2008 Woodie Awards
This American Crucible
This Monkey's Gone to Heaven
Kyle West
Issue date: 2/8/08 Section: Features
As the Pixies once said in a noisy garage, "this monkey's gone to heaven." Though they were an obscure band in the late eighties, they nonetheless made a good point. Our glorious leader, Mr. President Bush, tried to shuffle out of office on a positive note, but nobody in the television audiencereally paid much attention. Thanks to the legacy of the only credible aristocratic American family, the sensational senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), announced his endorsement of Barack Obama just an hour before Bush spoke to Congress on Jan. 28.
In the long wait before Bush spoke, those wonderful CNN commentators spent considerable time discussing the Kennedy endorsement, as well as Obama's failure to acknowledge Hillary Clinton. This stole more thunder from Bush, which unfortunately meant that no one really paid a lot of attention to what the President said. While most of it was standard nationalistic drivel, some rang as harshly as a cheese grater on my mind. First off, Bush spent a great deal of time talking about the need for Congress to trust people with their money. Imploring them to trust in "expanding consumer choice," Bush implied that privatization is the key to improving the economy. Now, this sounds like a good idea, doesn't it? Privatization means more business taking the place of government programs, but while this will create jobs and stimulate the economy at first, the lasting implications are a death knell to the middle class.
That's because the more you deregulate and privatize government programs and bodies, like the FCC, the more you allow big business to further monopolize the economy, choking the viability of successful small businesses, the driving forces behind a powerful economy. This also gives big business another foothold in government. Because of Ronald Reagan's deregulation of the FCC, monopolies like Clear Channel have been able to buy up almost every independent radio station in America. Because of privatization and deregulation, the American media is now run by five mega-corporations, instead of the 55 corporations that entertained America during the 1950s. Considering that the average American has some amount of credit card debit and the ultra-commercial culture we live in, trusting people with their money by privatizing Social Security and other government programs will only drain money away from the people and into the hands of the corporations. Personally, I don't want to live in an oligarchy, I don't want to be run by a Corporation telling me I need it.
In the long wait before Bush spoke, those wonderful CNN commentators spent considerable time discussing the Kennedy endorsement, as well as Obama's failure to acknowledge Hillary Clinton. This stole more thunder from Bush, which unfortunately meant that no one really paid a lot of attention to what the President said. While most of it was standard nationalistic drivel, some rang as harshly as a cheese grater on my mind. First off, Bush spent a great deal of time talking about the need for Congress to trust people with their money. Imploring them to trust in "expanding consumer choice," Bush implied that privatization is the key to improving the economy. Now, this sounds like a good idea, doesn't it? Privatization means more business taking the place of government programs, but while this will create jobs and stimulate the economy at first, the lasting implications are a death knell to the middle class.
That's because the more you deregulate and privatize government programs and bodies, like the FCC, the more you allow big business to further monopolize the economy, choking the viability of successful small businesses, the driving forces behind a powerful economy. This also gives big business another foothold in government. Because of Ronald Reagan's deregulation of the FCC, monopolies like Clear Channel have been able to buy up almost every independent radio station in America. Because of privatization and deregulation, the American media is now run by five mega-corporations, instead of the 55 corporations that entertained America during the 1950s. Considering that the average American has some amount of credit card debit and the ultra-commercial culture we live in, trusting people with their money by privatizing Social Security and other government programs will only drain money away from the people and into the hands of the corporations. Personally, I don't want to live in an oligarchy, I don't want to be run by a Corporation telling me I need it.
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