Dean on “ReRegulation” and a social contract
An article in the Boston Globe (online today and tomorrow only) reports on an interview with Dean in which he calls for “reregulation“:
In an interview around midnight Monday on his campaign plane with a small group of reporters, Dean listed likely targets for what he dubbed as his “reregulation” campaign: utilities, large media companies and any business that offers stock options. Dean did not rule out “reregulating” the telecommunications industry, too.
Go Dean!
And, Gov. Dean gave an important speech yesterday that talks about the economic issues that (from my point of view) underly the question of whether the economy is trending up or down this month. Some snippets without context:
The government today is no longer working for all the people. We need a new social contract for the 21st century…
[The Bush administration has] created an economic program that enriches their friends and supporters at the expense of ordinary working Americans. A program deserving of the name — Enron Economics.”
Today, there are new technologies which can be the foundation of our economy for the next century. We can invest aggressively in them, just as our nation did when it invested in railroads, in rural electrification, and in public roads and highways.
We will never win the war on terror with a purely military strategy. Al Qaeda knows that their most powerful weapon against us is not terrorism — it is persuasion. We are waging a military campaign, but for years, they have been waging a political campaign. And our military campaign is only serving to strengthen their political argument. They are preaching fear and hatred against all that we stand for, and we are not responding.
We need a global effort to provide education, to foster democracy and to promote capitalism and economic opportunity in areas of instability. We need to champion the rights of women across the world. Above all, we must demonstrate that our vision has the interests of the world at heart, and not merely our own.
Worth reading in full.
PS: At our get-together last night, 15 of us wrote 100 letters to undecided voters in Iowa. Feels good to write the letters and even better to meet a diverse group of Dean supporters.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Why Dean?
Off the start I was a fan of Dean for a few simple reasons. As I step back and view the larger picture, I see that I am more of a fan of Dean. Joho the Blog: Dean on “ReRegulation”…
Dean Calls For Business Re-Regulation To Make Capitalism Work For All Americans
The Economic Elite are just not paying attention, Howard Dean is. They grew up in nice places, went to nice schools, have nice jobs with nice incomes, drive nice cars, live in nice homes, and have nice friends. They are,…
Nice ideas, wonder if he has any more concrete plans or understanding of reality.
David, were Dean as enthusiastic about re-regulating the Iraqi economy, he might garner some foreign support for American presidential hopefuls in general. At present, their credibility is zilch.
Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 39 (CPA/ORD/19 September 2003), signed into so-called law by Paul Bremer, places all Iraqi assets in the hands of “foreign investors” (read “friends and supporters” of the Bush regime, including the “utilities, large media companies and any business [offering] stock options”) for forty years.
Bremer’s order governing Foreign Investment allows such “investors” to strip the country of its assets as, when, and how they please. Any Iraqi-owned or based company that somehow side-steps the system comes up against this gem (Section 14): “Where an international agreement to which Iraq is a party provides for more favorable terms with respect to foreign investors undertaking investment activities in Iraq, the more favorable terms under the international agreement shall apply.”
As Iraq is now a de facto colony of the United States, I guess this piece of S.P.E.W. means the Iraqi economy has been “liberated” lock, stock and barrel (literally) by so-called capitalist interests. Writers such as Naomi Klein have been shouting this from the rooftops for months now.
The nut of it is that the U.S. strategy is NOT military in nature and, for that, the Bush administration and those guiding it must be given credit (when they’re not taking it anyway). The military invasion of foreign countries is a tactic. The economic emasculation of these and countless other countries through First World economic instruments forms the strategy underlying the smoke and mirrors of shock and awe. Any calls for the promotion of “capitalism and economic opportunity in areas of instability” or the “need to champion the rights of women across the world” ring decidedly hollow in ears not deafened by a media onslaught broadcast from sea to shining sea.
Developing and Third World sentiment towards the United States is shaped by its high-profile foreign policy. Al-Qa’eda (in its myriad – not always malicious – guises) is an economic rather than a military force. Islamic business interests do not operate from caves; they comprise extraordinarily wealthy high rollers who (through ties unfathomable to Western agencies) own a large share of the United States’ economy. Countries beset by AIDS and poverty sit on vast reservoirs of untapped wealth and natural resources. Over and above the dollar / yen / euro battle, the strategies we see playing themselves are driven by economic, not military, interests.
Until the global economy is re-regulated, we will see no end to the superficial, i.e. the horrors of high and low-tech warfare. Dean and Co. might be able to pull the wool over the eyes of the U.S. electorate but, in the Third World, the “tired, [the] poor, [the] huddled masses yearning to breathe free” have their eyes fixed (for now) on the next forty years; years that have been signed over to a uniquely American Century by a Baghdad-posted bureaucrat.
