CITIZEN COALITION
STATEMENT
To Protect the United
States, Protect Democracy:
A Call for a Citizens
Agenda Against Corporate Raids on the Treasury and an Outburst of Wartime
Opportunism
On September 19, merely
eight days after the bombing of the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the
Wall Street Journal’s editorial page presented a blueprint
of how the Bush Administration could take advantage of the post September
11th environment. The Journal noted that President Bush had "an
historic opportunity to assert his leadership, not just on security and
foreign policy but across the board." "Now is the time,"
wrote the Journal editors, to push for next generation weaponry,
big defense budgets, tax cuts, judicial nominees, drilling in Alaska,
and more. And, as Bill Moyers said on October 16, "it didn’t
take long for the war time opportunists – the mercenaries of Washington,
the lobbyists, lawyers, and political fundraisers – to crawl out
of their offices on K Street determined to grab what they can for their
clients. While in New York we are still attending memorial services for
firemen and policy, while everywhere Americans’ cheeks are still
stained with tears, while the President calls for patriotism, prayers
and piety, the predators of Washington are up to their old tricks in pursuit
of private plunder at public expense. In the wake of this awful tragedy
wrought by terrorists, they are cashing in."
The media has said
little on the public airwaves to inform the citizenry about how members
of Congress and their corporate contributors are heeding the Journal’s
advice to enrich the corporate moguls while they ask working people to
send their relatives to fight abroad, dig out from the wreckage in New
York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and bear the brunt of recession at home.
Since September 11th, members of Congress have served up a nonstop buffet
of corporate pork legislation. Under the guise of "national security"
our federal treasury is being raided and our democratic rights are being
taken away while Congress feeds sympathetic campaign contributors at taxpayer
expense, sends working people to fight, and leaves the unemployed, the
disenfranchised, and American families to suffer.
The shameful profiteering
and opportunism since September 11th includes:
1) A so-called
"Economic Stimulus" Plan that benefits corporate treasuries
and neglects workers
Instead of a plan to help the hundreds of thousands of workers displaced
or about to be displaced by the events of September 11th and the millions
more at risk of losing their jobs, a piece of legislation even the Treasury
Secretary Paul O’Neill labeled "show business," the so-called
"economic stimulus" legislation, passed in the House of Representatives
on October 24, at a cost of $212 billion over the next three years. The
Senate is seeking an even more expensive version of $220 billion over
the next three years. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities noted,
while the meager aid to the unemployed and low and moderate income worker
is temporary, the corporate tax cuts are permanent. Common Cause says
that, "Regular Americans are being told to go out and spend more
to do their part to stimulate the economy…"Big campaign donors,
though, are being told that ‘the check’s in the mail.’"
For more information
see Citizens for Tax Justice at www.ctj.org;
ACORN at www.acorn.org; the AFL-CIO,
www.aflcio.org, Campaign for Americas Future, www.ourfuture.org,
Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, www.cbpp.org;
Friends of the Earth, www.foe.org;
Common Cause, www.commoncause.org;
and Center for Responsive politics, www.opensecrets.org.
2) Pharmaceutical
Gouging
The Administration has refused to authorize generic competitors to manufacture
ciprofloxacin, and thereby reduce public anxiety over the supply of anthrax-fighting
drugs. According to the Consumer Project on Technology, the Department
of Health and Human Safety could easily introduce competition which would
ensure redundant capacity and a more favorable procurement environment
for these drugs by using 28 USC 1498 to issue compulsory licenses for
patents, and immediately authorizing the five companies who have already
satisfied US FDA requirements for the quality of their products to speed
the manufacturer of ciprofloxacin to confront the current crisis. Instead
the government cut its own deal with Bayer.
For more information
see: Consumer Project on Technology, www.cptech.org;
and Public Campaign, www.publiccampaign.org.;
Public Citizen Health Research Group, www.citizen.org
3) "Bailouts
for Billionaires" not workers
Congress is open for business for maximum corporate and personal greed,
but closed for business to raise the long-suppressed minimum wage for
workers, which, at $5.15 is more than $2 less in purchasing power than
the minimum wage was in 1968. In the aftermath of September 11th, more
than 130,000 airline and civilian aircraft aviation workers have been
laid off and nearly one million people employed by the hotel industry
have been either laid off or are working only one or two days per week.
