http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28746.htm
The Four Great Hypocrisies
Keith Olbermann: Special Comment on the debt deal
I close, as promised, with a Special Comment on the debt deal.
Our government has now given up the concept of right and wrong.
We have, in this deal, declared that we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all political incumbents are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Re-nomination, re-election, and the pursuit of hypocrisy.
We have, in this deal, gone from the Four Freedoms to the Four Great Hypocrisies.
We have superceded Congress to facilitate 750 billion dollars in domestic cuts including Medicare in order to end an artificially-induced political hostage crisis over debt, originating from the bills run up by a Republican president who funneled billions of taxpayer dollars to the military-industrial complex by unfunded, unnecessary, and unproductive wars, enabled in doing so by the very same Republican leaders who now cry for balanced budgets - and we have called it compromise. And those who defend it have called it a credit to a pragmatic president who wins some sort of political "points" because, having stood for almost nothing here, he gave away almost nothing for which he stood.
It would be comical if it were not tragic.
Either way, it is a signal moment in our history, in which both parties have agreed and codified that the political structure of this nation shall now based entirely on hypocrisy and political self-perpetuation.
Let us start with the first of the Great Hypocrisies: The Committee. The Republican dogs can run back to their corporate masters and say they have forced one-and-one-half trillion dollars in cuts and palmed off the responsibility for them on this nonsensical "Super Congress" committee.
For two-and-a-half brutal years we have listened to these Tea Party mountebanks screech about the Constitution of the United States as if it were the revealed word and not the product of other - albeit far better - politicians. They demand the repeal of Amendments they don't like, and the strict interpretation of the ones they do, and the specific citation of authorization within the Constitution for every proposed act or expenditure or legislation.
Except this one.
Where does it say in the Constitution that the two houses of Congress can, in effect, create a third house to do its dirty work for it; to sacrifice a few Congressmen and Senators so the vast majority of incumbents can tell the voters they had nothing to do with this?
This leads to the second of the Great Hypocrisies: how, in the same breath, the Republicans can create an extra-Constitutional "Super Congress" and yet also demand a Constitutional Amendment to force the economic stupidity that would be a mandated balanced budget. Firstly: pick a side! Ignore the Constitution or adhere to it.
Firstly, pick a side, ignore the constitution or adhere to it. And of what value would this Mandated Balanced Budget be? Our own history proves that at a time of economic crisis, if the businesses aren't spending, and the consumers aren't spending, the government must. Our ancestors were the lab rats in the horrible experiments of the Hoover Administration that brought on the Great Depression, in which the government curled up into a ball while it simultaneously insisted the economy should heal itself, when, in times of crisis - then and now - the economy turns out to be comprised entirely of a bunch of rich people who will sit on their money no matter if the country starves.
Forgotten in the Republican Voodoo dance, dressed in the skins of the mythical Balanced Budget, triumphant over the severed head of short-term retrenchment that they can hold up to their moronic followers, are the long-term implications of the mandated Balanced Budget.
What happens if there's ever another… war?
Or another… terrorist attack?
Or another… natural disaster?
Or any other emergency that requires A government to spend a dollar morethan it has? A Constitutional Amendment denying us the right to run a deficit, is madness, and it will be tested by catastrophe sooner than any of its authors with their under-developed imaginations that can count only contributions and votes, can contemplate.
And the third of the Great Hypocrisies is hidden inside the shell game that is the Super Congress. TheSuper Congress is supposed to cut evenly from domestic and defense spending, but if it cannot agree on those cuts, or Congress will not endorse them, there will be a "trigger" that automatically cuts a trillion-two or more - but those cuts will not necessarily come evenly from the Pentagon. We are presented with an agreement that seems to guarantee the gutting of every local sacred cow from the Defense Department. Except if the Congressmen and Senators to whom the cows are sacred, disagree, and overrule, or sabotage the Super Congress, or, except if for some reason a 12-member Committee split evenly along party lines can't manage to avoid finishing every damned vote 6-to-6.
We're cutting Defense. Unless we're not.
The fourth of the Great Hypocrisies is the evident agreement to not add any revenues to the process of cutting. Not only is the impetus to make human budget sacrifices out of the poor and dependent formalized… but the rich and the corporations are thus indemnified, again, and given more money not merely to spend on themselves and their own luxuries, but more vitally, they are given more money to spend on buying politicians, and legislatures, and courts, buying entire states, all of which can be directed like so many weapons, in the service of one cause and one cause alone: making by statute and ruling, the further protection of the wealthy at the expense of everybody else, untouchable, inviolable - permanent.
The White House today boasted of loopholes to be closed and tax breaks to be rescinded -- later.
By a committee.
A committee that has yet to be formed.
There are no new taxes. Except the stealth ones, enacted on 99 out of 100 Americans by this evil transaction. Every dollar cut from the Safety Net is another dollar added to the citizen's cost for education, for security, for health, for life itself. It is another dollar he can't spend on making a better life for himself, or at least his children. It is another dollar he must spend instead on simply keeping himself alive.
