FW: benefits and costs of civil obedience

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Mike Lebowitz, a pen-l alumnus, sends me this: 

>US Nobel Laureate Slams Bush Government As "Worst" in American History
>
>Berlin, July 30 (RHC) - American Nobel Prize laureate for Economics George
>Akerlof lashed out at the government of US President George Bush, calling it
>the "worst ever" in 200 years of American history, the online site of
>Berlin's weekly Der Spiegel magazine reported Tuesday. The respected 2001
>Nobel Prize laureate who teaches economics at the University of California
>in Berkeley said the Bush administration "has engaged in extraordinarily
>irresponsible policies not only in foreign policy and economics but also in
>social and environmental policy." The 61-year-old scholar said now is the
>time for the American people to engage in civil disobedience and protest as
>much as possible.
>
>According to Akerlof, the officially projected 455 billion dollar fiscal
>deficit this year - the largest ever - is in the long term unmanageable and
>will put a severe strain on services like Medicare, Medicaid and Social
>Security. With respect to tax cuts for the wealthy, he said "they don't need
>it," adding that the rich have done extremely well in the US in the past
>twenty years, whereas poorer citizens have done quite badly. Responding to a
>question about Bush's promise while campaigning for an even larger tax cut
>earlier this year that it would create 1.4 million jobs, Akerlof said the
>government is not really telling the truth to the American people who, for
>some reason, still do not yet recognize the dire budgetary consequences.
>
>If they don't, he added, and if Bush isn't voted out of office next year,
>future generations and even people in ten years are going to face massive
>public deficits and huge government debt that will leave them with the
>choice of being like a very poor country with problems of threatening
>bankruptcy or drastically cutting health and pension services upon which the
>majority of the population depends.

Jim Devine