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Paying
for our sins
Expanded from the 1-27-2008 Daily Sparks (Nev.) Tribune
Updated
1-28-2008
One of Cabela's head vampires is in town this weekend to gloat over his success at sucking millions in corporate welfare away from local parks, roads, schools, police and fire protection.
This grand opening deserves a cold shower. First, don't assume that the coming of two other major sports retailers in Sparks and south Reno will necessarily drive down prices. Does having a gasoline market dominated by a half-dozen oil companies work? We suffer instead from an oligopoly, a narrow number of suppliers controlling prices.
Next, don't delude yourself that the big boxes mean bargains. Wal-Mart is a case study of the use of clever loss leaders and store layouts to create the illusion of discounts.On his Jan. 18 PBS program, Bill Moyers interviewed Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston. Investigative reporter Johnston's new book (Free Lunch: How the wealthiest Americans enrich themselves at government expense and stick you with the bill) has an interesting revelation. Here's part of the transcript:
MOYERS: One of your most revealing stories in here for me is about the small merchant of a fishing and outdoor gear (store) who's put out of business by a big competitor who gets $32 million in subsidies from the local government.
JOHNSTON: Well, you know, if you walk into many of the big box retailers today, you have to pay sales tax at the cash register on whatever you buy. Well, in many of those stores, the government never gets the money. The owners of the stores get to keep it. And who are the big beneficiaries of that? The Walton family that owns Wal-Mart and the Cabela family who own Cabela's, which is a fin, feather, and fur outfitting club for fishermen and hunters. And in this little town — in the Poconos, 4,100 people — they came and said, "We want to build the world's largest outdoor store, 32 million dollars."And the local town fathers went for it because they said all these jobs it'll create and all this economic benefit. And Jim Weaknecht who runs this little tiny store that makes enough money that his wife can stay home and raise their children, he's outraged.
He goes, "Nobody gave me a subsidy. If I had gone to City Hall and said, 'Give me a million dollars,' they would have laughed at me." And, you know, he charged lower prices than Cabela's. They still ran him out of business. This little town gave the Cabela family the equivalent of about 11 years of the entire city budget for police and fixing the streets and everything else. And this is going on all across America.
MOYERS: Cabela promised jobs and more money flowing through the economy but that hasn't happened —
JOHNSTON: No, it hasn't happened. And, in fact, that's the argument made everywhere. What you're really doing is using this government subsidy to draw business away from the existing local merchants who are effectively being taxed to subsidize the newcomer.See cabellyup.com for continuing revelations of Cabela's depredations.
BUSHED. Former Reno Kazoo-Journal boss Ward Bushee is taking over the San Francisco Chronicle. I hope The City will help him recover his ethics. I confronted him on a 1998 KNPB TV-5 show about failing to inform his readers of the Gannett newspaper chain's conflict of interest with Union Pacific. At the same time, UP was vacuuming local taxpayer pockets to get a free railroad trench. Mr. Bushee said he didn't think his readers needed such information.
HAIRY CAREY DEPT. However you want to spell hara kiri, it still means suicide and the Democrats are proving their expertise once again.
Bill Maher was entirely correct last year when he told Jay Leno that Edwards/Obama would be a helluva ticket.
Months ago, I made the GOP a slight favorite to win the presidency. Right now, the leader is warmonger John McCain, a man who saw the horrors of war, but advocates it; who shopped states after Vietnam to settle in the one giving him the most likely chance of election to congress; who just switched his religion from Episcopal to Southern Baptist for obvious reasons — it paid off in South Carolina. (Keep the white sheets pressed.)
We forget that Bill Clinton never won a majority. Only the maverick candidacy of madcap Ross Perot allowed Bubba to prevail by plurality.
Sen. Obama may be a rock star, but found out in New Hampshire that racism is alive and well. Just before the NH vote, I reminded a longtime African-American officeholder of the five to 10 percent every black candidate must allow for whites who refuse to admit to a pollster that they would never vote for a black person.
My friend disagreed, stating that Obama had put the black/white gap to rest. Then came New Hampshire.
