Republican politicians like to rant against taxes and blame all taxation on Democratic politicians. So you would think that Republicans in the federal House of Representatives would present a balanced budget.
Why did the House Republicans pass a budget this week, written by Paul Ryan, that would not balance the budget (barring an economic miracle) until 2024, a decade from now?
It is not just politics as usual, even though everyone knew this budget bill, which passed 219 to 205, won't become law. It will die in the Democrat-controlled Senate, and in any case President Barack Obama won't sign it.
Take a step back and look at the bigger picture, both economic and historical. Deficit financing did not become a regular part of the American economy until the Great Depression. In 1933 progressives of both parties (Democrat and Republican), led by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, tried "pump priming," getting the economy headed back to normal by government deficit spending. Soon income tax rates were raised too. But what really ran up a deficit, and revitalized the economy, was World War II.
After World War II the U.S. had an unprecedented amount of debt, but we were the only industrialized nation that had not been devastated by the war. More important, both parties had seen what a little economic heroin could do for politicians. So while conservatives talked of balanced budgets, they became rare even in years when the economy was booming.
Now tax rates are far lower than they were from 1935 until 1980. Republicans can take most, but not all, of the credit for that. But if anything Republicans have been worse than Democrats about spending taxpayer dollars.
Ryan's budget advocates cutting back on payments for food stamps, health care, education and transportation. But it does not cut back on military and homeland security spending, or on subsidies and tax breaks for corporations and the rich. It does not prioritize dealing with the national debt. The Democrats will say its domestic spending cuts amputate important programs, but in fact Ryan's cuts are band-aid sized cuts. They are meant not to antagonize too many senior voters, just mostly the type of people who vote Democrat, if they can get a valid voter ID card.
Ryan's budget tries to please Tea Party Republicans with the smell of budget cuts without alienating the big defense corporations or too many middle class voters.
And in his heart-of-hearts, Ryan may worry that without the deficit spending his plan envisions, the economy might stall, which would reduce tax collections, increase the deficit, and make it harder for him to reward his sponsors with government contracts.
Then there is the over $17 trillion dollars of federal debt. Currently the Treasury and the Federal Reserve are pretending they are keeping interest rates low to stimulate the economy, but the rates are way under what they have been historically in a growing economy with well less than 7% unemployment and no overall inflation. The main result of the low interest rates is that the government can finance its debt cheaply. Since that is the main result, that is the real purpose.
Normal interest rates are about 5%. 10% of $17 trillion is $1.7 trillion. 5% is half of that, so $0.85 trillion. Per year, in interest alone. A trillion is a thousand billions, and a billion is a thousand millions. So take my word for it, as valueless as the dollar has become since the Great Depression, and as large a the economy has become, we are talking a high-magnitude earthquake-like impact on the federal budget and on the economy if interest rates normalize. If we actually had an old-fashioned strong economy interest rates could easily climb above 5%, if we had free markets or the Fed were to do its job of keeping inflation under control.
Folly begets folly, and investors around the world see U.S. debt as a safe thing right now. Just a switch in that attitude, which would result in investors refusing to buy bonds until interest rates were higher (like 5% on 10 year bonds), would throw the U.S. into bankruptcy.
Its kind of like global warming. You have politicians who are in denial, and you have politicians who see the problem, but are not willing to act on something decades away. Only the debt crisis is probably well less than a decade away. It could start any time, and the longer it takes, the worse it will be.
The problem may be fixable. Democrats and Republicans alike would have to give up quite a bit. Each party uses federal money, or exemptions from taxes, to buy campaign donations and votes. Each party would have to give up much of its gravy train. And each could do that, without harming the economy overall.
Homeland security spending is nearly a complete waste. Cut that budget by 90%. Cut the military budget by 50%. And yes, it would take toughter-than-Ryan cuts in food stamps and education subsidies. Cut payments to health-care organizations and doctors, focusing on high-cost low-benefit drugs, diagnostic procedures, and surgeries. Raise the IRS budget, double it, and have them go after tax shirkers at all levels.
What, cut education subsidies? Yes, cut them. I support public schools, and I served on a public school board for 8 years, and I was the most liberal member of a liberal board. But I also saw the details of how federal money is doled out. Cut the money in half, remove the red tape by 100%, and let the school boards micromanage how to best educate their pupils. Some will screw up, many will be mired in mediocrity, but most will do better with half the money.
Alternatively taxes on the rich, and in fact on individuals making $50,000 a year or more, will soon need to be doubled. That is right, doubled. Read my lips: doubled. With no exemptions for capital gains, dividends, or inheritances. Even small inheritances.
Or we could do some combination of severe spending cuts and severe tax increases.
I imagine I have alienated just about everyone by pointing out the problem and the only ways it can be solved. I know plenty of people who get food stamps and never worry about how that food is really being paid for. I know soldiers and veterans, and I know people who make plenty of money and consider themselves over-taxed even after they take their tax breaks. No one likes to hear the nation is sick, and they all have to take some medicine.
So as an analyst, my prediction is the federal government is not going to act any better than heroin addicts would act (I've known some of them too). It will continue to borrow money until no one will lend it money.
Then it will either collapse in agony or go out and hit someone over the head and take the money it needs for its addiction. And blow off its creditors.
Disclaimer: I am registered to vote in California, but with no political party.
