, Lowell, Louise, Davies, Soderstrom, Norris & Albert
February 25,
2005
Roger Burbach
Murder
in the Amazon
Behzad Yaghmaian
Iranian Distrust of America: 50 Years in the Making
Kurt Nimmo
Conclave of the Brats
Joshua Frank
Diagnosing the Green Party
John Farley
How to Stop the War in Iraq: Punish Pro-War Politicians
Lawrence Reichard
The D'Aubuisson Memorial: Flowers of Evil
Pratyush Chandra
The Royal Coup in Nepal and Global Imperialist Designs
David Smith-Ferri
When
the Battlefield has No Borders
Website of
the Day
The 2005 Election in 3-D
February 24,
2005
Omar Waraich
The
Galloway Saga: Smearing an Anti-War Politician
Brian Cloughley
Bribing and Twisting Amerian Journalists: Valerie Plame &
30 Pieces of Silver
Tom Wright
Torture Nation: Abu Ghraib, a Year Later
Sharon Smith
The Anti-War Movement After Kerry: Learning All the Wrong Lessons
Dave Lindorff
Do These Roosting Chickens Have Flu?
Fred Feldman
Lynching Ward Churchill
James Reiss
On Hearing About a Plot to Assassinate President Bush
Diane Christian
Bad
Blood: Ritual & Sexual Torture in Iraq
Website of
the Day
The Gray Line
February 23,
2005
Werther
The
Poisoned Well: What the CIA's Nazi Files Can Tell Us About Iraq
W. John Green
A Salvador Option for Iraq? How Negroponte Changes the Ground
Rules
James Petras
A New Face to Bush Foreign Policy?
Conn Hallinan
Cornering the Dragon: the Return of the China Lobby
Joe Pietri
Cannabis: the Goose that Lays Golden Eggs (For Consumers and
Cops)
Louis Proyect
Hunter Thompson and the "New" Journalism
Alexander Cockburn
Hunter
S. Thompson and Gonzo
Website of
the Day
Did You Make the Blacklist? Why Not?
February 22,
2005
Naseer Aruri
The
Politics of the Hariri Assassination: Remapping the Middle East
Richard Manning
The
Economy of Hunger: Starvation is Part of the Economic Plan
William A.
Cook
Righteous
Racism Running Rampant
Paul Craig Roberts
The Agents of Instability
Ken Krayeske
Dr. Thompson is Out
Dave Zirin
How the Owners Destroyed the NHL
Kirkpatrick
Sale
Imperial
Entropy: the Collapse of the American Empire
February 21,
2005
Hunter S. Thompson
"He
Was A Crook"
John Ross
Mexico:
the Pentagon's Proxy Army in Iraq
Ward Churchill
What Did I Really Say? Why Did
I Say It?
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military Recruiting on Channel One: Geometry 101, Brought to
You by the US Navy
David Swanson
Fighting for a Living Wage, State by State
Dave Lindorff
All the News That's Fit to Fake
Stew Albert
Fear and Loathing: HST
Michael Neumann
Strategies
in Palestine: a Shrinking Pie in the Sky
February 19
/ 20, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Back
to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory"
Kathleen Christison
Struggling
for Justice in Palestine
Ted Honderich
On Being Persona Non Grata
Gary Leupp
Self-Hating Gays: Welcome to the White House & Welcome to
Commit Suicide
Don Santina
Reparations for the Blues
Jennifer Roesch
John Negroponte: Dirty Warrior
Scott Richard
Lyons
Ward
Churchill and the Identity Police
Chris Clarke
Ward Churchill and Liberal Outrage
George Beres
Censorship in the Land of Wayne Morse: Gagging W. Churchill in
Oregon
Harry Browne
The Belfast Heist: the Plot Unravels
Manuel García,
Jr.
Who Killed Rafik Hariri?
Mark Scaramella
Lessons from the Hidden Afghan War
Michael Donnelly
Whatever Happened to John Edwards?
John Pilger
First, They Attack the Past
Norman Madarasz
Death Wish for Reform in Brazil?
Surendra Devkota
The Monarchy in Nepal
Deborah Rich
How Anti-GMO Ballot Measures May Miss the Mark
Fred Gardner
When Dr. Tod Met Merle Haggard
CounterPunch
News Service
About King Mswati: Political Developments in Swaziland
Richard Oxman
CounterPunching Arthur Miller
Poets' Basement
Albert, Giebel, Tripp, Engel and Orkin
February 18,
2005
Ben Moxham
In
East Timor, the Nightmare Continues
Dave Lindorff
The
Scum Also Rises: the Bloody Career of John Negroponte
Larry Birns
Negroponte: a Resume of Death Squads, Deceptions and Bribery
Gregory Elich
N, Korea's Phantom Nukes and the US's Subversion of Diplomacy
Samuel Logan / John Meyers
The Future of Colombia's Paramilitary Death Squads
Nicole Colson
Shock and Awe on Civil Liberties: From Lynne Stewart to Ward
Churchill
Suzan Mazur
Whose National Security Are We Talking About?
