Even the first governments redistributed wealth: in Mesopotamia and Egypt, the people who worked the land were not the ones who accumulated the surplus wealth produced (wealth above subsistence). The governments--and the priests--extracted the wealth for their own enjoyment. As a rationale for doing so, they "protected" society and maintained order.
It still works that way. In the US, approximately half of all discretionary funds are spent on "security," and much of the proceeds go to a small elite, who run or own large corporations especially created to profit from the business of "security." Their friends in the financial sector arrange to siphon off perhaps half of the rest of the surplus wealth created. How do they do it: by buying off the powers-that-be.
My conservative Venezuelan uncle used to explain that American oil-men preferred to work with the dictatorship (of which my family had been a prosperous part), because they didn't have to buy off as many people as they do in a "democracy."
True democracy hasn't been possible since societies emerged from hunting and gathering. With agriculture, with empires, with armies, with currency, some people always find ways to steal everyone else's surplus wealth: in hunting and gathering societies there was no surplus, or it was small enough to be given away. That's why the indigenous Americans of the Northwest, practiced the potlatch: surplus riches were distributed at potlatch parties, so no one would become obscenely wealthy.
In the US today, some people are obscenely wealthy, like Mitt Romney. What we need is something like the potlatch, so that surplus wealth can benefit everyone, not just a tiny few.
When the Roman Empire held sway, there was a highly compensated bureaucracy, but an even wealthier Senatorial class--as well as impoverished plebeians and slaves, the latter doing most of the work. Julius Caesar was heavily in debt until he conquered Gaul; then he became the wealthiest Roman of all.
Long before the western Roman Empire fell in 476, men with swords and armor carried off most of the wealth. The Huns, highly successful for a time in pillaging both Empires; paid no taxes to Attila, but then their king only led them to the spoil; they shared it with him, of course, and his share was mind-boggling.
Now, we have a tax and financial system that ingeniously insures that a tiny percentage of the population carries off most of the surplus wealth. The elites work hard to siphon off government's rewards and society's spoils: like buying off Pennsylvania's government so that they could gain eminent domain over fracking sites: the people are powerless to stop them. Money to the Defense complex and most other government "services" are also huge sources of profit--for a few.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year: you have been so generous to the 1%: it is better to give than to receive.
Showing posts with label fall of Rome. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fall of Rome. Show all posts
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Friday, December 21, 2012
US House: No One In Charge
Never raise taxes!
The GOP caucus in the House of Representatives will only be mollified if taxes on the wealthy are cut even more. Further, to reduce Government debt, they demand most cuts to the budget have to come from non-Defense spending, especially programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare and food stamps (SNAP) that benefit the middle class and poor, but are unnecessary to the wealthy.
No one seems to be in charge in the House. Speaker Boehner's odious "Plan B," which would have been unacceptable to Democrats and the President, was an attempt to mollify the right-wing extremists in the GOP; still, it didn't pass Boehner's own caucus: it raised taxes on millionaires.
No one is in charge. The President's re-election, an increase in the Democratic minority in the House and of its majority in the Senate, makes no difference within the Republican caucus. This is because the House majority won convincingly in their gerrymandered districts (drawn by state majorities won in the Republican landslide of 2010). Despite receiving fewer votes overall than Democratic Congressional candidates, GOP Congressmen fear, not Democrats--their districts were drawn to be majority Republican--but members of their own party "primarying" them from the right, if they don't follow an extreme right-wing agenda. That means cutting taxes on the wealthy and sticking it to the people Romney tried to stigmatize as the dependent 47% (more like 52%).
The House majority of a majority therefore refuses to compromise, because they'd lose next time round to right-wing challengers if they did. A more moderate majority--of Democrats and pragmatic Republicans--might exist in the House, in theory. However, the majority's leadership controls the House's business, and it's likely that Boehner would block a pragmatic bipartisan majority's proposals from a vote--unless he's willing to risk his Speakership for real statesmanship. That's unlikely.
Therefore, an ideological minority (the House GOP caucus majority) refuses, as of 12/20/12, to allow any tax increases on the wealthy and won't back down from demanding large cuts to social programs, either. So, we could start sliding down the fiscal slope.
Radical Republicans appear truly determined to replay what happened in the Roman Senate in 476, when Roman Senators refused to raise taxes on themselves, and preferred to allow the takeover of the German (Ostrogothic) palace guard. That precipitated the Fall of Rome.
In 2013, taxes will automatically go up--for everyone. Then, if Republicans don't agree to cut taxes on everyone but the wealthy, they will probably cause a renewed recession. Yet, they were the ones who demanded this so-called "fiscal cliff" to cut the debt. Under that default plan, there would be more cuts to the Pentagon than to domestic spending, and entitlements wouldn't be touched. That's why I hope there isn't a bipartisan "grand bargain," except on the above tax "cuts."
Either Republicans have slashed their own throats, or everyone else's as well: welcome to European-style austerity and recession.
The GOP caucus in the House of Representatives will only be mollified if taxes on the wealthy are cut even more. Further, to reduce Government debt, they demand most cuts to the budget have to come from non-Defense spending, especially programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare and food stamps (SNAP) that benefit the middle class and poor, but are unnecessary to the wealthy.
No one seems to be in charge in the House. Speaker Boehner's odious "Plan B," which would have been unacceptable to Democrats and the President, was an attempt to mollify the right-wing extremists in the GOP; still, it didn't pass Boehner's own caucus: it raised taxes on millionaires.
No one is in charge. The President's re-election, an increase in the Democratic minority in the House and of its majority in the Senate, makes no difference within the Republican caucus. This is because the House majority won convincingly in their gerrymandered districts (drawn by state majorities won in the Republican landslide of 2010). Despite receiving fewer votes overall than Democratic Congressional candidates, GOP Congressmen fear, not Democrats--their districts were drawn to be majority Republican--but members of their own party "primarying" them from the right, if they don't follow an extreme right-wing agenda. That means cutting taxes on the wealthy and sticking it to the people Romney tried to stigmatize as the dependent 47% (more like 52%).
The House majority of a majority therefore refuses to compromise, because they'd lose next time round to right-wing challengers if they did. A more moderate majority--of Democrats and pragmatic Republicans--might exist in the House, in theory. However, the majority's leadership controls the House's business, and it's likely that Boehner would block a pragmatic bipartisan majority's proposals from a vote--unless he's willing to risk his Speakership for real statesmanship. That's unlikely.
Therefore, an ideological minority (the House GOP caucus majority) refuses, as of 12/20/12, to allow any tax increases on the wealthy and won't back down from demanding large cuts to social programs, either. So, we could start sliding down the fiscal slope.
Radical Republicans appear truly determined to replay what happened in the Roman Senate in 476, when Roman Senators refused to raise taxes on themselves, and preferred to allow the takeover of the German (Ostrogothic) palace guard. That precipitated the Fall of Rome.
In 2013, taxes will automatically go up--for everyone. Then, if Republicans don't agree to cut taxes on everyone but the wealthy, they will probably cause a renewed recession. Yet, they were the ones who demanded this so-called "fiscal cliff" to cut the debt. Under that default plan, there would be more cuts to the Pentagon than to domestic spending, and entitlements wouldn't be touched. That's why I hope there isn't a bipartisan "grand bargain," except on the above tax "cuts."
Either Republicans have slashed their own throats, or everyone else's as well: welcome to European-style austerity and recession.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Insanity
In November 2012, we will be faced with the choice between a quarter-billionaire who continually re-invents himself politically, and an incumbent who may not be trustworthy either, a casualty of the terror war.
