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from his mailing list:
The New Bush Slogan: “The Ownership Society”
Will Make Americans Poorer and Add to the Wealth of the Wealthiest
The selected President George W. Bush is expected to sound the theme of an “ownership society” featuring personal savings accounts at the
expense of social security, and medical accounts at the expense of full health care for all. This charade continues the duplicitous performance of Republicans at their corporate-saturated Convention in New York.
The new slogan is reminiscent of claims of being a “compassionate
conservative” in 2000 reinforced with the New York Convention’s slogan “People of Compassion.”
Were George W. Bush authentic about the “ownership society” he would
propose measures that would give control to what the American people
already own but have lost to the corporations.
He would give control over the public airwaves which the public owns. Presently and since the 1920s the radio and TV stations control the public airwaves as tenants though they are licensed from the Federal Communications Commission. These stations are the tenants. The people are the landlords. These tenants pay no rent (no license fee) to the landlords via the FCC. These tenants receive this public property free and decide who says and who does not say what 24 hours a day. The landlords neither have their audience networks nor any TV or radio stations based on a return of their property for an allotted time during prime time and drive time each day. These time periods would be programmed with experienced staff and studios and open widely the kind of information, participation and communication worthy of this great
public commonwealth that has been so trivialized and debased with
commercialism and more media concentration.
He would give control over the public’s federal lands to the American people who own these lands which amount to one third of the United States. Presently these federal lands are controlled by mining, timber and other extractive corporations through their compliant servants (often their former business associates) in the Department of Interior and the Department of Agriculture). As a result, the giveaways of the peoples’ natural resources are a form of legalized theft, matched by no other country in the world.
Finally he would not give away the results of federal research and
development – newly discovered drugs and many other innovations – paid for by hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. Drug companies are presently given free of charge important drugs discovered and tested by government or university scientists under contract or grant.
These giant drug companies then turn around and gouge patients
mercilessly for such anticancer drugs as Taxol (Brisol Meyers Squibb) without any price restraints from the federal government. An ownership society would give the taxpayers more control through their governmental representatives over what they own and have paid for. Government R&D has represented a very major portion of the entire nation’s research and development budget over the past fifty years.
George W. Bush has been representing the interests of the giant
corporations rather than the interests of the people. Over-two-thirds of the American people polled believe this to be the truth.
The American people should not be deceived by this evening’s deceptive Bush brand of “ownership society” which means turning over the people’ money in the health and social security sectors to corporate control. Mr. Bush’s corporate control brings with it woefully inadequate disclosure, regulation or prosecution when these companies proceed to rip-off defenseless Americans or when stock markets fail them after the corporate manipulators jump ship with their profits.
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