Showing posts with label Homeland Security. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Homeland Security. Show all posts
Friday, April 11, 2014
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Tax the American Empire
[Note: much of this article first appeared as Post-Imperial Mendocino County at MendoDay.com]
The American economy, the economic crisis of 2008, and ongoing sluggish growth, cannot be understood without first admitting that we are in a post-imperialist era.
We cannot move the economy forward again without getting out of the double-bind we are in: paying for the trappings of imperialism, without its economic benefits.
The federal government's budget is still deeply in deficit mode, yet has not provided enough stimulus to get us up to even moderate growth. So we are not really out of the crisis that swept over us starting in 2008. Food stamps and long-term unemployment benefits have staved off starvation for most citizens, but hardly amount to a long-term solution.
The idea that the United States of America ever went through an imperialist period will surprise many of its citizens. Imperialism often implies an emperor, but in our case it mainly means being able to extract wealth from foreign nations through the exercise of military and economic power.
There was no clear beginning to U.S. imperialism. Grabbing native American Indian lands was a major way of extracting wealth from outsiders even before 1776. Most historians would say modern U.S. imperialism started with the Spanish-American War in which the U.S. grabbed Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Cuba (we later sort of gave Cuba to its local elite, although the process was not really completed until Fidel Castro came to power). Or you could go back to the Mexican-American War, in which we grabbed the northern half of Mexico.
To understand how we might revive the economy and government, we should focus on U.S. imperialism after World War II. How did we get to that happy situation? From 1929 until just before World War II the United States economy was pretty sleepy . By the late 1940s and into the 1950s the U.S. economy was bustling. Why did World War II make such a difference?
The United States has had some pretty clever leaders. Even in the 1700's many of them wished for our nation to be a Great Power like the British Empire or France. Presidents like James Polk (who grabbed California), William McKinley (Spanish-American War) and Theodore Roosevelt came to symbolize U.S. global ambitions.
It was World War I, by accident or strategy, that became the template for future U.S. success. Under President Woodrow Wilson the U.S. stayed out of the war, selling all the goods our farms and factories could produce to both sides. Then, when Russia had collapsed and Italy, Germany, France and England were exhausted, the President, under pressure from U.S. bankers, found a pretext to declare war.
It was great, World War I. Not that many American soldiers died (just 117,000), but we tipped the balance for Great Britain and France. Germany was defeated. We did not grab any territory to speak of, but we became the world's bankers while leading the world in industry.
The rematch known as World War II went even better. President Franklin Roosevelt rearmed the United States while putting the British Empire even more heavily in our debt. We let the Communists defeat the Nazis and, again, came in towards the end to claim victory and its spoils. English, French, Italian, German, Japanese and Russian factories had been largely destroyed by aerial bombardment. In contrast the U.S. had built many more factories.
As the French and British empires collapsed after the war it was U.S. factories that supplied the goods for most of the world. In the U.S., in the 1950's, most Americans who wanted one could get a job that paid well. An interstate highway system was built, suburbs were built, colleges expanded and filled. The whole imperialist deal was so profitable that even though the U.S. maintained what was by far the world's most expensive military establishment, paying for it detracted little from the economy.
The Sixties were even better, with John F. Kennedy (a Democrat) engineering the biggest tax cuts for the rich in American history. Even those Americans whose race, geographical location, or just plain laziness and incompetence had prevented them from sharing in The American Dream were soon helped by President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society social programs.
The prosperity might have gone on for centuries, but America's capitalists betrayed it. Rival gangs of capitalists pursued opportunities that turned imperialism on its head. It was profitable to keep costs for consumers high in the U.S. It became more profitable to produce the goods sold in the U.S. in other sectors of the world, certain of the "third world" nations like Mexico and Korea, then later China and Brazil. Meanwhile another gang clung to the profits of the military-industrial complex, and even added profits by whipping up a Homeland Security spending bonanza.
As a result American military, homeland security, and domestic budgets had to be skimmed from a thinning layer of middle-class taxpayers. The capitalists received tax cuts, notably special treatment for dividends and capital gains, as well as no taxes on financial transactions. Factory workers, most of them, dropped back into the proletariat, losing their middle-class incomes. Low-paid service work came to make up most of the American economy.
In classic imperialism, as say run by the British Empire from about 1700 to about 1950, the economic idea is to extract wealth from the enslaved nations. The extracted wealth is brought home, and while the rich get most of it, enough is trickled down to the middle class and proletariat to keep them happy and patriotic, or at least not rebellious. It is important to keep the cost of the military used to dominate other nations low enough so there is a net, major profit for the homeland. The Brits were very good at that. They even drafted soldiers from their subject nations and used them quite effectively. The British Empire fell because England exhausted itself fighting Germany, not because the empire itself was not profitable. At the end of World War II, for practical purposes, the Brits had mortgaged their empire to American bankers. We foreclosed.
Starting in the 1990's, and accelerating this last decade, the U.S.A. has done the opposite. You can see from our Trade Deficits that wealth has been draining from the nation for two decades. At the same time we are being bled internally by the military and homeland security industries.
Look at Afghanistan. Where's the loot? We give money to the corrupt government of Afghanistan. We give them weapons. They sell the weapons to the Taliban, who then use them to shoot at U.S. troops. We get nothing out of it. Not oil, not a market for U.S. goods, not slaves or concubines or the usual imperialist loot.
There are only two solutions. One is to tax every nation in the world that we can. That is the classic imperialist solution: give unto Obama the things that are Obama's. The plan probably would not go down very well in most countries. But they would have no choice. Look what we did to Iraq, and most nations don't have the defenses Iraq did.
