Hurricane Maria
wreaked what the news services are calling unprecedented devastation on Puerto
Rico and other islands in the Caribbean, and for once it is not the usual media
hype and hyperbole. Agriculture,
infrastructure, and anything else you care to name is in ruins. Added to what happened already in the Virgin
Islands, the situation in Cuba, Venezuela, etc.,
etc., etc., and a virtually endless catalogue of catastrophe, as soon as
the politicians stop wringing their hands and trying to find someone to blame,
there is going to be the need for a comprehensive plan to rebuild not just
Puerto Rico, but the entire region.
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| CESJ and Polish Solidarity meeting with Pope John Paul II |
Ironically,
efforts have been made for decades to implement a program designed to
revitalize the region economically, primarily to counter the spread of
socialism, but also to make humanitarian aid efforts far more cost effective,
even profitable to the ordinary people who live there, instead of a political
or economic élite.
It was, in fact,
as early as 1983 that Dr. Norman G. Kurland, who would one day become president
of the all-volunteer, non-profit think tank, the interfaith Center for Economic
and Social Justice (CESJ), published a “strategy paper” outlining a possible program
that would establish and maintain a regional economy that would work for
people, not just politicians and corporations.
The paper, “Project Economic Justice: A Beachhead for Regional
Infrastructural Reform,” was prepared at the request of Dr. Norman Bailey, then
Chief Economist for International
Economic Affairs of the National Security Council under President Ronald
Reagan.
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| Dr. Norman A. Bailey |
Kurland’s paper
was the seed from which, in 1985, CESJ members initiated the Congressional
legislation that created President Reagan’s “Presidential Task Force on Project
Economic Justice.” This 1986 bipartisan
task force — funded entirely with private donations without one cent of
taxpayer money — offered a revolutionary regional strategy of expanded capital
ownership for economic revitalization in Central America and the Caribbean.
Once the Task
Force completed its work in 1987, CESJ representatives presented the Task Force
report, High Road to Economic Justice, to President Reagan and His
Holiness Pope John Paul II. CESJ’s
compilation, Every Worker an Owner, served as the orientation book for
the task force. This book was later translated into Polish and 40,000 copies
were distributed throughout Solidarity channels in Poland, prior to the
collapse of the Soviet system.
With the collapse
of the Soviet Union, the project was shelved, although a great deal of interest
was shown by the government of Costa Rica and the Movimiento Solidarista Costarricense,
and a number of elements of the program instituted. (The financing by “pure credit” was not
instituted, which inhibited the effectiveness of the effort.)
The program,
however, is more applicable today than ever before, and answers the question as
to how to rebuild the region in ways that not only do not put a burden on
taxpayers, but are designed to be profitable in ways that benefit the ordinary
citizen. This is not through “jobs and
welfare,” but through “jobs and ownership.”
Tomorrow we will
begin posting extracts
from Kurland’s strategy paper, and conclude in a few weeks by giving the
full text of President
Reagan’s speech on Project Economic Justice, delivered on August 3, 1987 at
the White House in Washington, DC.
Readers should
feel free to send links to the strategy paper and President Reagan’s speech to
their networks as well as their Representatives and Senators.
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