The New Political Environment

By Nancy Milio. Transcribed by Marnie Clark, with suggestions by Curt Torell
A talk given at the Chapel Hill Friends Meeting 11/28/04
Revised 12/8/04

We said this was to be a historic election. It was. Now we have something very new to deal with. The President promised us, and believes he has a mandate for, the "Ownership Society". I think you will find that it will be a "You're on your own society." The Administration has moved very quickly to institutionalize the ideologies of the groups that brought it to power. One, the militant neocon ideology and the other, the right-wing fundamentalist ideology. What I want to do is go through that as well as well as to suggest the constraints. (I don‘t really believe that they're going to be able to do all they'd like) And suggest the hints of those constraints pushing against the President that we get in the new Omnibus Appropriations Bill. And also where we are and what FCNL and Quakers and allies will do in the years to come.

First, I came across this quote, and I think you will catch the significance of these two quotations: "Our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy." That is Justice Robert Jackson who was the American Prosecutor at Nuremberg after World War II. "It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law because the goal of those that think international law really means anything are those who want to constrict the United States." That is John Bolton, 50 years later, who has been Assistant Secretary for Arms Reduction at the State Department and is thought to be the one who will be named Deputy Secretary of the State Department, second only to Condoleezza Rice. He is so virulent that he was taken out of the negotiations with North Korea. He is the one who negotiated 90 separate agreements with countries threatening them with loss of aid if they did not exempt the US from the International Criminal Court. That's how he spent his time in the last 4 years.

I think the contrast in the two statements is very interesting and instructive. But what the Administration is doing and really for the first time in many decades, at least in modern times, and to the extent they're doing it, is to move the political ideologists into positions of prime importance in the bureaucracy. Namely, of course with Condoleezza Rice at State, but also Alfredo Gonzales in the Dept of Justice as well as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Feith and those guys in the Dept of Defense, all under the tutelage of Dick Cheney and his aides.

But in addition to that, they will be moving staff of the National Security Council who are essentially?they are supposed to be?experts but they have also been framing policy in political terms under Karl Rove, the President's chief political advisor. They will be moving those people into the State Dept. That means the professionals at the State Dept will be set aside. They can't fire them but they will shift them out of the way. You have a new person coming into the Dept of Education with the privatizing, ideological picture there, among others that are coming into the Cabinet. You have a structure of politically oriented people instead of people who are supposed to be able to produce expert advice which, of course, the President can always refuse and it's his responsibility and right to do if he doesn't find it acceptable. But in this case the political ideologues are in the position of experts and what this means is that there are fewer and fewer tools, mechanisms, for negotiation, for compromise, for the availability of alternative views of reality.

The same, unfortunately?and this is really, in modern times, unique?is true in the Senate. The Senate has always prided itself on deliberation, fairness, collegiality and all that. Not so now. Not only have the Democrats, as the opposition, been and will increasingly be, excluded from the deliberations either before or after the policy positions have been decided. For the first time, the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, has been given the power to name the chairman of all committees and subcommittees, making them all beholden to him. That's just like the House since Newt Gingrich days and of course in the House now, in which the Leader, Tom Delay, can "serve" even if he gets indicted. They've given him that prerogative. So we're really all set for these people to do what they want. I must not forget, of course, Porter Goss, of CIA, who has told his staff he doesn't want folks there who won't support the Administration and its policies.

That pattern just gets repeated throughout the naming of other important slots and, of course, the Judiciary, which I think will have an opening very soon, because of Rehnquist, who is very, very sick. And I think it is irresponsible of him to be making decisions without hearing the arguments in given cases. He is making decisions from home, but he is not there to hear the arguments in court.

So much for that institutionalization of the Neocons. Another report has recently been rendered by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, which has been tracking and thoroughly reporting (something like 150 pages) on what it calls a "parallel government," whose goal is to penetrate agency operations to enlist, equip, enable, empower, and expand faith-based organizations in federal social and health services. Now you've heard me talk about the Faith-Based Initiative and its Offices in ten Departments and large agencies of government, but Rockefeller has gone into a great deal more depth and investigation of things I had no inkling of and that no one could have known because the FB-I Program is not being monitored.

