Molly Ivins April 28

AUSTIN, Texas — First, a salute to Sen. Phil Gramm, who's been trying hard for the title of Meanest Man in the United States and now just may have earned it.

Gramm is blocking legislation that would restore food stamps for elderly legal immigrants, one of the nastiest parts of welfare deform. This harsh and unseemly provision has provoked widespread criticism and is causing elderly legal immigrants to flock to overburdened food banks. There was widespread bipartisan agreement that the provision had to go — 71 senators are pushing Majority Leader Trent Lott for a vote on it — but Gramm is single-handedly holding it up.

You may think that this action alone earns Gramm the Meanest Man title, but what really puts him in contention is his rationale for cutting off food stamps to old, poor, legal immigrants. Follow this carefully:

"The 1996 reform was a critically important step toward getting families out of the welfare trap," Gramm said in an April 20 news release. "Reversing the 1996 reform would constitute a new personal tragedy inflicted on the most vulnerable people among us."

You see? If we were to restore food stamps to sick, 85-year-old legal immigrants who worked all their lives, it would be a new personal tragedy for them, throwing them right back into the welfare trap instead of letting them get right out there and compete for jobs, thus making them happier and better people. Phil is doing this to them for their own good.

Texas has 121,000 legal immigrants who had been receiving food stamps before they were cut off last year. Gramm said that restoring the food stamps would be "onerous and destructive." Gov. George Dubya Bush is finding it somewhat onerous himself since he had to come up with $18 million in state money to cover disabled children and the elderly who are sick. He supports restoring the food stamps. Restoring food stamps nationwide for 935,000 legal immigrants would cost $818 million, a tiny part of the $55 billion appropriation for the Department of Agriculture that includes a proposal sponsored by Gramm to spend $43 million on research to eradicate fire ants.

On a more cheerful note, Michael Moore's delightful documentary "The Big One" is now playing in local theaters. Moore, who made the wacky documentary "Roger & Me" a few years ago, made this film about his book tour promoting his jolly jeremiad "Downsize This!" Wherever he went, Moore stopped to visit local folks who had just been downsized, and he tried to talk to the corporate honchos responsible.

The result is one of those rare films with a working person's point of view and is a blow for Bubbas everywhere.

Moore doesn't take much seriously; he wants to change the name of the U.S.A. to "The Big One" and our national anthem to "We Will Rock You." But he does care about working-class folks getting stiffed by international corporations awash in profits. His interview with Nike CEO Phil Knight is priceless.

"Don't you care that there are 12-year-olds working for 40 cents an hour in your factories in Indonesia?"

"They're 14."

Many people, including Knight, have undertaken to explain to Moore that he just doesn't understand the imperatives of economic globalization. If he understood, you see, he wouldn't be troubled by downsizing because, you see, even though the international corporations are hugely profitable, they must remain competitive, you see? And anyway, it's all inevitable because of economic globalization.

In fact, of all the bull that's being sold about economics these days, the myth that nothing can be done about economic globalization is the silliest — and one of the most pernicious. Linda McQuaig's excellent new book, "The Cult of Impotence: Selling the Myth of Powerlessness in the Global Economy" (Viking), takes a close look at this amazing con job. She recounts an exchange between an economics professor and a journalist who finally inquires plaintively: "Is there some way we can stop this? Is there nothing we can do to avoid this dark future?"

The economist snaps, "That question reflects the thinking of the machine age."

McQuaig advises: "Hold it. Let's play that again slowly. This line is more subversive than it first appears. He is saying it's not just that we can't change things, but we can't even think about the possibility of changing things: To do so is to engage in old-style thinking. So, it's not just that we're powerless to stop being pushed over the edge of the cliff in the new global world order. But even to try to prevent ourselves from being pushed over the cliff is a sign of regressive thinking. The new way of thinking ... requires an acceptance of powerlessness, resignation to a world without solutions — a world of inaction and helplessness."

The myth of the inevitability of economic globalization is based largely on the work of Milton Friedman, and easily, the most underreported story of our time is that the current economy proves Friedman flatly wrong. You probably would have heard something about this if the media weren't awfully busy reporting on Monica Lewinsky.

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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