The hurricane disaster: US capitalism stands disgraced

[Karmadillo]

This article comes from a socialist website. It makes a lot of sense and is well worth reading all the way through. It is harsh regarding the actions (or lack thereof) of both the Republicans and the Democrats.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/hurr-s02.shtml

The catastrophe that is unfolding in New Orleans and on the Gulf coast of Mississippi has been transformed into a national humiliation without parallel in the history of the United States.

The scenes of intense human suffering, hopelessness, squalor, and neglect amidst the wreckage of what was once New Orleans have exposed the rotten core of American capitalist society before the eyes of the entire world—and, most significantly, before those of its own stunned people.

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Can anyone truly believe that the current administration and its Democratic accomplices in Congress are going to launch a serious program to construct low-cost housing, rebuild schools and provide jobs for the hundreds of thousands left unemployed by the destruction?

Congress has been virtually silent on the catastrophe in the south. It has nothing to say, having voted to support Bush’s extreme right-wing agenda of massive tax cuts for the rich, huge outlays for war in Iraq and Afghanistan and an ever-expanding Pentagon budget, and billions to finance the Homeland Security Department.

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Franklin Roosevelt—an astute and relatively far-sighted representative of his class—had to drag the American ruling elite as a whole kicking and screaming behind a program of social reforms whose basic purpose was to save the capitalist system from the threat of social revolution. Even during his presidency, the large-scale projects in government-funded and controlled social development, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, never became a model for broader measures to alleviate poverty and social inequality. The contradictions and requirements of an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and production for profit resulted in any further projects being shelved.

From the 1970s onward, as the crisis of American capitalism has deepened, the US ruling elite has attacked the entire concept of social reform and dismantled the previously established restrictions on corporate activities.

The result has been a non-stop process of social plunder, producing an unprecedented concentration of wealth at the apex of society and a level of social inequality exceeding that which prevailed in the days of the Robber Barons.

more...

[whistle]

1. U.S. capitalism and the rampant governmental corruption it has

...nurtured under the Bush administration.

[liberal N proud]

3. Make sure all know that this is on Bu$h!

Let history tell that the government failed its people all under the direction of George W. Bush.

[jody]

2. "US capitalism stands disgraced"? No, just revealed for what it is.

Capitalism is still the best among competing economic models for allocating resources to maximize profits but, socialism is the best model for distributing those profits among all members of society.

The "general Welfare" of the people not corporations is explicitly stated in our Constitution:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

[Joe Chi Minh]

5. That, if I may say so, had me in hysterics.

It is so pithy and to the point, and delivered in a such a deadpan way.

I mean it is so obviously the second point that is the crucial one - not the first one, of maximising profits! Yet the propaganda we have lived with, ate, drank and slept with since the day we were born, has it the other way round! Madness, utter, utter madness!

[SammyWinstonJack]

4. nominated and

:kick:

[Karmadillo]

6. Kick

nt

[Karmadillo]

7. One last kick. The "non-stop process of social plunder" part seems very

accurate. Going along to get along with the plutocracy simply isn't going to work. We have to fight them and we have to win. It's our duty.