Taxes should be modest and imposed gradually, so as not to shock the world economy. A 1% sales or income tax on developed allies and a 0.25% to 0.5% tax on less-developed dependents would probably work for a starter. While the rate is low, by taxing some 6 billion people, quite a bit of money would flow into the United States. It would pay for our work as the world's police, and also pay for our education, welfare, bread, and circuses.
The only other solution is to Cut the Military and Homeland Securities budget. Cut it to the size needed to defend us from Mexico and Canada. Something along the size of the New York Police Force budget.
Unfortunately we are maneuvering in is a sea of continued massive stupidity by American capitalists and both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Don't expect those bozos to start taxing England, Korea and Pakistan, or to reduce the military budget in a meaningful way, in your lifetimes.
Expect America to continue to decline. As the empire unravels, our homeland will unravel. To keep military muscle, we will loose economic muscle. If we keep on this course, at some point, our colossus will fall.
The American economy, the economic crisis of 2008, and ongoing sluggish growth, cannot be understood without first admitting that we are in a post-imperialist era.
We cannot move the economy forward again without getting out of the double-bind we are in: paying for the trappings of imperialism, without its economic benefits.
The federal government's budget is still deeply in deficit mode, yet has not provided enough stimulus to get us up to even moderate growth. So we are not really out of the crisis that swept over us starting in 2008. Food stamps and long-term unemployment benefits have staved off starvation for most citizens, but hardly amount to a long-term solution.
The idea that the United States of America ever went through an imperialist period will surprise many of its citizens. Imperialism often implies an emperor, but in our case it mainly means being able to extract wealth from foreign nations through the exercise of military and economic power.
There was no clear beginning to U.S. imperialism. Grabbing native American Indian lands was a major way of extracting wealth from outsiders even before 1776. Most historians would say modern U.S. imperialism started with the Spanish-American War in which the U.S. grabbed Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Cuba (we later sort of gave Cuba to its local elite, although the process was not really completed until Fidel Castro came to power). Or you could go back to the Mexican-American War, in which we grabbed the northern half of Mexico.
To understand how we might revive the economy and government, we should focus on U.S. imperialism after World War II. How did we get to that happy situation? From 1929 until just before World War II the United States economy was pretty sleepy . By the late 1940s and into the 1950s the U.S. economy was bustling. Why did World War II make such a difference?
The United States has had some pretty clever leaders. Even in the 1700's many of them wished for our nation to be a Great Power like the British Empire or France. Presidents like James Polk (who grabbed California), William McKinley (Spanish-American War) and Theodore Roosevelt came to symbolize U.S. global ambitions.
It was World War I, by accident or strategy, that became the template for future U.S. success. Under President Woodrow Wilson the U.S. stayed out of the war, selling all the goods our farms and factories could produce to both sides. Then, when Russia had collapsed and Italy, Germany, France and England were exhausted, the President, under pressure from U.S. bankers, found a pretext to declare war.
It was great, World War I. Not that many American soldiers died (just 117,000), but we tipped the balance for Great Britain and France. Germany was defeated. We did not grab any territory to speak of, but we became the world's bankers while leading the world in industry.
The rematch known as World War II went even better. President Franklin Roosevelt rearmed the United States while putting the British Empire even more heavily in our debt. We let the Communists defeat the Nazis and, again, came in towards the end to claim victory and its spoils. English, French, Italian, German, Japanese and Russian factories had been largely destroyed by aerial bombardment. In contrast the U.S. had built many more factories.
As the French and British empires collapsed after the war it was U.S. factories that supplied the goods for most of the world. In the U.S., in the 1950's, most Americans who wanted one could get a job that paid well. An interstate highway system was built, suburbs were built, colleges expanded and filled. The whole imperialist deal was so profitable that even though the U.S. maintained what was by far the world's most expensive military establishment, paying for it detracted little from the economy.
The Sixties were even better, with John F. Kennedy (a Democrat) engineering the biggest tax cuts for the rich in American history. Even those Americans whose race, geographical location, or just plain laziness and incompetence had prevented them from sharing in The American Dream were soon helped by President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society social programs.
The prosperity might have gone on for centuries, but America's capitalists betrayed it. Rival gangs of capitalists pursued opportunities that turned imperialism on its head. It was profitable to keep costs for consumers high in the U.S. It became more profitable to produce the goods sold in the U.S. in other sectors of the world, certain of the "third world" nations like Mexico and Korea, then later China and Brazil. Meanwhile another gang clung to the profits of the military-industrial complex, and even added profits by whipping up a Homeland Security spending bonanza.
As a result American military, homeland security, and domestic budgets had to be skimmed from a thinning layer of middle-class taxpayers. The capitalists received tax cuts, notably special treatment for dividends and capital gains, as well as no taxes on financial transactions. Factory workers, most of them, dropped back into the proletariat, losing their middle-class incomes. Low-paid service work came to make up most of the American economy.
In classic imperialism, as say run by the British Empire from about 1700 to about 1950, the economic idea is to extract wealth from the enslaved nations. The extracted wealth is brought home, and while the rich get most of it, enough is trickled down to the middle class and proletariat to keep them happy and patriotic, or at least not rebellious. It is important to keep the cost of the military used to dominate other nations low enough so there is a net, major profit for the homeland. The Brits were very good at that. They even drafted soldiers from their subject nations and used them quite effectively. The British Empire fell because England exhausted itself fighting Germany, not because the empire itself was not profitable. At the end of World War II, for practical purposes, the Brits had mortgaged their empire to American bankers. We foreclosed.