Romney would cut taxes on the wealthy, cut services for everyone else and go to war at the drop of an Israeli's hat. Obama told Yemen to keep a Pulitzers prize-winning Yemeni journalist, Abdulelah Shaye, imprisoned. The real charge against him: he interviewed possible terrorists, making him an "associate" of al Qaeda. According to Obama's new NDAA, associates of al Qaeda can be detained indefinitely.
Shaye crossed Obama, because he proved that the US is waging war in Yemen. The transparent American-Yemeni official fiction: Yemenis were doing it themselves--assassinating opponents with drones only the US had. Many people suspected this was going on, but Shaye was in the field and witnessed it. So, he was doing his job and informing the world; what the best journalists do. And for that he's still held in a Yemeni prison, thanks to Obama's personal phone call to Yemen's President.
On one side there is a plutocrat who will take any position if it will win him GOP votes, and on the other, a former constitutional law professor, who acts as if freedom of the press is a national threat. And he's the signer of the NDAA that gave him this power. He first objected that it wasn't strong enough!
What would happen if Romney were elected? He supports attacking Iran and virtually every other war; he's likely to escalate the one in Yemen.
Who is Obama? On government leaks, he has become more extreme than Nixon, while on economic and social issues he's somewhat sane, compared to the positions Romney has taken to win GOP support.
Some have said that the November election will be between a born-again right-wing Republican and a moderate Republican marked D on the ballot. Romney has compromised anything he ever stood for when Governor of Massachusetts--and his advisor revealingly blurted out that everything Romney said for the primaries would be wiped clean in his General Election campaign (the etch-a-sketch remark). Romney's unabashed hypocrisy is astounding, but he won't be able to hide from it: his primary positions are flying all over the internet, such as his pledge to defund Planned Parenthood as soon as he takes office. Republicans will hold him to it.
Super-pacs will broadcast every slip Romney made, every cockamamie thing he said to win over the right-wing--over and over. They're having to doctor voices and events to get Obama, but super-pacs will do that, too.
Hold your nose, wish there was a viable third party, but know there isn't, then vote, hoping our progression towards what happened to Rome in 476 is slow enough that we can reverse it--if we can Occupy sanity, instead.
Romney would cut taxes on the wealthy, cut services for everyone else and go to war at the drop of an Israeli's hat. Obama told Yemen to keep a Pulitzers prize-winning Yemeni journalist, Abdulelah Shaye, imprisoned. The real charge against him: he interviewed possible terrorists, making him an "associate" of al Qaeda. According to Obama's new NDAA, associates of al Qaeda can be detained indefinitely.
Shaye crossed Obama, because he proved that the US is waging war in Yemen. The transparent American-Yemeni official fiction: Yemenis were doing it themselves--assassinating opponents with drones only the US had. Many people suspected this was going on, but Shaye was in the field and witnessed it. So, he was doing his job and informing the world; what the best journalists do. And for that he's still held in a Yemeni prison, thanks to Obama's personal phone call to Yemen's President.
On one side there is a plutocrat who will take any position if it will win him GOP votes, and on the other, a former constitutional law professor, who acts as if freedom of the press is a national threat. And he's the signer of the NDAA that gave him this power. He first objected that it wasn't strong enough!
What would happen if Romney were elected? He supports attacking Iran and virtually every other war; he's likely to escalate the one in Yemen.
Who is Obama? On government leaks, he has become more extreme than Nixon, while on economic and social issues he's somewhat sane, compared to the positions Romney has taken to win GOP support.
Some have said that the November election will be between a born-again right-wing Republican and a moderate Republican marked D on the ballot. Romney has compromised anything he ever stood for when Governor of Massachusetts--and his advisor revealingly blurted out that everything Romney said for the primaries would be wiped clean in his General Election campaign (the etch-a-sketch remark). Romney's unabashed hypocrisy is astounding, but he won't be able to hide from it: his primary positions are flying all over the internet, such as his pledge to defund Planned Parenthood as soon as he takes office. Republicans will hold him to it.
Super-pacs will broadcast every slip Romney made, every cockamamie thing he said to win over the right-wing--over and over. They're having to doctor voices and events to get Obama, but super-pacs will do that, too.
Hold your nose, wish there was a viable third party, but know there isn't, then vote, hoping our progression towards what happened to Rome in 476 is slow enough that we can reverse it--if we can Occupy sanity, instead.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Romney, Roman Senator
You wouldn't think that in 21st Century "democracy," one that has stood the test of two and a half centuries, that we would emulate the Roman Empire of the Fifth Century, but Willard (Mitt) Romney is the perfect Roman Senator, like the ones that ran the Empire in its dying days--ran it into the ground.
Perhaps, historically, he's most like Petronius Maximus, the Roman Senator who became Emperor after he arranged the assassination of Valentinian III. He was reputed to be the wealthiest of the wealthy, and Roman Senators (a legal class) had pretty much cornered the wealth of the Empire, in land, slaves, serfs and gold. Maximus lasted less than a year (455). He was literally ripped apart by the mob, in response to the Vandals landing at Ostia, before Vandals earned the meaning of their name, sacking and pillaging (vandalizing) Rome.
Just like those Roman Senators, Willard is to the manor (or manner) born, and just like them, he is a master at draining off wealth from those who have created it. He calls it "creative destruction," but the trail of ruined, looted businesses and lost or down-priced jobs, is a tale of predation. He hasn't made his case that he's created wealth--except his and his class, through financial wizardry and exploitation.
Willard is not the richest of the wealthy, but he's definitely high up in the modern senatorial class, at somewhere around a quarter of a billion dollars; he's not yet a billionaire. His candidacy, however, is emblematic of that class, and of its urge to take over this nation, and as much of the rest of the world as it can.
With Citizens United giving that corporate/senatorial class the perfect tool (its money) to take over, the only thing that stands in its way is Barack Obama and some Democrats, who may not represent the senatorial class quite so slavishly. There is the People, but with our modern version of Roman circuses, the people are lulled into passivity, or taught to follow their natural leaders. Only if Americans can awaken to what is happening in the United States, center of an undeclared, retreating global empire, can the people counterbalance the surge of money on the one side, and the weak reeds on the other.
Romney and the Republicans clearly represent the modern Roman Senators, what the OWS labels "the one percent." The Democrats, while partially bought off, still have some predilection to represent a larger portion of the population. The GOP is explainable in Marxist terms, as I pointed out previously: the party of the emergent super-rich, eager to wield their power.
It would take too much space, this time, to explore the likely results of a GOP takeover, but it could be like the destructive reactionary politics that drove the Empire in mid-Fifth Century Rome. The western Empire "fell" in 476.
Perhaps, historically, he's most like Petronius Maximus, the Roman Senator who became Emperor after he arranged the assassination of Valentinian III. He was reputed to be the wealthiest of the wealthy, and Roman Senators (a legal class) had pretty much cornered the wealth of the Empire, in land, slaves, serfs and gold. Maximus lasted less than a year (455). He was literally ripped apart by the mob, in response to the Vandals landing at Ostia, before Vandals earned the meaning of their name, sacking and pillaging (vandalizing) Rome.
Just like those Roman Senators, Willard is to the manor (or manner) born, and just like them, he is a master at draining off wealth from those who have created it. He calls it "creative destruction," but the trail of ruined, looted businesses and lost or down-priced jobs, is a tale of predation. He hasn't made his case that he's created wealth--except his and his class, through financial wizardry and exploitation.
Willard is not the richest of the wealthy, but he's definitely high up in the modern senatorial class, at somewhere around a quarter of a billion dollars; he's not yet a billionaire. His candidacy, however, is emblematic of that class, and of its urge to take over this nation, and as much of the rest of the world as it can.
