WILLIAM A NOTED REPORTER AND AUTHOR TELLS US HOW CORPORATIONS ARE DESTROYING THE AMERICAN ECONOMY AND WHAT WE CAN DO TO FIX IT.

from THE Q & A with William Greider interviewed by Mark Johnson
in HUSTLER Magazine – January 2010

William Greider is one of the experts who warned us ten years ago that our economy was headed into the shredder. A longtime observer of runaway capitalism, Greider has written several books and worked as a reporter for numerous newspapers and magazines, including the Washington Post and Rolling Stone. He is currently national affairs correspondent for The Nation.

During his 40-year career he has crossed paths with the country’s most powerful people. He has examined in detail how and why America went from a thriving democracy to a nation run by bankers. In his latest book—Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country —Greider maintains that we are at an epic turning point in our history. It is time for people to step up and reclaim their role as true citizens.

HUSTLER: How did you recognize early on that our economy was in deep trouble?

WILLIAM GREIDER: Ten years ago I wrote in my book One World Ready or Not that our [economic] system, despite all of its creative energies, was veering off-balance. The United States was playing buyer of last resort for everybody else. We had our arms wide open and accepted imports from everywhere when no one else would. Our multinational corporations were going into poorer countries, developing production there and shipping parts back into the U.S.
We now import four or five times more than we export. Because our production and jobs have been moving offshore, we don’t have the money to pay for the imports. We borrow the money from the people who are selling us stuff. There’s surplus production every year all around the world. Most countries won’t take it, either because they can’t afford it or because they just won’t let it in. The U.S., because we’re the big-hearted Goliath, says,“We’re for free trade; keep it coming.” The long-term consequences are the U.S. gets deeper and deeper in debt, and American workers suffer stagnant or falling wages because they’re competing with foreign low-wage workers.

Has this policy been pushed by the multinational corporations?

Absolutely. Both Democrats and Republicans have supported this in the belief that if our U.S. multinationals do well in the world, we’ll be okay. But it doesn’t work that way. The multinationals (whether you’re talking about General Electric or Microsoft or whomever) can do very well and actually hurt the United States in the process. As long as it was just T-shirts and cheap shoes, you could say, “That’s not going to make much difference.”

The reality is, we’re now getting some of the most advanced products and technology in the world out of places like China.We’re losing what businesspeople call “value added production.” The process of making a product produces high value added [for the producing country]. Most countries understand that they’ve got to hang on to that really valuable production and the jobs that go with it to maintain a prosperous middle class. Otherwise you sink lower and lower. Twenty years ago I talked to working guys in auto plants, and they told me this was happening to them. Blue-collar people understand this way better than the people who run the country.

How do you bring production back to the United States?

It starts in politics. You get a government and a political party that stands up and says to the American people, “We’re in a deep hole, and it’s getting deeper, and we cannot go on like this.” First, we’ve got to change our approach to the U.S. multinationals. We’re going to say to them, “Look, we’re not handing out tax breaks and other subsidies any longer. You have some obligations to the home country. We want you to be profitable, but you have to include the national interest in your business strategies.” If they don’t, we will reform the corporate income tax so that the companies that do better at retaining the jobs and keeping value added gain in our own home country will get a lower tax rate than companies simply moving it out the door.

How likely is that to happen with Congress in the pocket of Big Business?

Politicians are in line with the most powerful companies and financiers because they support globalization. However, in Congress there’s a growing nucleus of representatives who are mad because their constituents are mad. It’s just a start, but it’s not hopeless. As candidate for President, Barack Obama said that we’re going to stop rewarding the companies that simply move production overseas and start rewarding companies that do the best job of keeping it here in the U.S. with a modest tax incentive.

His idea doesn’t go far enough, but I’m encouraged he’s starting down that road. People should be banging on him right now saying, “Hey, you said this during the campaign. What are you doing about it?” The other thing we’ve got to do is say to the rest of the world, “We’ve been generously supporting the development of the global economy for years, but the whole system is going to come crashing down if the United States taps out. We’re going to put a cap on our trade deficits and gradually reduce it so we can come closer to something like a balanced trading system.”