For example, there is now a national clearinghouse out of the White House to gather all information that the churches - these are, it says, "faith-based organizations" but really they are fundamentalist churches, evangelical churches, mainly - how they can get federal money. They have developed a catalog of $50 billion worth of government programs that these organizations can get, including training seminars that show them how to do it. And they have guides for pastors as to how to deal with HIV and AIDS (without condoms of course).

Except I want to mention the new things. There is something called the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services. It's very important with tobacco and drugs and alcohol issues. As of now, you no longer need to be a medical professional in order to treat people. That in effect means the churches can get this money and treat people in any of these areas. That's a lot of money and a lot of non-expertise.

I want to say that I don't think that most of the people right on the line? you know, the ordinary people who sit in the pews? are disingenuous at all. I'm not suggesting that. But I am suggesting that there is a political agenda behind this, of financing a whole constituency of leadership in the churches and people who control these programs and the intermediaries that I'll tell you about, that have political ends to support this right wing, to ensure their continued political support of Republicans and the right-wing end of the Republican party, which is now the majority.

Again, in terms of abstinence education? and this, just from a purely professional point of view, I think is unconscionable? they have tripled the amount of money going for abstinence education. So they don't talk about condoms; they talk about abstinence only as the way to prevent HIV and AIDS, which is true but it's just not real. And what's happened is that for the first time in these health education programs, more of the funds are going to faith-based groups than to secular nongovernmental organizations. This is extraordinary and for the first time they have excluded any of what we call "outcomes evaluation." Nobody has to prove that doing it this way is better than doing it some other way. Is it worse, is it better, is it safe? Now, everybody in the health field has worked for decades to get outcomes research; in every other field of health you attempt to do outcomes evaluation. They don't have to do it. So there's no accountability even in a professional sense. In addition to that, they're putting in $7 million to develop pregnancy crisis centers, which means when girls get pregnant, we tell them, "Don't think about abortion. Adopt the baby out."

And then the Rockefeller Institute couldn't find out who reviews these grants in order to approve them, so they had to go through Freedom of Information Act procedures. What they found was that the people who review the grants, unlike every other kind of health and social welfare program that has to compete for monies, they have evangelical groups reviewing the grants? not experts, not Planned Parenthood, not the Guttmacher Institute, not health education organizations that are expert in sex education and have been doing it for decades and have a wonderful reputation. It's groups like the Family Research Council, which is extreme right wing; the Christian Coalition, the True Values Association, Summit Ministries (headed by the Watergate ex-convict, Charles Colson) that are reviewing grants.

HUD is now giving a third of its grants to faith-based organizations, and in one training session for the faith-based crowd, they used the burning bush as the logo, and one of the federal trainers led the group in gospel songs. Now I love gospel songs in another setting. I don't see it in a federal training seminar. I think it's wrong for the Feds to be doing that.

So this is what's happening, but nobody knows about it. It's never been reported anywhere because you don't have easy access to this information. Similarly with US AID, the Agency for International Development. They have a program opposing human slavery, which means taking especially girls and using them as sex slaves. So these AID agency men? and there's an evangelical in charge of the anti-slavery program? are giving money to the churches so they can teach these young girls to abstain, but they don't teach them about, and they don't want to give out, condoms because they say it's promoting prostitution. And AID is consequently under-funding the secular organizations that have been working with these girls for years. On the one hand, you're weakening the secular structures and you're building up the financing of the religious structures whose strategies are simply not of this world.