Where is the outrage over these Great Hypocrisies? Do you expect it to come from a corrupt and corrupted media, for whom access is of greater importance than criticizing the failure of a political party or defending those who don't buy newspapers or can't leap website paywalls or could not afford cable tv?
Do you expect it to come from a cynical and manipulative political structure? Do you expect it from those elected officials who no longer know anything of government or governance, but only perceive how to get elected, or how to pose in front of a camera and pretend to be leaders? Do you expect it from politicians themselves, who will merely calculate whether or not it's right based on whether or not it will get them more contributions?
Do you expect it will come from the great middle ground of this country, with a population obsessed with entertainment, video games, social media, sports, and trivia?
Where is the outrage to come from?
From you!
It will do no good to wait for the politicians to suddenly atone for their sins. They are too busy trying to keep their jobs, to do their jobs.
It will do no good to wait for the media to suddenly remember its origins as the 'free press,' the watchdog of democracy envisioned by Jefferson. They are too busy trying to get exclusive details about exactly how the bank robbers emptied the public's pockets, to give a damn about telling anybody what they looked like, or which way they went.
It will do no good to wait for the apolitical public to get a clue. They can't hear the clue through all the chatter and scandal and diversion and delusion and illusion.
The betrayal of what this nation is supposed to be about did not begin with this deal and it surely will not end with this deal. There is a tide pushing back the rights of each of us, and it has been artificially induced by union-bashing and the sowing ofhatreds and fears, and now this ever-more-institutionalized economic battering of the average American. It will continue, and it will crush us, because those who created it are organized and unified and hell-bent.
And the only response is to be organized and unified and hell-bent in return. We must find again the energy and the purpose of the 1960's and early 1970's and we must protest this deal and all the God damn deals to come, in the streets. We must arise, non-violently but insistently. General strikes, boycotts, protests, sit-ins, non-cooperation take-overs - but modern versions of that resistance, facilitated and amplified, by a weapon our predecessors did not have: the glory that is instantaneous communication.
It is from an old and almost clichéd motion picture that the wisdom comes: First, you've got to get mad.
I cannot say to you, meet there or there at this hour or that one, and we will peacefully break the back of government that now exists merely to get its functionaries re-elected. But I can say that the time is coming when the window for us to restore the control of our government to our selves will close, and we had damn well better act before then.
Because this deal is more than a tipping point in which the government goes from defending the safety net to gutting it. This is wrong, and while our government has now declared that it has given up the concept of right-and-wrong, you and I… have not, and will not, do so.
Good night, and good luck.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
SC108-2
http://disquietreservations.blogspot.com/2011/08/whether-it-is-terror-crisis-or-debt.html
Whether It Is The Terror Crisis Or The Debt Crisis, The Solution Is Always A Super Dictatorship
"I have no intention for the next weeks and months to be talking about this committee." - House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi when asked by reporters at a press conference about the new Super Congress. (Source: Gregory Korte, USA Today, August 3, 2011).
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. . . Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before." - Chicago Mayor/Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. (Source: Gerald F. Seib, The Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2008).
"We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it." - Tennessee Williams
Nothing makes sense in Washington if you assume that the leading political figures in both parties care about the interests, freedoms and security of the American people. The political, media, and financial elite are pursuing an anti-democratic, anti-Constitution, and anti-American agenda.
This agenda includes the gutting of Social Security and Medicare, an endless war for empire, the economic, security and political unification of Mexico, America and Canada, and top-down control of the economy and society by a technocratic class that answers to criminal bankers and criminal corporations.
The creation of the Super Congress is another step in a process that began long ago, and won't end until the structures that underpin the American constitutional republic are destroyed once and for all.
By the swish of a pen, the treasonous political leaders from both parties overstepped their colleagues, who are considered half-wits that are blocking their secret agenda of control.
"This provision," said Congressman Ron Paul, commenting on the Super Congress, "is an excellent way to keep spending decisions out of the reach of members who are not on board with the leadership's agenda."
Both President Obama and his treasonous comrades on the other side of the aisle are taking advantage of this hyped crisis to fundamentally change the character of the American political system and pass draconian laws without the active resistance of Congress.
During a calmer state of affairs in Washington they would not have been able to get away with establishing a new legislative body which decisively ends the illusion that Washington can be held accountable to the American people through the voting box.
Time after time, we've seen the Hegelian dialectic being used in Washington against the American people. The 9/11 attacks produced a crisis of insecurity and public fear that led to the criminal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and gave the American people the Patriot(Traitor) Act.
Then in September 2008, the big criminal banks on Wall Street, led by Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson, generated their own crisis by threatening to blow up the financial system if Congressmen and Senators refused to pass the TARP Bailout bill.
The American people's representatives were bombarded with a campaign of fear and propaganda, with the threat of Martial Law and economic collapse hanging over their heads, if they did not hand over trillions of dollars of the American people's money to the banks.
