Pawlenty’s Budget: Shock Doctrine and gangster capitalism

by Ed Felien
published Jan. 5, '09

In order to fully understand what Governor Pawlenty is proposing in his budget, you have to read Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine.”  She details how
fascist governments in Chile and other South American countries, puppet governments in Iraq and Afghanistan, Russia under Yeltsin, Poland under Solidarity and the U. S. government in New Orleans managed to use natural and man-made disasters to institute gangster capitalism.  Natural resources and state industries were sold off at fire sale prices, government functions were outsourced, basic subsidies for poor people were slashed and eliminated, and the rich got much richer and the poor became much poorer.

The Shock Doctrine is the central philosophy of the neoconservative movement.  The spiritual father of the movement was Milton Friedman, an economics professor from the University of Chicago.  He had a naïve faith that the capitalist system, if it were completely freed of government regulations, would quickly provide the greatest good for the greatest number.  Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan tried this with the American stock market and the violent crash last fall was a direct result of this kind of deregulation.  In fact, everywhere this philosophy has been tried it has been a tragic failure for everyone except the super-rich.

Tim Pawlenty is the heir apparent to the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party.  If he can show that he can make the “tough decisions” and dismantle government, sell off the resources and cut taxes for the rich, then he stands a good chance of attracting huge campaign contributions from Halliburton, Bechtel and other corporations in the military-industrial complex who are looking for just such a candidate to head up the Republican ticket in 2012.  And the only things standing in his way are the DFL majorities in the State House and Senate.
Unfortunately, in the past, the DFL has gone along with Pawlenty’s proposals.  They were quite willing to throw the Minneapolis Public Library system under the bus and let it collapse in bankruptcy.  They were complicit in agreeing to tax the citizens of Hennepin County to the tune of almost a billion dollars in a regressive sales tax to subsidize multibillionaire Carl Pohlad’s baseball stadium.  Pawlenty has played the tune, and the DFL legislators have danced. Pawlenty wants to sell off the Metropolitan Airport and other assets.  He says they could be run much more efficiently under private ownership. 

Efficiently for whom?  What always happens in this kind of private takeover of public assets is that the wages of workers go down and the prices to the general public go up.  If Pawlenty is successful in selling the airport: It will probably be sold for half of its real value; the unions will be busted; wages will go down; the planes will be less safe; airline tickets will be much more expensive; and the State will probably sell bonds to finance the sale so the rich purchasers won’t even have to use their own money.

What’s next?  Private hunting lodges and condos in our state parks?
The common wealth of this state was given to us by our parents and grandparents, not to be given away to some huckster in a cheap suit, but to pass on even better to our children and our children’s children.

Hopefully, the example of Barack Obama might inspire the Democratic Congress and the DFL Legislature to rediscover their backbone.  Obama won because he was willing to say “NO!” to the war in Iraq and to tax cuts for the
rich.  Now, it’s time for the Minnesota DFL to say “NO!” to Tim Pawlenty.  No more tax breaks for the rich.  Restore the progressive Minnesota income tax.  Don’t give away the assets that the people of Minnesota have built.  Don’t give away our children’s inheritance.