What’s wrong with trade tariffs?

Nothing. Every country in the world uses them. I’m for a trading system that functions for poor people as well as the wealthy. When I started writing about this 20-plus years ago, a lot of people dismissed me as a fearmonger and a protectionist. Now the facts are so devastating that a lot of people who used to be cheerleaders for free trade are not so anxious to be identified with it.

I would put Obama in that category. He’s willing to acknowledge things are not working in America’s self-interest. But he’s not yet ready to step up and really forcefully address it. [He and his advisers] are blinded by the ideology that the world works better if government gets out of the way and lets business do its thing. That’s not only nonsense, it’s morally wrong. These same businesses siphon off taxpayer money, and the things they promised do not happen. When you ask Americans how they feel about corporations, an overwhelming consensus says corporations have too much power, and the government should get some control over them.

Why doesn’t the government do that?

Because those same corporations are manipulating elected politicians and financing their campaigns. The American people have a deeper understanding of this reality than they’re given credit for. I’m optimistic this is going to change, but it’s got to be bloody. The usual interests will just try to either stomp on people or brush them aside. Somebody ought to stand up and say, “I am proposing an amendment to the Constitution that clarifies once and for all: Corporations do not have the rights of people.” It would give you a fight for people to organize around.

Is our technology going overseas along with our jobs?

Yes. A good example is Boeing, which makes large-body commercial aircraft. They will contract out to scores of other countries: China, Indonesia, Europe, the Middle East, the whole list. They’ll say, “We want you to make the titanium alloy strut that holds up the engines on a 747, and we’ll show you how to make it. We’ll have guys in your plant, your foundry, monitoring you for quality because we can’t screw this up. This has got to work, because otherwise the plane will crash.” The Chinese will take instructions from the Americans, make that part, ship it to Seattle or Wichita, Kansas, where it is then installed in a Boeing assembly line and becomes part of the aircraft. They do that with hundreds of components. The most obvious reason is wages: It’s cheaper. But that’s not even the main motive for Boeing. Boeing wants to sell airplanes to those countries. China especially has a huge air-travel industry. So Boeing buys market share [meaning the ability to sell huge amounts of product in China] by trading away American jobs. I’ve had interviews with Boeing managers and strategists, and they’re pretty upfront about it. They say, “Look, if we don’t do this, they won’t buy our airplanes.”

The reason that we have to fight for both manufacturing and service jobs is because even the high-end technical, professional jobs are now being shipped overseas. Google and Microsoft are competing in China now. They’ve both opened big research centers there. The workers are cheaper, but they’re perfectly good engineers. Hundreds of big-name companies have traded technology to those developing countries in exchange for cheap labor and market access.

How did Singapore, a tiny city-state, get so good at making disc drives invented by IBM and other U.S. companies?

The answer is: IBM taught them, in return for tax subsidies and protection against wage increases [in Singapore].

How do we rein in the banks as well?

Obama should be using the government’s power to say, “Until we get out of this crisis, we’re in charge. We’re keeping you afloat with our loans. That gives us the power, and if we have to, we’ll pass a law to direct you and your behavior and cut out all the bullshit and get this credit system working again so that we can get a real economic recovery.” The banks are in trouble because they still have these huge portfolios of rotten assets. Nothing has happened to change that. The bankers know that if they do get back in trouble, the government has to come and save them again. It’s a one-way bet for them: Heads we win, and tails you lose.

How do you get out of this quickly rather than dragging it on for years?

You get these bad assets out of the banks so they can begin lending again. They didn’t do that because the bankers said, “Well, if the economy comes back, this stuff is going to be worth a lot of money again, and we don’t want to sell it cheap.” At that point, if the government had the balls, they would have grabbed these bankers by the collar and said, “You’re going to sell this stuff or we’re cutting off your water right now.” The government has them in a life-and-death situation, and Obama won’t use that.

How do we force politicians to keep their promises?

