From The Boston Globe, 12/29/04:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/12/29/you_cant_blame_uncle_sam_for_what_bush_does/
You can't blame 'Uncle Sam' for what Bush does
By Robert Kuttner
NEXT YEAR, 1.3 million college students will receive reduced Pell
grants for college aid.
Another 89,000 currently eligible students will get no aid at all.
These cuts will save the Bush administration about $300 million, a
small part of what it needs to pay for its tax cuts and military
forays.
Here's how Terry W. Hartle, vice president of the American Council on
Education, characterized the situation to The New York Times.
"Season's Greetings from Uncle Sam," Hartle said sarcastically.
"Your student aid stocking is going to be a little thinner this year."
Excuse me.
It isn't Uncle Sam playing Scrooge.
It is the Bush administration.
I've noticed a pattern here.
The administration makes a concerted effort to disparage "the
government."
That's not surprising; the administration believes in cutting taxes
(mostly on the wealthy) and reducing services on everyone else.
The less confidence people have in government, the easier it is to
sell tax cuts.
But what is distressing is that people who should know better, even
advocates of public services, are falling into the trap of confusing
"the government" with a particular administration and its policies.
Mr. Hartle, repeat after me:
"Season's Greetings from President Bush . . . "
Here's another example.
The president, in touting plans for Social Security privatization,
declared in his acceptance speech to the Republican National
Convention, "We must strengthen Social Security by allowing younger
workers to save some of their taxes in a personal account, a nest egg
you can call your own and government can never take away."
But it isn't "government" that's threatening Social Security.
It's Bush.
Recently, the NPR program "The Connection" invited me to debate my
Dec. 8 Globe column arguing the case for a national identity card.
I had written, playing against type, that a national ID card with
proper safeguards would be an improvement on the mess we have now,
where citizens' personal information reposes in dozens of government
and commercial data bases, with far too few prohibitions against its
misuse.
With a national ID card, approved by Congress in return for stringent
safeguards, we could have instant voter registration, better
protections against teen binge-drinking, clarity about who is entitled
to legally work, as well as more effective control against terrorism.
In exchange, we could pull back some of the real abuses in the USA
Patriot Act, and strengthen privacy in other respects.
Most callers objected, largely because of amorphous fear of something
called "the government."
I observed that the problem is not the government, but the
administration.
There is a universe of difference between Bush's authoritarian
Attorney General John Ashcroft and such distinguished
liberty-respecting predecessors as Edward Levi, who served under
Gerald Ford.
A liberal Congress could enact severe penalties for misusing
confidential data.
Liberal judges could enforce them.
Note how beautifully this all works for Bush.
Appointees like Ashcroft make Americans fear their government, with
good reason.
Then, when Bush disparages government's ability to safeguard Social
Security, he has already softened up public opinion to suspect and
fear government.
Even Democratic officials fall into the trap.
When Bill Clinton famously reassured a voter that he would not let
"the government" tamper with her Medicare," he passed up an
opportunity to remind her, and the American people, that Medicare
exists only because the government provides it.
And government provides it only because a Democratic congressional
majority in 1964 overrode the opposition of the health-industrial
complex and their Republican allies.
John Kerry unfortunately played into the same trap during the 2004
campaign, when he indignantly denied that his proposed plan to expand
health coverage involved government.
Of course it did.
It had to, because the private sector won't provide enough health
coverage at decent cost.
That's one of the reasons we need government.
Some of us, as a matter of principle, don't think government should
play much of a role in society.
That's fine.
But polls show that most Americans actually value Social Security,
public education, reliable health coverage, and other services that
the Bush administration proposes to reduce or kill.
This country is (still) a democracy.
If we don't like the way a particular administration runs our
government, we should get a different administration.
We shouldn't displace our concerns into a generalized loathing of "the
government."
Despite the right's propaganda, if we can't think clearly enough to
distinguish the government from the administration, we will lose what
we actually like about government, as well as our function of being
free, deliberative citizens in a self-governing democracy.
____________________________________________________
You can't blame 'Uncle Sam' for what Bush does, but you *can* blame
the voters.
Harry
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