Jerry Brown on the
Clinton & Roosevelt Inaugurals
William Jefferson Clinton's inaug-uration, bringing all the
color and page-antry of an oriental potentate or medieval king-the 21-gun
salute, the soldiers ar-rayed on the steps as Clinton marched between them,
the 14 inaugural balls with 5,000 people each, the $42 million spent -is
quite at variance with the founding concept of an anti-monarchy, democratic
people recently freed from the yoke of colonial control. Jefferson walked
to his first inaugural from a boarding house, gave his speech, and then
walked back. Washington was even more brief-nothing of the magnitude we
see today. Clinton is certainly within the lineage of Richard Nixon, who
pumped up the inaugural. Nancy and Ronnie took it another step with all
their cronies and tremendous White House dinners. Then Bush continued all
that and had parties where you could get his signature for $90,000, and
you could sit at a table with a senator for several thousand dollars, with
a congressman for a little less, and members of the cabinet had their price,
too. It was nothing more than a house of prostitution. It's treated that
way, it acts that way, it functions that way. If you apply the rules of
one, you can fully understand and predict the behavior of the other.
Critiques of Clinton's inaugural address were limited to the topics considered
in the ball park for discussion-the balanced budget, cutting entitlements,
cutting Medicare, and changing campaign rules. No mention of the growing
gap between rich and poor, no mention of the dangerous deepening destruction
of the environment, no mention of the CIA connection to drug-running, no
mention of the unexplained murders and tortures in Central America, and
no mention of the fact that although we're 84% white people, the majority
locked up in prisons are people of color.
The balanced budget is said to free up capital that would otherwise go to
deficits, going instead to the private sector to buy new tools and equipment
and machinery. That is precisely the link to downsizing. You don't need
more people working because the banks and companies have the new machines,
the new tools, and the new equipment that go with the availability of cheap
labor, planetwide. Under the protective rules of the World Trade Organization,
if you put a buck into Bangladesh or Oakland, it has the same essential
judicial protections-no union, no coup d'etat, no socialist, no trouble-maker,
no priest, prophet, or other zealot to interfere with the repatriation of
your profits. That being the case, the attractiveness of cheap labor and
miserably low environmental standards cannot be resisted. During a 20-year
period of incredible innovation, incredible profits, and purchase of tools,
equipment and machinery, wage stagnation continues and the gap between the
rich and poor widens. The philosophy here could have been right out of the
Republican platform or even Herbert Hoover.
When Clinton talks about the"promise of America" he says it was
extended in the 18th century, extended even further in the 19th century,
"when our nation spread across the continent, saved the union, and
abolished the awful scourge of slavery." When he says "spread
across the continent," where is the recognition of Native Peoples,
recognition of the suffering and the dislocation, the cultural genocide
involved in that Westward trek? If we are to arrive at a wisdom about our
place in the world, we better talk about that-and get it clear!
Clinton says America stands alone as the world's indispensable nation. What
does he mean by "indispensable"? Indispensable to globalization?
Indispensable to support repressive countries in Central and Latin America?
Indispensable to create a $40 billion surplus with China, as they strip
away human rights and destroy the nation of Tibet? Indispensable to promote
the automobilization of our lives and our environment?
Families? Clinton says we are building stronger families, thriving communities,
better educational opportunities. Is the family stronger now? Is the economy?
Is the corporate charter-that governs so much of the money and working hours
and behavior of the majority of the people- geared toward building stronger
families? Not at all. It is directed toward a return on investment, a manipulation
of stateless money that sees no family, no color, no nation, no flower,
no species-only the cold inhuman logic of accumulation.