Now also, more of the anti-HIV/AIDS monies, the US global program monies for addressing AIDS issues, which are huge problems, are going?most of it?to faith-based organizations, including to something called (this is a new one on me) Operation Blessings International. This is a newly formed intermediary group started by the evangelical preacher, Pat Robertson (you know Pat Robertson!). He's also getting money from the Bush Compassion Capital Fund, which has quintupled since 2001. These are funds for capital expenses essentially for churches so they can provide social and health services; but they can also use the same buildings and facilities, computers, and so on, for their religious purposes. These intermediary groups are wonderful because Roberson has got $11 million that he can deal out to churches that he likes and there's no accountability of individual churches: they do not have to report what they do or how they do it in the way other non-profits must do.

Just a few more agencies:

The EPA now has a faith-based program. Also, FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Administration, the Small Business Administration, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac: together they finance practically all of the housing in the country. FHA as well. The National Credit Union, FDIC, the Social Security Administration?all have faith-based programs and are giving money out somehow to faith-based organizations. That's the point of the parallel government: unaccountable, uninformative, and unevaluated.

So that's my point: We have the institutionalization of the right-wing fundamentalists in the government. And this has already happened before George Bush felt he had a mandate.

I have to tell you too: in the National Park Service in the Grand Canyon, in their gift shop, they have a book on how the world was created in a few thousand years, published by fundamentalists. The grandeur of the Grand Canyon! So now they have Creationists selling their books in the National Park Service Book Store.

Outside of the government, supporting all this and urging the administration on, some of you may know the Center for Security Policy, Frank Gaffny. He's been an extreme right-wing hawk for a long time. Within 3 days of the election, he put out the other end of the right-wing agenda, as to what should be accomplished in the next four years, including regime change in Iran and North Korea, the destruction of safe havens for the insurgents in Iraq, and missile defense at sea, on land, and in space! And I'll say right at this point: in the omnibus appropriations bill that was passed, the only agency that got a real increase? 5% when every other agency got 1% or less or was cut? was NASA, the purpose being almost a billion dollars to start the Mars Program, which I think is not because the administration loves science and wants to explore the universe but really to develop space weapons. That will be their cover.

A couple of the other things that Frank Gaffny and his crowd (whose Board members have included Rumsfeld and Cheney and Wolfowitz and all the rest of them) call for, includes opposing countries like Germany and France and any other international institution that thwarts American expansion, and also to face off China and Russia if they dare to worsen our trade deficit or move forward in weapons development. The same with "anti-American" governments in Latin America?Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela. Then there's a new Committee on the Present Danger started up by the same crowd, who feel we are in World War IV against "Islamo-Fascism" worldwide.

When I used to hear these things, I didn't pay any attention because they sounded so extreme. But we've got it now. So I think they need to be taken seriously. Finally, Jerry Falwell has developed a new (and this again, just within weeks) Faith and Values Coalition with all the usual suspects on his Board. Their aim is to get anti-abortion judges on the bench, including the Supreme Court, get the gay marriage ban passed as a constitutional amendment, and support the next Republican president in 2008. And they've got lots of money to do it.

So that's the lay of the land? the new things.

Well, can it happen? Are there constraints? Yes, except they may come from the really most remote sources. I would say world lenders are going to be a major constraint. Of course, the Administration won't admit it, but it's true, because to do a lot of this aggressive policy, they need to continue to seek more money, and with it, more debt. If George Bush does his permanent cuts in taxes, including the estate tax, the deficit will be so terrible that the Asians, who are financing our debt, will pause a bit , and our trade deficit is really not going to get any better either. The Republicans had to raise the debt ceiling after the election from $7.3 to $8.2 billion. Consider the additional $4.4 Trillion that will be the cost of making the income and estate tax cuts permanent, another $2.2 trillion, which is what it will cost if you start privatizing Social Security over 10 years. Think about that. This will place huge pressures on the federal budget (especially domestic people programs), ballooning the deficits and debt, and requiring ever more foreign credit. Today foreign creditors hold 40% of America's debt, mainly China, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea are our fiscal saviors. One of their more recently acquired US assets are the very foundation of "The American Dream": the federal home mortgage bonds. Of course, when these troubles are felt by most of us, Mr. Bush will be out of office, so he can watch the troubles from beyond the Oval Office.

