William Greider has long been one of my favorite muckraking writers and in his new article for The Nation, The New Colossus, he packs a wallop straight at the jaws of CEOs and investment bankers who think that changes forced on them in the wake of Enron and WorldCom are heading for the past. Instead, their new troubles are coming from an entirely new direction: state officials and union bosses who control massive retirement funds and aren’t afraid to use them.
From a different angle, Friedman’s latest (No Mullah Left Behind) offers a lever that meshes well with the action Greider discusses. Where does the money go when Americans fill up their cars, SUVs and pickup trucks? Among other places to the governments in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, which they tend to turn around and use against us. Decreasing our profligate consumption of petroleum would decrease their income and their ability to fund groups antithetical to our interests.
But are President Bush and his crew in DC working to strengthen our national security by developing meaningful alternative fuel source? No, because that would also take money out of the oil industry and that’s where Bush has his strongest backing and where many of his political appointees spent their careers. Can’t bite the hand that feeds him, can he?
Democrats can. If Howard Dean can use his new party chairmanship to push the policies developed by California State Treasurer Phil Angelides, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and others (this is from Greider’s piece) as one pincer and a well-thought out New Manhattan Project to develop new energy resources as the other, the Democratic Party may just nip this Radical Right neotheocracy in the bud.
BillSaysThis 