Shock Doctrine—California Style

Since the financial crisis hit in September, Naomi has been warning that the real shock was yet to come. "Unless we get a good deal" on the bailouts, Naomi wrote back in October, "there will be nothing left over after the banks are done feeding to pay for the meager services now provided in exchange for taxation. The spiraling cost of saving Wall Street from its bad bets is already being used as an excuse for why we can't solve our many other crises, from health care to climate change."

In California, the real shock has arrived with the state's devastating budget crisis and unprecedented spending cuts. Read the post by Avi Lewis below about California and then click on the links to watch his incredible half-hour documentary.

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Schwarzenegger’s Shock Therapy—The Poor Pay For The Sins Of The Rich

By Avi Lewis
June 17, 2009
Published on the Huffington Post

Now that Washington has ruled out an immediate bailout for California, we know who will pay the ultimate price for the crisis born on Wall Street: the state’s most vulnerable citizens. And with many states facing similar crises, this could be a preview of where the country as a whole is headed.

California is facing a $24.3 billion dollar budget gap, and the governor wants to attack it with cuts to social programs alone. If Schwarzenegger has his way, the price will be paid by 1.9 million people who lose their health care coverage, 1.3 million who lose basic welfare, thousands of state workers who get fired, schools that lose $5 billion in funding, having already survived brutal cuts earlier this year.

I just spent a week in LA and Sacramento filming a documentary on the crisis for Fault Lines, the show I co-host on Al Jazeera English Television. We interviewed teachers who are on hunger strike against the cuts, students organizing protest marches, health care workers and their patients, politicians from both parties, undocumented immigrants and the talk show hosts who demonize them (Californians will know the John and Ken Show…)

What we discovered (beyond some priceless video of Arnold Schwarzenegger introducing Milton Friedman’s TV series on PBS in 1990, is that thanks to the quirks of California’s system, the state is a Petri dish for some of the most virulent strains of American political culture.

Around the world, government is seen as the last hope to stimulate a comatose economy. In California, anti-tax, anti-spending, and anti-government sentiments are converging: California is facing a de-stimulus package of epic proportions.

Watch both parts of my half-hour documentary below, and check out AJE live, 24 hours day, at livestation.com.

Fault Lines, California: Failed State, Part 1:


Fault Lines, California: Failed State, Part 2:

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Since we posted this on Facebook, we have been bombarded by people's stories:

• "The similar solutions are on the table in Poland. The one and only cure from their point of view are tax cuts and cuts in social spending. For example, as we have free public universities, there is a governmental plan to reduce this privilege only to one specialization for each person (I know that it's far better than in US but it is one of the first steps)" -- Jakub Osina


• "Bosnia: coming apart at the seams... The IMF is forcing its usual - cuts cuts cuts, on a country which is already bankrupt, unemployment at 40 percent (50 where I live), a law being passed to cut public expenditure by 10 percent (will hit war invalids, old age pensions, already shamefully low and often not paid teachers' wages, etc.). Members of parliament, ministers and the like had raised their own wages last year, "just in case", so they will still be above the average, but common people are loosing their nerves. Unemployed veterans blocked the Bosnian-Croatian border here in Bihać yesterday in revolt after five months of not receiving a 80 euros allowance, and no representative of the authorities even showing up to talk to them... Syndicates are announcing mass demonstrations for tomorrow (June 18th)." -- Paola Lucchesi


• "Naomi, in Italy it's happening the same, and we don't even know Milton Friedman. 135,000 teachers sent home, 200,000 Italian university researchers will be sent home within 15 days. Not 1 euro for non regular workers who have lost their jobs in the last three months. I think that in Italy there will be a hot fall season, hotter than summer." -- Thomas Olivieri

Keep these stories coming by sharing your thoughts on The Huffington Post. We look forward to reading them.

All the best,
Debra Levy, Naomi's research assistant