-Caveat Lector- More coup for you www.workingforchange.com The administration stole the election and are now after our freedoms by Geov Parrish 09.25.01 A lot has changed in the past couple of days. The U.S. now says it has actual evidence linking bin Laden to the attacks, something conspicuously missing to date. Word is also trickling out that Americans should not expect a "massive military response," which is enormously good and sensible news that might not have come from a Gore administration. But we're getting quite a few other things that wouldn't have happened with Gore at the helm, either. Ten months ago, the world witnessed American democracy unravel. Al Gore not only comfortably won the popular vote, and not only arguably won the Florida vote (had it ever been fully counted), but was repeatedly victimized by well-documented cases of vote fraud -- people in areas likelier to support Gore, especially non-whites, who were either denied the vote or never had their votes counted. When it was all over, three Supreme Court justices with good reason to recuse themselves decided the presidency. It was a not very sanitized coup d'etat. By all rights, as America goes to war, Albert Gore should be president. But he's not. It's worth remembering that in many ways, Gore as Commander-in-Chief might have been far worse -- his foreign policy was far more interventionist, his advisors (e.g., Brent Scowcroft) were just as bloodthirsty, and his track record (as well as that of Joe Lieberman) of enthusiasm for Israeli policies would have portended bad things for Middle Eastern diplomacy. But there's one thing that wouldn't have happened, at least not to the extent it's happening today: a vast far right agenda would not be getting rammed through Congress with nary a whimper of objection, everyone "united behind the President" in this time of bipartisan glory. The coup d'etat has entered a new phase. Of course, the first casualty in any war is civil liberties, and as we saw with Bill Clinton's post-Oklahoma initiatives, bashing immigrants and stripping people of legal rights would have been fine fare for Al Gore, too. But the stunning panoply of new powers for the FBI, INS, and other law enforcement agencies goes far beyond the already bad Clinton years. Within hours of the tragedy, the FBI was approaching major Internet companies, Carnivore in hand. Attorney General John Ashcroft, widely considered the most reactionary member of the Cabinet, has proposed and is winning a wide array of new powers to snoop on people engaged in lawful activity. Much of it is embodied in the so-called "Mobilization Against Terrorism Act," which, like all assaults on the Bill of Rights, will remain law, keeping the 4th Amendment in tatters long after the "mobilization" ends. Non-citizens, even permanent residents, can now be detained indefinitely (so long as it's a "reasonable time"), and deported with neither trial nor evidence. Either party would also have been likely to lead the charge to shovel money for new weaponry at the Pentagon and at military contractors. This, of course, is pure idiocy, at least in the short term. If our national defense didn't work, what we now need isn't more of what didn't work; we need a rethinking of how we provide security to our homeland. Ah, but that will now be the province of the new Homeland Security department (a fascinating tacit admission that the "Department of Defense" is too busy conquering the world and enriching Lockheed Martin to actually concern itself with our defense). Homeland will coordinate both the stripping of our civil liberties and the corporate welfare that will fatten the usual DoD leeches. And the purest of idiocy, National Missile Defense, is being pushed still harder just after a conclusive demonstration of its complete irrelevance to the safety of you and me. We couldn't even defend the frigging Pentagon because an ordinary commercial jet flew in low and the Pentagon's defenses were set for a high, missile trajectory. Even assuming our mythical future enemies weren't taking notes on the virtues of anonymous attacks, don't you think they'd at least notice the value of circumventing NMD's high- trajectory tracking? The answer, of course, is depressing but simple: thousands are dead in New York and the Pentagon, at the hands of an enemy that long ago swore their enmity because for many years our national defense has not concerned itself with, you know, defending our nation. It's mostly been a vehicle for global conquest and enriching corporate political patrons of both parties, and now, repulsively, economic elites are latching onto a terrorist attack as their vehicle to achieve long-standing but previously unachievable political goals. This goes far beyond "defense" spending. The Social Security and Medicare lockboxes are prehistory, as is the notion of, say, a Patients' Bill of Rights or prescription drug benefits. First, we have to reinvigorate the economy, and you know what that means: even more tax cuts for the rich. Lower Manhattan was still smoking when House Republicans began circulating their shopping list of tax breaks for individual and corporate wealth, including yet another reduction in the already well-reduced capital gains tax -- all tricked out as an "economic stimulus" for the bad times caused in part by previous corporate-friendly policies that misdirected our entire national security apparatus. It's like the retail business joke, of the guy who's losing five bucks on every sale, but plans to make it up on volume. Shoveling money to the rich has made the income gap worse and hurt most working people, so we'll shovel more money to the rich and see if that helps. And then more, if it still doesn't work, on the premise that what's good for the top 1 percent is good for America, even when we're under attack. Note that when we run out of money to give them, we run to the reserves of money the rich don't already have (like Social Security); once the policies have failed, said economic elites never have to give any of their freebies back. There's more, of course. Backers of presidential fast track authority for negotiating so-called "free trade" agreements want to use our need for global harmony and uniting behind the blah blah as a reason for short-circuiting the constitutional requirement that the Senate approve treaties, mostly so that the Senate can't get a look at the really stupid ones heavily tilted toward enriching guess who. The U.S. is also pushing a "now more than ever" line for the upcoming Qatar attempt to save the World Trade Organization. Last week, the newly Republican-dominated FCC quietly dropped a number of cross-ownership and market share restrictions, expanding the ability of large corporations to dominate all media in a given market. (Apparently, they were simply appalled by the overwhelming diversity of political opinion being shown on our newscasts this month.) And so it goes. All this and more is on its way or already arrived, and much that was unthinkable 15 days ago is now becoming law without debate or even much notice. It's a reactionary conservative's dream, and it's hard to remember that these guys and gals shouldn't even be in the White House. They stole the office, they kept stealing once in office, and now they're using an unspeakable tragedy as political cover for further theft -- of our money, our power, and our freedoms. Don't get me wrong -- I'm incredibly thankful that we aren't apparently rushing into World War Three. But, as always, there seems to be a price attached. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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