Congress gave the airline companies a cash and loan guarantees bailout
of $15,000,000,000. Congress gave laid-off aviation workers and hotel
industry workers nothing.
According to Public
Campaign, "How did the airlines get to the head of the bailout line?
And how did they end up getting more money out of taxpayers than they
lost in the three days the nation's airports were shut down? By moving
fast and without shame to deploy a crack army of lobbyists on Capitol
Hill and by using all the access and influence that could be bought with
$65 million in campaign contributions over the last eleven years."
For more information
see: Public Campaign at www.publiccampaign.org;
Public Citizen at www.citizen.org;
4) The Re-emergence
of Autocratic "Fast Track"
The Department of Commerce official numbers admit that at least 360,000
jobs have been lost to NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement),
while the Economic Policy Institute estimates nearly double that many
jobs and potential jobs have been eliminated. Now, as millions of layoffs
have begun, what is Congress doing? It is deciding whether to surrender
to the corporate demand to expand Nafta under a no-amendment NAFTA abdication
of authority. The Bush Administration and U.S. Trade Representative Robert
Zoellick have zealously pursued their secret global government trade agenda
in the wake of the attacks, putting special emphasis on Fast Track.
For more information
see Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch: www.citizen.org/trade;
Friends of the Earth, www.foe.org;
and the Economic and Policy Information Network at www.epinet.org;
5) Handouts for
the Insurance Industry
According to J. Robert Hunter, director of insurance for Consumer Federation
of America and former Federal Insurance Administrator, "[t]he insurance
industry has proposed a "massive overreach that unnecessarily exposes
taxpayers to billion of dollars in risk." The insurance industry
is proposing legislation that would create free government reinsurance
for the industry with taxpayers footing the bill, while waiving all federal
and state anti-trust laws and a reduction of oversight.
For more information
see: Consumer Federation of American at www.consumerfed.org,
www.acorn.org
6) More Phony "Defense"
and the Reintroduction of Biological Weapons
President Bush has
said he is determined to build an unworkable missile defense system and
to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with Russia.
According to the Center for Defense Information and Aerospace Daily, on
Oct. 24, 2001, the House Appropriations Committee approved missile defense
funding up to $7.9 billion, $400 million less than the Senate. Rear Admiral
Eugene J. Carroll, Jr., USN (Ret.), Vice-President of CDI says that Americans
should care deeply about the decision to deploy a national missile defense
system. "By such an action we will signal to the world that we are
willing to pursue illusory defenses against non-existent threats even
though we subject all nations to continued nuclear competition and increased
risks of a future nuclear war."
For more information
see: Center for Defense Information, www.cdi.org;
Union of Concerned Scientists, www.ucsusa.org;
The Sunshine Project, www.sunshine-project.org;
7) Endangering
the Environment and Energy
For over 30 years, watchdog organizations which follow the nuclear power
industry have warned that a successful attack on any of the 103 nuclear
power plants could unleash an immense quantity of radioactivity which
could cause hundreds of thousands of cancers and contaminate wide areas
for generations. The response thus far from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
has been to completely shut down its website and to suggest a "long
bureaucratic review process" according to Paul Leventhal, president
of the non-profit Nuclear Control Institute. On Friday, October 26, the
Washington Post reported that the Bush Administration has also made a
fresh appeal to the Senate to approve his proposal to boost domestic energy
supply and production, including a plan to allow drilling in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge. As actor-environmentalist Robert Redford and
Biogems, a project of the National Resource Defense Council, points out,
"Using our national tragedy as an opportunity to advance the narrow
interests of the oil lobby would not be in the best interest of the public."
For more information
see: Friends of the Earth,www.foe.org;
the Sierra Club, www.sierraclub.org;
Biogems, www.savebiogems.org;
The Nuclear Control Institute, www.nci.org;
Public Citizen, www.citizen.org;
USPIRG, at www.uspirg.org; Greenpeace,
www.greenpeace.org
8) The Oxymoronic
"USA PATRIOT Act"
On October 26th, President Bush signed legislation defining civil liberties
downward in the United States. Congress passed the bill at breakneck speed
-- despite a widely supported and diverse coalition of organizations,
law professors, computer scientists and others who protested the contents.
According to OMB Watch, "[t]here was no conference, since lawmakers
worked out their differences in closed-door sessions prior to the votes.
The process was so rushed that a final copy of the bill was not available
to the public at the time the votes were taken."
For more information
see: American Civil Liberties Union, www.aclu.org;
Electronic Privacy Information Center, www.epic.org;
OMB Watch, www.ombwatch.org; October
25, 2001 Statement of Senator Russell Feingold from the Senate Floor
On The Anti- Terrorism Bill.
9) Restrictions
on Information/Invasions of Privacy
According to Bruce Shapiro, in the October 29th edition of the Nation:
"Never in the nation's history has the flow of information from government
to press and public been shut off so comprehensively and quickly as in
the weeks following September 11. Much of the shutdown seems to have little
to do with preventing future terrorism and everything to do with the Administration's
laying down a new across-the-board standard for centralized control of
the public's right to know."
For more information
see OMB Watch, www.ombwatch.org,
Public Citizen, www.citizen.org;
USPIRG, www.uspirg.org; The Nation,
www.thenation.org
Electronic Privacy Information Center, www.epic.org
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President Bush said, in his September 20th address to a Joint Session
of Congress and the American People, that, "They hate our freedoms
– our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to
vote and assemble and disagree with each other." What freedom "to
disagree with each other" does he refer to as Congress rushes nearly
in lockstep to satisfy vested corporate interests while weakening and
damaging our rights in numerous ways? Citizen groups and citizen advocates
who band together to question, to propose, to seek debate, to protest
or to voice their opposition are acting out of a deeply felt sense of
patriotism and allegiance to ideas which represent the best of our country.
And, as Bill Moyers said, the corporate marauders are "counting on
your patriotism to distract you from their plunder. They’re counting
on you to be standing at attention with your hand over your heart, pledging
allegiance to the flag, while they pick your pocket!" The huge distortions
of public budgets and resources on the way – which must be stopped
-- such as the billions in tax rebates to corporations, drilling in pristine
environments to enrich oil companies, and furthering cold war weaponry
designed to fight a no longer existing Soviet Union – has nothing
to do with a response to terrorism in the aftermath of September 11th.
The undersigned organizations
and individual citizen advocates are opposed to this rancid opportunism.
We are working on various components of a Citizens Agenda Against Corporate
Raids on the Treasury and an Outburst of Wartime Opportunism and are calling
for better approaches to domestic security. We support in part or in whole
this call to action. The coalition itself does not support or oppose specific
legislation, but individual organizations in the coalition may have taken
positions on specific legislation.
The undersigned do
support:
A. Joining the
citizen’s coalition for a Citizens Agenda Against Corporate Raids
on the Treasury and an Outburst of Wartime Opportunism at www.citizenworks.org.
B. Adopting a new plan for America that really promotes our national
security through actions that seek to:
1) Protect public
health and safety with access to health care and prescription drugs
at reasonable prices, adequately funding our state and local public
health departments to combat bioterrorism, and providing national
security for our transportation systems;
2) Protect energy security and our environment by shifting to clean
energy sources, promoting conservation and increased efficiency, reducing
dependency of fossil fuels and oil imports, and reducing risks with
our nuclear infrastructure;
3) Protect our economic security by taking care of displaced workers
and their families, not corporations and political campaign contributors.
4) Protect our civil liberties and prevent unwarranted invasions of
privacy.
5) Secure public financing of public elections to undercut the power
of corporate lobbyists to ensure their opportunistic agendas.
6) Protect our relationship with citizens across the globe by respecting
human rights -- political, economic, and social, minimizing global
diseases, health risks, and environmental devastation, promoting citizen-managed
rather than corporate-managed trade agreements, and moving toward
waging peace to foresee and forestall future perils.
C. Making sure that
any legislation that passes for "security" contains citizen
empowerment provisions that can help revitalize our democracy and our
economy by restoring the ability of citizens to influence the decision
of Government and the actions of powerful business corporations.
D. Monitoring rigorously
the legislation enacted after September 11th.
Coalition in formation:
Ralph Nader, consumer
advocate/founder Citizen Works
John Passacantando, executive director, Greenpeace USA
Steve Cheifetz, National Council of the Alliance for Democracy
Theresa Amato, president, Citizen Works
Robert Weissman, co-director, Essential Action
Mildred Brown, past national president, ACORN
Brent Blackwelder, president, Friends of the Earth
*Organizations are for identification purposes only.
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