Starting in the 1990's, and accelerating this last decade, the U.S.A. has done the opposite. You can see from our Trade Deficits that wealth has been draining from the nation for two decades. At the same time we are being bled internally by the military and homeland security industries.
Look at Afghanistan. Where's the loot? We give money to the corrupt government of Afghanistan. We give them weapons. They sell the weapons to the Taliban, who then use them to shoot at U.S. troops. We get nothing out of it. Not oil, not a market for U.S. goods, not slaves or concubines or the usual imperialist loot.
There are only two solutions. One is to tax every nation in the world that we can. That is the classic imperialist solution: give unto Obama the things that are Obama's. The plan probably would not go down very well in most countries. But they would have no choice. Look what we did to Iraq, and most nations don't have the defenses Iraq did.
Taxes should be modest and imposed gradually, so as not to shock the world economy. A 1% sales or income tax on developed allies and a 0.25% to 0.5% tax on less-developed dependents would probably work for a starter. While the rate is low, by taxing some 6 billion people, quite a bit of money would flow into the United States. It would pay for our work as the world's police, and also pay for our education, welfare, bread, and circuses.
The only other solution is to Cut the Military and Homeland Securities budget. Cut it to the size needed to defend us from Mexico and Canada. Something along the size of the New York Police Force budget.
Unfortunately we are maneuvering in is a sea of continued massive stupidity by American capitalists and both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Don't expect those bozos to start taxing England, Korea and Pakistan, or to reduce the military budget in a meaningful way, in your lifetimes.
Expect America to continue to decline. As the empire unravels, our homeland will unravel. To keep military muscle, we will loose economic muscle. If we keep on this course, at some point, our colossus will fall.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Republican, Democratic and Tea Party Debacle
The rhetoric was shrill, but in the end there was much to do about nothing. The federal government has no plan for reviving the economy, and it has no plan for not going bankrupt down the road a few years. But consumers, business decision makers, and bankers were filled with terror throughout July, making the economy worse, not better. A worse economy results in lower taxes and bigger federal deficits, the opposite of what the Tea Party claims to want.
In yesterday's Disecting the Bull blog, Plenty of Stimulus, intended primarily for investors, I argued that the federal stimulus, on the whole, is plentiful.
Unfortunately, Congress and the President, as a whole, have their priorities screwed up.
Military and homeland security spending were exempt from cuts. There are economists who will tell you that military spending creates jobs, but so does make-work spending. The finished goods from military spending create no value. Also, much of the spending goes to troops garrisoned in our overseas empire, rather than into the American economy. Military and homeland security spending do not help the U.S. compete in the international arena against export powers like Germany, South Korea, and China.
Research and development, science, and education are being cut. Can you spell s-t-u-p-i-d? Sure, education money could be better targetted. We have too many English and film majors, not enough people learning technical, business, and science skills. We have way too many high school drop outs.
Regulatory agency budgets are prime targets for cuts. A lot more Americans are going to die because of lack of enforecement of safety rules than could possibly be killed by international terrorists. Banks won't get examined, impure foods will make it to supermarket shelves, passenger planes will crash in mid-air. Thank the Tea Party for that.
What is truly amazing, though, is that nothing is being done about the families being devastated by long-term unemployment. True, at least until the end of 2011 the federal government will continue to extend unemployment benefits to 2 years (most state allow for 6 months, which is fine in a normal economy or mild recession). Unemployment started rising in 2007. Of course there are food stamps, homeless shelters and Medicaid, but unemployed people are economically unproductive. Talent is being wasted when we need to be competing vigorously against the Chinese and Germans. The Republicans pray to their Holy Trinity, gold, free markets, and capitalism, but while the price of gold is up (don't worry, it's a bubble, it will fall again), our free markets have been rather lax at creating jobs.
It CEO's won't hire, government should take action. Here's what an activist President and Congress would do: impose a 95% income tax rate on CEO's of profitable companies that fail to grow their workforces. Include stock options and other benefits when calculating the tax. My guess: full employment by the end of 2011.
Get the housing market started again by allowing the Federal Reserve to loan directly to credit-worthy home buyers at the same interest rates it charges banks. Oh no, that would be socialism! Better depression, suicide, homelessness, riots, and chaos than a bit of healthy socialism.
You can talk about economics, but in the end an economy is just the aggregate of a bunch of human decision makers. You don't want people to be overconfident, or you get bubbles, but you don't want them to be overly cautious either.
The July Debacle did anything but inspire confidence. Hey hey, ho ho, the Tea Party has to go.
In yesterday's Disecting the Bull blog, Plenty of Stimulus, intended primarily for investors, I argued that the federal stimulus, on the whole, is plentiful.
Unfortunately, Congress and the President, as a whole, have their priorities screwed up.
Military and homeland security spending were exempt from cuts. There are economists who will tell you that military spending creates jobs, but so does make-work spending. The finished goods from military spending create no value. Also, much of the spending goes to troops garrisoned in our overseas empire, rather than into the American economy. Military and homeland security spending do not help the U.S. compete in the international arena against export powers like Germany, South Korea, and China.