Education? The fees are going up. Twenty years ago, the total college indebtedness
was relatively small. Today it is $25 billion and on its way to doubling-an
incredible mortgage on the flexibility and the choice and the freedom of
today's graduates and a burden on people who can't take those financial
risks and go to school. If we just look at the ratio in Californa of prison
to college, it's getting worse, day by day. From a 1:1 ratio of one African
American man to prison and one to college, it is now 4 to prison and 1 to
college, and by the year 2001, the estimate is 7:1. It's a moving horror,
an intensifying burden and deterioration of the community, of educational
opportunities, of the family. And there is no mention of what has to be
among the greatest scandals of modern civilization-the imprisonment in cages
of healthy, vibrant young men and now a growing number of young women, many
of them mothers, most of them non-violent, whose children are taken away
from them.
Responsiblity? Clinton says, "Our founders taught us that the preservation
of our liberty and our union depends on responsible citizenship . . . Each
and every one of us in our own way must assume personal responsibility,
not only for ourselves and our families but for our neighbors and our nation."
It's you and me and poor people and others who have to be responsible! Where
is there mention of corporate responsibility? There isn't one syllable!
Nothing! This is a speech of fantasy and coverup to beguile people into
equating the Dow Jones average with the measurement of our well being as
a nation. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Drug War? Clinton looks to the future and says "Our streets will
echo again with the laughter of our children because no one will try to
shoot them or sell them drugs anymore." So the drug war is going to
be over? We will win it? Are Clinton's and Newt's international banking
friends going to be called to account for their financing of the importation
of all these drugs? The image put out is that it's the poor people, the
ghetto, financing these tens of billions of dollars of clandestine narcotics
commerce. It's the intelligence game-they cloak themselves in secrecy and
what happens? Nothing! So they get more money, more cops, more infiltrators,
more guys to go out around the world, and they lock up more and more people,
and the problem doesn't get better-it gets worse. If a fraction of the hundred
billion dollars spent to fight the drug war had been spent going after the
people responsible, wouldn't this drug business have been cut dramatically?
Why don't they look into the CIA and drugs? The federal government and our
presidents haven't even owned up to the heroin connection in Vietnam! And
that's 30 years ago! An official report said that 80% of the cocaine is
coming through Mexico. We just bailed them out with billions of dollars;
they're getting Huey helicopters; and we've got agents down there. This
thing could be stopped!
Compare Clinton's second-term inaugural address with Franklin Roosevelt's
second-term address. It's hard to understand how they can be in the same
political party or the same country or the same century. Franklin Roosevelt,
on January 20, 1937, gave us some straight talk, grounded in common sense.
He said, "We've pledged ourselves to drive from the temple of our ancient
faith those who had profaned it; to end by action, tireless and unafraid,
the stagnation and despair. . . ." He's talking about action. What
kind of action? Personal responsibility? Leaving the corporations off the
hook? Rendering the federal government impotent? Being a Lilliputian fool
standing meekly in front of the giant corporate contributors like so many
bashful prostitutes on some street on a dusty town south of the border?
Be real! Wake up, America!
Roosevelt said, "We're going to find through government the instrument
of our united purpose to solve for the individual the ever-rising problems
of a complex civilization." Clinton said government isn't the solution,
it isn't the problem. It's we the people! Roosevelt said:
Repeated attempts at solution without the aid of government have left us
baffled and bewildered, for without that aid, we have been unable to create
those moral controls over the services of science which are necessary to
make science a useful servant instead of a ruthless master of mankind. To
do this we know we must find practical controls over blind economic forces
and blindly selfish men.
Where was the identification of" blindly selfish men" in the Clinton
speech? Are they no longer here? Where was the call for "practical
controls over blind economic forces?" Is there anything in Clinton's
speech that hints that technology and science could be a ruthless master
of mankind without moral control? Where is the moral control when the market
reigns supreme?
Clinton said, "Everyone who can work will work" and today's permanent
underclass will be "part of tomorrow's growing middle class."
