Disappeared News

by Larry Geller

Katie Rose writes incisively and to the point. In an op-ed written for today’s Garden Island, Katy reflects, I think, the theme of “disaster capitalism” explicated in Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine. That is, how conservative leaders take advantage of every crisis for political and economic gain.

In Hawaii, Governor Lingle has successfully turned the conversation to whether public unions should suffer furloughs or layoffs, rather than whether destroying unions is the right approach in times of economic adversity, given that it will further hurt both individuals and the chances of recovery, or whether preserving jobs and homes is a better approach.

Here is a snippet. Please read the entire article, an excerpt does not do it justice:

Conservative political leaders and their industry allies are using the economic crisis to engineer new “solutions” which further burden ordinary poor and working folk.

For politicians like Lingle, this crisis presents an opportunity for political advancement. Like many Republican governors and legislators in the U.S., Lingle seems to hope that she can invent a particularly creative approach to the crisis, and thus earn the admiration and attention of the conservative establishment….

Of course, the common theme of all these various right-wing “science projects” is that they reduce public services, redirect public wealth into private hands, and thus make ever more jagged the rough edges of our economy for those most vulnerable. [The Garden Island, Lab Rats for Lingle, 7/30/2009]

Permalink posted by Larry @ 7/30/2009 12:12:00 PM