http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/06/collapse/index.html
Glenn Greenwald
Aug 6, 2010
As we enter our ninth year of the War in Afghanistan with an escalated
force, and continue to occupy Iraq indefinitely, and feed an endlessly
growing Surveillance State, reports are emerging of the Deficit Commission
hard at work planning how to cut Social Security, Medicare, and now even
to freeze military pay. But a new New York Times article today illustrates
as vividly as anything else what a collapsing empire looks like, as it
profiles just a few of the budget cuts which cities around the country
are being forced to make. This is a sampling of what one finds:
"Plenty of businesses and governments furloughed workers this year, but
Hawaii went further -- it furloughed its schoolchildren. Public schools
across the state closed on 17 Fridays during the past school year to
save money, giving students the shortest academic year in the nation. ...
Many transit systems have cut service to make ends meet, but Clayton
County, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, decided to cut all the way, and shut
down its entire public bus system. Its last buses ran on March 31,
stranding 8,400 daily riders.
Even public safety has not been immune to the budget ax. In Colorado
Springs, the downturn will be remembered, quite literally, as a dark age:
the city switched off a third of its 24,512 streetlights to save money
on electricity, while trimming its police force and auctioning off its
police helicopters."
There are some lovely photos accompanying the article, including one
showing what a darkened street in Colorado looks like as a result of
not being able to afford street lights. Read the article to revel in
the details of this widespread misery. Meanwhile, the tiniest sliver of
the wealthiest -- the ones who caused these problems in the first place
-- continues to thrive. Let's recall what former IMF Chief Economist
Simon Johnson said last year in The Atlantic about what happens in
under-developed and developing countries when an elite-caused financial
crises ensues:
"Squeezing the oligarchs, though, is seldom the strategy of choice among
emerging-market governments. Quite the contrary: at the outset of the
crisis, the oligarchs are usually among the first to get extra help from
the government, such as preferential access to foreign currency, or maybe
a nice tax break, or -- here's a classic Kremlin bailout technique -- the
assumption of private debt obligations by the government. Under duress,
generosity toward old friends takes many innovative forms. Meanwhile,
needing to squeeze someone, most emerging-market governments look first
to ordinary working folk -- at least until the riots grow too large."
The real question is whether the American public is too apathetic and
trained into submission for that to ever happen.
UPDATE: It's probably also worth noting this Wall St. Journal article
from last month -- with a subheadline warning: "Back to Stone Age"
-- which describes how "paved roads, historical emblems of American
achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with
gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets
and dwindling state and federal revenue." Utah is seriously considering
eliminating the 12th grade, or making it optional. And it was announced
this week that "Camden [New Jersey] is preparing to permanently shut its
library system by the end of the year, potentially leaving residents
of the impoverished city among the few in the United States unable to
borrow a library book free."
Does anyone doubt that once a society ceases to be able to afford
schools, public transit, paved roads, libraries and street lights --
or once it chooses not to be able to afford those things in pursuit
of imperial priorities and the maintenance of a vast Surveillance and
National Security State -- that a very serious problem has arisen, that
things have gone seriously awry, that imperial collapse, by definition,
is an imminent inevitability? Anyway, I just wanted to leave everyone
with some light and cheerful thoughts as we head into the weekend.
Glenn Greenwald
Aug 6, 2010
As we enter our ninth year of the War in Afghanistan with an escalated
force, and continue to occupy Iraq indefinitely, and feed an endlessly
growing Surveillance State, reports are emerging of the Deficit Commission
hard at work planning how to cut Social Security, Medicare, and now even
to freeze military pay. But a new New York Times article today illustrates
as vividly as anything else what a collapsing empire looks like, as it
profiles just a few of the budget cuts which cities around the country
are being forced to make. This is a sampling of what one finds:
"Plenty of businesses and governments furloughed workers this year, but
Hawaii went further -- it furloughed its schoolchildren. Public schools
across the state closed on 17 Fridays during the past school year to
save money, giving students the shortest academic year in the nation. ...
Many transit systems have cut service to make ends meet, but Clayton
County, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, decided to cut all the way, and shut
down its entire public bus system. Its last buses ran on March 31,
stranding 8,400 daily riders.
Even public safety has not been immune to the budget ax. In Colorado
Springs, the downturn will be remembered, quite literally, as a dark age:
the city switched off a third of its 24,512 streetlights to save money
on electricity, while trimming its police force and auctioning off its
police helicopters."
There are some lovely photos accompanying the article, including one
showing what a darkened street in Colorado looks like as a result of
not being able to afford street lights. Read the article to revel in
the details of this widespread misery. Meanwhile, the tiniest sliver of
the wealthiest -- the ones who caused these problems in the first place
-- continues to thrive. Let's recall what former IMF Chief Economist
Simon Johnson said last year in The Atlantic about what happens in
under-developed and developing countries when an elite-caused financial
crises ensues:
"Squeezing the oligarchs, though, is seldom the strategy of choice among
emerging-market governments. Quite the contrary: at the outset of the
crisis, the oligarchs are usually among the first to get extra help from
the government, such as preferential access to foreign currency, or maybe
a nice tax break, or -- here's a classic Kremlin bailout technique -- the
assumption of private debt obligations by the government. Under duress,
generosity toward old friends takes many innovative forms. Meanwhile,
needing to squeeze someone, most emerging-market governments look first
to ordinary working folk -- at least until the riots grow too large."
The real question is whether the American public is too apathetic and
trained into submission for that to ever happen.
UPDATE: It's probably also worth noting this Wall St. Journal article
from last month -- with a subheadline warning: "Back to Stone Age"
-- which describes how "paved roads, historical emblems of American
achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with
gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets
and dwindling state and federal revenue." Utah is seriously considering
eliminating the 12th grade, or making it optional. And it was announced
this week that "Camden [New Jersey] is preparing to permanently shut its
library system by the end of the year, potentially leaving residents
of the impoverished city among the few in the United States unable to
borrow a library book free."
Does anyone doubt that once a society ceases to be able to afford
schools, public transit, paved roads, libraries and street lights --
or once it chooses not to be able to afford those things in pursuit
of imperial priorities and the maintenance of a vast Surveillance and
National Security State -- that a very serious problem has arisen, that
things have gone seriously awry, that imperial collapse, by definition,
is an imminent inevitability? Anyway, I just wanted to leave everyone
with some light and cheerful thoughts as we head into the weekend.