With Citizens United giving that corporate/senatorial class the perfect tool (its money) to take over, the only thing that stands in its way is Barack Obama and some Democrats, who may not represent the senatorial class quite so slavishly. There is the People, but with our modern version of Roman circuses, the people are lulled into passivity, or taught to follow their natural leaders. Only if Americans can awaken to what is happening in the United States, center of an undeclared, retreating global empire, can the people counterbalance the surge of money on the one side, and the weak reeds on the other.
Romney and the Republicans clearly represent the modern Roman Senators, what the OWS labels "the one percent." The Democrats, while partially bought off, still have some predilection to represent a larger portion of the population. The GOP is explainable in Marxist terms, as I pointed out previously: the party of the emergent super-rich, eager to wield their power.
It would take too much space, this time, to explore the likely results of a GOP takeover, but it could be like the destructive reactionary politics that drove the Empire in mid-Fifth Century Rome. The western Empire "fell" in 476.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
The NDAA: Plunging Downhill
Regardless of who is President, once grabbed, the executive branch never gives up power without a fight: the Imperial Presidency. In other words, Obama will sign the NDAA, which may authorize the President to detain citizens indefinitely (they'll leave it up to the courts to decide if a President can do this) and that's okay, because Obama says he won't use that power!
Would anyone, trust a President Gingrich or Romney with that power? Hell, no one knows what either of them think, especially Romney, who the big boys don't like, but for whom they may have no choice. They don't trust Gingrich, who's fading, and would never consider anti-militarist Ron Paul; their money is where their mouths are, and he'd also disrupt the corrupt games of their primary constituents: the financial industry.
But I'm not so sure Obama wouldn't use those powers in the NDAA.
One of the things that seems to be happening worldwide, is that global protests are now being suppressed with greater and greater ferocity. First, Occupiers were tolerated, then they were penned and arrested, then they were driven out of Zuccotti Park, and a whole lot of other, similar encampments in places like Oakland, Seattle, Tampa, Washington, DC, and even places like Poughkeepsie, NY. Some violence in New York, more in Oakland, pepper spray apparently everywhere, but nothing compared to the beatings and bludgeoning of women in Tahrir Square, and not by police, but by the Army. Their actions were preceded in Bahrain, spearheaded by the Saudi Army. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are both recipients of tons of American weapons, and training by the US military.
Now, the NDAA gives power to detain indefinitely, and who gets to take the primary role in combating "terror" in the US? Not the police, not the CIA/FBI, it's the military. If I were paranoid, I'd think the American military was getting ready for a coup d'etat, gaining the power to carry one out legally. I'm not paranoid, and I don't like conspiracy theories as explanations, but I do think the NDAA is setting us up, even if no General or Admiral, or Secretary of Defense even dreams of a military takeover: it makes a military takeover much more possible.
I also think that Obama as President is more than the man, he is the institution, which has a terrible logic of its own: increase the power of the Presidency whenever possible. It's this kind of progression that led to the absolutism of the Roman Emperors and the totalitarianisms of Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union.
But we're starting late down that road: the Empire is beginning to self-destruct. The military is still determined to maintain world dominance, even when we can no longer afford one war against insurgents in one of the poorest nations on the globe.
In 476, the victors against Rome were barbarians. Now, they could be American soldiers.
Would anyone, trust a President Gingrich or Romney with that power? Hell, no one knows what either of them think, especially Romney, who the big boys don't like, but for whom they may have no choice. They don't trust Gingrich, who's fading, and would never consider anti-militarist Ron Paul; their money is where their mouths are, and he'd also disrupt the corrupt games of their primary constituents: the financial industry.
But I'm not so sure Obama wouldn't use those powers in the NDAA.
One of the things that seems to be happening worldwide, is that global protests are now being suppressed with greater and greater ferocity. First, Occupiers were tolerated, then they were penned and arrested, then they were driven out of Zuccotti Park, and a whole lot of other, similar encampments in places like Oakland, Seattle, Tampa, Washington, DC, and even places like Poughkeepsie, NY. Some violence in New York, more in Oakland, pepper spray apparently everywhere, but nothing compared to the beatings and bludgeoning of women in Tahrir Square, and not by police, but by the Army. Their actions were preceded in Bahrain, spearheaded by the Saudi Army. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are both recipients of tons of American weapons, and training by the US military.
Now, the NDAA gives power to detain indefinitely, and who gets to take the primary role in combating "terror" in the US? Not the police, not the CIA/FBI, it's the military. If I were paranoid, I'd think the American military was getting ready for a coup d'etat, gaining the power to carry one out legally. I'm not paranoid, and I don't like conspiracy theories as explanations, but I do think the NDAA is setting us up, even if no General or Admiral, or Secretary of Defense even dreams of a military takeover: it makes a military takeover much more possible.
I also think that Obama as President is more than the man, he is the institution, which has a terrible logic of its own: increase the power of the Presidency whenever possible. It's this kind of progression that led to the absolutism of the Roman Emperors and the totalitarianisms of Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union.
But we're starting late down that road: the Empire is beginning to self-destruct. The military is still determined to maintain world dominance, even when we can no longer afford one war against insurgents in one of the poorest nations on the globe.
In 476, the victors against Rome were barbarians. Now, they could be American soldiers.
Monday, December 5, 2011
93-7 Guantanamo Here We Come!
That was the margin of passage of the Defense Authorization bill (NDAA) in the Senate, the one that declares the whole world, including the United States, as a global battlefield (between Good and Evil?). This enables the military to take out, by assassination or indefinite detention and torture (therefore 'Guantanamo'), anyone, anywhere in the world, even American citizens in Peoria, if the President secretly declares them a danger to national security.
Remember those novels: The Tale of Two Cities and The Count of Monte Cristo? People were imprisoned indefinitely in dungeons, on the whim of a nobleman. That's what we are approaching today. Due Process? Forgeddaboudit. Innocent until proven guilty? Hah! Right to a jury trial and a lawyer? We lost both some time ago.
It's astounding what rights Americans have given up without a whimper! Because we're terrified of terrorists? Aside from 9-11--a terrorist's wet dream come true--there have been only a few hundred people killed by terrorists in this country and abroad. Many times that number are killed every year on our nation's highways, and nearly as many more are murdered in our cities and towns.
Modern societies, especially imperial ones, should be vigilant and able to protect themselves. But if everyone is to lose their rights, then there is nothing left to defend: we might as well elect the Taliban to a majority in Congress, or elect a dictator, who can order us shot at will, and have himself re-elected for life.
That's what ushered in the Roman Emperor, even though times were good. The Roman Senate's succession and election machinery didn't function: a dictator was better than civil war.
Why are we so scared, now, that we're so readily giving up our freedoms? Less than a hundred Americans may have gone off to fight for a branch of al Qaeda (in Somalia or Yemen), and we're terrified they'll come back and--what? Stage another 9-11?
Security here, already, is enough to stop all but the most determined individual maniac. No security will ever stop every fanatic.
A woman asked Benjamin Franklin, at the close of the Constitutional Convention, if the US would be a republic or a monarchy. "A republic, if you can keep it," he replied.
We've not crowned Obama, and we're unlikely to crown Gingrich or Romney, either (I hope), but we're headed towards elective dictatorship with the NDAA. Obama, by the way, has threatened a veto, because it "micromanages" war against al Qaeda. So, unlike Augustus, Obama may have little stomach to be Imperator. But Newt or Mitt? A salamander or a baseball glove?
The NDAA is a caricature of 1984! It's parallels 31 BC (when Augustus was crowned, replacing the Republic with the Empire), except that this empire is in decline, more like Rome's decades-long run up to 476 (when it "fell" in bankruptcy to the Goths).
