Category Archives: US Government

This Should be the Romney Comment Being Discussed

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[The] former head of Goldman Sachs, John Whitehead, was also the former head of the New York Federal Reserve. And I met with him, and he said as soon as the Fed stops buying all the debt that we’re issuing—which they’ve been doing, the Fed’s buying like three-quarters of the debt that America issues. He said, once that’s over, he said we’re going to have a failed Treasury auction, interest rates are going to have to go up. We’re living in this borrowed fantasy world, where the government keeps on borrowing money. You know, we borrow this extra trillion a year, we wonder who’s loaning us the trillion? The Chinese aren’t loaning us anymore. The Russians aren’t loaning it to us anymore. So who’s giving us the trillion? And the answer is we’re just making it up. The Federal Reserve is just taking it and saying, “Here, we’re giving it.” It’s just made up money, and this does not augur well for our economic future. You know, some of these things are complex enough it’s not easy for people to understand, but your point of saying, bankruptcy usually concentrates the mind. – Mitt Romney, May 2012

He’s not making this up. This is the honest truth. The Chinese might even dump about a trillion in our bonds and another trillion in Japanese bonds, further burdening both our central bank and the Bank of Japan with those debt burdens. Tax cuts make the deficit worse. Spending cuts would have to be not $1.2 trillion over ten years, but about $1.5 trillion right now to balance the budget – which would likely wreck the Treasury Department’s “rescue” of the major banks… aaaaand there goes the banking sector!

On average, major economic collapses like the one we had in 2008 see a 180% increase in sovereign debt. We’re still about $6 trillion away from that benchmark. It won’t matter which party is in Congress or the White House: those numbers are relentless in their historic precedents. While it could be better, it could also be much, much worse – and there’s plenty of underlying instability and unaccounted-for losses to trigger a much worse knock-on disaster to the current situation.

I said it makes no difference which party runs things in regards to this problem. Perhaps the reason it’s not being discussed in the national media is that we, as a people, will realize that neither party will make a difference and, in that realization, stop dividing ourselves with anger over issues that distract us from how the nation has been sold out from under us.

Martial Law in Congress

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No, I am not making this up. Martial law in the Congress means that bills are debated on the floor and voted on without any time for committee deliberation or even reading the bills. Massive things, full of fine print and spaghetti legalisms, hundreds of pages long, with nothing more than a “Vote for this!” to recommend it to the legislators.

That’s rubber-stamp legislation, plain and simple. Both Republicans and Democrats resort to it, so it’s not a partisan issue. It’s wholesale failure of democratic principles, that’s what it is. The people that wrote the massive bills – the rich men and women and corporations that can afford to hire enough lawyers and make enough campaign contributions to make them happen – do not want what’s in those bills to be read. It would spoil their system of spoils.

No matter what appearances you think you might see to indicate to the contrary, America is an increasingly authoritarian plutocracy. The rich run this place, and they use both the Democrats and Republicans at their beck and call to expand their power, increase their wealth, and all the while impoverishing and oppressing us that aren’t rich. This is why discussions about Romney and Obama tire me: neither man will make a difference when it comes to reducing the power of our unelected tyrants.

Political Percentages

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47% of Americans don’t pay income taxes, although they still pay sales taxes. In that 47% are the very poor, military overseas, and the retired elderly. Also the disabled. Yet, there is one group in that 47% of Americans that don’t pay income taxes that isn’t angry about Mitt Romney’s gaffe: they’re the richest of the rich, whose incomes have gone up 385% in the last 20 years, while the bottom 90% of American incomes have declined by 1% in the same time frame. Those guys don’t pay taxes, or pay very little, and they all know how to take huge streams of taxpayer money and direct them towards their businesses and bank accounts.

It’s disgusting how the rich of this nation have forgotten that we are all debtors to the earth and our national ancestors. This is not a land to be consumed in an instant: it is to be husbanded carefully so that it will be in proper shape for our descendants. We are currently being ruled by plunderers, and the plunderers to watch are not the supposed ones that are barely able to keep from starving. No, the real plunderers, the real criminals, the real destroyers of democracy are people that live in houses with more bathrooms than bedrooms. They are the people that live in one of many houses like that, and they care nothing at all for the poor, the infirm, or the widows.

Well, let them cut aid for the poor. What they get will serve them right. I will pass over what may await them in an afterlife scenario. I will instead look to the rioting that happens around the world when people are starving and food prices go up. If our nation fails to care for its poor and they go hungry, we will see the destruction of the nation.

Even if we cling to fascism as a means of combatting nascent communism, it will be a fool’s bargain with the devil: does anyone remember that fascism demands militarism, and that when all the small targets are consumed, fascism commits a nation to a path that leads to world war. Do not point to Spain or Portugal as a model: the USA is a great power, and it must be compared to the fascism that ruled in Italy, Japan, and Germany as a possible glimpse into a future in which we forget our poor.