Poor John Edwards, we really screwed him over. He worked so hard in Nevada which rewarded him with only four percent. The Culinary Union did and didn't do what I feared. They endorsed Obama out of emotion but didn't do the advance work necessary to allow him to prevail. So Hillary won Las Vegas and the whole idea of the Nevada caucus — to make labor a kingmaker — failed miserably.
Predicting the crash for yearsMichael Moore said Bill Clinton served the fourth and fifth terms of the Reagan Administration. McCain may win the eighth.
The only silver lining: the next four years are going to be disastrous. We will pay for our sins. Witness the worldwide stock market crash hitting right now.
The next president will be the new Herbert Hoover. Better, perhaps, that it be a Republican so that maverick GOP author Kevin Phillips' 2000 prediction may come true: the restoration of a royal family usually leads to destruction of its power. He thus predicted the end of the Republican Party.
We are all paying the upfront price of the funeral right now.
America is being stirred with a long stick. The result will be the country continuing on the path it's been traveling for decades, breaking up into regions, as I've been preaching for 25 years.
We're in for a very bumpy ride.Be well. Raise hell.
NAOMIKLEIN.ORG: The Shock Doctrine Short Film
A Film by Alfonso Cuarón and Naomi Klein, directed by Jonás Cuarón
An official selection of the Toronto Film Festival
An official selection of the Venice Film Festival
The Shock Doctrine short film is cleared for Internet use but not for broadcast,
so feel free to share it with your friends.
NAOMI WOLF: Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps
There are some things common to every state that's made the transition to fascism. Author Naomi Wolf argues that all of them are present in America today.
Alternet 5-20-2007Johnson, Chalmers; REPUBLIC OR EMPIRE? A National Intelligence Estimate on the United States; Harper's magazine; January, 2007. I love it when heavy hitters validate what I've been saying for years in the tiny Sparks Tribune.
Barlett, Donald L. and Steele, James B.; America: What Went Wrong? (1992); America: Who Really Pays the Taxes? (1994); America: Who Stole the Dream? (1996) ; Andrews & McMeel/Universal Press Syndicate. For additional comments on the work of the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning team, use the NevadaLabor.com search engine and sweep for "Barlett."
Review of Alex Carey's Taking the Risk Out of Democracy:
Propaganda in the US and AustraliaThe Orwell Diversion by Alex Carey
Excerpted from the book available below
ORDER Taking the Risk Out of Democracy
Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty
By Alex Carey
Edited by Andrew Lohrey
Foreword by Noam Chomsky
University of Illinois Press
SEE ALSO: Lapham, Lewis H.; Tentacles of Rage: The Republican Propaganda Mill, A Brief History; Harper's Magazine cover article; September, 2004, page 32.
By one conservative estimate, the corporate right has spent about $3 billion over the past three decades manufacturing public opinion to suit big business goals. Lapham's number covered the early 1970's to the present day. Alex Carey noted that by 1948, anti- New Deal corporate propaganda expenditures had already reached $100 million per year, not adjusted for inflation, for advertising alone. (Carey, ibid; page 79)
Adjusted for inflation, that 1948 $100 million becomes $801,659,751.04 in 2005 dollars.
Conservatives Help Wal-Mart, and Vice Versa
As Wal-Mart struggles to rebut growing criticism, it has discovered a reliable ally: conservative research groups.
New York Times 9-8-2006; Free registration may be required.BARBWIRE: Labor Day '94: People vs. corporate con job, 9-4-94
Chilling forecasts from Alex CareyBARBWIRE: The Nevada Republican Party Becomes Communist, 3-30-97
A prescient Plato on the dangers of oligarchyThe sands of time do not cloud the long memories of the sheiks of Araby
Barbwire 9-10-2006
Rinfret, Pierre A.; Peace is Bullish; Look magazine, 5-31-1966
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The Dean's List
The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006
Copyright © 1982-2008 Andrew BarbanoAndrew Barbano is a 39-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and JoeNeal.org; a member of Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO, and the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Daily Sparks (Nev.) Tribune since 1988.
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