We have to stop the NDAA any way we can.
Remember those novels: The Tale of Two Cities and The Count of Monte Cristo? People were imprisoned indefinitely in dungeons, on the whim of a nobleman. That's what we are approaching today. Due Process? Forgeddaboudit. Innocent until proven guilty? Hah! Right to a jury trial and a lawyer? We lost both some time ago.
It's astounding what rights Americans have given up without a whimper! Because we're terrified of terrorists? Aside from 9-11--a terrorist's wet dream come true--there have been only a few hundred people killed by terrorists in this country and abroad. Many times that number are killed every year on our nation's highways, and nearly as many more are murdered in our cities and towns.
Modern societies, especially imperial ones, should be vigilant and able to protect themselves. But if everyone is to lose their rights, then there is nothing left to defend: we might as well elect the Taliban to a majority in Congress, or elect a dictator, who can order us shot at will, and have himself re-elected for life.
That's what ushered in the Roman Emperor, even though times were good. The Roman Senate's succession and election machinery didn't function: a dictator was better than civil war.
Why are we so scared, now, that we're so readily giving up our freedoms? Less than a hundred Americans may have gone off to fight for a branch of al Qaeda (in Somalia or Yemen), and we're terrified they'll come back and--what? Stage another 9-11?
Security here, already, is enough to stop all but the most determined individual maniac. No security will ever stop every fanatic.
A woman asked Benjamin Franklin, at the close of the Constitutional Convention, if the US would be a republic or a monarchy. "A republic, if you can keep it," he replied.
We've not crowned Obama, and we're unlikely to crown Gingrich or Romney, either (I hope), but we're headed towards elective dictatorship with the NDAA. Obama, by the way, has threatened a veto, because it "micromanages" war against al Qaeda. So, unlike Augustus, Obama may have little stomach to be Imperator. But Newt or Mitt? A salamander or a baseball glove?
The NDAA is a caricature of 1984! It's parallels 31 BC (when Augustus was crowned, replacing the Republic with the Empire), except that this empire is in decline, more like Rome's decades-long run up to 476 (when it "fell" in bankruptcy to the Goths).
We have to stop the NDAA any way we can.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Why Dismantle the US?
It doesn't seem to make sense that Americans, many from old families living in this country for many generations, would want to dismantle the country that nurtured them.
In my Dec. 7th blog-post, "Come-on to Apocalypse," I showed how a libertarian/conservative list was promoting relocation to any of "80 beautiful countries." Allegiance to the US seems absent among the moneyed. Their attitude: take your fortune somewhere else, where you won't be so heavily taxed/regulated/controlled. The assumption is that the US is all of these things, although our tax burden is lower than almost all other developed nations. In many developing ones, however--and some developed ones like Greece--taxes and regulations are not enforced.
I expect the emigres would evade taxes of both their new abode and their former one, but it's ironic that the site promoting emigration also highlighted free medical care, something most conservatives complain about when it's "Obamacare."
So, the financiers, or other wealthy, have places to go. Their means of enrichment, however, might even suggest a parallel to fugitives from the law, who flee the country to escape imprisonment. For example, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, et al, get virtually free money from the Fed, which they use to speculate through computer programs and algorithms, doing split-second trades for billions of dollars, and profiting with fractions of a cent. Actually what they are doing is ripping off millions of dollars daily, from everyone else. How different are they than the cyber-criminals who siphon unnoticeable fractions of a cent from millions of transactions? There have been crime movies, in which super-criminals invade bank security networks and do the same thing.
But Goldman, et al aren't criminals, at least in the legal sense: they're Wall Street operators. Why do they want to dismantle the US? Because they can: they can come away fabulously wealthy, but at the expense of everyone else.
The same ethos rules many American businesses: military contractors who overbill, "frackers," who don't care if they ruin our drinking water, for-profit prisons gaining "clients" from corrupt judges and manufacturers who outsource to avoid taxes and union wages.
This isn't just economics, it's politics: the effect of trade treaties. Mexican or Chinese workers undercut American labor. Trade barriers were lowered or eliminated enabling corporations to break unions and force American workers to compete with the lowest-paid labor globally.
Again, why? There is strong anti-union feeling among those who earn from capital: after all, the more a worker gets, the less they get--and vice-versa. Additionally, workers without unions can't resist the boss.
It boils down to class struggle. Capital is winning, never mind if it's destroying the country. With their money, the wealthy can always go somewhere else: one of those "80 beautiful countries." They can even find new victims.
In Rome, Senators voted to hand Italy and the Emperor over to the Ostrogoths, rather than raise taxes on themselves.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Tax Cuts a Bad Deal
So, the tax-cut compromise is a done deal.
The Republicans were clever; they repeated ad infinitum: don't raise taxes in a recession. But continued tax-cuts for the wealthy will be counterproductive.
We'll have to borrow $700-$800 billion (probably from China or Saudi Arabia) to pay for their lower taxes. But that money will not stimulate the economy. It will buy speculation on the stock market, or investment overseas long before it creates a single job here. It will also exacerbate US inequality. Already the US has one of the most unequal distributions of wealth among developed nations.
Tax cuts for those below $250,000 income, will mostly be spent in the US, on consumer goods, and on homes, creating demand for jobs. Even here, many of the consumer goods would be imports, so many of those dollars will fly out of the country. Leakage of any kind of spending, except direct government expenditures on something like a WPA, is to be expected in an economy as open as ours.
The effects of the tax cuts are not only economic; they are also social. Economic inequality increases social distance. When you have escalating social distance, you lose a sense of community. That's why legislators who have lived lives insulated from economic hardship, elected by money from the wealthy, can credibly threaten to cut off an unemployment extension, or argue that poor rich kids need tax breaks even more than the long-term unemployed need benefits. Further, high inequality is an economic handicap to the nation, since consumption by the wealthy cannot substitute for mass consumption as an economic base for a stable economy; inequality makes economic instability more likely: prosperity depends on a small minority.
Inequality is even a health hazard: inequality of wealth is directly correlated with poorer overall health of the population. This is partly due to unequal access to health care, but is also due to higher levels of anxiety, which extends even to the wealthiest. Why? Greater inequality breeds resentment, crime and violence.
Obama's compromise was a bad deal for everyone. The pre-Bush tax rates for the over $250,000, should have been restored. I think they should be raised, because the top 2% have cornered most of the growth in wealth produced by everyone since 1980. That's why wages have hardly budged since the '70's.
Further, corporations are swimming in cash, and only slowly hiring or loaning out money. So, more money in elite pockets will not promote investment, or create jobs--except maybe in China or Malaysia.
As the recent elections demonstrated, large aggregations of wealth skew the balance of political power. The Compromise illustrates the consequences: a one-year unemployment extension vs two years of high-end tax-cuts and a more unstable economy.
Our equivalent of fifth century Roman Senators has prevailed, to even their ultimate detriment. It is one more step towards our own 476 ( (See: Fall of Rome).
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Wiki-Revolution II
Wikileaks has added a new wrinkle to non-violent protest. Neither Gandhi, nor Martin Luther King could reach so many, to unveil the secrets, of violence and corruption, by so many, over most of the globe. Neither could stop wars, and perhaps wikileaks can't either, but it can certainly reach the masses of people with the information they need, so popular revulsion could stop them. It's possible.