“Helicopter Ben” Lives Up to His Name – But What Will Be His Legacy?

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Ben Bernanke said the Fed will buy $85 billion in US debt every month through to the end of 2013. That means, by that time, the Fed balance sheet will have 25% of US GDP on its hands. It will eventually have to unwind all that. That will be hard to do.

But for the short term, look for higher prices at the pump, higher food prices, more desperate people about to retire that can’t get good yields on their investments, more insolvent state pension plans, aaaaaand… more riots, revolutions, and civil wars around the world.

Food prices spike up when the Fed does a round of QE*. When the Fed did its first move in 2008, we saw massive riots in the poor nations of the world. When QE2 hit in 2010, the riots were severe enough in North Africa to deliver the Arab Spring. Prices were already high enough this year to intensify the Syrian civil war and provide the foundation for the latest round of anti-US violence in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, Tunisia, and Morocco (so far). This new QE looks set to send food prices even higher – and they were already higher in 2012 than they were in 2010.

Jeremy Grantham has said that we are five years into a severe global food shortage. This “QE to Infinity and Beyond” business from Bernanke is going to exacerbate that situation. We may soon see nuclear armed Pakistan and China descend into civil war because of food prices. China might be able to avoid war through draconian internal measures, but Pakistan is not capable of such action in my assessment.

The law of diminishing returns says that this QE will have less effect on the US economy than previous ones. It might even have no effect on the US economy outside of fueling a stock market bubble that will have tremendous fallout when it pops. But that law of diminishing returns is the least of our worries when we look at the law of inflation and how those food prices are going to affect Central America, South America, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. Think about each in turn, because we do ourselves a disservice if we lump them all together. Can governments in those regions withstand an even more severe food shortage than the one they’re facing now?

*QE= Quantitative Easing, or the Federal Reserve’s purchase of bank loans that may or may not be dodgy… Japan tried it in 2001 and found it to be highly ineffective in the long run.

An Angry Redaction

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OK, so I endorsed Obama because I can’t stand the foreign policy people connected to Romney. Now I have to un-endorse Obama because I can’t stand the foreign policy people connected to his organization. Not only is a third carrier group underway to the Persian Gulf, which can only serve to further provoke and inflame Iran, Russia, and China, but this happened: Video of undemocratic stunt at Democratic convention…

That is unreal! The party wanted to add a platform plank that required a two-thirds majority. I don’t care if it was right or wrong to add the plank. It could have been about endorsing the official dog food of the Democratic party, for all I care. They ran the vote three times, and it was clear to me that there wasn’t a two-thirds majority for the plank… and the chairman rammed it through, anyway, claiming he heard a two-thirds majority in favor of it.

Democracy, that ain’t. Sorry, Democrats, but stuff like this should be unacceptable. At least half the people there didn’t want to have that on the party platform. In a two-thirds majority situation, the measure should have been defeated, not added to the platform.

This is all about power. Naked, aggressive power. I’ve seen this in the GOP, and I’m looking at it right now in the Democrat party. It’s like breaking a hole in the drywall and seeing the wood frame shot through with termite tunnels. How far does this go? How long has this been going on? If it’s been going on too long, is the structure able to be saved, or is it beyond repair?

I know that sounds terribly negative, and it’ll sound even more so when I say I don’t think it is savable, not with this system in place around it. I have hope for the future, but it lies more in myself and my community than in the people that hold power in the USA. There are ways to fix this mess, but they have to come from within individuals and not from within party platforms, as we can see here…

A Nauseating Endorsement

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I’m going to have to vote for Obama and his associated gang of criminals come November. I say that because I cannot support Romney, due to the fascists in his close camp. Yes, I know that for the most part Obama and Romney themselves are virtually the same. However, it’s the people close to them that give me the pause that I have.

Both will bend over backwards to accommodate Wall Street. That’s a lost cause, as far as I’m concerned. The only way we’ll see Wall Street reigned in is if they don’t get Obama re-elected and he takes them down with him in his lame duck period.

So what about foreign policy? Romney’s got John Bolton in his corner, and that’s what made me come down against him. I hereby withdraw my offer to be his VP. This Bolton guy is a real spook, and I can’t be in the same room with him.

He’s been involved in Iran-Contra, denying reparations to Japanese-Americans interned during WW2, and has previously been owned by Taiwan. Bolton’s also one of the brain trust that decided it would be a great idea to lie to the American people to get the nation to invade Iraq. Bolton was also the guy that kept one and all from knowing the truth behind the connections between the CIA and international drug running back in Reagan’s days. The man is a fascist in cahoots with drug dealers, and that won’t do, see?

I’m very disappointed in Obama’s listless administration, but at the end of the day he’s still marginally better than Bush II. Romney’s embrace of the neocons would make him as bad as or worse than Bush II.