Research and development, science, and education are being cut. Can you spell s-t-u-p-i-d? Sure, education money could be better targetted. We have too many English and film majors, not enough people learning technical, business, and science skills. We have way too many high school drop outs.
Regulatory agency budgets are prime targets for cuts. A lot more Americans are going to die because of lack of enforecement of safety rules than could possibly be killed by international terrorists. Banks won't get examined, impure foods will make it to supermarket shelves, passenger planes will crash in mid-air. Thank the Tea Party for that.
What is truly amazing, though, is that nothing is being done about the families being devastated by long-term unemployment. True, at least until the end of 2011 the federal government will continue to extend unemployment benefits to 2 years (most state allow for 6 months, which is fine in a normal economy or mild recession). Unemployment started rising in 2007. Of course there are food stamps, homeless shelters and Medicaid, but unemployed people are economically unproductive. Talent is being wasted when we need to be competing vigorously against the Chinese and Germans. The Republicans pray to their Holy Trinity, gold, free markets, and capitalism, but while the price of gold is up (don't worry, it's a bubble, it will fall again), our free markets have been rather lax at creating jobs.
It CEO's won't hire, government should take action. Here's what an activist President and Congress would do: impose a 95% income tax rate on CEO's of profitable companies that fail to grow their workforces. Include stock options and other benefits when calculating the tax. My guess: full employment by the end of 2011.
Get the housing market started again by allowing the Federal Reserve to loan directly to credit-worthy home buyers at the same interest rates it charges banks. Oh no, that would be socialism! Better depression, suicide, homelessness, riots, and chaos than a bit of healthy socialism.
You can talk about economics, but in the end an economy is just the aggregate of a bunch of human decision makers. You don't want people to be overconfident, or you get bubbles, but you don't want them to be overly cautious either.
The July Debacle did anything but inspire confidence. Hey hey, ho ho, the Tea Party has to go.
Monday, November 29, 2010
With Both Hands
It can be a shocking thing to learn that the world view constructed for children by family, school, church and media outlets is an illusion. Some people never go through that shock. Others react by burrowing their heads deeper into their childhood myths, or by maintaining a willful ignorance. Some people, however, react by wanting to know more about what is really going on.
One of my favorite literary passages is chapter 13 of Count Zero
by William Gibson. Bobby, a teenager from the bottom-of-the-pit New Jersey suburbs, is sitting talking with his new adult friend, Beauvoir. For reasons of his own, Beauvoir is gently enlightening Bobby about certain apsects of how the real world of cybercrime works.
After a brief discussion of how the Voodoo religion compares to Scientology, Beauvoir explains how Bobby was being used as a sacrificial pawn in a larger game. Bobby had been encouraged to try to steal valuable data, and had twice narrowly escaped being killed in the past 24 hours because this had pissed off powerful people. Bobby wanted out of the suburbs badly, he wanted adventure, and suddenly his life had become a pretty unpleasant action thriller.
Beauvoir explains how cybercrime syndicates work, in very general terms. The basic idea that the vast majority of the risk is dumped on grunts, with layers of middlemen acting to minimize risk for the money guys at the top. Just like the U.S. Marines, just like urban gangs that specialize in selling recreation drugs.
After describing how an expendable is recruited — by telling them they have what it takes to be part of something bigger, something important — Beauvoir asks Bobby, "Sound like anybody you know?"
Even as Bobby puts the picture together, he is seeing just one tiny facet of reality. My own introduction to big league predators was more gentle. I studied my way out of a Marine Corps family into a slot at an Ivy League University. At seventeen I thought nothing could stop me (that was in 1972). I had figured out that the Catholic Church was a pack of liars, that the U.S. was an aggressor nation, and that science, which I loved, was being used for bad ends (mass murder of Vietnamese and other non-Americans) by the U.S. government, which seemed to be owned by capitalists. I volunteered in the McGovern for President campaign in the fall of 1972, then veered off sharply to the left, with occasional forays into psychedelic spaces. The economic advantages a Brown University education usually bestows on working class comers like myself were lost on me. After graduation, I just wandered in the wilderness for years, observing people and thinking about how things could be set to right. Some how I survived.
Mohamed Osman Mohamud has not been so lucky. Teenage boys get angry a lot, and when you add that to their ignorance and their need to prove that they are men, you can get some sad outcomes. Doubtless Mr. Mohamud was a pretty smart teenager, as he studied engineering at Oregon State University. For some reason he did not come to reject Islam (a lot of science/engineering kids reject religions as stupid. Because they are). He must have read up on the history of U.S. attacks on Islamic states. He must have had a hothead side to him.
Instead of hooking up with a kindly Mr. Beauvoir, or with a kindly non-violence activist, Mohamed Mohamud was treated kindly by the FBI. They needed a Wilson, a loser to be part of their big plot to keep the Homeland Security and Pentagon budgets high. FBI agents pretended to be Islamic extremists, and they double dared Mohamed to become a terrorist. They encouraged him, they showed him real explosives, and they stroked his ego.
I don't know how many people the Obama Administration has going in these games at any one time; hopefully some of them have the sense to refuse to actively participate in violence against civilians.
I know that with the right mentor Mohamed Osman Mohamud could have become a constructive member of global society. Perhaps he could have figured out how to make Israel respect the private property rights of Palestinians. Perhaps he could have just been a good engineer, or family man. We will never know.