As financial analyst Max Kesier, economist Dean Baker, economist Michael Hudson, and others have said over and over again: Wall Street banks and private central bankers regularly use terrorist tactics to get what they want, while leaving the American people to starve and die in their own country, and forcing millions of human beings to live like slaves without homes, without jobs, and without a future.
The crisis that should define the political discourse in America and set the terms of the public debate is a political crisis and a legitimacy crisis, as pointed out by Catherine Austin Fitts, the former Assistant Secretary of Housing, in this interview.
This political crisis centers around the manipulations and hidden machinations of private bankers, aka financial terrorists, who are occupying America with the help of paid-off politicians, including President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner.
Once this crisis is recognized by the great majority of the American people it will be an easy thing to overcome it and restore America's financial independence. And the roots of this political crisis are very, very deep. It goes back to the assassination of JFK, and the creation of the illegal Federal Reserve System. Over the years this crisis has evolved for a reason: it has not been faced yet.
The crisis cannot be fully understood if people overlook the fact that a silent mutiny against America's constitutional republic took place in November 1963, when the security-intelligence-military-financial apparatus basically took over the office of the Presidency. The traitors had names and faces. Former CIA Director Allen Dulles is one of them. Another is former CIA Director/President George H. W. Bush.
Washington shifted from a constitutional republic to an invisible plutocratic dictatorship after the CIA's assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Ever since, real American history has been ignored, whitewashed and censored by the CIA-controlled mass media, and academia.
Investigative journalist Russ Baker is one of the few journalists who has a handle on the scale of the treason that was committed against America in 1963. Baker recently wrote in his article,"The NY Times’ Ostrich Act On JFK Assassination Getting Old":
I myself ran into the depth of the subterfuge and the institutional resistance to disturbing revelations while researching the Bush family’s past for my investigative history, Family of Secrets. I learned, for example, of George H.W. Bush’s secret intelligence connections, which preceded his CIA directorship by several decades. I learned that the elder Bush had a lifelong friendship with a Dallas-based Russian émigré (anti-communist) oil and intelligence operative named George de Mohrenschildt—who himself was of intense if passing interest to the Warren Commission. And I learned that de Mohrenschildt had essentially guided Oswald for a good part of the year before the assassination.
There’s paperwork on all this, even a letter on the topic of Oswald from de Mohrenschildt to Bush, with Bush’s reply. Plus connections between de Mohrenschildt and right-wing Dallas moguls of exactly the sort that the late Mr. Leslie wrote about more generally.
The crisis of legitimacy in Washington extends to other Western capitals, especially London and Ottawa. People in these countries are fed up with the left/right political puppets, the parasitic oligarchy, the secret intelligence agencies that are breaking the law, and the entire Western political system that masquerades as democratic and free.
But the political crisis is not the only crisis that we face in this century. We live in an age of mega-crisis. There exists a true state of global emergency. However, there are fake crises which are generated by greedy oligarchs and authoritarian politicians who are only interested in advancing their own private objectives and interests, and there are real crises that impact us all like endless global war, false flag state terrorism, unemployment, lack of truthful reporting in the media, environmental degradation, and many more. Here is a general list:
Energy Crisis
Crisis of Endless War
Environmental Crisis
Poverty Crisis
Financial Crisis
Political Crisis
Immigration Crisis
Health Care Crisis
Unemployment Crisis
Hunger Crisis
False Flag Terrorism Crisis
Crisis of Conscience
Moral Crisis
Crisis of Confidence in Political Leaders
Accountability Crisis in most Western governments
Constitutional Crisis
U.S. Dollar Crisis
Mainstream Media Crisis
Government Secrecy Crisis
Crisis of Understanding
Crisis of Communication, Truth, and Knowledge
The greatest crisis in the list above is the moral crisis. All the other crises can be fixed if we use our creative and collective imagination. We must stop listening to power-mongering politicians and criminal private bankers that want to bring upon us a tyrannical and totalitarian world system.
Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, "I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."
King, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy faced the moral crisis head-on by challenging the forces of the global financial-militarist empire, and showed America that the way towards national redemption and renewal requires unbreakable courage.
All three brave men got their heads cut off in public by the cabal of treasonous usurpers in Washington who are now about to cut the American people's head off after stuffing it all these years with totalitarian propaganda and evil lies. But the American people's head is not as soft as these wicked traitors imagine it to be.
Setting up a super global corporate dictatorship on the ruins of America and other collapsing Western countries will be met with resistance.
Whether It Is The Terror Crisis Or The Debt Crisis, The Solution Is Always A Super Dictatorship
"I have no intention for the next weeks and months to be talking about this committee." - House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi when asked by reporters at a press conference about the new Super Congress. (Source: Gregory Korte, USA Today, August 3, 2011).
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. . . Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before." - Chicago Mayor/Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. (Source: Gerald F. Seib, The Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2008).
"We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it." - Tennessee Williams
Nothing makes sense in Washington if you assume that the leading political figures in both parties care about the interests, freedoms and security of the American people. The political, media, and financial elite are pursuing an anti-democratic, anti-Constitution, and anti-American agenda.
