| Letter to the Editor - Indianapolis Star |
Editor,
Shortly before I attended a demonstration at the Indiana State
House last Thursday where several dozen people gathered to
protest the building of a liquid coal power plant near Terra Haute I
had started reading Naomi Klein's fascinating book THE SHOCK
DOCTRINE I had no idea that a new power plant in Indiana was
related to the coups d'etat in Chile, Argentina and Brazil. I had
also not known that the Chicago University Economics Department
and Milton Friedman were credited with the inspiration for those
coups.
As I listened to various speakers at the State House protests tell
about Indiana being ranked 48th and 49th in separate estimates of
the cleanliness of air in the 50 states, and as I heard that Duke
Power wanted to build the most expensive plant because rate
payers in Indiana would make up the difference (even though the
power generated would be sold largely outside Indiana) and turn a
profit for the company, it occurred to me that this coal fired power
plant was inspired by the same ideology that brought us the war in
Iraq, the debacle of the Katrina cleanup, and had inspired the
coups in Chile, Argentina and Brazil in the 1970s. The same
earmarks were being repeated here in the United States that had
characterized the juntas in those countries: namely, the tightening
of wages, the privatization of all public works, and the export of
good jobs overseas to the cheapest labor markets. In those Latin
American countries the cleansing of society had required the
genocide of all dissidents; in this country it seems that the entire
middle class has been targeted because they constitute the
political base of no one of any importance, in contrast to the
"haves and have mores". I seem to recall that there was a time
when everyone, rich or poor, mattered in this country and the
government was of, by, and for us all.
Jay Carrigan
Shortly before I attended a demonstration at the Indiana State
House last Thursday where several dozen people gathered to
protest the building of a liquid coal power plant near Terra Haute I
had started reading Naomi Klein's fascinating book THE SHOCK
DOCTRINE I had no idea that a new power plant in Indiana was
related to the coups d'etat in Chile, Argentina and Brazil. I had
also not known that the Chicago University Economics Department
and Milton Friedman were credited with the inspiration for those
coups.
As I listened to various speakers at the State House protests tell
about Indiana being ranked 48th and 49th in separate estimates of
the cleanliness of air in the 50 states, and as I heard that Duke
Power wanted to build the most expensive plant because rate
payers in Indiana would make up the difference (even though the
power generated would be sold largely outside Indiana) and turn a
profit for the company, it occurred to me that this coal fired power
plant was inspired by the same ideology that brought us the war in
Iraq, the debacle of the Katrina cleanup, and had inspired the
coups in Chile, Argentina and Brazil in the 1970s. The same
earmarks were being repeated here in the United States that had
characterized the juntas in those countries: namely, the tightening
of wages, the privatization of all public works, and the export of
good jobs overseas to the cheapest labor markets. In those Latin
American countries the cleansing of society had required the
genocide of all dissidents; in this country it seems that the entire
middle class has been targeted because they constitute the
political base of no one of any importance, in contrast to the
"haves and have mores". I seem to recall that there was a time
when everyone, rich or poor, mattered in this country and the
government was of, by, and for us all.
Jay Carrigan
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