Because the organization that was originally founded to be the American Gestapo (the FBI was created to disorganize labor unions, particularly the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), got a hold of Mohamed Osman Mohamud. And they burned him but good. One wonders what kind of child-rearing these guys are up to when they aren't taking taxpayer money to create problems designed to take more taxpayer money.
I have no problem with the FBI fighting genuine organized crime. Someone has to do it. I might even applaud if they took down Goldman Sachs, or arrested war criminals like George W. Bush. But if we want to live in a safe and secure world, in a safe and secure America, we don't need the FBI creating phony terrorism scares. We need to do what is right in the greater world, and mainly that means doing nothing where for centuries we have done wrong. A just nation has no need to station its troops on foreign soil. A just nation has no need to install its puppets to rule over other nations like Somalia, Afghanistan, or Great Britain.
We know George W. Bush was mentored by his father, former President George H. W. Bush, and his CIA, oil, and Pentagon cadre of big fellows. We might ask, who mentored Barack Obama, and why did his policies on homeland security and international aggression turn out to be identical to Bush's? I know why. They taught me in my Political Science classes at Brown University. The short answer is that we live in an oligarchy, which has done a fine job of social engineering. What looks like democracy is really just a tuned set of safety valves that sings like a real organ but lets off just enough steam to keep the oligarchy in power. The organist has to keep on his toes. Because complacent oligarchies crumble. They would not want that.
One of my favorite literary passages is chapter 13 of Count Zero
by William Gibson. Bobby, a teenager from the bottom-of-the-pit New Jersey suburbs, is sitting talking with his new adult friend, Beauvoir. For reasons of his own, Beauvoir is gently enlightening Bobby about certain apsects of how the real world of cybercrime works.
After a brief discussion of how the Voodoo religion compares to Scientology, Beauvoir explains how Bobby was being used as a sacrificial pawn in a larger game. Bobby had been encouraged to try to steal valuable data, and had twice narrowly escaped being killed in the past 24 hours because this had pissed off powerful people. Bobby wanted out of the suburbs badly, he wanted adventure, and suddenly his life had become a pretty unpleasant action thriller.
Beauvoir explains how cybercrime syndicates work, in very general terms. The basic idea that the vast majority of the risk is dumped on grunts, with layers of middlemen acting to minimize risk for the money guys at the top. Just like the U.S. Marines, just like urban gangs that specialize in selling recreation drugs.
After describing how an expendable is recruited — by telling them they have what it takes to be part of something bigger, something important — Beauvoir asks Bobby, "Sound like anybody you know?"
Even as Bobby puts the picture together, he is seeing just one tiny facet of reality. My own introduction to big league predators was more gentle. I studied my way out of a Marine Corps family into a slot at an Ivy League University. At seventeen I thought nothing could stop me (that was in 1972). I had figured out that the Catholic Church was a pack of liars, that the U.S. was an aggressor nation, and that science, which I loved, was being used for bad ends (mass murder of Vietnamese and other non-Americans) by the U.S. government, which seemed to be owned by capitalists. I volunteered in the McGovern for President campaign in the fall of 1972, then veered off sharply to the left, with occasional forays into psychedelic spaces. The economic advantages a Brown University education usually bestows on working class comers like myself were lost on me. After graduation, I just wandered in the wilderness for years, observing people and thinking about how things could be set to right. Some how I survived.
Mohamed Osman Mohamud has not been so lucky. Teenage boys get angry a lot, and when you add that to their ignorance and their need to prove that they are men, you can get some sad outcomes. Doubtless Mr. Mohamud was a pretty smart teenager, as he studied engineering at Oregon State University. For some reason he did not come to reject Islam (a lot of science/engineering kids reject religions as stupid. Because they are). He must have read up on the history of U.S. attacks on Islamic states. He must have had a hothead side to him.
Instead of hooking up with a kindly Mr. Beauvoir, or with a kindly non-violence activist, Mohamed Mohamud was treated kindly by the FBI. They needed a Wilson, a loser to be part of their big plot to keep the Homeland Security and Pentagon budgets high. FBI agents pretended to be Islamic extremists, and they double dared Mohamed to become a terrorist. They encouraged him, they showed him real explosives, and they stroked his ego.
I don't know how many people the Obama Administration has going in these games at any one time; hopefully some of them have the sense to refuse to actively participate in violence against civilians.
I know that with the right mentor Mohamed Osman Mohamud could have become a constructive member of global society. Perhaps he could have figured out how to make Israel respect the private property rights of Palestinians. Perhaps he could have just been a good engineer, or family man. We will never know.
Because the organization that was originally founded to be the American Gestapo (the FBI was created to disorganize labor unions, particularly the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), got a hold of Mohamed Osman Mohamud. And they burned him but good. One wonders what kind of child-rearing these guys are up to when they aren't taking taxpayer money to create problems designed to take more taxpayer money.
I have no problem with the FBI fighting genuine organized crime. Someone has to do it. I might even applaud if they took down Goldman Sachs, or arrested war criminals like George W. Bush. But if we want to live in a safe and secure world, in a safe and secure America, we don't need the FBI creating phony terrorism scares. We need to do what is right in the greater world, and mainly that means doing nothing where for centuries we have done wrong. A just nation has no need to station its troops on foreign soil. A just nation has no need to install its puppets to rule over other nations like Somalia, Afghanistan, or Great Britain.