People have to create their own power and their own communication. That’s what the Internet is about. Ordinary Americans are learning to use these technologies for their own purposes. It means communicating with people they don’t even know, who may be on the other side of an issue, and spreading the word. Out of that can come organizations independent of both political parties. They have to be able to mobilize lots of people to do a jujitsu on the system. Jujitsu is when the little guy flips a big guy on his back. People can do that in the electoral arena if they’ve got the nerve.

The Democratic Party is supported by all kinds of groups—unions, environmentalists, consumer advocates, civil rights activists. But what these groups haven’t been able to do is punish the Democratic Party when it sells them out. They have to say, “You’re screwing us. We’re going to make a list of senators or House members [who are working against us].

Instead of handing over our money, we’re going to take some of it and run our own candidates against Democratic incumbents.” You can do that with a minor percentage of the vote if you’re willing to take on the big party and say we’ve had enough.

One guy I know is warning the Democrats that they’re going to have a political train wreck in the Congressional elections if they go ahead with the idea of taxing health benefits. One of the guys talking this up is Max Baucus, senator from Montana and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Must be a Republican, right? No, he’s a Democrat! His position goes against what Obama said during the campaign. It goes against basic fairness.

Anybody in a union knows they traded wage increases for better benefits. Along comes the government and pretends they’re getting this stuff for free.We have to say to the Democratic Party, “Don’t go down that road. If you do, you’re going to wind up where you did in 1994, when the Republicans took back the House of Representatives after 50 years.”

Ordinary people, both nonunion and union, can begin to provoke this. They can say to the unions [and other groups], “You come around and ask for money every year, but you won’t threaten the Democrats or members of Congress with retribution when they sell you out.” Nothing moves opinion in the Congress more reliably than members seeing a couple of their colleagues cut down out of the blue by something they didn’t take seriously.

People are always screaming about how influential the NRA [National Rifle Association] is. The NRA is influential because they play hardball. Every member of Congress, whether they’re far left or far right, understands that. The NRA will not forget when they’re crossed, and they’re effective. You don’t have to be a political party, you don’t have to be a labor union to play that kind of politics. I envision lots of what I call “independent formations.” Not political parties, not issue groups. They’re people together exercising their rights as citizens. It’s like guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare works not because the fighters are bigger or stronger, but because they pick their spots. They’re willing to shoot for the kneecaps.

What can the average person do in terms of forcing change?

Above all, trust your guts. Have faith in your basic convictions and tune out the propaganda that’s meant to manipulate your mind. I have a lot of faith in the capacity of Americans, regardless of their status, to think for themselves. They’ve been pushed around for so many years. Yes, they’re cynical; they don’t know who to trust; and so forth. The first step is for them to uncover that good stuff in themselves. As they do that, they don’t have to ask me or anyone else what to do. They’ll figure that out for themselves. I believe that deeply.
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IT’S TIME FOR AMERICANS TO TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY. HERE’S THE CLARION CALL THAT SET THE HUFFINGTON POST ABLAZE.

by Larry Flynt
from HUSTLER Magazine – January 2010

The American government—which we once called our government—has been taken over by Wall Street, the mega-corporations and the super-rich. They are the ones who decide our fate. It is this group of powerful elites, the people President Franklin D. Roosevelt called “economic royalists,” who choose our elected officials—indeed, our very form of government. Both Democrats and Republicans dance to the tune of their corporate masters. In America, corporations do not control the government. In America, corporations are the government.

This was never more obvious than with the Wall Street bailout, whereby the very corporations that caused the collapse of our economy were rewarded with taxpayer dollars. So arrogant, so smug were they that, without a moment’s hesitation, they took our money—yours and mine—to pay their executives multimillion-dollar bonuses, something they continue doing to this very day. They have no shame. They don’t care what you and I think about them. Henry Kissinger has been quoted as saying we’re “useless eaters.”

But, you say, we have elected a candidate of change. To which I respond: Do these words of President Obama sound like change?

“A culture of irresponsibility took root, from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street.” There it is.   Right there. We are Main Street. We must, according to our President, share the blame. He went on to say: “And a regulatory regime basically crafted in the wake of a 20th-century economic crisis—the Great Depression—was overwhelmed by the speed, scope and sophistication of a 21st-century global economy.”

