Return with us once again to those distant days of 2000, when the Republican presidential ticket – AKA “Bigtime” – stumped across the country, promising voters that, if elected, candidates George Bush and Dick Cheney would use the skills they’d acquired as businessmen to run the country. Chalk one up for promises kept.
Since 1980, it has been a Republican mantra that local, state and federal governments would be more efficient if they were run like businesses. The recitation went like this: “The problem with government is, there’s no accountability. In the business world, if a CEO doesn’t show a profit, he knows he won’t be CEO much longer. Accountability is built into the system.”
We all know that’s wrong. If the company fails to show a profit, the CEO cooks the books to create an illusion of profit, then cashes out his stock options, deposits his bonus in an offshore bank and moves on to a new company before anyone gets wise.
Of course, all lies are eventually revealed and that’s what we’re living through now. We know who some of the bad actors are (the full list of dramatis personae will be much longer) but no one has yet been convicted. They broke the law, they got the money and they got away. Two of them are sitting in the White House.
The chumps, the suckers who got left holding the bag are the employees, the shareholders and the vendors who dealt with the now bankrupted corporate leviathans. Imagine you’re a janitor at the custodial company that cleaned the offices at WorldCom. Guess how long you’ll have to wait in line for the money you’re owed.
Meanwhile, the leaders of the Bush-Cheney gang are holed up in their Pennsylvania Avenue lair. Take a moment to ponder the recently uncovered corporate calamities, with particular emphasis on Harken Energy and Halliburton, then think about the way the national economy has been run since Butch and Sundance showed in DC.
As promised, the techniques of business have been applied to government, with similar results and just as much accountability. In business, the top executives get bloated salaries, bonuses and stock options. In government, the wealthiest one percent of Americans gets a heaping platter of tax cuts. First the corporate pigs get fat by indulging in white-collar crime, the George and Dick reward them some more.
In business, so-called aggressive accounting technologies record non-existent customers, non-existent sales and non-existent profits. It’s called fraud when poor people do it. In government, we’re told we can increase defense spending, increase education spending, save Medicare and Social Security – even while we defund Social Security by privatizing it – and at the same time cut taxes, especially for the rich.
The stock market plunges down, down, down and analysts say investors lack confidence. I say it’s just an outbreak of remedial arithmetic.
In both business and government, the looters and pillagers at the top of the pyramid planned to get away before the full extent of their deeds became apparent. Social Security and Medicare will not collapse during the current administration; tax cuts will not suck the Treasury dry for another ten years.
In government, as in business, it’s the little guys who suffer. State and local governments are draining down their rainy day funds. The working and middle classes are still paying more than their fair share of taxes, even as they lose their jobs.
Say what you will about Bill Clinton, he left us a budget surplus. Less than two years later, the federal government is projecting at least a decade of deficits.
Unlike Zapata, Spectrum Seven and Harken Energy, li’l Georgie can’t expect Daddy’s pals to bail him out of this one.
Business as Usual
Return with us once again to those distant days of 2000, when the Republican presidential ticket – AKA “Bigtime” – stumped across the country, promising voters that, if elected, candidates George Bush and Dick Cheney would use the skills they’d acquired as businessmen to run the country. Chalk one up for promises kept.
Since 1980, it has been a Republican mantra that local, state and federal governments would be more efficient if they were run like businesses. The recitation went like this: “The problem with government is, there’s no accountability. In the business world, if a CEO doesn’t show a profit, he knows he won’t be CEO much longer. Accountability is built into the system.”
We all know that’s wrong. If the company fails to show a profit, the CEO cooks the books to create an illusion of profit, then cashes out his stock options, deposits his bonus in an offshore bank and moves on to a new company before anyone gets wise.
Of course, all lies are eventually revealed and that’s what we’re living through now. We know who some of the bad actors are (the full list of dramatis personae will be much longer) but no one has yet been convicted. They broke the law, they got the money and they got away. Two of them are sitting in the White House.
The chumps, the suckers who got left holding the bag are the employees, the shareholders and the vendors who dealt with the now bankrupted corporate leviathans. Imagine you’re a janitor at the custodial company that cleaned the offices at WorldCom. Guess how long you’ll have to wait in line for the money you’re owed.
Meanwhile, the leaders of the Bush-Cheney gang are holed up in their Pennsylvania Avenue lair. Take a moment to ponder the recently uncovered corporate calamities, with particular emphasis on Harken Energy and Halliburton, then think about the way the national economy has been run since Butch and Sundance showed in DC.
As promised, the techniques of business have been applied to government, with similar results and just as much accountability. In business, the top executives get bloated salaries, bonuses and stock options. In government, the wealthiest one percent of Americans gets a heaping platter of tax cuts. First the corporate pigs get fat by indulging in white-collar crime, the George and Dick reward them some more.
In business, so-called aggressive accounting technologies record non-existent customers, non-existent sales and non-existent profits. It’s called fraud when poor people do it. In government, we’re told we can increase defense spending, increase education spending, save Medicare and Social Security – even while we defund Social Security by privatizing it – and at the same time cut taxes, especially for the rich.
The stock market plunges down, down, down and analysts say investors lack confidence. I say it’s just an outbreak of remedial arithmetic.
In both business and government, the looters and pillagers at the top of the pyramid planned to get away before the full extent of their deeds became apparent. Social Security and Medicare will not collapse during the current administration; tax cuts will not suck the Treasury dry for another ten years.
In government, as in business, it’s the little guys who suffer. State and local governments are draining down their rainy day funds. The working and middle classes are still paying more than their fair share of taxes, even as they lose their jobs.
Say what you will about Bill Clinton, he left us a budget surplus. Less than two years later, the federal government is projecting at least a decade of deficits.
Unlike Zapata, Spectrum Seven and Harken Energy, li’l Georgie can’t expect Daddy’s pals to bail him out of this one.