This agenda includes the gutting of Social Security and Medicare, an endless war for empire, the economic, security and political unification of Mexico, America and Canada, and top-down control of the economy and society by a technocratic class that answers to criminal bankers and criminal corporations.
The creation of the Super Congress is another step in a process that began long ago, and won't end until the structures that underpin the American constitutional republic are destroyed once and for all.
By the swish of a pen, the treasonous political leaders from both parties overstepped their colleagues, who are considered half-wits that are blocking their secret agenda of control.
"This provision," said Congressman Ron Paul, commenting on the Super Congress, "is an excellent way to keep spending decisions out of the reach of members who are not on board with the leadership's agenda."
Both President Obama and his treasonous comrades on the other side of the aisle are taking advantage of this hyped crisis to fundamentally change the character of the American political system and pass draconian laws without the active resistance of Congress.
During a calmer state of affairs in Washington they would not have been able to get away with establishing a new legislative body which decisively ends the illusion that Washington can be held accountable to the American people through the voting box.
Time after time, we've seen the Hegelian dialectic being used in Washington against the American people. The 9/11 attacks produced a crisis of insecurity and public fear that led to the criminal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and gave the American people the Patriot(Traitor) Act.
Then in September 2008, the big criminal banks on Wall Street, led by Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson, generated their own crisis by threatening to blow up the financial system if Congressmen and Senators refused to pass the TARP Bailout bill.
The American people's representatives were bombarded with a campaign of fear and propaganda, with the threat of Martial Law and economic collapse hanging over their heads, if they did not hand over trillions of dollars of the American people's money to the banks.
As financial analyst Max Kesier, economist Dean Baker, economist Michael Hudson, and others have said over and over again: Wall Street banks and private central bankers regularly use terrorist tactics to get what they want, while leaving the American people to starve and die in their own country, and forcing millions of human beings to live like slaves without homes, without jobs, and without a future.
The crisis that should define the political discourse in America and set the terms of the public debate is a political crisis and a legitimacy crisis, as pointed out by Catherine Austin Fitts, the former Assistant Secretary of Housing, in this interview.
This political crisis centers around the manipulations and hidden machinations of private bankers, aka financial terrorists, who are occupying America with the help of paid-off politicians, including President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner.
Once this crisis is recognized by the great majority of the American people it will be an easy thing to overcome it and restore America's financial independence. And the roots of this political crisis are very, very deep. It goes back to the assassination of JFK, and the creation of the illegal Federal Reserve System. Over the years this crisis has evolved for a reason: it has not been faced yet.
The crisis cannot be fully understood if people overlook the fact that a silent mutiny against America's constitutional republic took place in November 1963, when the security-intelligence-military-financial apparatus basically took over the office of the Presidency. The traitors had names and faces. Former CIA Director Allen Dulles is one of them. Another is former CIA Director/President George H. W. Bush.
Washington shifted from a constitutional republic to an invisible plutocratic dictatorship after the CIA's assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Ever since, real American history has been ignored, whitewashed and censored by the CIA-controlled mass media, and academia.
Investigative journalist Russ Baker is one of the few journalists who has a handle on the scale of the treason that was committed against America in 1963. Baker recently wrote in his article,"The NY Times’ Ostrich Act On JFK Assassination Getting Old":
I myself ran into the depth of the subterfuge and the institutional resistance to disturbing revelations while researching the Bush family’s past for my investigative history, Family of Secrets. I learned, for example, of George H.W. Bush’s secret intelligence connections, which preceded his CIA directorship by several decades. I learned that the elder Bush had a lifelong friendship with a Dallas-based Russian émigré (anti-communist) oil and intelligence operative named George de Mohrenschildt—who himself was of intense if passing interest to the Warren Commission. And I learned that de Mohrenschildt had essentially guided Oswald for a good part of the year before the assassination.
There’s paperwork on all this, even a letter on the topic of Oswald from de Mohrenschildt to Bush, with Bush’s reply. Plus connections between de Mohrenschildt and right-wing Dallas moguls of exactly the sort that the late Mr. Leslie wrote about more generally.
The crisis of legitimacy in Washington extends to other Western capitals, especially London and Ottawa. People in these countries are fed up with the left/right political puppets, the parasitic oligarchy, the secret intelligence agencies that are breaking the law, and the entire Western political system that masquerades as democratic and free.
But the political crisis is not the only crisis that we face in this century. We live in an age of mega-crisis. There exists a true state of global emergency. However, there are fake crises which are generated by greedy oligarchs and authoritarian politicians who are only interested in advancing their own private objectives and interests, and there are real crises that impact us all like endless global war, false flag state terrorism, unemployment, lack of truthful reporting in the media, environmental degradation, and many more. Here is a general list:
Energy Crisis
Crisis of Endless War
Environmental Crisis
Poverty Crisis
Financial Crisis
Political Crisis
Immigration Crisis
Health Care Crisis
Unemployment Crisis
Hunger Crisis
False Flag Terrorism Crisis
Crisis of Conscience
Moral Crisis
Crisis of Confidence in Political Leaders
Accountability Crisis in most Western governments
Constitutional Crisis
U.S. Dollar Crisis
Mainstream Media Crisis
Government Secrecy Crisis
Crisis of Understanding
Crisis of Communication, Truth, and Knowledge
The greatest crisis in the list above is the moral crisis. All the other crises can be fixed if we use our creative and collective imagination. We must stop listening to power-mongering politicians and criminal private bankers that want to bring upon us a tyrannical and totalitarian world system.
Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, "I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."
King, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy faced the moral crisis head-on by challenging the forces of the global financial-militarist empire, and showed America that the way towards national redemption and renewal requires unbreakable courage.
All three brave men got their heads cut off in public by the cabal of treasonous usurpers in Washington who are now about to cut the American people's head off after stuffing it all these years with totalitarian propaganda and evil lies. But the American people's head is not as soft as these wicked traitors imagine it to be.
Setting up a super global corporate dictatorship on the ruins of America and other collapsing Western countries will be met with resistance.
SC108-1
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25833
The Pentagon Rules America: Militarism and the Crisis of the Civilian Economy
“Have we as a nation gone mad, waging war in the Persian Gulf while society crumbles?” Seymour Melman asked rhetorically when I interviewed him for The
Progressive 19 years ago.
Even though Melman, a professor emeritus at Columbia University's school of industrial engineering, departed this life in 2004, his question still haunts our society, as the American War Machine since then has only gained in momentum, immensity, universality and cruelty.
To answer Melman: “Yes, we have gone mad.” That's because presidents and Pentagon chiefs start new wars even before they finish fighting the old ones! Who can recall a time in our history when the U.S. initiated aggressive wars against five nations(Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen)?
Between 1947 and 1989, Melman said, the U.S. spent $8.2 trillion (in 1982 dollars) on the military. When I said I couldn't grasp a figure that large, Melman replied, “Think of it this way: In 1982, the total money value of all America's manufacturing, industry and its infrastructure amounted to $7.3 trillion. You could have replicated the largest part of everything made by people in this country with what the military got.” (Everything made by everybody? All the houses? All the highways? All the schools? All the hospitals? A new America? Everything?)
Melman went on to say, “Half of every dollar you pay in Federal taxes goes into the military account. Pentagon contractors are awash in billions while the infrastructure that underpins our economy collapse around us and human misery spreads everywhere.”
Fast-forward: Today, the Pentagon still gets roughly half of every tax dollar. The War Resisters League estimates 54% of the pie goes to the military compared with 30% for all human resources, 11 percent for general government and 5% for physical resources..
Defense contractors are awash in profits while lines lengthen at soup kitchens, foreclosed families sleep in shelters, 20 million are jobless or underemployed, food stamp use sets records, summer jobs for teens have vanished, and President Obama appears willing to rat out the elderly on Social Security and Medicare as too costly while he authorizes new CIA drone attacks on Pakistan.
The Pentagon budget does more than absorb tax dollars. It punishes the civilian sector in many ways. For instance, it has siphoned off so much scientific talent the U.S. has long since fallen behind Japan and Germany in innovative technologies. “We're paying the price for building colossal military power,” Melman said. “It's set in motion a process of technical, industrial and human deterioration. We're losing millions of productive jobs because U.S. firms with U.S. factories can't even hold our home markets against foreign competition.”
“While the Pentagon turns out B-2 bombers at $865 million a copy, foreign creators are flooding our markets with cars, bikes, tape recorders, shoes, machine tools, movie cameras, calculators, TV sets, and integrated microcircuits.” Melman said that 19 years ago and it holds true today.
One reason the U.S. fell behind, Melman explained, is that “about 30 percent of the nation's engineers, scientists and technicians work directly or indirectly for the military. The loss to the civilian economy is incalculable.” Consumer electronics, he said, “declined dramatically while the Government employs thousands of electronic engineers in its military labs.”
That was true when Melman spoke and it is true today. We have an army of death scientists toiling away in germ warfare labs ($50 billion wasted on this nauseating research alone since 9/11), in space warfare labs, in nuclear warfare labs, in electronic warfare labs, as well as in labs specializing in conventional ways to kill people.
Melman said one reason for the continuing dominance of the MIC is that the U.S. “is now a military form of state capitalism in which top managers of the military forces and their economy have dominant power---economic, political and military.” Translation: the Pentagon rules!
Today, Melman might add the Pentagon spends more for war than all 50 states spend for all peaceful purposes; that the Pentagon's armed forces are bigger than the next dozen countries combined; that the Pentagon leads the world in arms sales; and that the Pentagon operates 800 overseas bases for “defense” when, in fact, they are used, like Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, for aggression.