Of course, I live in Texas, so my vote probably won’t count. But I have a principle to uphold: I have to fight Fascism, even if it’s a losing battle.

Yet One More Way Wall Street Has Ripped You Off

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Rolling Stone has an important article that should be required reading for anyone that still believes markets are efficient or that it makes a difference if we vote for Democrats or Republicans. Markets are rigged, frequently, and the parties exercise a cozy duopoly in which they do the bidding of the big corporations doing the rigging of the markets.

This isn’t isolated stuff, either. This is the way things roll in the USA. We’re not a land of the free, nor is there justice for all. The big players pay tiny fines, keep their ill-gotten gains, and then go on to keep doing what they’ve been doing. They commit massive felonies, admit no guilt, and then the government sets them up to commit the same felonies over and over.

Three-time losers get life in jail, but only if they’re individual felons. Corporate three-time losers face no such penalties. Instead, they can bend Congress to let them murder to get gain. And before anyone balks and says nobody in the financial world is directly killing anyone, I’m going to come right back and say that acting as the killer or the killer’s accomplice is the same thing. They’re responsible for health care not provided to the poor, food not available for the hungry, shelters unbuilt for the cold. Inasmuch as they have done it unto the least among us, they have done it unto Jesus, as far as my religion goes.

And now you know why Jesus had so much hostility towards the rich. They tend to be Satan’s most dependable servants.

Will the Senate Bite the Hand that Feeds?

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Probably not. Even with direct campaign donation limits, the guys with the money can sit down in front of their friends whenever a Senate committee decides it’s time to have a hearing.

From ZeroHedge:

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Here’s an idea for parents about to drop a packet of cash on a child’s college education: There’s an election this year. Make that money a campaign donation, instead, and your pride and joy will get the best job out of high school that money can buy. Given that George Bush gave the plan to evacuate New Orleans from Katrina to a person with zero experience, but maxed out in donations, your recent senior can count on a $500,000 contract with no experience and a $2500 donation. If you can give more, you can get more. This is the lesson Jamie Dimon teaches us: with enough money, anything is possible. Even if you have no experience or are about to bring the world financial system to its knees, the US Congress and Presidency will ride to your rescue if you’re a big donor.

The Bill of Rights and Civil War Amendments, 2012 Version

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Preface: Although written otherwise, the de facto language of these amendments has changed significantly through acts of Congress, interpretation of the Executive, and rulings of the Supreme Court. Citizens of the United States may appeal to the original language of the amendments, but the government of the United States may violate those amendments at will, placing the burden of both the breach and the proving of it thereof squarely on the shoulders of those oppressed by the actions of the government. Challenging the government over breaches of the amendments will likely meet in failure, for while it delights in clothing itself in the cloth of freedom and republican democracy, it is only to disguise an increasingly authoritarian power. Continue reading →

The Cult of Personality in History

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I am watching the film, The Fall of Berlin, a 1948 Mosfilm production, and it is an amazing historigraphical experience. First off, the actors are not listed in order of appearance, but hierarchically. The man playing Stalin is given top billing, followed by actors portraying high political and military officials, on down to the actual lead Russian peasant roles, finished off by the actors playing the Germans (boo, hiss!). The credits are proper Soviet yellow-on-red, and just in case one was wondering what was most important in life, the main character – who was born on the day of the October Revolution – is awestruck by the presence of Stalin.

When told that he will visit Stalin in honor of his attaining a world record of steel production, our hero is gobsmacked. “What will I say to Stalin?” he asks in his panic. His boss reassures him. One does not speak to Stalin! One listens to Stalin! But of course.

While everyone else has doubts or failings, Comrade Stalin – played by one of his real-life body doubles – remains cool as a cucumber through the whole picture. Soviet generals demand 150 tanks and 3000 anti-tank rifles: Stalin tells them 15 tanks and 200 rifles will do the job, if used carefully and wisely. Hitler rants and raves about attaining his goals: Stalin comprehends all and is sure of his eventual victory. Goering plots secretly with Allied industrialists to sneak raw materials into Germany: Stalin deals with them plainly and foursquare in the open. Hitler runs his nation into the ground: Stalin saves his and delivers it from evil.

The extremity of Stalin’s Christ-like portrayal is fascinating to study. While terribly ugly in its implications, it is nevertheless a lesson worth enduring. As a film, The Fall of Berlin has some cool action sequences you won’t see in the CGI spectaculars of today: Comrade Stalin ordered several divisions of the Red Army to participate in the battle scenes. While the dogfight scene over Moscow was shot with scale models that are obviously so, the symbolism of the scene is not lost on the astute viewer who knows that the poor production values of that part of the film symbolize the poor production values of Nazi Germany. Maybe. If I was living in the USSR in 1948, that would be my defense if I was stupid enough to criticize the film.