Mickey Z.
"One
Man Has Stopped Killing"
February 17,
2005
Joshua Frank
Hogtying
of the Deaniacs
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
Willing Sychophants: the Conservative Media
Robert Fisk
Under
the Shadow of Death in Lebanon
Christopher
Brauchli
Where
Time Stands Still: Kinsey and Darwin in Cobb County, GA
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military
Recruitment TV: Why Send Them to College, When Your Kid Can be
Cannon Fodder?
Alison Weir
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions
Ahrar Ahmad
A Review of Shahid Alam's "Is There an Islamic Problem?"
Saul Landau
An
Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon: "The US Tramples
the Laws It Wrote"
Website of the Day
Petition to Support Ward Churchill
February 16,
2005
Robert Fisk
Lebanon:
a Battlefield for the Wars of Others
Kevin Zeese
Creating a Real Ownership Society: Share the Wealth; Protect
Retirement
Gary Leupp
Meanwhile, in Nepal...
Ron Jacobs
Why the Iranian Opposition Should Not Trust the Bush Administration
Jessica Leight
Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff
Greg Moses
Houston, You've Got a Problem: Documenting Voting Irregularities
in Texas
Mark Engler
The Last Porto Alegre
Jack McCarthy
Where's the Outrage About Pat? Buchanan Does a Churchill
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel
Website of the Day
The
World is Melting: a Photo Survey by Gary Braasch
February 15,
2005
CounterPunch
News Service
Dean
a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch
Robert Fisk
The
Killing of Mr. Lebanon
Uri Avnery
"Sharm-al-Sheikh,
We Have Come Back Again"
Stan Cox
Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal
Mickey Z.
Radio
Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook
Dave Zirin
Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean
Nadia Martinez
Ending
World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now
Lila Rajiva
"Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of
Magical Thinking in Politics
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
American Job Sell Out
February 14,
2005
Robert Jensen
Ward
Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11
Brian Cloughley
Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style
Patrick Cockburn
Outcome
of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War
Gary Leupp
Post-election Iraq: What Next?
Michael Donnelly
Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity?
Dave Lindorff
When Bush Came to My Neighborhood
Elaine Cassel
The
Lynne Stewart Verdict
February 12
/ 13, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill's Genes
Saul Landau
Alarcon
Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba
Paul Craig
Roberts
Nothing
to Fear But Bush Himself
Patrick Cockburn
Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All
Major Roads into Baghdad
John Feffer
Bush
v. N. Korea: Round Two
Mickey Z.
Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak
Kurt Nimmo
Viva la Cucaracha!
Fred Gardner
Waiting for Raich
Dave Zirin
Fighting the New Republic(ans)
John Chuckman
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
A Leftist on the Bush Payroll
Carol Norris
"Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?"
Robert Fisk
No Middle East Peace Without Justice
Frank / Chowkwanyun
Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin
Mike Whitney
Condi's Euro Tour
Deborah Frisch
A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Reading Khomeini in Colorado
Christine TenBarge
What's So Special About Ward?
Ron Jacobs
Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan
Dr. Susan Block
Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting
Poets' Basement
Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Free Sherman
February 11,
20055
Manuel Garcia,
Jr
The
Eight Percent War
Kurt Nimmo
Ann
Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need
Him?
Dave Lindorff
Guckert
or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In
Larry Birns
War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott
Abrams
Bill Quigley
Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz
Tom Barry
Bush's State of Delusion
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Lynne
Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All
February 10,
2005
Dave Lindorff
What
Academic Freedom?
Christopher Brauchli
The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq
Patrick Cockburn
In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed
Nicole Colson
Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?