As of Jan. 1 of this year, the National Priorities Project of Northampton, Mass., says, the Pentagon has spent $445 billion to wage war in Afghanistan and $815 billion for Iraq, for a total of $1.26 trillion. This at a time when the American Society of Civil Engineers reckons $2.2 trillion is needed to restore our infrastructure. Example: 33% of all roads are in poor or mediocre condition. Does the Pentagon need to spend $19.3-billion on atomic energy when the same sum could pay 295,000 elementary school teachers?
Cutting the Pentagon down to size and converting to civilian economy will require “a new coalition of working people, professionals, trade associations, mayors---all suffering from the prosperity of the military-industrial complex, all needing a turn away from militarism.” “What we need,” Melman concluded, “is a political opposition that would take down the entire military system.”
We saw the faintest stirrings of hope for change in June when the U.S. Conference of Mayors passed a resolution to spend at home the $125 billion the Pentagon is wasting this year waging wars in the Middle East. In depressed Detroit, the unemployment level is 38% and Rep. John Conyers(D-Mich.) blames the White House's lack of leadership for the lack of job creation. Given our infrastructure needs alone, why isn't there a job or job-training for every person who is willing to work?
To support President Obama's medieval war-making is what Professor Melman would rightly have called “mad.” It fits the dictionary definition of insanity as “utterly senseless” and “irrational.” It also fits the view of insanity which observes that the insane repeat their mistakes over and over. That's today's war machine, bigger and deadlier than ever. Welcome to the United Loony Bin of America.#
The Pentagon Rules America: Militarism and the Crisis of the Civilian Economy
“Have we as a nation gone mad, waging war in the Persian Gulf while society crumbles?” Seymour Melman asked rhetorically when I interviewed him for The
Progressive 19 years ago.
Even though Melman, a professor emeritus at Columbia University's school of industrial engineering, departed this life in 2004, his question still haunts our society, as the American War Machine since then has only gained in momentum, immensity, universality and cruelty.
To answer Melman: “Yes, we have gone mad.” That's because presidents and Pentagon chiefs start new wars even before they finish fighting the old ones! Who can recall a time in our history when the U.S. initiated aggressive wars against five nations(Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen)?
Between 1947 and 1989, Melman said, the U.S. spent $8.2 trillion (in 1982 dollars) on the military. When I said I couldn't grasp a figure that large, Melman replied, “Think of it this way: In 1982, the total money value of all America's manufacturing, industry and its infrastructure amounted to $7.3 trillion. You could have replicated the largest part of everything made by people in this country with what the military got.” (Everything made by everybody? All the houses? All the highways? All the schools? All the hospitals? A new America? Everything?)
Melman went on to say, “Half of every dollar you pay in Federal taxes goes into the military account. Pentagon contractors are awash in billions while the infrastructure that underpins our economy collapse around us and human misery spreads everywhere.”
Fast-forward: Today, the Pentagon still gets roughly half of every tax dollar. The War Resisters League estimates 54% of the pie goes to the military compared with 30% for all human resources, 11 percent for general government and 5% for physical resources..
Defense contractors are awash in profits while lines lengthen at soup kitchens, foreclosed families sleep in shelters, 20 million are jobless or underemployed, food stamp use sets records, summer jobs for teens have vanished, and President Obama appears willing to rat out the elderly on Social Security and Medicare as too costly while he authorizes new CIA drone attacks on Pakistan.
The Pentagon budget does more than absorb tax dollars. It punishes the civilian sector in many ways. For instance, it has siphoned off so much scientific talent the U.S. has long since fallen behind Japan and Germany in innovative technologies. “We're paying the price for building colossal military power,” Melman said. “It's set in motion a process of technical, industrial and human deterioration. We're losing millions of productive jobs because U.S. firms with U.S. factories can't even hold our home markets against foreign competition.”
“While the Pentagon turns out B-2 bombers at $865 million a copy, foreign creators are flooding our markets with cars, bikes, tape recorders, shoes, machine tools, movie cameras, calculators, TV sets, and integrated microcircuits.” Melman said that 19 years ago and it holds true today.
One reason the U.S. fell behind, Melman explained, is that “about 30 percent of the nation's engineers, scientists and technicians work directly or indirectly for the military. The loss to the civilian economy is incalculable.” Consumer electronics, he said, “declined dramatically while the Government employs thousands of electronic engineers in its military labs.”
That was true when Melman spoke and it is true today. We have an army of death scientists toiling away in germ warfare labs ($50 billion wasted on this nauseating research alone since 9/11), in space warfare labs, in nuclear warfare labs, in electronic warfare labs, as well as in labs specializing in conventional ways to kill people.
Melman said one reason for the continuing dominance of the MIC is that the U.S. “is now a military form of state capitalism in which top managers of the military forces and their economy have dominant power---economic, political and military.” Translation: the Pentagon rules!
Today, Melman might add the Pentagon spends more for war than all 50 states spend for all peaceful purposes; that the Pentagon's armed forces are bigger than the next dozen countries combined; that the Pentagon leads the world in arms sales; and that the Pentagon operates 800 overseas bases for “defense” when, in fact, they are used, like Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, for aggression.