I’d love to be wrong on this one but I’d need a hell of a lot of convincing.
PS: Please do not nuke your comments feature a la RB. Delete the spammers. This long-winded comment excepted, of course :).
Mike, it’s news to me. Thanks.
I’m not sure why you hang this on Dean, though. Because he hasn’t addressed it? That’s not quite “pulling the wool” over people’s eyes. I doubt very much that he supports this (if he knows about it).
(I’m not shutting down the comments. Jay Allen’s fix is working well for me so far.)
I’m not hanging the dictat on him, David; he had little to do with it. However, Dean has an obligation to be aware of and take a strong position on U.S. foreign policy and actions. The sale of Iraq to U.S. companies should not be ‘news’ to a presidential hopeful any more than it should be news to the incumbent, i.e. why blame Bush?
In much the same way as wilfull ignorance of high-profile state actions in countries such as Israel, Zimbabwe or Chechnya would detract from the merits of presidential opponents, silence on such issues from Dean and ALL other Democratic nominees is damning.
Most outside the U.S. feel it to be a moral imperative that these hopefuls stake out their positions and policies on the Middle East and foreign policy in general.
Iraq is, after all (or should be), an issue among domestic voters. If it is not, we have good reason to worry.
Also, these are virtually the first U.S. presidential elections to enjoy wide exposure on and through the Web. To now, such elections have been entirely domestic affairs and the world has lived with the result.
Today, those living outside the U.S. have a sense they can voice their opinions on or influence U.S. voters picking a leader whose actions have a profound impact on their lives. With a global audience jammed to its monitors, silence on issues affecting non-Americans is as much a statement as none (no matter how much or how little imporance is attached to the medium by candidates).
Politicians are, by nature and almost by definition, ambivalent on any issue until forced to state a position. For this reason, I wouldn’t be sure of anything left unsaid by Dean who, I’m sure, is aware of policy in Iraq and elsewhere. As a politician who will carry the can for such policies in office (unlike women’s rights), he knows this. By being silent or wishy-washy on the method of Iraq’s payment for a war it did not want he does pull the wool over the eyes of his electorate.
It’s an unfortunate reality that U.S. presidential nominees will be ‘hanged’ or supported by the outside world for what they say as much as for what they do not say.
Mike, I appreciate your comments, but Dean’s first and foremost responsibility is to get elected, and prevent George W Bush from having four unconstrained years in the White House.
The person elected will need to have credibility with the world at large to govern effectively, but they first have to convince an extremely volatile, single-issue populace that they are their best option.
Iraq as it relates to people being killed, or Iraqi citizens being denied freedom will resonate more with this populace, then what happens to Iraq’s resources. Sound harsh? Mike, what do you think we in the US have been living under for 100 years? We’ve seen our own resources given to coporate interests, and our own jobs offshored, and our own wealth siphoned. If we can’t defend ourselves, then who can we defend?
Dean’s re-regulation policy is actually a pretty damn gutsy move to make, and a committment. I respect it. But all of this — reregulation, Iraq, corporate malfeasance — is nothing if we end up coming down to battles based on single moral and religious issues.
It’s interesting but weblogging has opened up so much from an international viewpoint. Yours is the second non-US voice I’ve heard that talks about foreign influence on the US vote (Joi Ito also wrote soemthing on this). Note, that though I may agree with much of it, I live among the voters. Not the webloggers, the voters. I can see what will fly, and what will die on the vine. And I were to walk down the Missouri and chat with the boys fishing for catfish and tell them that a South African and a Japanese person feels we should vote on this issue and that — you tell me how far this will fly.
We first have to get Dean voted in. Unless you’d rather have Bush?
Reregulate telecom? What are we unhappy about? I’m happy as heck with my free domestic calls and 5 cent calls to UK and France.
Reregulate big media? Big media is hanging itself with its own shoelaces, even as globs of bloggers and other p2p publishers swarm up to strangle it.
Reregulate my tiny company because it gives staff an option to reap the rewards our success?
I like Dean’s fire, but some of his smoke makes me cough.
Obviously you have to (re)regulate the right stuff. Henry, you know the litany of abuses and monopolistic practices as well as I do, so I won’t go through the refrain. I agree that more definition is needed from the Dean campaign on this topic, but the notion of regulating against abuses sounds real reasonable to me.
Hmmm, I would like Dean to clarify his thoughts on regulating “any business that offers stock options”. As an entrepreneur that uses these options to recruit talent, this starts to worry me.
Perhaps it was because of a late-night interview and slip of the tongue, but I’d like to hear what Dean *really* menat by that.
Dave
after 3 years it’s still a nice read ;)