Suzan Mazur
More
on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha
Michael Donnelly
Salvaging an Opposition
Mike Stark
Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little
Hope"
Greg Moses
Taking
Jesus Back from the Hijackers
Website of
the Day
The Missionary Positions
February 9,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Duck
and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers
Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say
John Ross
Hecho
en Mexico: the Iraqi Election
Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon
Conn Hallinan
The
Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely
Forbidden"
Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions
Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians
Website of
the Day
Support Antiwar.com
February 8,
2005
Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd
Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral
Pact, Not a Party"
Brian Cloughley
Out
of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"
Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"
Harry Browne
"Don't
Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland
Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President
and Ward Churchill
Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the
Same Beast
Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper
David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq
February 7,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
War on Jobs
Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher
Ed
Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill
Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill
Patrick Cockburn
The
Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq
Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism
Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried
Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI
Tariq Ali
Imperial
Delusions
February 5
/ 6, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill and the Mad Dogs
Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day
Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill
P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust
Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America
Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story
Pamela Olson
West Bank Story
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court
Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents
Robert Fisk
History by Laptop
David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome
Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada
Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love
Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life
Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside
Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy
Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the
Game
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert
Website of
the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File
February 4,
2005
Brian Cloughley
The
Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior
of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"
Bill Christison
Election
Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005
Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?
Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft
Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal
Ron Jacobs
The
Downward Spiral in Iraq
February 3,
2005
Ward Churchill
On
the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications
and Gross Distortions
Sharon Smith
Resisting
Soldiers Need Our Support
Mickey Z.
Leslie
Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?
Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union
Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan
Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq
Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence
Dave Lindorff
The
Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies
February 2,
2005
David Domke
/ Kevin Coe
Bush's
Brand of Christianity
Noam Chomsky
Iraq
After the Elections
M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's
Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me
in Its Crosshairs
Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen
Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean
Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT
Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn
Website of the Day
War is a Racket
February 1,
2005
Joshua L. Dratel
The
Torture Memos
Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi
Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"
Uri Avnery
The Stalemate
Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal
Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel
Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades
Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified
Voters
Paul Craig
Roberts
American
Police State
Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
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Behold,
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Here for More Stories.
|
February 28, 2005
What's the BIG Idea?
Basic
Income Guarantee Versus the Corporate Media
By
DAVID SWANSON
A case can be made that the left in
the United States is too eager to compromise, that because we
have no far left, our moderate left is more easily dismissed
as extreme. This contrasts with a far right that advocates --
for decades if necessary -- for extremely unpopular positions
(such as eliminating Social Security), thus rendering the right's
goals (such as partially dismantling Social Security) respectable,
moderate, and middle of the road.
But what happens when people
in this country begin promoting an idea from the left that is
completely off the map, that is not a response to a White House
initiative, that does not propose to damage the country or the
world a little bit less than the Republicans want, that actually
sets forth an innovative proposal?
Many people in this country
have no way to answer that question, because fundamentally what
happens -- in contrast to what happens with ideas from the right
-- is that the corporate media blacks out the proposal. With
some proposals, such as single-payer health care, the blackout
is incomplete. The proposal is given minimal attention and is
even included in opinion surveys, such as the October, 2003 ABC
News/ Washington Post poll, which found that 62 percent of Americans
favor single-payer health care. But the idea is carefully marginalized
by the media, and labeled politically impractical, so that most
of that 62 percent almost certainly have no idea they sit in
a majority. See http://ilcaonline.org/
With other proposals the media
blackout is virtually absolute. Consumers of the media have no
reason to imagine these proposals exist at all, much less have
enough information to form a useful opinion about them. This
is the case with an idea that has garnered considerable attention
in Europe, Africa, and South America, but virtually no mainstream
media attention in the United States. That idea? The basic income
guarantee.
This basic income guarantee,
or BIG as it's known to the activists and academics who make
up the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network "is a government
ensured guarantee that no one's income will fall below the level
necessary to meet their most basic needs for any reason."
How would a basic income guarantee
work? Each month, every adult would receive a check from the
government, for the exact same amount. These checks, notes the
Citizen Policies Institute, would be "large enough to meet
basic costs of food and shelter, and perhaps health care, but
not so large as to undermine incentives to work, earn, save,
and invest." The checks, likely "in the range of $400
to $800 a month," would go to everyone, working or not working,
wealthy or not wealthy.
I should note quickly that
some of the chief proponents of the basic income guarantee in
the United States today would object to my characterizing the
idea as "left." They would note that supporters of
an income guarantee have historically fallen across a broad political
spectrum, from liberals like John Kenneth Galbraith to to such
right wingers as Milton Friedman. A limited "BIG" was
actually endorsed by President Nixon in 1970 and passed by the
U.S. House, but not the Senate.
Under Republican Governor Jay
Hammond, the state of Alaska established an income guarantee
in 1976 that sets aside 25 percent of the state's tax revenue
from oil production. The money goes into a permanent fund run
by an appointed board of trustees. Every year, the fund pays
a portion of investment earnings to any person who has lived
in the state for at least a year. Since the first checks were
mailed in 1982, each resident has received $21,902.
