[fwd Chris Kromm, This Strange Silence From the Left, Hattersley, Guardian, 7/15/2002]:
``...There is no doubt what the reaction would have been. The chorus of excoriation would have been carefully orchestrated by the Adam Smith Institute. The scandal would have been denounced, not as an aberration but the result of socialism's inherent weakness. We would have been told that nothing better was to be expected from a system which disturbed the equilibrium of the free market. There would have followed confident, if not very carefully argued, explanations of why inefficiency and corruption is the inevitable result of tampering with a system which makes us prosperous. Now the six great companies - not to mention Arthur Andersen - have all demonstrated how fallible free enterprise is. And the world's social democrats have not said a word...''
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It's more than six, and closer to a dozen, and the amounts are in billions, and the scandal should include the US President, Vice President, secretaries of Energy, Treasury, and Justice, plus members of the Senate and House, SEC chairman, and secretary of the Army---and those defrauded include India, Russia, and at least the US states of California and Michigan. The bogus concern expressed for shareholders and employees is ludicious compared to the millions of people defrauded through their utility bills. But rest assured nobody in power is going to be impeached, let alone accused or named by a formal body. We'll be lucky if the same public officials are not re-elected in a flurry of patriotism.
Reasons? It sure isn't the Left, because there is no Left in power either in government or the media with sufficient access to either political or media resources to bring down the chorus of excoriation demanded in this article. That chorus, all of it, is in the sole hands of the same reactionaries who brought us the Clinton impeachment, the Supreme Court appointed President, then Enron et al, and they amount to the same jerks in public office now. Why on earth would they accuse themselves? They are too busy trying to blame a few bookkeepers, drum up diversionary support for bombing Iraq, calling for a new Palestinian leader, and guilt tripping the rest of the world for its failed entrepreneurial spirit (via IMF, WB, WTO). `The trouble with the French is they have no word for entrepreneur', says our fearless leader GW. So there you have it, from the horse's mouth(?).
I am afraid the role of critical public consciousness in the US has fallen to what remains of the European social democrats, because there are none here. So Limeys, Frogs, and Krauts unite! Whip up a storm of anti-American and anti-neoliberal fury and enjoy it.
Chuck Grimes