As of Jan. 1 of this year, the National Priorities Project of Northampton, Mass., says, the Pentagon has spent $445 billion to wage war in Afghanistan and $815 billion for Iraq, for a total of $1.26 trillion. This at a time when the American Society of Civil Engineers reckons $2.2 trillion is needed to restore our infrastructure. Example: 33% of all roads are in poor or mediocre condition. Does the Pentagon need to spend $19.3-billion on atomic energy when the same sum could pay 295,000 elementary school teachers?
Cutting the Pentagon down to size and converting to civilian economy will require “a new coalition of working people, professionals, trade associations, mayors---all suffering from the prosperity of the military-industrial complex, all needing a turn away from militarism.” “What we need,” Melman concluded, “is a political opposition that would take down the entire military system.”
We saw the faintest stirrings of hope for change in June when the U.S. Conference of Mayors passed a resolution to spend at home the $125 billion the Pentagon is wasting this year waging wars in the Middle East. In depressed Detroit, the unemployment level is 38% and Rep. John Conyers(D-Mich.) blames the White House's lack of leadership for the lack of job creation. Given our infrastructure needs alone, why isn't there a job or job-training for every person who is willing to work?
To support President Obama's medieval war-making is what Professor Melman would rightly have called “mad.” It fits the dictionary definition of insanity as “utterly senseless” and “irrational.” It also fits the view of insanity which observes that the insane repeat their mistakes over and over. That's today's war machine, bigger and deadlier than ever. Welcome to the United Loony Bin of America.#
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http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=19304
This Country Defaulted Long Ago
“There is no means of avoiding a final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.” – Ludwig von Mises
The final collapse of our credit expansion boom approaches. We have a choice over the next week. We could voluntarily abandon further credit expansion by voting for a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution or we can raise the debt ceiling, pretend to cut spending far in the future, and allow our currency system to experience a catastrophic final collapse.
We’ll take what’s behind door #2 Johnny. The vested interests in Washington DC and Wall Street only care about power and wealth. They will never abandon credit expansion. It’s their drug. They must have it. They are addicted to it. They will keep injecting it into our system until they overdose America.
The mainstream media acts as if not raising the debt ceiling by next Tuesday will result in America defaulting. This is a crock. America chose to proceed on a path to default decades ago. We are just finally reaching our destination. Below are the choices we made as a people and a country to default on our obligations and eventually destroy our country:
The enactment of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution in 1913 allowing the government to impose a tax on your income, thereby opening Pandora’s Box to a 60,000 page tax code and allowing politicians to sell their votes to the highest bidder.
The signing into law of the Federal Reserve Act by Woodrow Wilson in 1913, transferring control of our currency system to Wall Street banks. The man made inflation created by the Federal Reserve has reduced the purchasing power of the USD by 97% since 1913 and has allowed politicians to promise $100 trillion of benefits to Americans, that can never be delivered.
The Social Security Act signed into law by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1935, supposedly to help widows and orphans, morphed into a giant ponzi scheme used by politicians to make Americans think it was a retirement plan and the money was in a lockbox. The scam continues, but ponzi schemes always collapse.
Fannie Mae was created in 1938 as a government agency and Freddie Mac was created in 1970 as a quasi-government agency. By promoting home ownership and subsidizing loans to people who should have never gotten loans these agencies caused hundreds of billions in mal-investment. As tools of politicians, they were used to push social agendas. The result will be in excess of $300 billion in losses to the American taxpayer.
The Korean War set a precedent where the President did not need to seek Congress to declare war as required under the Constitution. This has allowed the President the freedom to fight undeclared wars around the world for decades, while spending trillions, with no approval from Congress.
LBJ’s Great Society programs such as Medicare and Medicaid were sold to Americans as cost saving programs that would improve healthcare for all Americans. We now spend 17% of our GDP on healthcare and these two programs have an unfunded liability of almost $100 trillion.
Nixon closing the gold window in 1971 removed all restraint on the Federal Reserve, banks and politicians. With a fiat currency backed by nothing but promises, it was only a matter of time before the greed and corruption of bankers and politicians overcame any self imposed fiscal responsibility. The result has been the National Debt going from $400 billion in 1971 to $14.4 trillion today, a 3,600% increase in 40years. Meanwhile, GDP only increased 1,350% over this same time frame.
The embrace of consumer debt by the Baby Boom generation beginning in 1980 created an atmosphere of living for today and not worrying about the future. This attitude has left 50% of all the households in the country with a net worth of $70,000 or below.
The repeal of the Glass Steagall Act in 1999 unleashed the hounds of hell upon America, as the soulless blood sucking vampires on Wall Street proceeded to rape and pillage the American economy with their financial derivatives of mass destruction and marketing of debt to the clueless masses. The housing bust and impoverishment of the middle class can be laid at the feet of these evil greedy bastards.
Bush’s unpaid for wars of choice, his reckless tax cuts, and his foolish expansion of a bankrupt Medicare program in the midst of two wars turbo charged the country on its path to default.