This is nonsense.

The reason Wall Street was able to game the system the way it did—knowing that they would become rich at the expense of the American people (oh, yes, they most certainly knew that)—was because the financial elite had bribed our legislators to roll back the protections enacted after the Stock Market Crash of 1929.

Congress gutted the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial lending banks from investment banks, and passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which allowed for self-regulation with no oversight. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently revised its rules to allow for even less oversight—and we’ve all seen how well that worked out. To date, no serious legislation has been offered by the Obama Administration to correct these problems. Instead, Obama wants to increase the oversight power of the Federal Reserve. Never mind that it already had significant oversight power before our most recent economic meltdown yet failed to take action.

Never mind that the Fed is not a government agency but a cartel of private bankers that cannot be held accountable by Washington. Whatever the Fed does with these supposed new oversight powers will be behind closed doors.

Obama’s failure to act sends one message loud and clear: He cannot stand up to the powerful Wall Street interests that supplied the bulk of his campaign money for the 2008 election. Nor, for that matter, can Congress, for much the same reason.

Consider what multibillionaire banker David Rockefeller wrote in his 2002 memoirs: “Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure— one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”

Read Rockefeller’s words again. He actually admits to working against the “best interests of the United States.”

Need more? Here’s what Rockefeller said in 1994 at a U.N. dinner: “We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis, and the nations will accept the New World Order.” They’re gaming us. Our country has been stolen from us. Journalist Matt Taibbi, writing in Rolling Stone, notes that esteemed economist John Kenneth Galbraith laid the 1929 crash at the feet of banking giant Goldman Sachs. Taibbi goes on to say that Goldman Sachs has been behind every other economic downturn as well, including the most recent one. As if that wasn’t enough, Goldman Sachs even had a hand in pushing gas prices up to $4 a gallon.

The problem with bankers is longstanding. Here’s what one of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, had to say about them: “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation, and then by deflation, the banks and the corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

We all know that the first American Revolution officially began in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. Less well known is that the single strongest motivating factor for revolution was the colonists’ attempt to free themselves from the Bank of England. But how many of you know about the second revolution, referred to by historians as Shays’ Rebellion? It took place in 1786-87, and once again the banks were the cause. This time they were putting the screws to America’s farmers.

Daniel Shays was a farmer in western Massachusetts. Like many other farmers of the day, he was being driven into bankruptcy by the banks’ predatory lending practices. (Sound familiar?) Rallying other farmers to his side, Shays led his rebels in an attack on the courts and the local armory. The rebellion itself failed, but a message had been sent: The bankers (and the politicians who supported them) ultimately backed off. As Thomas Jefferson famously quipped in regard to the insurrection: “A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Perhaps it’s time to consider that option once again.

I’m calling for a national strike, one designed to close the country down for a day. The intent? Real campaignfinance reform and strong restrictions on lobbying. Because nothing will change until we take corporate money out of politics. Nothing will improve until our politicians are once again answerable to their constituents, not the rich and powerful.

Let’s set a date. No one goes to work. No one buys anything. And if that isn’t effective—if the politicians ignore us—we do it again. And again. And again.

The real war is not between the Left and the Right. It is between the average American and the ruling class. If we come together on this single issue, everything else will resolve itself. It’s time we took back our government from those who would make us their slaves.

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Thousands of Americans have responded to this article since it first appeared on Huffington Post. To see their comments go to HuffingtonPost.com.

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Asshole of the Month from HUSTLER Magazine -December 2009

Honestly, we’re not sure who the real Asshole should be—Alexia Kelley or President Obama for appointing her to head the Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

We understand Obama’s thing about bringing political opponents into his government, à la Abraham Lincoln, but come on! Kelley, an antichoice zealot, will have the power to reduce abortion access in an agency charged with expanding it, or at least facilitating it. Given that, you might think Obama should be our nominee for Asshole of the Month. But since we still want to give the Prez time to prove himself, we’ll focus on the holier-than-thou Kelley.

