Jim Hightower - Theres Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos: A Work of Political Subversion

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THERES NOTHING IN THE
MIDDLE OF THE ROAD BUT
YELLOW STRIPES AND DEAD

ARMADILLOS

JIM HIGHTOWER

To
William Fletcher Hightower

Speak the truth, but ride a fast horse.
Old Cowboy Saying

CONTENTS

1 CORPORATEWORLD!
THEY GET THE GOLDMINE, WE GET THE SHAFT

2 CLASS WAR
LETS CHECK THE Doug JONES AVERAGE

3 THE MEDIA
LIKE CATS WATCHING THE WRONG MOUSEHOLE

4 POLLUTION
STATUS QUO IS LATIN FOR THE MESS WERE IN

5 POLITICS
YOU DONT HAVE TO BE IN WHOS WHO TO KNOW WHATS WHAT

We are writing the constitution of a single global economy.
Renato Ruggiero, 1996

We? Who is we? A new constitutionthats big, right? Will we get to vote? Will there be yard signs? Who the hell is this guy, and is he serious?

Serious as a snake bite. Ruggiero, an Italian trade bureaucrat, was hand-picked in 1995 to head an obscure and downright secretive international body called the World Trade Organization, based in Geneva. Technically, the WTO is the creation of governments, including ours, but in fact it is the baby of the worlds corporate and financial giantssuch names as GM, Chase Manhattan, Nestl, Caterpillar, Credit Suisse, ADM, Kodak, Nippon, Goldman Sachs, GE, Boeing, Unilever, Exxon, Monsanto, British Petroleum, and, well, the full club of powerhouse corporations that now call themselves transnational.

For the past few years, members of the club have been diligently separating themselves from allegiance to any national flag, polity, or people, purposefully erecting a legal fortress around themselves, their hoards of money, and their financial ambitions. This legal construct is the constitution Ruggiero referred to. It is not merely protection that they seek from their fortress, but a secure place from which to reign, for they are quietly setting themselves up as a rogue governmentone that is unelected, unaccountable, for-profit, supranational, and sovereign. The building blocks of their constitutional fortress are the WTO, GATT, IMF, APEC, OPIC, NAFTA, MFN, CBI, AFTA, MAI, and other jumbles of letters that form the esoterica of global trade policy.

If Paul Revere were to make his midnight ride in 1998, it is not an invasion by Redcoats he would warn us about, but the astonishing assault these global corporate powers are making on our liberties, economic fortunes, way of life, and sovereignty. Im a Texan without even a pony, so I cant gallop into the night like Revere, but I have written this book as my own modern-day warning, and as a rallying cry to fight back.

What the British monarchy of old could not accomplish by forcethe subjugation of the American peopletodays new oligarchy of corporations is achieving by stealth, without even a protest from our political leaders. To the contrary, both Bill Clintons Democrats and Newt Gingrichs Republicans are blithely opening the doors for the transnationals, shouting: Give me liberty or give me a PAC contribution!

As I write this, another national election is under way for the control of Congress, yet there is a dumbfounding silence from the whole system about the unbridled power of top corporate and financial executives, whoamong their many other excessesare almost jubilantly knocking down the wages and middle-class aspirations of Americas workaday majority. They are abandoning families and whole communities here as they flee to exploit the impoverished in Third World nations. Instead of discussing these real, practical, and immediate class issuesas ordinary folks do every day around their kitchen tables, at their cafes, and in their bars of choicewe get a political season of silliness: Clinton is darting here and there around the globe desperately trying to look like a president; Newts do-nothing Congress is either in recess or deliberating such weighty matters as renaming Washingtons airport for Ronald Reagan; and the media have little time for any politics not tied directly to Clintons willy.

Far from serious political or journalistic questioning (much less criticism) of their frontal assault on the poor and the middle class, the corporate powers are being widely exalted, hailed as crusaders who are bringing a God-ordained, market-based order to the worlds people. They are marching onward under the golden banner of globalization, a nowhere land in which honey is promised to flow to all if only the owners and managers of transnational corporations are freed from any governmental ordinance anywherenational, state, or localthat they believe constitutes an infringement on their Holy Right to do business as they see fit. Their self-serving concept of globalization gives their own narrow interest (nothing more noble, by the way, than hauling off the highest possible profit they can grab) supremacy over all competing interests around the world, including those of labor, human rights, environment, religion, democracy, community, and nation.

Such supremacy, for example, can outlaw even a simple effort by your city government to buy made-in-the-U.S.A. products, or to refuse to buy any products made with sweatshop labor, or to choose to buy from hometown suppliers. Imperious trade tribunals already have been established with international authority to strike down these acts of local sovereignty as an infringement on the global trade rights of corporations. Too wacky to be believed, you say? Sony, Toyota, Mitsubishi, and other transnationals are presently pursuing just such an action through the World Trade Organization against the state of Massachusetts, which passed a law in 1997 saying state agencies there will not buy products from companies that do business with the brutally repressive dictatorial gangsters now ruling Burma. The corporations say uh-uhtheir global trade rights supersede the legislative autonomy of the Massachusetts people. The case is pending before a WTO tribunal of faceless officials in Geneva. Their proceedings are not open to the public or the press; a state has no standing under WTO rules, so Massachusetts cannot present its own case or even be present; and there is no appeal of the tribunals ruling.

Having the WTO is better than a 900 number for the chieftains of transnationals, who can dial up 900-SMOOCH-ME and have their every corporate fantasy come true. Chiquita banana, for example, owned by fat-cat political contributor Carl Lindner of Cincinnati, is using the WTO against European nations that now choose to buy their bananas from their former Caribbean colonies. He says they must change their laws and buy bananas from his operation in Central America, even though such a shift could gut the economies of St. Lucia and other small island-nations dependent on European salesand even though it would likely shift many desperate islanders into the cocaine and heroin trade. Talk about bananas! Oil companies, too, have already been to the WTO and succeeded in overturning a portion of our Clean Air Act, because its antipollution standards were ruled too strict and therefore a barrier to the dirtier oil products the companies ship to the United States from Venezuela.

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