Former Governor Hammond has,
in recent years, promoted the Alaska program as a model that
should be applied to Iraq. Mary Landrieu (D.-La.) and Lisa Murkowski
(R-Alaska) have advanced the same idea. They have proposed a
fund created out of Iraqi oil revenues that would put money directly
into the hands of every Iraqi.
That idea has international
support as well. Brazilian Senator Eduardo Suplicy, the sponsor
of BIG legislation in Brazil signed into law last year, has pushed
the notion extensively.
"When the Brazilian Sergio
Vieira de Melo was nominated to be the coordinator of the United
Nations' actions in Iraq, in May 2003, I contacted him, suggesting
that the Alaskan model be applied for the Iraqis," says
Suplicy. "He quickly replied positively and said that he
would share the suggestion with the relevant authorities. The
following month, on June 23 in a speech in Jordan, Ambassador
Paul Bremer, the chief administrator in Iraq, said: 'Some profits
from oil sales could be distributed to Iraq's citizens as "dividends,"
along the lines of the system used by the State of Alaska.'"
So bipartisan support currently
exists for the idea of a basic income guarantee, but only apparently
for Iraqis. And even that Iraqi BIG has yet to be created. As
Karl Widerquist of USBIG has noted, in the 1970s right-wingers
viewed a basic income guarantee as a simpler and more efficient
replacement for a relatively large and complex welfare state.
Now they view it as the recreation of a safety net that they
have been largely succeeded in shredding. Thus BIG has become
a proposal supported only from the left, which means, these days,
that we hardly hear about it at all.
BIG in the
U.S. Media
The media in the United States,
as the above discussion suggests, has had any number of terrific
"hooks" that could have triggered articles about the
idea of a basic income guarantee, hooks that range from the war
on Iraq to the passage of an income guarantee in Brazil. USBIG
has also held annual conferences featuring legislators, academics,
and activists; and other events and press conferences about the
BIG idea have abounded. Throughout this all, the media has remained
distinctly disinterested.
Earlier this month, the Institute
for Public Accuracy sent a press release to media recommending
interviews with Senator Suplicy and with Steve Shafarman, the
president of Citizen Policies Institute. A search in Google News
for either of those names or for "basic income guarantee"
finds no related articles. A search in the Nexis database for
these and similar terms in the past 60 days finds nothing related
to the topic.
Searches in Nexis over the
past two years find little more. I could not find a single broadcast
transcript or print editorial or column on the topic. I found
one Associated Press article from February 2004 and one Los Angeles
Times article from May 2003 on the congressional proposal for
Iraq. I found extensive coverage of political changes in Brazil
and Senator Suplicy (92 articles mentioning "Eduardo Suplicy"),
but nothing from U.S. media about his BIG legislation. The two
articles on Iraq, from the AP and the LA Times, were excellent.
But neither broached the subject of a BIG in the United States.
Thus, the media's blackout of the BIG idea as a possibility in
the United States has been complete.
Or nearly so. Shafarman this
month has done radio interviews on a college station in Boston,
the Pacifica station in Los Angeles, and WHAS in Louisville KY.
Will the blackout be broken?
The Fourth Congress of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network
will be held in New York City March 4-6. Details are available
at http://usbig.net . Clearly
this conference will generate a rich exchange of ideas, proposals,
variations, and counter proposals. Will the media notice? Will
newspapers begin accepting op-eds on the topic? Will the independent
media push the idea until the corporate media is forced to place
it squarely on the table of our public discourse? We shall see.
What's
the BIG Idea?
There are a number of reasons
why progressives should promote the idea of a basic income guarantee.
For one thing, the public should be aware that we do indeed have
a bold, positive vision to offer. BIG ought to be part of a wide-ranging
progressive agenda that includes universal free quality education
from preschool through college, single-payer health care, a living
wage for all work, work for all who want it, affordable housing,
the right to form a trade union, an environmentally sustainable
economy, and the application of these same values in our foreign
affairs.
If we had a basic income guarantee
in the United States, no one would have to prove they are poor
or unemployed to get a check. The checks would go to everyone,
Of course, some checks would be wasted on awesomely affluent
Americans who have absolutely no financial worries. But awesomely
affluent Americans are already getting billions in tax breaks
and giveaways from the public treasury. More importantly, by
making the BIG universal, we would eliminate the need for a huge
bureaucracy to determine who should receive it and also eliminate
the stigma that has been attached to recipients of welfare. As
with welfare, some will choose to live off the BIG and not seek
employment at all. But those who do find work will not face a
reduction in their BIG check.