By bailing out Wall Street on the backs of the middle class in 2008/2009, the politicians in this country showed their hand. They will protect their fellow power brokers and contributors and throw the American people under the bus. Wall Street controls Congress.
The Keynesian schemes rolled out by Obama and his minions have just added trillions of debt while depressing the economic system and doing nothing to help the average person. The Fed created inflation has inflamed revolution through out the world and further impoverished the middle class who need to eat and fill up their cars.
In the midst of a Depression Obama chose to create a brand new healthcare bureaucracy, add 30 million people into the government controlled system, and commit the US taxpayer to trillions of future healthcare costs.
As you can see, next Tuesday means nothing. The debt ceiling means nothing. We chose to default as a nation many years ago. The destination was certain, only the timing was in question. Time to step on the gas.
This Country Defaulted Long Ago
“There is no means of avoiding a final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.” – Ludwig von Mises
The final collapse of our credit expansion boom approaches. We have a choice over the next week. We could voluntarily abandon further credit expansion by voting for a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution or we can raise the debt ceiling, pretend to cut spending far in the future, and allow our currency system to experience a catastrophic final collapse.
We’ll take what’s behind door #2 Johnny. The vested interests in Washington DC and Wall Street only care about power and wealth. They will never abandon credit expansion. It’s their drug. They must have it. They are addicted to it. They will keep injecting it into our system until they overdose America.
The mainstream media acts as if not raising the debt ceiling by next Tuesday will result in America defaulting. This is a crock. America chose to proceed on a path to default decades ago. We are just finally reaching our destination. Below are the choices we made as a people and a country to default on our obligations and eventually destroy our country:
The enactment of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution in 1913 allowing the government to impose a tax on your income, thereby opening Pandora’s Box to a 60,000 page tax code and allowing politicians to sell their votes to the highest bidder.
The signing into law of the Federal Reserve Act by Woodrow Wilson in 1913, transferring control of our currency system to Wall Street banks. The man made inflation created by the Federal Reserve has reduced the purchasing power of the USD by 97% since 1913 and has allowed politicians to promise $100 trillion of benefits to Americans, that can never be delivered.
The Social Security Act signed into law by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1935, supposedly to help widows and orphans, morphed into a giant ponzi scheme used by politicians to make Americans think it was a retirement plan and the money was in a lockbox. The scam continues, but ponzi schemes always collapse.
Fannie Mae was created in 1938 as a government agency and Freddie Mac was created in 1970 as a quasi-government agency. By promoting home ownership and subsidizing loans to people who should have never gotten loans these agencies caused hundreds of billions in mal-investment. As tools of politicians, they were used to push social agendas. The result will be in excess of $300 billion in losses to the American taxpayer.
The Korean War set a precedent where the President did not need to seek Congress to declare war as required under the Constitution. This has allowed the President the freedom to fight undeclared wars around the world for decades, while spending trillions, with no approval from Congress.
LBJ’s Great Society programs such as Medicare and Medicaid were sold to Americans as cost saving programs that would improve healthcare for all Americans. We now spend 17% of our GDP on healthcare and these two programs have an unfunded liability of almost $100 trillion.
Nixon closing the gold window in 1971 removed all restraint on the Federal Reserve, banks and politicians. With a fiat currency backed by nothing but promises, it was only a matter of time before the greed and corruption of bankers and politicians overcame any self imposed fiscal responsibility. The result has been the National Debt going from $400 billion in 1971 to $14.4 trillion today, a 3,600% increase in 40years. Meanwhile, GDP only increased 1,350% over this same time frame.
The embrace of consumer debt by the Baby Boom generation beginning in 1980 created an atmosphere of living for today and not worrying about the future. This attitude has left 50% of all the households in the country with a net worth of $70,000 or below.
The repeal of the Glass Steagall Act in 1999 unleashed the hounds of hell upon America, as the soulless blood sucking vampires on Wall Street proceeded to rape and pillage the American economy with their financial derivatives of mass destruction and marketing of debt to the clueless masses. The housing bust and impoverishment of the middle class can be laid at the feet of these evil greedy bastards.
Bush’s unpaid for wars of choice, his reckless tax cuts, and his foolish expansion of a bankrupt Medicare program in the midst of two wars turbo charged the country on its path to default.
By bailing out Wall Street on the backs of the middle class in 2008/2009, the politicians in this country showed their hand. They will protect their fellow power brokers and contributors and throw the American people under the bus. Wall Street controls Congress.
The Keynesian schemes rolled out by Obama and his minions have just added trillions of debt while depressing the economic system and doing nothing to help the average person. The Fed created inflation has inflamed revolution through out the world and further impoverished the middle class who need to eat and fill up their cars.
In the midst of a Depression Obama chose to create a brand new healthcare bureaucracy, add 30 million people into the government controlled system, and commit the US taxpayer to trillions of future healthcare costs.
As you can see, next Tuesday means nothing. The debt ceiling means nothing. We chose to default as a nation many years ago. The destination was certain, only the timing was in question. Time to step on the gas.
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