Naomi Klein gives a picure of what Bush (and company) would like to do to rebuild New Orleans. There seems to be a good opportunty to clean out New Orleans of undesireable elements and make it more corporate friendly, and more friendly to those with money. It will be easier to do that when the right people are in the city. Anyway, the first item that follows is a bit from a DemocracyNow! interview with Naomi Klien where she talks about some points in her article. Her article can be seen here (The Nation): Purging the Poor The second item that follows is a list of actions that the Republican Study Committee would like to do in New Orleans. Some of the actions are odd, like "Allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge," or "Make the entire affected area a flat-tax free-enterprise zone." I'm sure that you can figure it out for yourself. (A link to this list is at The Nation web site at Naomi's article.)
Part of a DemocracyNow! intereview with Naomi Klien:
NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah. There are two key documents that people should really take a look at. We're going to have them up on The Nation website and I'm sure we can have them up on Democracy Now! as well. There's two documents. They come from the same people, and they're connected. The first one comes from the Republican Study Group, which is the caucus of Republican lawmakers in Congress, headed by Mike Pence. It is called the “Pro Free Market Ideas for Responding to Hurricane Katrina and High Gas Prices.” It comes out of a meeting that took place at the Heritage Foundation on September 15th, where people from the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing think tanks got together with the Republican Study Group members, and they brainstormed thirty-two policy demands to package in as hurricane relief. And we have already seen several-- this is why I think it should be taken extremely seriously, is that the first of the demands is automatically suspending Davis-Beacon prevailing wage laws in disaster areas.
So it's pretty clear that the people making this list have a direct line to President Bush. Because that's already been adopted by presidential decree. The second is to make the entire affected area “flat tax-free enterprise zone”. This is Bush's “Gulf Opportunity Zone” idea, making the whole region a sort of “Club Med” for corporations to have every tax break they have ever dreamed of. But it goes on. This is where we, I think, need to get ready.
They use the excuse of Katrina to talk about everything from opening up drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to subsidizing -- this is an incredible, incredible one of their demands -- they want to subsidize oil exploration, saying that the corporations won't fund this themselves. And then there's things that we have heard about like they don't want money to be going directly to public schools for displaced children who are affected by the hurricane. They want it to go into school vouchers. This is already happening.
So it’s a transfer of wealth from the public realm, a huge transfer of wealth from the public realm into private hands. So you have this on the one hand. They issued this on September 13. It's already being adopted into law on several levels. And then they come up with another document that actually just came out yesterday, which is the Republican Study Committee's ideas of how to pay for all of these corporate subsidies that they have demanded.
They say, “look, we cannot do this -- we cannot pay for so-called “hurricane relief,” and it has very little or nothing to do with the families that were affected by the hurricane; in fact, it's going to hurt those families.) They say, “the only way we can afford this is if we make some radical cuts to the budget.” They issue another document, the “RSC Budget Options for 2005”, which says “here's where we are going to make the cuts”. Once again, you have the radical re-victimization of the very people who the money was intended for.
Their demands are things like: suspend Medicaid's prescription drug coverage. But more than that, you know, I mentioned the thing that got me was -- I mentioned the fact that they're demanding subsidization for Big Oil for exploration that they won't pay for. In this other document where they talk about how they're going to find the money for all of this corporate welfare, they say that they should cut all programs, all federal research programs, into sustainable energy sources. So, here you have the issue that's really at the core of this disaster, which is global warming and fossil fuels. They're subsidizing big oil and cutting funding to any alternative energy source research.
posted September 23, 2005
GOP Opportunity Zone
Naomi Klein
This is a list of "Pro-Free-Market Ideas for Responding to Hurricane Katrina and High Gas Prices," circulated by the House Republican Study Committee. Attributions included where available.
Automatically suspend Davis-Bacon prevailing wage laws in disaster areas. (Reps. Marilyn Musgrave, Colorado, Tom Feeney, Florida, Jeff Flake, Arizona)
Make the entire affected area a flat-tax free-enterprise zone. (Rep. Paul Ryan, Wisconsin)
Make the entire region an economic competitiveness zone (comprehensive tax incentives and waiving of regulations). (Rep. Todd Tiahrt, Kansas)
Immediate, first-year business expensing in lieu of depreciation for all assets, both personal property and structures (buildings) in the affected areas.
Allow net operating loss carry-backs for affected residents and businesses going back as many years as is needed to actualize the NOL.
For residents and businesses located or investing in the affected area, their 2005 and 2006 capital gains and dividends rate should be zero.
Individuals in the affected area should have a Section 911 (overseas earned income) exclusion that is uncapped.
Waive the death tax for any deaths in the affected area between August 20, 2005-December 31, 2005.
Provide limited liability protection for construction contractors who voluntarily provide services or equipment before a government contract is finalized. (Rep. Gary Miller, California, Rep. Tom Cole, Oklahoma)
Repeal or waive restrictive environmental regulations, such as NEPA, that hamper rebuilding. (Heritage Foundation)
Waive penalties for early withdrawals from tax-advantaged savings (like IRAs and 401k accounts). (Heritage Foundation)
Eliminate any regulatory barriers and other disincentives that block faith-based and other charitable organizations from engaging in the recovery and reconstruction process. (Orthodox Union, Heritage Foundation)
Increase the amount of rehabilitation tax credits by 30 percent in census tracts where the greatest poverty exists, and for smaller projects where raising capital for reconstruction is the most difficult, and where there is the most critical need for housing and neighborhood reinvestment. (Rep. Phil English, Pennsylvania)
Allow non-itemizers to deduct chartable contributions to disaster relief. (Rep. Ron Paul, Texas)
Give school-choice vouchers for displaced children. (Rep. Ted Poe, Texas)
Provide tax (and other such) incentives to lenders if they provide funding for school and other construction.
Reduce, suspend, or eliminate tariffs on Canadian lumber, Mexican cement, and other materials used for new construction.
Permit an additional advance refunding for all governmental bonds issued by or on the behalf of entities contained in the disaster area as declared by the president.
Eliminate the volume cap for private-activity bonds in the disaster area and permit the use of private-activity bonds for all transportation-related infrastructure in the disaster area.
Eliminate the income and home price limitation for mortgages funded by tax-exempt mortgage revenue bonds for a five-year period.
Allow a non-profit corporation to issue tax-credit bonds--which provide a return in the form of a federal tax credit--and allocate the proceeds for school rehabilitation and reconstruction.
Streamline the environmental hurdles to building new oil refineries. (Rep. John Shadegg, Arizona)
Make it easier for small refineries to increase capacity. (Kansas's Tiahrt)
Allow more offshore oil drilling. (Texas's Poe)
Pay the royalties for new offshore oil drilling to the local governments nearest to shore. (Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, California)
Allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Temporarily suspend the gas tax. (Arizona's John Shadegg)
Permanently reduce the gas tax.
Waive or repeal gas formulation (e.g. oxygenation) requirements under the Clean Air Act and related regulations. (Heritage Foundation)
Encourage the production of renewable fuels (biodiesel, ethanol.)
Encourage private-market projects to recover usable energy from oil shale.
Strengthen the existing investment tax credit for Enhanced Oil Recovery (using modern technology improvements to extract oil from previously unavailable sources) in section 43 of the IRS Code.