The wikileaks case is radical. Political alliances crumble, and others emerge in unforeseen places, like conservative libertarians and anti-war progressives: Ron Paul insisted that Assange is only the publisher and that nobody was killed by the document dump, compared to the many killed in illegal wars caused by lying, the very thing the documents illustrate. He said if Assange is prosecuted, then the Times and WaPo should be as well. He claimed (as Ellsberg has) that what Assange did was just as legal as Daniel Ellsberg, and the Pentagon Papers. Some claim that Assange is no Ellsberg, but one funny fact is: Ellsberg loudly proclaims that he is.
However, this is bigger than one person. What wikileaks wrought is not simply Assange's creation. As wikileaks' name implies, it involves the cooperation of numberless collaborators all over the world, but it has also awakened a sleeping giant--yes, like Gandhi awakening colonized Indians from their torpor. The counter-offensive, after wikileaks was attacked, on the web and financially, has made people wake up. If you have a computer, and you're enraged at the world as presently constituted, here is a bloodless, even relatively safe, way of expressing your outrage, and perhaps forcing changes. Technology now being what it is, it is entirely possible that a small global movement, say 1 million strong, could force the world's governments to negotiate, to stop their wars, to enforce fair labor laws worldwide, to oppose the power of global corporations, or to act definitively and decisively on global climate change.
Anonymous demonstrates a whole new power, much more direct, non-violent, and populist. Yes, you have to have minimal understanding of computers, and a computer, of course, but computers and computer literacy are like a disease spreading across the globe with lightning speed.
On matters of free speech, and on wars and secrecy, progressives should look around them. As Ron Paul's speech indicates, progressives can find allies in funny places: progressives and libertarians have more in common than they think. There will be more libertarians, and hardly fewer progressives in the next Congress. Think how progressive the free exchange of information could be.
In addition, the resulting generation of hacktavists could make it possible to dismantle The Empire without bloodshed. The US might emulate Britain, peacefully withdrawing, instead of collapsing, like the fall of Rome.
The wikileaks case is radical. Political alliances crumble, and others emerge in unforeseen places, like conservative libertarians and anti-war progressives: Ron Paul insisted that Assange is only the publisher and that nobody was killed by the document dump, compared to the many killed in illegal wars caused by lying, the very thing the documents illustrate. He said if Assange is prosecuted, then the Times and WaPo should be as well. He claimed (as Ellsberg has) that what Assange did was just as legal as Daniel Ellsberg, and the Pentagon Papers. Some claim that Assange is no Ellsberg, but one funny fact is: Ellsberg loudly proclaims that he is.
However, this is bigger than one person. What wikileaks wrought is not simply Assange's creation. As wikileaks' name implies, it involves the cooperation of numberless collaborators all over the world, but it has also awakened a sleeping giant--yes, like Gandhi awakening colonized Indians from their torpor. The counter-offensive, after wikileaks was attacked, on the web and financially, has made people wake up. If you have a computer, and you're enraged at the world as presently constituted, here is a bloodless, even relatively safe, way of expressing your outrage, and perhaps forcing changes. Technology now being what it is, it is entirely possible that a small global movement, say 1 million strong, could force the world's governments to negotiate, to stop their wars, to enforce fair labor laws worldwide, to oppose the power of global corporations, or to act definitively and decisively on global climate change.
Anonymous demonstrates a whole new power, much more direct, non-violent, and populist. Yes, you have to have minimal understanding of computers, and a computer, of course, but computers and computer literacy are like a disease spreading across the globe with lightning speed.
On matters of free speech, and on wars and secrecy, progressives should look around them. As Ron Paul's speech indicates, progressives can find allies in funny places: progressives and libertarians have more in common than they think. There will be more libertarians, and hardly fewer progressives in the next Congress. Think how progressive the free exchange of information could be.
In addition, the resulting generation of hacktavists could make it possible to dismantle The Empire without bloodshed. The US might emulate Britain, peacefully withdrawing, instead of collapsing, like the fall of Rome.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Come-on to Apocalypse
Today, I got a letter, no heading, from the "President of the Sovereign Society." She has a website: she spells the nation, "Amerika," as in escape from! She sells a how-to to gain dual citizenship and more.
These missives come from a conservative publishing group: I recognize the MO.
Many trot out tired bromides of the right, but this one is revealing. It lays out the dream of would-be capitalists, who scream loudest about Freedom, and: America has been ruined (by that Socialist Obama and that cowboy, W). Astoundingly, Erika is selling "government health programs and FREE prescriptions," while you "live like royalty for less than $390 a week;" the four countries most affordable for retirees; how you can gain business and tax benefits with dual citizenship, and so on.
Other newsletters in the network provide interesting stock analysis and questionable advice, but the MO is telling. It never lays out something for you to read, until after you subscribe. They give a presentation: a rolling script, while a voice hypes the argument. You can't move forward or back; it forces you to hear each agonizing minute if you want to figure out what they're selling. If you try to cancel, it yells at you, in print--or voice over it--that you mustn't give up this chance NOW! Every time I've watched one, it concludes by selling a subscription to another, more specialized newsletter that will: solve all your health problems, or make you rich, instantly, protect you from the coming apocalypse, or, in this case, sell you a newsletter for fleeing the United States. The subscriptions go upwards from the $35 for an extended advertisement for other newsletters, to several thousand for the "elite" stock advice sheets.
Having received one for free and then another for $35 (deductible as an expense), I can see a pattern. First of all, a significant share of the financial advice is either to buy gold, since everything will collapse soon, or oil, the more polluting the better. Some recommendations are interesting, but when I check the buy figures, they're almost always late--buy below $6.50, when it hasn't been below $6.50 for weeks. The newsletters are sparing of real recommendations, but lavish in selling other newsletters.
Their star economic commentator, a Brit, gives scornful analysis of the US economy; he lives in Taiwan.
There is something this audience shares with the left: a conviction that the US is in inevitable decline. However, they are sanguine about it--and eager to exploit it. Then, as reward, there are "over 80 beautiful, get-away countries," where you could establish residency, and maintain "your personal privacy and affluence."
They are wannabe Roman Senators; Roman Senators buried their gold before Rome's "fall." Afterwards, the barbarians tortured them to get it for themselves.
These missives come from a conservative publishing group: I recognize the MO.
Many trot out tired bromides of the right, but this one is revealing. It lays out the dream of would-be capitalists, who scream loudest about Freedom, and: America has been ruined (by that Socialist Obama and that cowboy, W). Astoundingly, Erika is selling "government health programs and FREE prescriptions," while you "live like royalty for less than $390 a week;" the four countries most affordable for retirees; how you can gain business and tax benefits with dual citizenship, and so on.
Other newsletters in the network provide interesting stock analysis and questionable advice, but the MO is telling. It never lays out something for you to read, until after you subscribe. They give a presentation: a rolling script, while a voice hypes the argument. You can't move forward or back; it forces you to hear each agonizing minute if you want to figure out what they're selling. If you try to cancel, it yells at you, in print--or voice over it--that you mustn't give up this chance NOW! Every time I've watched one, it concludes by selling a subscription to another, more specialized newsletter that will: solve all your health problems, or make you rich, instantly, protect you from the coming apocalypse, or, in this case, sell you a newsletter for fleeing the United States. The subscriptions go upwards from the $35 for an extended advertisement for other newsletters, to several thousand for the "elite" stock advice sheets.
Having received one for free and then another for $35 (deductible as an expense), I can see a pattern. First of all, a significant share of the financial advice is either to buy gold, since everything will collapse soon, or oil, the more polluting the better. Some recommendations are interesting, but when I check the buy figures, they're almost always late--buy below $6.50, when it hasn't been below $6.50 for weeks. The newsletters are sparing of real recommendations, but lavish in selling other newsletters.
Their star economic commentator, a Brit, gives scornful analysis of the US economy; he lives in Taiwan.