As founder of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG), Kelley is not just antiabortion but also anti-contraception. Hello? If you are against abortions, shouldn’t you be for birth control? Most mainstream Catholics have dismissed anti-contraception church doctrine as a quaint, unsophisticated relic of the Middle Ages.

Not Kelley. According to blogger Francis Kissling, Kelley is so anti-choice, she comes across as “more Catholic than the Pope.” While the CACG claims its agenda is “seeking common ground” with those in favor of choice, what’s clear is that there isn’t a lot of real estate to stand on.

Kelley’s way of reducing the abortion rate, for example, is to pay pregnant women to go fullterm. That includes funding programs for job creation, primary and prenatal healthcare and nutrition. But Kelley’s study, which purported to show a reduction in abortions as the result of such programs, has been largely discredited.

Logic alone, it would seem, negates Kelley’s position on how to reduce abortions. How can you strive to reduce abortions while at the same time oppose comprehensive sex education? It stands to reason that if you provide information on sexual reproduction, women will be better able to avoid unwanted pregnancies. But, gosh, that would mean disseminating information on contraception, wouldn’t it? And that’s against Kelley’s beliefs as a Catholic.

Just look at what the CACG has to say about abortion: “We support full legal protection for unborn children as a requirement of justice and as a matter of essential human rights.” Is Kelley the ideal person to hold a “faithbased” government position? Or should Obama have appointed someone from, say, Catholics for Choice, a progressive organization that’s been around far longer than the CACG?

Let’s examine the root of Kelley’s beliefs: Catholicism itself. Adherents are told that the Pope is infallible. So if he says abortion is wrong, then it must, perforce, be wrong. Someone who is infallible, by definition, can’t be wrong—the 1992 pardoning (or absolution) of Galileo not withstanding. Damn that Galileo with his scientific trickery about the Earth not being the center of the universe! Damn those telescopes! And, of course, the Vatican wasn’t wrong to blame the death of Jesus on the Jews, setting in motion centuries of anti-Semitic violence that led directly to the Holocaust in Nazi Germany—and the deaths of six million Jews. Nor was the Vatican wrong during the Spanish Inquisition when countless “heretics” were tortured to death. And how about its claim that all non-Catholics are going to hell? Could all that be wrong? No! Impossible! Unless, of course, the Catholic Church has, throughout history, zealously embraced stupidity and ignorance. Which is more likely? Infallible? Stupid?

The church seems to agree with the latter, since it has admitted those aforementioned precepts were wrong. Probably some heavenly static on the direct line to God. And let’s not get into that nastiness about the Vatican’s protection of pedophile priests.

Regarding abortions, Kelley maintains that this time the Pope is most certainly correct. Abortion is wrong; birth control is wrong; sex education is wrong. The Pope couldn’t be blowing smoke up our ass again, could he? But what about global warming? Overpopulation? That couldn’t possibly be a valid reason for birth control, could it? (It’s not okay to abort a zygote, but apparently it is okay to abort all life on our planet.) And what about those who choose abortion because they can’t afford to provide the child with a good home? Does Kelley plan on providing cash to such women after they give birth?

More than anything, however, we wonder by what right Kelley thinks she should impose her religious beliefs on everyone else. Oh, yeah, by divine right taken from a book written by people who thought that the world was flat and that if you could throw a stone high enough, you would break the sky.

Since Kelley’s religious beliefs are so much a part of her life, it’s only fair to ask how she found Catholicism.Was it by thoroughly investigating every spiritual philosophy? Or was it a sudden moment of blinding insight after years of searching, introspection and meditation? Oh, that’s right. Kelley was born into it! It’s so much easier that way.You believe what your parents believe. You know, the more we think about it, the more convinced we are that Kelley is the right choice for Asshole of the Month.

But what about Obama? He’s not Catholic. It’s worth noting, though, that the CACG is generally credited with pushing the conservative voters of Kansas into electing Democrat Kathleen Sebelius governor in 2006. (She’s now Secretary of Health and Human Services.) The CACG is also believed to have helped Obama pull in Catholic voters. Could the Sebelius and Kelley appointments be political payback? Can you say business as usual?
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