So I really think that, while it may not phase George Bush because he thinks God is going to take care of him in everything, there are Republicans in the Senate who are a little more reality oriented and still are conservative in the sense that they don't like deficits. As a matter of fact, that is the second level of restraint. Many of the Republicans in the Congress feel that they have given up a lot to let this president get his way in order to get reelected, because they wanted to be reelected too. And they're ready now to re-equalize power between the Congress and the President. They've toed the line since 9/11 and they're tired of it.

Now that means of course, the Republican Leadership wants to control things. They don't care about an opposition: They don't care about the democratic thing in this country, about minority voices having some say, like compromise. They don't care about Democrats at all. In fact, Senate Republican Leaders want to limit the filibuster as a last resort tool for the Democrats. What they do care about is their own power and they're tired of letting Karl Rove call all the shots. They swallowed a couple of items in legislation that they didn't like, like the Medicare Prescription Drugs and the No Child Left Behind Act. In fact they got some vengeance in this Appropriations Bill that will be finalized in a week. They extended the Bill for child testing but at the same time, they cut funds for poor schools and special education. So they're happy to tell you how bad you are and let you fail but they're not going to help you get better.

There are now 30,000 failed schools. That means all the parents in those schools can take their vouchers and go to private schools. They can go to religious schools and any other private school they can get into. And under the Administration's interpretation of the law, if you have a voucher and you go to a private place, that institution, whatever it is, does not have to abide by federal Civil Rights constraints. With any other federal money, if you have a grant or a loan or whatever, you of course have to abide by the Constitution, but if you have a voucher you're in the private sector, and you don't have to: You may discriminate in hiring; you may discriminate in religious teaching. You can discriminate by sexual orientation, race, whatever you want, if you justify it as your religious belief. So there's going to be more of that.

As a matter of fact, a new study came out on charter schools, which the failed schools are slated to become: Take them out of the public school system and make them things unto themselves. There was a report done under the auspices of the Department of Education which they didn't report because it showed that charter schools weren't doing as well as public schools. The only way that people found out about it was that it was leaked to the New York Times and then it had to be made public.

So that's the direction education is going and Bush has his long-time close advisor as Secretary of Education to pursue subtle privatization.

Republicans in the Congress are not so happy about the "Ownership Society" if it means more deficits. That's where we'll hear more from them as well as public lenders. They're also a bit leery about privatizing Social Security because they know there are people left in this country who like Social Security.

So we may see some objections there as well as in immigration reform and even tax reform. Tax reform, of course in the eyes of George W. Bush, is either a flat tax or a consumption tax, a sales tax, both of which are terribly regressive. So there's going to be a push back there.

Finally, The New York Times just did a poll? after the election? where Americans, a plurality of Americans, feel that Bush is going to divide us more. A majority on each side of the blue and red divide believe that the other side doesn't share the same values they do, which is not good. At the same time, a majority opposes a gay marriage ban. They think the rich ought to pay more taxes. They think that business has too much influence in government. That's a plus in terms of a germ of support for alternative views.

I just want to say a few more things about this Omnibus Appropriation Bill. As some of you know, especially if you happened to see my letter in the News and Observer a couple of days ago, there was hidden in 3600 pages of this legislation a clause that in effect said that health care providers don't have to provide abortions to women who request them and they won't lose their federal funding. Always before, they could refuse to do it but would lose their federal health funding. Now they won't. So in effect they take choice away from women and give it to providers, whether they're religious institutions or not. Senator Harkin said he would in the next Congress introduce a resolution reaffirming Roe v Wade. That will be a very interesting discussion to hear.

