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November 4, 2005
Red Alert
by Soren Wuerth

Taking Time for the Status Quo

     For years, you succumb to the routine of a mindless job, holding out the hope for retirement. Then, when you get there, the company for whom you’ve loyally toiled has gutted your health care pension.

     In the past 20 years, the number of fixed income retirement pensions has dropped from 112,200 to 29,700, the number of workers covered fell by five million, and almost 200 of America’s top 1,000 corporations ended or suspended their benefit plans.

     Where did I find this liberal hype? The Nation? The Progressive?

     No, I found this corporate and Congressional horse whipping in none other than Time.

     The magazine leads its cover story with a photo of an elderly woman collecting pop cans on the side of a highway. “Corporate promises are often not worth paper their printed on,” reporters Don Barlett and James Steele write. “Businesses in one industry after another are revoking longstanding commitments to their workers. It’s the equivalent of your bank telling you that it needs the money you put into your savings account more than you do—and keeping it.”

     “So what else is new?” you lefties ask. “Alaskan author Dr. Larry Weiss has been writing about this stuff for years.”

     But the astounding thing, for me at least, is I’m reading this in a notoriously conservative periodical.

     Listen:  “Congress has enacted legislation that adds to the cost of retirement and eats away at dollars once earmarked for food and shelter. That reversal of fortunes is staggering, and even those already retired or near retirement will be squeezed by changing economic rules.”

     Meanwhile, public sector retirees are “safe”. While only 20 percent of private workers are covered by a defined-benefit pension, 90 percent of public employees can look forward to a return for their labor to “the man.”

     Yet with most of the nation’s workforce stuck with corporate jobs, “all but the most affluent citizens,” the Time reporters predict, “will have two options:” They can either start a can collecting business or “follow in the footsteps of Betty Dizik of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., who is into her sixth decade as a working American.”

     I flipped some pages and scanned an article identifying religious fanatic Ralph Reed as a White House doormat for lobbyists. In a later section, I noticed an illustration of a man guzzling cans of crude alongside a story “How to kick the oil habit.”

     “Yea, I know, I know,” I said to myself as I turned pages past BP ads, an article about an opinionated book that vilifies Mao, “Time is a corporate junkie itself.” By the time I reached the inside back cover, I had almost cast it outside the door, as we do here in the Bush.

     Then I saw this cartoon called “The Fuel Miser in Chief.” The cartoon had Bush, characterized by his strained, constipated expression, announcing his actual pitch for energy conservation. Among his conservation efforts, the cartoon noted, will be to have G.O.P. lobbyists, donors and Congressmen “Gulfstream pool” to overseas destinations. A panel showing five Halliburton workers changing a light-bulb says the energy department will contract out to change bulbs in federal buildings to lower wattage.

     “Even the President’s mother is pitching in.” Martha is seen getting fanned by dark skinned men in togas. “Everyone still needs air conditioning,” she says, “so this is working out great for these underprivileged!”

     Needless to say, I’m not going to go out and buy a subscription. Time isn’t Adbusters, The Nation, Harper’s, or the Earth First! Journal. It’s just good to know that all those folks out there in the heartland aren’t all that ignorant. Are they?






Soren Wuerth is perhaps Alaska's best known community activist. He resides in an undisclosed location in rural Alaska and can be reached at soren@insurgent49.com.
- Columnists -

Editor's Desk
by Aaron Selbig

Red Alert
by Soren Wuerth

Alaskan In Exile
by Neil Zawicki

The
Bramble Bush
by Kevin Morford





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in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership.