March 2, 2006

DIRECTOR'S CORNER

By TIM HARRIS

When did we all agree that the world is just one big fire sale for the rich? In Iraq, war profiteers like Haliburton and Bechtel reap enormous windfalls on fat cost-plus contracts at taxpayer expense while misery abounds. Here in Washington state, wealthy sports team owners say their multi-million dollar profits aren’t enough, and that taxpayers must subsidize their franchises by first forgiving their debt and then buying them new stadiums.

Developers in Seattle spin visions of a sleek new downtown characterized by high-rise affluence and assume that government’s role is to simply get out of the way. But when land values rise and poor people get pushed out, it’s no one’s responsibility. It’s like the weather. Nothin’ you can do.

Somewhere along the line, it became common sense that we should all just obligingly funnel money upwards to the rich as quickly as possible. And every year, the wealth of the top 1 percent becomes more obscene while the poor descend deeper into poverty.

We’re supposed to be grateful to these John Galts of commerce for providing jobs and opportunity and resent the poor for sucking the system dry. Who’s the real leech here? Some mom trying to raise two kids on $543 a month in public assistance, or Howard Schultz, squeezing a couple hundred million out of the state legislature so that corporate execs can have the cushy skyboxes they think they deserve? Enough is enough.