There is something this audience shares with the left: a conviction that the US is in inevitable decline. However, they are sanguine about it--and eager to exploit it. Then, as reward, there are "over 80 beautiful, get-away countries," where you could establish residency, and maintain "your personal privacy and affluence."
They are wannabe Roman Senators; Roman Senators buried their gold before Rome's "fall." Afterwards, the barbarians tortured them to get it for themselves.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Obama: Ordinary Politician
The American people have been betrayed. An election stolen; a popular election and a surge of hope: hope disappointed; another election bought.
Obama perpetuates the failing policies of the past: he depends on "experts" from the past. While he could give inspirational speeches as a candidate, he's a pedagogue as President, rarely a fighter. He went from talking about changing the dialogue, to repeating it.
Obama is now going to cut (government) workers wages to trim the deficit, while unemployment is high and borrowing is dirt-cheap. Wage-cuts will slow down the economy further, increasing the deficit. He's talking about "compromising" with Republicans, by caving in on continuing tax cuts to the over $250,000 crowd. That would add $700 billion to the deficit, but few jobs.
He signed a health care bill, but like Medicare Part D, signed by W, it caters to the needs of the health care industry far more than patients, and provides no alternative to private health insurance; he could have pushed for the public option but Rahm Emmanuel persuaded him otherwise. "Reform" will give insurers huge new markets, subsidized by Uncle Sam.
He did sign a New Start treaty that cuts nuclear weapons, but his timid, transactional politics, reinforced by the Senate Democratic leadership, makes it unlikely to be ratified in this Congress; it won't be in the next.
Has he gotten us out of wars? Obama campaigned against Iraq, but we're still in it: our military is angling to stay after the 2011 treaty cut-off negotiated by Bush! And we're in up to our ears in Afghanistan--now until 2014. And Pakistan, and--the torturers are unpunished, and Guantanamo still has inmates.
Obama campaigned on the need for an international agreement on climate change, deploring Bush's rejection of Kyoto. He went to Copenhagen empty-handed from Congress (no climate change legislation passed), but he didn't use the EPA's so-far unchallenged mandate to regulate CO2 as leverage. So, no agreement was reached, just a handshake on the "we'll try to reduce emissions," mantra.
Then there's the deficit commission. Obama appointed advocates for dismantling Social Security and Medicare. So, of course, the co-chairs propose cutting Social Security, not raising the cap to better finance it, and cutting Medicare, not restructuring health care so we can pay for it.
Obama hasn't even challenged the false notion that Social Security contributes to the deficit; it doesn't. Instead, he tries to co-opt Republican anxiety about deficit spending, while millions are without jobs, or homes, and the economy is stuck. The nation needs a huge public works/public jobs program, not deficit-cutting: not until unemployment is slashed.
Obama is hardly a reformer like Emperor Majorian. Despite his rhetoric, he is a lesser Emperor, like Glycerius, creature of Generals and Senators, two years before the fall of Rome.
Obama perpetuates the failing policies of the past: he depends on "experts" from the past. While he could give inspirational speeches as a candidate, he's a pedagogue as President, rarely a fighter. He went from talking about changing the dialogue, to repeating it.
Obama is now going to cut (government) workers wages to trim the deficit, while unemployment is high and borrowing is dirt-cheap. Wage-cuts will slow down the economy further, increasing the deficit. He's talking about "compromising" with Republicans, by caving in on continuing tax cuts to the over $250,000 crowd. That would add $700 billion to the deficit, but few jobs.
He signed a health care bill, but like Medicare Part D, signed by W, it caters to the needs of the health care industry far more than patients, and provides no alternative to private health insurance; he could have pushed for the public option but Rahm Emmanuel persuaded him otherwise. "Reform" will give insurers huge new markets, subsidized by Uncle Sam.
He did sign a New Start treaty that cuts nuclear weapons, but his timid, transactional politics, reinforced by the Senate Democratic leadership, makes it unlikely to be ratified in this Congress; it won't be in the next.
Has he gotten us out of wars? Obama campaigned against Iraq, but we're still in it: our military is angling to stay after the 2011 treaty cut-off negotiated by Bush! And we're in up to our ears in Afghanistan--now until 2014. And Pakistan, and--the torturers are unpunished, and Guantanamo still has inmates.
Obama campaigned on the need for an international agreement on climate change, deploring Bush's rejection of Kyoto. He went to Copenhagen empty-handed from Congress (no climate change legislation passed), but he didn't use the EPA's so-far unchallenged mandate to regulate CO2 as leverage. So, no agreement was reached, just a handshake on the "we'll try to reduce emissions," mantra.
Then there's the deficit commission. Obama appointed advocates for dismantling Social Security and Medicare. So, of course, the co-chairs propose cutting Social Security, not raising the cap to better finance it, and cutting Medicare, not restructuring health care so we can pay for it.
Obama hasn't even challenged the false notion that Social Security contributes to the deficit; it doesn't. Instead, he tries to co-opt Republican anxiety about deficit spending, while millions are without jobs, or homes, and the economy is stuck. The nation needs a huge public works/public jobs program, not deficit-cutting: not until unemployment is slashed.
Obama is hardly a reformer like Emperor Majorian. Despite his rhetoric, he is a lesser Emperor, like Glycerius, creature of Generals and Senators, two years before the fall of Rome.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Plutocracy?
Corporatocracy? Is it big corporations, or wealthy individuals who have stolen democracy and poisoned citizens' minds? It's both, of course. All I know is: people like Russ Feingold bit the dust, because they refused to play to the big donors, the corpocrats who were funding entities like Crossroads GPS.
Plutocracy means rule by the rich, and by that standard, the election of Ron Johnson over Russ Feingold, certainly looks like a plutocratic takeover. Feingold was not only not wealthy, he was fastidious about where he got his campaign funding, and he was notoriously independent when it came to the needs of the wealthy. So old fashioned: he insisted that ordinary people and their concerns mattered. The man who defeated Russ, Ron Johnson, is a millionaire plastics manufacturer who never held office, but was not particularly fastidious about where the money came from, and was the beneficiary of almost all the anonymously funded ads (most out of state); they either promoted his positions, or attacked Feingold.
On the other hand, Feingold raised significantly more money than Johnson (all from small donors, apparently), and spent more, perhaps more than Johnson and the out of state ad campaigns combined. The election in Wisconsin, and in many other states, has been described as "rejectionist." It was like that voter in my Election District who demanded a list of all the incumbents, so he could vote against them all. See my earlier blog for that story.
Except maybe the election wasn't really rejectionist. My two Democratic Senators were reelected easily, even if my Congressman lost. My Senators, Schumer and Gillibrand, are probably acceptable to what some are beginning to call the plutonomy, i.e. the wealthy, corporate movers and shakers. They have both been friendly enough to Wall Street.
The system we appear to be evolving towards looks increasingly like the end days of the Western Roman Empire. That was a true plutocracy, however, because there were no corporations. This, in some ways looks more insidious. The wealthy get what they want, which includes turning everyone else into the equivalent of serfs, but they also get to set their serfs, in far-flung parts of the world, against each other, competing for the lowest wages. And, because of mass media, they can persuade them that this is the way things have to be.
"The best democracies money can buy" means plutocracy, or corporatocracy on a world scale.
A fellow graduate student (long ago) was asked, while on a Political Science panel, what he thought about Revolution. Pointing to his small stature, he said, "I'm a small Political Scientist, so I don't like violence." I'm small, too, and I agree.
But I wonder how much misery people will willingly endure--before they erupt. Is that what suicide bombers are doing already? Are they the beginning of our era's barbarian hordes?