We know George W. Bush was mentored by his father, former President George H. W. Bush, and his CIA, oil, and Pentagon cadre of big fellows. We might ask, who mentored Barack Obama, and why did his policies on homeland security and international aggression turn out to be identical to Bush's? I know why. They taught me in my Political Science classes at Brown University. The short answer is that we live in an oligarchy, which has done a fine job of social engineering. What looks like democracy is really just a tuned set of safety valves that sings like a real organ but lets off just enough steam to keep the oligarchy in power. The organist has to keep on his toes. Because complacent oligarchies crumble. They would not want that.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Afghanistan War and American Politics
The economic, military, and political stupidity of the United States of America's war against Afghanistan, and "War Against Terror," has been noted by an increasing number of American citizens over the last decade. The war makes sense only to the military-industrial complex. Watching President Barack Obama addressing disabled veterans on Friday, I saw the new mask of brutal Americanism. It is a smooth talking mask, crucial to keeping enough liberal voters in the war camp to keep the dollars flowing to the aggression industries.
Having dissected the real nature of the Taliban and the politics of Afghanistan on many occasions, here I want to focus on how the system is "fixed" [as in a crooked gambling game]. Most people remember that most Obama voters thought they were voting to get the U.S.A. out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Was Obama lying from the start, or did he really change his policy once he became President?
Now, of course, Obama claims that he never promised to withdraw from the war on terror. He offered "hope" and "change." It is like game of blackjack in a casino. The house always wins, but a new shuffle or pack of cards always offers hope to the chronically deluded gambler.
Barack Obama was a very confident man long before he became President. It is conceivable that during the campaign he imagined he could finesse his way out of Afghanistan. After all, the success of President Bush's surge strategy in Iraq, and the clear sentiment of a majority of Americans that we do not need to wage a large scale war to deal with the few dozen dingbats who actually are in Al-Qaeda, seemed to provide a lot of leverage against the national security establishment. Obama knew better than most Americans that Presidents don't make the laws, or even foreign policy: they only enforce them. But he probably thought that he would have the cooperation of the Democratic Party members of Congress. He may have even thought the Republican Party would be happy if the issue went away, and any blowback, like successful terrorist acts in the U.S., could be blamed on the Democrats.
But probably he knew how Washington D.C. really works: some policies can change with changes of the popular will, but most change comes only with the permission of, and when it is to the benefit of, a set of power brokers. The military-industrial complex, with its secretive national security, black-ops adjuncts, knows all the tricks of power. The election of Barack Obama did not diminish its power one inch.
Recall that during the electin the nation was in a deep economic crisis, caused primarily by the Bush tax cuts for the rich and the incompetence of the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan. This made it possible for small groups of Senators and Representatives to hold the nation hostage to their special interests.
One of those small, but certainly not tiny, groups were the committee and subcommittee chairs who were (and are) in the pockets of the security establishment or the military contractor corporations. Progressive Democrat like to assume that these men and women are mostly Republicans, but the group has been dominated by Democrats ever since President Franklin Roosevelt began the largest military buildup in American history in the late 1930's with the objective of conquering Japan. In the Senate this included Joseph Lieberman chairing the Homeland Security Committee, Carl Levin chairing Armed Forces, and Diane Feinstein chairing Intelligence. Levin, Feinstein, and Liberman have always favored U.S. funded aggression against Palestinians and other Moslems. All are Jewish. Levin is also chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Homeland Security.
In the House of Representatives, on the all-important Appropriations committee the Defense subcommittee is chaired by Norman D. Dicks, while the Homeland Security subcommittee is chaired by David E. Price. The Armed Services Committee is chaired by Ike Skelton; its Terrorism subcommittee is chaired by Loretta Sanchez. The Foreign Affairs Committee chair is Howard L. Berman. Committee on Homeland Security chair is Bennie G. Thompson. Its subcommitte chairs are Jane Harman for Intelligence, Sheila Jackson Lee for Transportation Security, Henry Cuellar for Border and Maritime, Christopher Carney for Investigations, Yvette Clarke for Cyber & Science, and Laura Richardson for Emergency Communications. The Judiciary Committee also has a Terrorism subcommittee chaired by Robert C. Scott.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is chaired by Sivestre Reyes. Its numerous subcommitteees are headed by Mike Thompson, Anna Eshoo, Dutch Ruppersberger, and Janice Schakowsky.
Traditionally almost ever congressional district was given some sort of military base or factory with a defense contract, giving the military the ability to put pressure broadly on Congress. Thus the servants become the masters, while preserving the illusion of civilian control of the military.
Barack Obama was an Illinois State Senator representing the 13th District, basically Chicago's South Side, from 1996 to 2004 [he ran unopposed in the Democratic primary because he successfully challenged the nomition petitions of 4 other candidates]. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004 and served their from 2005 until 2008. Chicago and Illinois are bloated with defense contracting industries, including the corporate offices of the world's largest defense contractor, Boeing. Obama would have worked closely with his state's defense contractors while holding his U.S. Senate seat.
To get anything done after becoming President, given that he was unlikely to pick up Republican votes in Congress, Barack Obama needed a Democratic Party that was 100% behind his program. Even one defecting vote in the Senate could derail any agenda item, as we have seen several times. But with important Democrats demanding the continued expansion of homeland security and Pentagon spending in their districts, Obama folded almost immediately. He took credit that was due to George Bush for winding down the war in Iraq, but bought into transferring troops and budgets to the Afghan war. Exaggerating the power of Al Qaeda and vilifying the Taliban became necessary to provide political cover for Obama's lack of balls. The problem is that if Obama had the balls to take on the Pentagon, they would have made his domestic agenda impossible.