Meanwhile, in the City of Oakland, 2,500 residents who have been living
on an average of $630 a month in Supplemental Security Income saw their
last check in January. They're not going to get another check because Congress
and the President cut loose unfortunate individuals debilitated because
of drug or alcohol dependency. They're the first wave. Next summer about
6,500 legal immigrants in Oakland (this applies to even larger numbers to
Los Angeles, Manhattan, and other places), who have been living off the
SSI checks, will lose their monthly income, while roughly 6,000 other legal
immigrants who receive Food Stamps will lose that benefit too. Food Stamps
are one of the few guaranteed income supplements that exist in the United
States. If you're working below the poverty line, you can get Food Stamps
to supplement your miserable income. In other countries it isn't called
"welfare"; it's called "income assistance" or "family
assistance," where poverty generated by the market system is compensated
by direct government intervention.
The people here are being cut loose by something called-and get the Orwellian
aura here-"The Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act
of 1996" There is certainly no "reconciliation" in this legislation,
and no"work opportunity" is provided. What are these people to
do? Are another 14,000-15,000 jobs going to be opening in this city that
will be available to them? I think not. The folks in the higher circles
passed a law; elections were won; now they can go off to their vacations,
their fundraisers, their endless meetings.
Under Franklin Roosevelt and the Social Security Act, widows and those who
had lost their key breadwinner could stay home and raise the next generation
to be solid citizens. There was a belief then in the family and in the future.
Today, there is no sense of the future or of justice outside of this thing
called the economy. Now the goal is to institutionalize the child and put
the mother in a job at a $5 or $5.50 an hour, working in the global economy.
This is called liberty, independence, and old-fashioned American values.
It's just the opposite!
If you look at the welfare cuts, the big winner was prisons. No matter what
happens to the economy, the number of prisoners keeps growing and the money
is guaranteed. If there are ten prisoners, they're paid for; if there are
a thousand prisoners, they're paid for. If there are ten thousand prisoners,
they're paid for. There's an automatic, undying, eternal commitment to incarceration.
This commitment doesn't apply to universities, to job opportunities, to
investment in the arts.
President Roosevelt said of corporate dominance:
We have begun to bring private, autocratic powers into their proper subordination
to the public's government. A legend that they were invincible, above and
beyond the processes of democracy, has been shattered. They have been challenged
and beaten.
Roosevelt actually mentions the words "private autocratic powers."
That's a corporation-the Standard Oil trust at the time. He's talking about
something that in the Clinton world, in the Clinton imagination, doesn't
exist-just all us responsible, caring, community-bulding, family-loving
people. Well, it's not that way, Bill! It's corporate control! It's money!
It's the bond markets! It's stateless funds by the trillions, moving around
the world to the click of computers, all in search of-not community, not
stronger famlies, not better education, not kids laughing in the streets,
free from shots and drug dealers-but of more money to produce money to produce
money to produce money to produce money to produce money! That's what it's
about! Call it by its name, Bill-"private autocratic powers."
Roosevelt talked about the challenge to our democracy; he didn't talk about
personal responsibility. He said, "In this nation, I see tens of millions
of its citizens, a substantial part of its whole population, who at this
very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards
of today call the necessities of life.
I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the
pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day. I see millions. . .
continue under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society
half a century ago. I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-fed."
That's the way it was. And you know what? That's the way it is today! In
terms of kids and mothers and fathers, you bet they are suffering! And the
answer is still to bring under public control "private autocratic power."
Change doesn't really take all that much if those in power make up their
mind to do right. If they're not going to do right, then it requires lots
of us to put the pressure on, to organize, to build that fire of discontent
and forge social change.
Material for Jerry Brown's article was excerpted and edited with permission,
from Jerry Brown's "We the People" radio broadcasts. Jerry Brown
broadcasts live on non-commercial radio FM (Pacific Standard Time: 4-5 p.m.,
M-F, KPFA, Berkeley, CA, 94.1; KFCF, Fresno, CA, 88.1; KPFK, Los Angeles,
CA, 90.7; Central Standard Time: 6-7 p.m., KPFT, Houston, TX, 90.1; Eastern
Standard Time: 7-8 p.m., New York, WBAI, 99.5). Contact "We The People"
in Oakland, 1-800-426-1112, or 200 Harrison St., Oakland, CA 94607 for more
information or to join We the People. The web site for We The People is
http://www.wtp.org/index.html