Plutocracy means rule by the rich, and by that standard, the election of Ron Johnson over Russ Feingold, certainly looks like a plutocratic takeover. Feingold was not only not wealthy, he was fastidious about where he got his campaign funding, and he was notoriously independent when it came to the needs of the wealthy. So old fashioned: he insisted that ordinary people and their concerns mattered. The man who defeated Russ, Ron Johnson, is a millionaire plastics manufacturer who never held office, but was not particularly fastidious about where the money came from, and was the beneficiary of almost all the anonymously funded ads (most out of state); they either promoted his positions, or attacked Feingold.
On the other hand, Feingold raised significantly more money than Johnson (all from small donors, apparently), and spent more, perhaps more than Johnson and the out of state ad campaigns combined. The election in Wisconsin, and in many other states, has been described as "rejectionist." It was like that voter in my Election District who demanded a list of all the incumbents, so he could vote against them all. See my earlier blog for that story.
Except maybe the election wasn't really rejectionist. My two Democratic Senators were reelected easily, even if my Congressman lost. My Senators, Schumer and Gillibrand, are probably acceptable to what some are beginning to call the plutonomy, i.e. the wealthy, corporate movers and shakers. They have both been friendly enough to Wall Street.
The system we appear to be evolving towards looks increasingly like the end days of the Western Roman Empire. That was a true plutocracy, however, because there were no corporations. This, in some ways looks more insidious. The wealthy get what they want, which includes turning everyone else into the equivalent of serfs, but they also get to set their serfs, in far-flung parts of the world, against each other, competing for the lowest wages. And, because of mass media, they can persuade them that this is the way things have to be.
"The best democracies money can buy" means plutocracy, or corporatocracy on a world scale.
A fellow graduate student (long ago) was asked, while on a Political Science panel, what he thought about Revolution. Pointing to his small stature, he said, "I'm a small Political Scientist, so I don't like violence." I'm small, too, and I agree.
But I wonder how much misery people will willingly endure--before they erupt. Is that what suicide bombers are doing already? Are they the beginning of our era's barbarian hordes?
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Government by Default
Corporate leaders, right-wing media moguls, speculators, bankers and hedge fund managers were all cheering as the election returns rolled in. Oh, they had their little disappointments, both in California and New York. The oil companies suffered the most, having spent well over a $100 million to repeal California's global warming law: their proposition failed.
Generally, big business won, defense won, and the American people were sold a shoddy bill of goods. What did the people vote for? Kicking the bums out. According to Pew's polls, the economy, i.e. jobs, was by far the most important issue (to 61%): what people wanted was more of them. Repealing health care reform, or substantially changing it was important to only 21%.
However, John Boehner, new Speaker-designate, vowed that a health care repeal bill was the first order of business. And what will Republicans propose as stimulus, to create jobs? Cut taxes, or specifically, make the Bush tax cuts permanent, including tax cuts for those poor mites who earn more than $250,000 a year, and even for those heroes of enterprise who earn a $100 million or more. That is supposed to create jobs, but corporations are already rolling in money, even as they lay off more employees.
The Fed's response is to go big ($600 billion) on Quantitative Easing, or creating money. Fed chief, Bernanke, nearly pleaded with Congress for greater fiscal stimulus, but he could see that Congress isn't going to pass one. Ironically, it may increase the deficit by cutting taxes and pushing for a more aggressive defense policy. Cutting "waste" is a fraud, and even Republicans know that.
So, how are Republicans going to solve the jobs issue? They can't; they will make it worse, so they will continue their diversionary politics--and blame all our troubles on Obama.
Meanwhile, the corporations are getting exactly what they paid for. Stalemate in Washington means: no interference, unilateral control over their own multinational estates and their pursuit of maximum profits, everywhere.
What corporations really want? Government to concern itself only with protecting them and their assets, both at home and abroad, but certainly not to concern itself with the people's welfare: ultimately, corporations want to control that, too, for a profit.
How would workers fare under unrestrained corporate rule? Forget about minimum wages, maximum hours, safe working conditions, or safe food and drink. Forget about a chance to "make it rich," an American dream that fools many into supporting the corporate agenda. Only a tiny elite will "make it," and most of them will come from the already elite. Everyone else will be overworked and underpaid, or cast off to survive however they can, including crime. Security companies should thrive! So should private prisons.
America's Roman Senators just took a giant step towards our equivalent of the Fall of Rome.
Generally, big business won, defense won, and the American people were sold a shoddy bill of goods. What did the people vote for? Kicking the bums out. According to Pew's polls, the economy, i.e. jobs, was by far the most important issue (to 61%): what people wanted was more of them. Repealing health care reform, or substantially changing it was important to only 21%.
However, John Boehner, new Speaker-designate, vowed that a health care repeal bill was the first order of business. And what will Republicans propose as stimulus, to create jobs? Cut taxes, or specifically, make the Bush tax cuts permanent, including tax cuts for those poor mites who earn more than $250,000 a year, and even for those heroes of enterprise who earn a $100 million or more. That is supposed to create jobs, but corporations are already rolling in money, even as they lay off more employees.
The Fed's response is to go big ($600 billion) on Quantitative Easing, or creating money. Fed chief, Bernanke, nearly pleaded with Congress for greater fiscal stimulus, but he could see that Congress isn't going to pass one. Ironically, it may increase the deficit by cutting taxes and pushing for a more aggressive defense policy. Cutting "waste" is a fraud, and even Republicans know that.
So, how are Republicans going to solve the jobs issue? They can't; they will make it worse, so they will continue their diversionary politics--and blame all our troubles on Obama.
Meanwhile, the corporations are getting exactly what they paid for. Stalemate in Washington means: no interference, unilateral control over their own multinational estates and their pursuit of maximum profits, everywhere.
What corporations really want? Government to concern itself only with protecting them and their assets, both at home and abroad, but certainly not to concern itself with the people's welfare: ultimately, corporations want to control that, too, for a profit.
How would workers fare under unrestrained corporate rule? Forget about minimum wages, maximum hours, safe working conditions, or safe food and drink. Forget about a chance to "make it rich," an American dream that fools many into supporting the corporate agenda. Only a tiny elite will "make it," and most of them will come from the already elite. Everyone else will be overworked and underpaid, or cast off to survive however they can, including crime. Security companies should thrive! So should private prisons.
America's Roman Senators just took a giant step towards our equivalent of the Fall of Rome.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Anarchism 2010-style
They don't wear black masks, and they don't trash police cars. They go to rallies and hold up signs against Obamacare, or Guvmint, or claim Obama is a Muslim. Yes, the Tea Party.
It's not as if the Tea Party doesn't have sponsors. Again, it's not like those masked vandals, who eschew money, itself. The Tea Party anarchists, are for dissolving all government, eventually. Just follow their logic--and their sponsors.
Government isn't supposed to be doing all the things it does now, because, well, maybe they can point to mis-interpretations of our 18th Century Constitution, but really they just insist (against a good deal of evidence to the contrary) that government can do nothing right.
Logically, that will eventually extend to the police and the military. In both cases, private corporations are taking over increasing shares of these functions: private prison corporations and Blackwater/Xie come to mind.
So, the new anarchism hands over all power to huge corporations. Governments wither away. If we could do without government, I'd be happy too, but given the size of our population, and the complexity of our society, government functions would be taken over by corporations: not an improvement.
We cannot do without government functions, collective goods, and a whole host of services we just take for granted, like insuring clean, healthy food, reliable weights and measures, information about the economy, about the people in it. Everyone gains when more people are healthy, so public health is necessary: plagues and epidemics are really bad for business.
