My Birthday
Like a fine LP, I am now a dizzy 33. However, I have so much to do today that I won't have the time to give any detailed and well-referenced responses and commentaries. Instead, I can give a few quick things to keep minds thinking:
1. Money saved from tax cuts in the last twenty years have not been used to update methods of production in the US. They have been used for personal luxury items. Problems of industrial production that were typical to the 1970s have yet to be solved. Any reform of current financial policies must make more use of tax incentives for investment in the real economy rather than simple increases of short-term consumption or in "paper" investments.
2. The energy industry is rife with corruption, be it American, British, French, ... . It part it is because it is the nature of the industry: producers aim at market domination, which requires unlimited supplies of energy. The corruption practiced by French oil companies in Iraq is hardly unique: one need only look at the relationships between Standard Oil and the Nigerian government or the Angolan government-French arms traders-Bush administrators triangle (so called Angolagate abroad, which doesn't get much attention in the US because it involves neither sex nor Democrats.) Domestically, the energy industry is pushing the Bush administration into repealing environmental legislation form even Nixon's administration. This legislation will keep old, polluting factories running throughout the South for decades (they have no other incentives to modernize.) They have also been involved in market manipulation (California brownouts.)
3. If the Democrats want seriously to challenge Bush in 2004, they must nominate John Edwards (Senator from South Carolina.) The Republicans have constructed a well-disciplined voting block that will not stray. Democrats, in response, must construct a united front of the left. They must forget trying to appeal to moderate republicans: they will still vote for Bush even if they disagree with him because they will not want to appear "liberal." They need someone who can bring the left together, someone who is critical of the right, not too conservative himself, and not too liberal. Edwards seems most able to be critical of the current administration without appearing too far to the left or too obscure or too confrontational (sorry, , Sen. Lieberman, Gov. Dean.) The focus of the primaries must be on how Democrats can defeat Bush.
Later this week I will write about religion and government in the US. Usually I would be supportive of some role for religious institutions, knowing what I know about how it functions in other countries. But I have read some disturbing things this week about how government funding (especially in Texas) has been used by religious institutions to expand proselytization without addressing the original reasons why those funds were granted in the first place. I have also developed some concerns that some religious institutions are not necessarily dedicated to improving living standards in the US.
