Naomi Klein

Real Change Depends on Stopping the Bailout Profiteers

By Naomi Klein, November 4, 2008

To understand the meaning of the U.S. election results, it is worth looking back to the moment when everything changed for the Obama campaign. It was, without question, the moment when the economic crisis hit Wall Street.

Up to that point, things weren’t looking all that good for Barack Obama. The Democratic National Convention barely delivered a bump, while the appointment of Sarah Palin seemed to have shifted the momentum decisively over to John McCain.

Then, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac failed, followed by insurance giant AIG, then Lehman Brothers. It was in this moment of economic vertigo that Obama found a new language. With tremendous clarity, he turned his campaign into a referendum into the deregulation and trickle down policies that have dominated mainstream economic discourse since Ronald Reagan. He said his opponent represented more of the same while he stood for a new direction, one that would rebuild the economy from the ground up, rather than the top down. Obama stayed on this message for the rest of the campaign and, as we just saw, it worked.

The question now is whether Obama will have the courage to take the ideas that won him this election and turn them into policy. Or, alternately, whether he will use the financial crisis to rationalize a move to what pundits call “the middle” (if there is one thing this election has proved, it is that the real middle is far to the left of its previously advertised address). Predictably, Obama is already coming under enormous pressure to break his election promises, particularly those relating to raising taxes on the wealthy and imposing real environmental regulations on polluters. All day on the business networks, we hear that, in light of the economic crisis, corporations need lower taxes, and fewer regulations—in other words, more of the same.

The new president’s only hope of resisting this campaign being waged by the elites is if the remarkable grassroots movement that carried him to victory can somehow stay energized, networked, mobilized—and most of all, critical. Now that the election has been won, this movement’s new missions should be clear: loudly holding Obama to his campaign promises, and letting the Democrats know that there will be consequences for betrayal.

The first order of business—and one that cannot wait until inauguration—must be halting the robbery-in-progress known as the “economic bailout.” I have spent the past month examining the loopholes and conflicts of interest embedded in the U.S. Treasury Department’s plans. The results of that research can be found in a just published feature article in Rolling Stone, The Bailout Profiteers, as well as my most recent Nation column, Bush’s Final Pillage.

Both these pieces argue that the $700-billion “rescue plan” should be regarded as the Bush Administration’s final heist. Not only does it transfer billions of dollars of public wealth into the hands of politically connected corporations (a Bush specialty), but it passes on such an enormous debt burden …

Naomi Klein

The Halliburton-ization of the Treasury

$700 Billion Bailout: The Halliburton-ization of the Treasury
<http://www.rollingstone .com/issue1065>  Don’t miss Naomi’s Rolling Stone feature article, “The Bailout Profiteers.” Naomi examines how the Bush administration’s $700 billion plan for Wall Street is starting to mirror Iraq’s Green Zone, with private contractors running the show and conflicts of interest run rampant. On newsstands this Friday.

In the meantime, those looking for analysis of the bailout and the financial crisis can listen to Naomi on The Brian Lehrer Show <http://www.w nyc.org/shows/bl/episodes/2008/10/22> . She lays out how the US Treasury bailout is vastly inferior to the deal struck in the UK 97and listen up for her recommendation for the next U.S. Treasury Secretary.

You can also watch Naomi’s recent appearance at the Commonwealth Club <htt p://fora.tv/2008/10/16/Naomi_Klein_Disaster_Capitalism>  in San Francisco. In this onstage conversation with author Stephen Elliot, Naomi discussed how the financial crisis will impact the next U.S. president, and what people can do now to get ready for the next dose of the shock doctrine. After next Tuesday, Naomi says, “what 92s going to happen is we are going to be asked to sacrifice the dreams of actually moving to a sustainable ecological model on the altar of this crisis.”

Sandy Springs: You Read About It, Now See It!

 <http://www.youtu be.com/watch?v=dOI9yrKGAV4>  Readers of The Shock Doctrine know the name Sandy Springs. It is the city in Georgia, discussed at the end of the book, that has outsourced its government to military contractor CH2M Hill 97the cutting edge of total privatization. Recently, Naomi’s husband Avi Lewis went to Sandy Springs and reported about the way this experiment is pitting rich against poor in the suburbs of Atlanta. It aired on the show he hosts on Al Jazeera English, Inside USA <http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/insideusa/2 008/10/20081020131956718877.html> . Watch the segment <http://www.youtu be.com/watch?v=dOI9yrKGAV4>

And to refresh your memories, here is what Naomi wrote about Sandy Springs in Harper 92s magazine last year:

“Another glimpse of a disaster-apartheid future can be found in a wealthy Republican suburb outside Atlanta. Its residents decided that they were tired of watching their property taxes subsidize schools and police in the county’s low-income African-American neighborhoods. They voted to incorporate as their own city, Sandy Springs, which could spend most of its taxes on services for its 100,000 citizens and minimize the revenue that would be redistributed throughout Fulton County. The only difficulty was that Sandy Springs had no government structures and needed to build them from scratch 97everything from tax collection to zoning to parks and recreation. In September 2005, the same month that New Orleans flooded, the residents of Sandy Springs were approached by the construction and consulting giant CH2M Hill with a unique pitch: Let us do it for you. For the starting price of $27 million a year, the contractor pledged to build a complete city from the ground up.

A few months later, Sandy Springs became the first “contract city.” Only four people worked directly for the new municipality 97everyone else was a contractor. Rick Hirsekorn, heading up the project for CH2M Hill, described Sandy Springs as “a clean sheet of paper with no governmental processes in place.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that “when Sandy Springs hired corporate workers to run the new city, it was considered a bold experiment.” Within a year, however, contract-city mania was tearing through Atlanta’s wealthy suburbs, and it had become “standard procedure in north Fulton.” Neighboring communities took their cue from Sandy Springs and also voted to become stand-alone cities and contract out their government. One new city, Milton, immediately hired CH2M Hill for the job 97after all, it had the experience. Soon, …

Diary, Influences

Naomi Klein

I’ve been a fan of Naomi Klein (fellow Canadian) I’ve read - NO LOGO and I’m reading her new book- THE SHOCK DOCTRINE- I’m also watching a film she was involved in called THE TAKE- tonight- She and another favorite of mine-Naomi Wolff (THE BEAUTY MYTH) are fantastic, insightful food for thought/people authors, minds_- to say the least- I’ve always loved politics or fascinated anyway- The world is our children’s- and there is a way to make it a better place- it’s overwhelming the information and the perceptions- but in the end its bottom line and simple- what is best for our kids? Lets do the right thing.