NP? The Wartime Opportunists

[Doug Millison]

The Wartime Opportunists
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

Make way for the wartime opportunists.

Corporate interests and their proxies are looking to
exploit the
September 11 tragedy to advance a self-serving agenda
that has nothing
to do with national security and everything to do with
corporate profits
and dangerous ideologies.

Fast track and the Free Trade Area of the Americas. A
corporate tax cut.
Oil drilling in Alaska. Star Wars. These are some of
the preposterous
"solutions" and responses to the terror attack offered
by corporate
mouthpieces.

No one has been more shameless in linking their agenda
to the terror
attack than U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick.
Writing in the
Washington Post last week, Zoellick proclaimed that
granting fast-track
trade negotiating authority to the president -- to
assist with the
ramming through Congress of a Free Trade Area of the
Americas, designed
to expand NAFTA to all of the Americas, among other
nefarious ends --
was the best way to respond to the September 11
tragedy.

"Earlier enemies learned that America is the arsenal
of democracy,"
Zoellick wrote, "Today's enemies will learn that
America is the economic
engine for freedom, opportunity and development. To
that end, U.S.
leadership in promoting the international economic and
trading system is
vital. Trade is about more than economic efficiency.
It promotes the
values at the heart of this protracted struggle."

No explanation from Zoellick about how adopting a
procedural rule
designed to limit Congressional debate on
controversial trade agreements
advances the democratic and rule-of-law values he says
the United States
must now project.

The administration has identified fast track as one of
the handful of
legislative priorities it hopes to see Congress enact
this year.

Getting fast track passed isn't big business's only
priority for the
shrinking legislative calendar. The Fortune 500 has
been whimpering
since George Bush was elected president and top
administration officials
told the business community to silence their demand
for corporate tax
cuts until after passage of the inequality-increasing
personal income
tax cut.

Even before the September 11 attack, business
interests and the anti-tax
ideologues were increasingly making noise that
corporate tax cuts were
the solution to the coming recession.

Now they are beginning to argue that capital gains tax
cuts and
corporate tax breaks are America's patriotic duty.

In releasing a study purporting to explain how a
capital gains cut would
spur economic growth, the National Taxpayers Union
(NTU) touted a
capital gains tax cut -- a tax break that exclusively
benefits the
wealthy -- as an anti-terrorism initiative. "By
reducing the rate at
which capital gains are taxed, President Bush and
Congress could help
revitalize the sagging economy and bring new revenues
to Washington --
decidedly aiding our war against terrorism," said NTU
director of
congressional relations Eric Schlecht.

Not wishing to be outdone, Senator Frank Murkowski,
R-Alaska, didn't
wait long to explain how the terror attack makes it
imperative to open
up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). "There
is no doubt that
at this time of national emergency, an expedited
energy-security bill
must be considered," the Alaska senator announced last
week. "Opening
ANWR will be a central element in finally reducing
this country's
dangerous overdependence on unstable foreign sources
of energy," he
said.

Neither Murkowski nor the oil companies pushing for
opening ANWR have
ever been able to offer a coherent explanation of how
using up U.S. oil
reserves heightens energy security. Security rests in
maintaining the
reserves. Real energy security and independence can
only come from
renewables (particularly solar and wind) -- where the
supply is
plentiful and infinitely renewing. Only a failure of
public and private
investment leaves the country (and the world) unable
to harvest
renewable energy efficiently.

And, of course, the purveyors of Star Wars couldn't
let the opportunity
pass them by. The Center for Security Policy --the
center of a web of
defense industry-backed think tanks and organizations
pushing for a
National Missile Defense program -- urged President
Bush in advance of
his address to Congress to announce that "this
Administration will use
every tool at its disposal to ensure that the
resources and latitude
needed to develop and deploy missile defenses are made
available."

A missile defense system -- even if it overcame the
technical obstacles
which have so far proved insurmountable, after
billions spent -- would
have done nothing to stop the September 11 attack. Nor
would it do
anything to stop any other conceivable terrorist
attack on the United
States, none of which involve might missile delivery
systems.

Opportunism and cynical manipulation of tragedy are
nothing new in
Washington. But the proposals to exploit the September
11 tragedy for
narrow corporate aims mark a new low.

The United States is emerging from a national mourning
period. Now is
the time to proceed with caution and care, as the
nation seeks to
address legitimate security concerns (e.g., airport
security) and tend
to victims of the attack. It is no time to rush
through proposals on
matters essentially unrelated to the attack,
especially damaging and
foolhardy proposals that have been unable to win
popular or
Congressional support when the public has had a chance
to consider them
dispassionately, and on the merits.


Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington,
D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington,
D.C.-based
Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of
Corporate Predators: The
Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy
(Monroe, Maine: Common
Courage Press, 1999).

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

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