That some small percentage
of people, if a BIG existed, would not work cannot possibly be
considered a fatal flaw in the BIG idea, not in a country where
we already have a significant percentage of people not working,
including those unable to work, those with no need to work and
no desire to, those searching for work, those who have given
up on searching for work, those who have calculated that they
would spend more on child care than they would earn if they took
a job, those who are behind bars as a result of crimes that tend
to increase with unemployment and poverty, those working part-time
who want full-time jobs, and those working full-time or more
who would prefer to work part-time and train for other work if
they could afford to.
And surely anyone's displeasure
with people receiving a basic income without working should not
outweigh their displeasure with the current state of affairs
in which 35 million Americans, including 13 million children,
live in poverty, and at least half a million Americans lack the
most basic of life's necessities, a home.
Handouts based on "means
testing" the poor too often create stigmas and bureaucracies
-- and fail to reach many of the intended recipients. The earned
income tax credit (EITC), for instance, only goes to those who
know to apply for it. Corporate-funded opponents of living wage
standards have taken to advocating for (or pretending to advocate
for) the EITC as an alternative to a living wage, but there should
be no conflict between decent wage standards and support for
those in need.
A BIG should coexist harmoniously
with a living wage law, but may conflict with the EITC and some
of the remnants of the New Deal. One BIG proponent, Steve Shafarman,
even wants to make BIG more appealing to conservatives by arguing
that, with a BIG in effect, we could eliminate many existing
social programs and maybe the progressive income tax as well.
Is this wise?
I don't think so. Progressive
taxes, unlike "flat taxes," serve the useful purpose
of restraining disparities in wealth. We need to be strengthening
the progressivity in our tax system, not eroding it further.
We may even need a "maximum wage" along the lines proposed
by labor journalist Sam Pizzigati, that is, a 100 percent tax
on all income over 10 or 25 times the minimum wage. That would
give our nation's most rich and powerful a personal incentive
in enhancing the well-being of our nation's poorest workers.
And the BIG, if enacted, would make sure that all those who can't
work are guaranteed decency.
If we do not restore value
to the minimum wage (and index it to automatically keep pace
with the cost of living, as we must do with the BIG), the greatest
disincentive to work will not be the BIG but the declining wages
received for working.
What Will Get
BIG into the Media?
The sorts of topics that almost
never make it through the filter of the corporate media are generally
those that have no serious corporate supporter (single-payer
health care), as well as those that have major corporate supporters
but no serious corporate opponents (the incredible waste in the
Pentagon budget).
So what would it take to get
BIG into the media? Probably no amount of spinning, compromising,
or appealing to corporate self-interest will do it. It's also
doubtful that the Bush Administration's PR approach -- blatant
lying -- will help.
A basic income guarantee is
not possible in the United States without serious media reform.
The corporate media holds a tight grip on our political agenda.
No one will ever be able to buy enough commercials for a BIG
to make it happen. No one will ever be able to come with a "spin"
on BIG brilliant enough to force the corporate media to sit up
and take notice.
What we need is diverse and
democratic media, media worthy of being considered a plural noun.
We need to continue building the movement for media reform through
Congress and the FCC. We need to restore some sort of fairness
doctrine. We need to strengthen limits on media ownership. We
need, ultimately, to divorce content providers from the controllers
of the media pipelines. We need to invest in truly public media
outlets, to support community-funded outlets. And we need to
make it much easier for new media outlets to get started.
But, more importantly, we need
to create our own media. Central to this -- because the labor
movement has the resources -- must be the restoration in this
country of significant labor media. A proposal for the development
of labor media into a force to be reckoned with can be found
on the website of the International Labor Communications Association
at http://ILCAonline.org>http://ILCAonline.org
.
All this, of course, amounts
to an incredibly ambitious agenda. Where do we start? How about
working to create an alliance between the living wage movement,
the media reform movement, and unions open to organizing at newspapers?
Imagine if we were to target large chains of small local newspapers
paying poverty wages and producing fourth-rate reporting. Imagine
if we built a community movement for a living wage for reporters.
We could focus on the link between low wages for reporters and
poor-quality reporting on the issues that community organizations
care about.
Imagine if then we used the
strength of the coalitions we've built to advance our political
agenda around issues like BIG. Improved local newspapers, I suspect,
would be far better read than our current major media outlets,
such as the ones in New York that will probably not notice the
USBIG conference this coming weekend.
David Swanson was communications coordinator for
ACORN from 2000 to 2003 and is now media coordinator for the
International Labor Communications Association. He can be reached
at: david@davidswanson.org
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