One colonel that did criticize the film wound up in the Gulag for eight years. Better to praise the film, yes?

Watching it made me reflect on the cults of personality developing in America and how they warp our views of history. We have legends, true. Washington and Lincoln both never told lies, from what we can gather from legendary and apocryphal sources. Those are ancient myths, though, and only serve to buoy up modern cults.

The first real cult of personality in US History is that of FDR. He worked the media hard so that many people in America loved him. Regardless of his actual legacy, he got the message out that he was one of the best presidents the nation ever had, and a lot of people believed him. That legacy remains with us today in his depiction on our coins and our popular mentality. His bespectacled grin decorated with homburg hat and cigarette holder has a certain friendly ubiquity in our national conscience.

The next cult is the one that casts a shadow over our day: Reagan. His visage is used again and again on the Right to impose a symbol of their triumph. Reagan the man does not enter their political calculus: they have room only for Reagan the myth. They recall always “Morning in America” and never Iran-Contra, Ed Meese, or US support of heroin rings in Pakistan (IE, the Pakistani Army and the ISI). Reagan is always The Great Conservative and never a president that raised taxes, ran up the deficit, and quadrupled the national debt in his administration. This sort of whitewashing is as dangerous to us as was Stalin’s whitewashing in Soviet Russia.

It shackles the mind with error and places belief in a man over historical realities. Reagan is not God. He is not Absolute. He is not Messiah. Reagan was a fallible man, who presided over one of the most corrupt administrations in US History. I won’t argue over whether or not the man had great accomplishments: I’ll allow them, for the sake of argument. But none of those accomplishments would justify complete ignorance and setting-aside of his presidential failures. None of them justify the mythology that has grown up around his name and face.

Clinton may well become a myth of the Left one day, as a two-term exponent of their greatest hour (lately). The Left hasn’t been very symbol-oriented of late, outside of Obama’s “Hope” posters of 2008. Perhaps that’s why they won then and are drifting now. In 2012, they lack a symbol and, therefore, they lack a cult.

The Right is ready to supply a cult. Fox News is tailor-made for hagiographic treatments of any True Conservative that steps on their doorstep. They’ve propagandized and exalted some truly terrible choices for president and made them out to be Reagan’s True Successor. Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and, finally, Rick Santorum all took a turn as the One True Conservative. Every one of them benefited from Fox News’ and other heavy hitters from the mainstream right-wing media praises and near-deification.

Which makes me wonder… is one reason they begrudge Romney due to Romney’s not wanting to have a cult of personality? All the other candidates accepted that sort of fawning adoration, but Romney rejects that. This is bad news for America if Romney loses in 2012. It’ll mean that a GOP candidate MUST have a massive cult behind him to get him close enough for a chance at victory. Bush II had a cult: McCain did not. If a cult-less Romney loses 2012, Fox News and other conservative mouthpieces will savage him and set the stage for a culted candidate in 2016.

I find all this ironic because Mormons are frequently referred to as being in a cult. Yet, here I am saying that Romney was the only GOP candidate this year without a cult-like mentality driving his campaign. In the interests of disclosure, I’m a Mormon, but I’m only going to support Romney if he names me as his vice-presidential candidate. Until then, I’m not backing him. Now, if I were in a cult, wouldn’t my cult leaders be telling me to vote in a fellow cultist to control the USA? Of course they would: that’s what the GOP is telling its membership. No matter how much you dislike Romney, to be a true GOP-er, one must dislike Obama even more.

While that’s not all that hard to do from a political standpoint, it’s even easier to do from a mythological standpoint. There’s some ugly thinking on the Right, and Obama plays as a villain to every racist, misogynistic, fascist, homophobic, plutocratic, and other hate-driven ideology that has attached itself to the GOP. I’ve got many good friends in the Republican Party that deserve not one of those adjectives, but the fact remains that the GOP needs their votes in order to win, so it has to sing songs they want to hear. A cult of personality makes those songs easier to sing.

And that brings me back to Stalin. He solidified his position with a cult. He was able to commit genocide and destroy the rights of his people with a cult. The cult turned off critical thinking, which is vital to confront our earthly leaders with, and enabled Stalin to enact his grand wickedness.

If we have a president elected from either the Left or the Right with a cult-like backing, then that is the seal on the doom of America. For if the GOP loses in 2012, expect their cult to win in 2016. That will force the Democrats to follow suit in 2020, and then neither party will run a campaign after that without a massive propaganda campaign, complete with suppression of dissent.

As a professional dissenter, this worries me greatly. It’s bad enough seeing a 1948 film that glorified Stalin. I saw films from 2007 and 2008 that glorified Putin. I don’t ever want to have that sort of historigraphical experience with an American film, but we’re headed that way.