On our side, and FCNL was very happy about this, there were no funds appropriated for the Bunker Buster, the big bomb that penetrates with its nuclear warhead to get whatever is hidden deep below ground there. That's a plus. On the other hand, there were monies but not as much as Bush wanted, for developing a nuclear weapons testing site in Nevada. But that will stretch out the possibility of testing over a 2-year period. Medicaid was cut. The gist of my letter was: You cut health insurance funds for people who don't have it, yet where the money's are, you make it inaccessible to people who want it. Another tiny plus: they didn't block grant the housing vouchers that you can use for supplemental rent if you're low-income people, and they funded it to the tune of a billion and a half dollars; that's way over what Bush wanted? he wanted to cut it. That much is good. On the other hand, they cut almost all other housing programs, including public housing and money for poor elders, the homeless, and disabled people.

To further compromise social support infrastructure, making the estate tax cut permanent will be to effectively lower charitable giving by $13 billion per year because, apparently, rich people give to charity partly to reduce their estate. They also develop their own foundations that function effectively as a tax shelter, allowing them to "do well by doing good." That's going to mean hard times things for a lot of cultural and social service organizations. The tax cuts eat out the infrastructure to support people, concentrating wealth. But Administration proponents of the cuts say, in effect, "We are compassionate because the churches are going to take up these tasks voluntarily."

The Congress did increase the Global AIDS monies at $1.2 billion, a moderate improvement, but nothing near what it should be, according to the President's promises, or the proportionate share that is our responsibility.

They gave a small increase to the National Institutes of Health, the smallest increase in 15 years. And why is that important? The NIH funds basic science. We are having a real problem now in this country where we are deteriorating in our basic science. The Dept of Defense got a huge increase in its science budget - for weapons. What we're finding for the first time this year is that fewer out-of-country students are coming here for their PhDs in science. They're going to China. And their governments are subsidizing them to go to China. We rely for 38% of our scientists on foreign scientists here. Our kids are not entering science in the schools. This is dropping continuously. So we're really gutting this essential resource that has always been the basis for our technology and all the goodies that we do everywhere whether it's weapons or medicine or communication. This will hit us in years to come. Added is the fact that more kids are being exposed to Creationism in the schools from day one as the states pass these requirements that Darwinism and Creationism are presented to be equivalent. So you don't have to believe any of this Darwinism. And when you are ideologically indoctrinated so blatantly in the schools, why would you be interested in science?

The same ideological blinders hold, in the other science work that the Administration doesn't accept on global warming, on environmental impacts, on their spurious claim that you can get breast cancer if you have an abortion, and much else, and the gag orders that they put on experts, medical people talking about reproductive options and talking about "sensitive but unclassified" information, and the silliness of the sex education they're touting. They're just not in the real world.

There's another very important thing that's happening that I want to mention so you can track it. Under the rubric of market ideology and being competitive, large corporations now are going to the courts to contest the so-called lifetime benefits in people's pensions. They are saying that what "lifetime" means is the lifetime of the contract. So when current workers change their contract with the corporation? and they're giving back all kinds of things now under all kinds of threats? that means that the contract that I as a retiree had when I was there doesn't work any more. That holds for pensions, it holds for health insurance, which really puts older people in a bind.

So that's what is happening now. In addition, because of big airlines and other corporations going bankrupt, what is called the National Pension Benefits Guarantee Corporation, which underwrites the benefit packages of these corporations, is in rapidly growing debt. The indebtedness (which is the amount it needs to pay out pension benefits to bankrupt corporations) has doubled in just the last year. So what happens to it when the funds run out? NPBG is going to have to be bailed out by you. Where else is the money going to come from? Like the S&L scandal. That's what's brewing there.

All this makes for huge indirect pressures on working people. Not only are they losing what they thought was a permanent promise in private pension benefits, but they may also lose some Social Security benefits in order to pay for partial privatization. Not only is that income being threatened, but if the tax cuts become permanent and these other savings accounts for the rich are passed, the burden of taxation will fall on wages rather than wealth and that means that working people will either be paying more taxes or they will suffer a reduction in federal programs, whether health or education or housing or child care because "we just don't have any more money" and no politician wants to raise taxes. So there you go. Bad stuff!

[Last 15 minutes of the presentation not taped]