Compassionate Corporatism: Your Letters

September 16, 2005

Faith Fundamentals

Re: 9/11 And The Sport Of God by Bill Moyers

Isn't it frightening that anyone who doesn't agree with the Bush agenda is reviled, castigated and called unpatriotic?  It is as though the people on the left have no right to their own thoughts and no right to freedom of speech.  It seems a small thing, but scary.

Sharon Lynn Terpe 

Mr. Moyers is stirring, as always. However, he's overlooking the one ironic fact that the GOP, in reality, has no intention whatever of allowing the Christian right to win its sundry "cultural" battles. These less-than-intellectually luminous folks are useful to the Republicans who've sold them their political souls only as long as they remain in an inflammable and politically expedient state of anger. If the GOP were ever to fulfill its promises of ridding the country of abortion, gay rights, secular humanism, etc., the great majority of these misled souls would rejoice only until they looked about them and realized that even as their worldview has triumphed, their world remains, at best, financially precarious. So the Republican party will simply continue paying lip service to the evangelical nonsense ad nauseum , while it goes about its business as usual—i.e., robbing the evangelicals as blind as everyone else, save its plutocratic patrons. Which, of course, makes these ladies and gentlemen not unlike the harlot who, at the completion of business, picks her customer's pockets. It's as simple and slick a scam for a political whore as it is for a literal one.

Ellen Remore

There are some who say the Republican Party has hijacked the Christian right but they are wrong.  It is the Christians, in fact, who have hijacked the Republican Party.  They own it and no moderate Republican stands a chance—if one still exists, that is.

Rich Aull

I respect Bill Moyers and am disappointed that in this complex and dangerous time, he quotes those incendiary passages from the Quran.  Equal violence exists in the Christian and Jewish sacred texts.  This is not the time to shame decent Muslims, if indeed there is ever a time for that!

Anne  Costello

As usual, Bill Moyers gets it. He gives lie to the claim that those of us who favor improvement, change and concern for the less fortunate are devoid of religious or moral sensibilities. I wish we had more moral voices like Bill Moyers in our society today. 

Kathy Hughes

Rebuild, But How?

Re: Rebuild The Gulf Coast—And America by Roger Hickey

There is one story that seems completely absent from the news, because of the understandable myopia that has been generated by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Does anyone think this is the last time the Gulf coast of the United States is going to be hit this hard? Did it ever occur to you in light of the Kyoto Accords and the storms that hit last year, that "alleged" global warming may have already created a reality where this type of disaster will now occur with greater and greater frequency? If this kind of a disaster is in fact not a one time event, but a harbinger of our future, shouldn't we be discussing the possibility of not rebuilding in an area that will continually be wiped off the face of the earth for the foreseeable future—or at least until this country seriously addresses this phenomenon? It has taken a long time for the energy that generated this storm to build up through global warming—a phenomenon only denied by the fossil fuel lobby. It seems only logical that it will take a significant time to lessen the factors that generated these conditions.

If we deny this possibility, then I ask you the following question: How many more storms of this magnitude will it take to make you a believer? Are we really willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to set up the the bowling pins for the next storm?

Leonard Isenberg

Why is there no call for public housing here?  The overwhelming majority of people affected were poor, black and already the victims of liberal gentrification i.e. HOPE VI "affordable housing" schemes which were pushed through by the so-called "first black president" Bill Clinton, programs that actively engaged in destroying poor neighborhoods of color to build condos for lily-white yuppies.  Honestly, how the hell do you call this a progressive agenda without even mentioning such an essential component?

Sam Romero

Freeing The Internet

Re: Freedom Of The Routers by George Monbiot

So, if you want to blow the whistle anonymously, you still have to use snail mail?  Hey, we knew that.  My boss can go into my personal letters (typed while on lunch break and after hours, of course) any time he wants.  The Internet has made Big Brother stronger. But let's face it, information by its very nature must leak, and the Internet has made leaking a million times easier.

Michele Russell

I enjoyed your article on the freedom of the press on the Internet and the limitations it has come up against, both here and abroad.  I really feel the need to liberate the press from corporate ownership—I'm certain that the majority of Americans could agree that a free and unfettered press is a worthwhile goal.  No one wants to be fed on a diet of lies and pap selected by the powers that be!  So the question is, how do we achieve this?  I think it would behoove liberal action organizations to come together on this one point: Until the press is free to tell the tales of corruption and excess, no progress will be made by any of us. Doesn't this make sense as a critical first step for everyone interested in making the government of the United States as great as its citizens?

Dr. T. Tristan Brandhorst

The Corporate Cleanup

Re: Watch Who's Cleaning Up  by Charlie Cray

Now Bush has suspended the Davis Bacon act for the federally funded clean-up work.  So, now these poor folks in the Gulf can come back home and work to clean up the mess making substandard wages.  As a result, the administration claims the clean-up will cost the taxpayers less.  I don't believe them.  I think it will simply mean more money in the pockets of the contractors who will get the clean-up work and who contribute well to the Republicans. So the story goes again...the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  

Rose Kalamarides

I think we have seen the initial U.S. withdrawal from Iraq with the big contractors pulling out and the money all but gone. Will these "boys" ever learn?! The world is not a sandbox for them to play their lethal games. Then, when they lose interest or they are about to lose the "game" they go off to another sandlot to start anew.

Michael Manning

Trimming The Fat

Re: Bring Home The Davis-Bacon by Beth Shulman

So, will the president will also pay only "prevailing" wages for those outside contractors who come to clean up? I don't suggest their working for free as a requirement, but, just as restrictions are put on worker wages, why not put just as strict profit limits on work done in New Orleans? How much are the supervisors going to make—including per diem? Compassionate Corporatism is the new motto of Bush.

Larry Shumaker

Take A Long Look

Re: The Inequality President by Rinku Sen

I really don't think Bush is anti-black (or even anti-poor). I think his problem is that he is completely oblivious to what being poor actually means—and really doesn't care to know.  His mother showed the same trait when she noted the poor were better off in the Astrodome then they had been in New Orleans, even before the flood.

To the Bushes, "Them" is an abstract concept that exists far away and all they really understand is "We", the privileged.

Michael Rosenberg

It seems to me that Mr. Bush, et al., should stop for a minute and revisit New York, this time going to the Statue of Liberty and reading the inscription therein inscribed into its base for every American to read:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. 
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

Jerry Szostek