The Tea Party opposition to "Obamacare," is generated by vast amounts of money from healthcare corporations that want to keep the best parts--like guaranteed new markets (required by the individual mandate)--while jettisoning costly regulations like no pre-existing conditions. It's also opposed by wealthy ideologues like the Koch brothers.
There is a logical path from one to the other, however: it is empowering corporations and disempowering everyone else. In other words, the new anarchism could eventually usher in a world in which Google provides the economic data--it's attempting to, right now, with the price index--and Xie fights unending, profitable wars.
Do you remember Newt Gingrich proposing that Visa could collect taxes much more efficiently than the IRS?
And who would make the decisions? Why, the Senators and Congressmen and Presidents, who are elected by corporate campaign funds, of course. And they'll do the bidding of the corporations, perhaps meeting informally when disagreements do crop up.
People would only be necessary to pay the bills and provide the underpaid muscle and intellect needed for the corporations to make even greater profits. Corporate owners, i.e. the fewer and fewer people who really own them, would have unlimited wealth. And power.
Voila, Anarchism 2010! Just like Rome circa 477, after its "fall," before wandering marauders finish off most of the Romans. By 500, Rome had shrunk to 20-30,000 people (from over 1 million).
It's not as if the Tea Party doesn't have sponsors. Again, it's not like those masked vandals, who eschew money, itself. The Tea Party anarchists, are for dissolving all government, eventually. Just follow their logic--and their sponsors.
Government isn't supposed to be doing all the things it does now, because, well, maybe they can point to mis-interpretations of our 18th Century Constitution, but really they just insist (against a good deal of evidence to the contrary) that government can do nothing right.
Logically, that will eventually extend to the police and the military. In both cases, private corporations are taking over increasing shares of these functions: private prison corporations and Blackwater/Xie come to mind.
So, the new anarchism hands over all power to huge corporations. Governments wither away. If we could do without government, I'd be happy too, but given the size of our population, and the complexity of our society, government functions would be taken over by corporations: not an improvement.
We cannot do without government functions, collective goods, and a whole host of services we just take for granted, like insuring clean, healthy food, reliable weights and measures, information about the economy, about the people in it. Everyone gains when more people are healthy, so public health is necessary: plagues and epidemics are really bad for business.
The Tea Party opposition to "Obamacare," is generated by vast amounts of money from healthcare corporations that want to keep the best parts--like guaranteed new markets (required by the individual mandate)--while jettisoning costly regulations like no pre-existing conditions. It's also opposed by wealthy ideologues like the Koch brothers.
There is a logical path from one to the other, however: it is empowering corporations and disempowering everyone else. In other words, the new anarchism could eventually usher in a world in which Google provides the economic data--it's attempting to, right now, with the price index--and Xie fights unending, profitable wars.
Do you remember Newt Gingrich proposing that Visa could collect taxes much more efficiently than the IRS?
And who would make the decisions? Why, the Senators and Congressmen and Presidents, who are elected by corporate campaign funds, of course. And they'll do the bidding of the corporations, perhaps meeting informally when disagreements do crop up.
People would only be necessary to pay the bills and provide the underpaid muscle and intellect needed for the corporations to make even greater profits. Corporate owners, i.e. the fewer and fewer people who really own them, would have unlimited wealth. And power.
Voila, Anarchism 2010! Just like Rome circa 477, after its "fall," before wandering marauders finish off most of the Romans. By 500, Rome had shrunk to 20-30,000 people (from over 1 million).
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Ron Paul: Anti-war, Anti-Fed
I knew Ron Paul was a rare conservative Republican against the war in Afghanistan: outspokenly against. I had seen him in the Presidential debates, and he had seemed too old, and too obsessive about a lot of more quirky issues: I didn't take him seriously.
But when he rose to debate the war in Afghanistan this year, he was oddly elegant. He did ramble a bit, but his argument made a lot of sense. Two points stand out: first, the reason we're in these wars is because it's too easy to go to war. The War Powers Act gave the President 90 days of war before Congress could say boo. By then, it becomes an accomplished fact: how can you withdraw and let the x number of soldiers killed, "die in vain?" So, it's hard, once engaged, to get out of a war, as demonstrated by both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Paul's other main point was that by fighting these wars against Muslims, we are fulfilling Osama bin Laden's strategy for winning the region and driving out the US and the West--using the anger we generate among Muslims to recruit support, while bankrupting us.
Ron Paul is predictably critical of the financial reform bill, but he reveals why housing the Consumer Finance watchdog agency in the Fed is not just a convenience: it will be dependent for a budget not from Congress, but from the Fed, itself. It will be controlled by it.
Paul would like to abolish the Fed and fiat money, for gold, which makes him a bit of a kook among most economists, conservative or liberal. However, he's co-sponsoring, with liberal Democrat, Kucinich, a bill that would require the Fed to be audited, a proposal that makes sense.
Paul's opposition to the Afghan war connects with his opposition to the Fed: fiat money finances wars for Republicans and "unlimited welfare" for Democrats, he says, because the Fed can just keep issuing money, indebting us all. He's not entirely wrong about the debt part, but too many Democrats are willing to finance wars, as well, and "welfare" is pretty meager, compared to the money we lavish on wars.
Paul made the same point I've made on this site: empires bankrupt themselves over wars. The Romans, after their peak, had a long and painful decline, because they could no longer pay for the Empire's continuous wars. They lost territory, losing revenue and the loot from conquest. The Empire consumed more than it produced. Sound familiar?
The western Empire fell because it was so bankrupt it couldn’t even pay the palace guard: so, they overthrew the Emperor, and stole what remained of his assets.
It is a valid question, though: how long can the Fed create money for wars and consumption, and persuade the rest of the world that "the dollar is sound?"
But when he rose to debate the war in Afghanistan this year, he was oddly elegant. He did ramble a bit, but his argument made a lot of sense. Two points stand out: first, the reason we're in these wars is because it's too easy to go to war. The War Powers Act gave the President 90 days of war before Congress could say boo. By then, it becomes an accomplished fact: how can you withdraw and let the x number of soldiers killed, "die in vain?" So, it's hard, once engaged, to get out of a war, as demonstrated by both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Paul's other main point was that by fighting these wars against Muslims, we are fulfilling Osama bin Laden's strategy for winning the region and driving out the US and the West--using the anger we generate among Muslims to recruit support, while bankrupting us.
Ron Paul is predictably critical of the financial reform bill, but he reveals why housing the Consumer Finance watchdog agency in the Fed is not just a convenience: it will be dependent for a budget not from Congress, but from the Fed, itself. It will be controlled by it.
Paul would like to abolish the Fed and fiat money, for gold, which makes him a bit of a kook among most economists, conservative or liberal. However, he's co-sponsoring, with liberal Democrat, Kucinich, a bill that would require the Fed to be audited, a proposal that makes sense.
Paul's opposition to the Afghan war connects with his opposition to the Fed: fiat money finances wars for Republicans and "unlimited welfare" for Democrats, he says, because the Fed can just keep issuing money, indebting us all. He's not entirely wrong about the debt part, but too many Democrats are willing to finance wars, as well, and "welfare" is pretty meager, compared to the money we lavish on wars.
Paul made the same point I've made on this site: empires bankrupt themselves over wars. The Romans, after their peak, had a long and painful decline, because they could no longer pay for the Empire's continuous wars. They lost territory, losing revenue and the loot from conquest. The Empire consumed more than it produced. Sound familiar?
The western Empire fell because it was so bankrupt it couldn’t even pay the palace guard: so, they overthrew the Emperor, and stole what remained of his assets.
It is a valid question, though: how long can the Fed create money for wars and consumption, and persuade the rest of the world that "the dollar is sound?"
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