No one person, not even a President, can change the system. Many Presidents have tried to put the Pentagon on a modest diet, only to find Congress injecting all the pork they can think of into the budget.
It is a little house of horrors scenario. At some point the Pentagon, CIA and homeland security will eat every living thing in America. Then the have two choices: eat up other nations in a more openly imperialistic manner, or collapse with the rest of the American economy.
Having dissected the real nature of the Taliban and the politics of Afghanistan on many occasions, here I want to focus on how the system is "fixed" [as in a crooked gambling game]. Most people remember that most Obama voters thought they were voting to get the U.S.A. out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Was Obama lying from the start, or did he really change his policy once he became President?
Now, of course, Obama claims that he never promised to withdraw from the war on terror. He offered "hope" and "change." It is like game of blackjack in a casino. The house always wins, but a new shuffle or pack of cards always offers hope to the chronically deluded gambler.
Barack Obama was a very confident man long before he became President. It is conceivable that during the campaign he imagined he could finesse his way out of Afghanistan. After all, the success of President Bush's surge strategy in Iraq, and the clear sentiment of a majority of Americans that we do not need to wage a large scale war to deal with the few dozen dingbats who actually are in Al-Qaeda, seemed to provide a lot of leverage against the national security establishment. Obama knew better than most Americans that Presidents don't make the laws, or even foreign policy: they only enforce them. But he probably thought that he would have the cooperation of the Democratic Party members of Congress. He may have even thought the Republican Party would be happy if the issue went away, and any blowback, like successful terrorist acts in the U.S., could be blamed on the Democrats.
But probably he knew how Washington D.C. really works: some policies can change with changes of the popular will, but most change comes only with the permission of, and when it is to the benefit of, a set of power brokers. The military-industrial complex, with its secretive national security, black-ops adjuncts, knows all the tricks of power. The election of Barack Obama did not diminish its power one inch.
Recall that during the electin the nation was in a deep economic crisis, caused primarily by the Bush tax cuts for the rich and the incompetence of the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan. This made it possible for small groups of Senators and Representatives to hold the nation hostage to their special interests.
One of those small, but certainly not tiny, groups were the committee and subcommittee chairs who were (and are) in the pockets of the security establishment or the military contractor corporations. Progressive Democrat like to assume that these men and women are mostly Republicans, but the group has been dominated by Democrats ever since President Franklin Roosevelt began the largest military buildup in American history in the late 1930's with the objective of conquering Japan. In the Senate this included Joseph Lieberman chairing the Homeland Security Committee, Carl Levin chairing Armed Forces, and Diane Feinstein chairing Intelligence. Levin, Feinstein, and Liberman have always favored U.S. funded aggression against Palestinians and other Moslems. All are Jewish. Levin is also chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Homeland Security.
In the House of Representatives, on the all-important Appropriations committee the Defense subcommittee is chaired by Norman D. Dicks, while the Homeland Security subcommittee is chaired by David E. Price. The Armed Services Committee is chaired by Ike Skelton; its Terrorism subcommittee is chaired by Loretta Sanchez. The Foreign Affairs Committee chair is Howard L. Berman. Committee on Homeland Security chair is Bennie G. Thompson. Its subcommitte chairs are Jane Harman for Intelligence, Sheila Jackson Lee for Transportation Security, Henry Cuellar for Border and Maritime, Christopher Carney for Investigations, Yvette Clarke for Cyber & Science, and Laura Richardson for Emergency Communications. The Judiciary Committee also has a Terrorism subcommittee chaired by Robert C. Scott.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is chaired by Sivestre Reyes. Its numerous subcommitteees are headed by Mike Thompson, Anna Eshoo, Dutch Ruppersberger, and Janice Schakowsky.
Traditionally almost ever congressional district was given some sort of military base or factory with a defense contract, giving the military the ability to put pressure broadly on Congress. Thus the servants become the masters, while preserving the illusion of civilian control of the military.
Barack Obama was an Illinois State Senator representing the 13th District, basically Chicago's South Side, from 1996 to 2004 [he ran unopposed in the Democratic primary because he successfully challenged the nomition petitions of 4 other candidates]. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004 and served their from 2005 until 2008. Chicago and Illinois are bloated with defense contracting industries, including the corporate offices of the world's largest defense contractor, Boeing. Obama would have worked closely with his state's defense contractors while holding his U.S. Senate seat.
To get anything done after becoming President, given that he was unlikely to pick up Republican votes in Congress, Barack Obama needed a Democratic Party that was 100% behind his program. Even one defecting vote in the Senate could derail any agenda item, as we have seen several times. But with important Democrats demanding the continued expansion of homeland security and Pentagon spending in their districts, Obama folded almost immediately. He took credit that was due to George Bush for winding down the war in Iraq, but bought into transferring troops and budgets to the Afghan war. Exaggerating the power of Al Qaeda and vilifying the Taliban became necessary to provide political cover for Obama's lack of balls. The problem is that if Obama had the balls to take on the Pentagon, they would have made his domestic agenda impossible.
No one person, not even a President, can change the system. Many Presidents have tried to put the Pentagon on a modest diet, only to find Congress injecting all the pork they can think of into the budget.
It is a little house of horrors scenario. At some point the Pentagon, CIA and homeland security will eat every living thing in America. Then the have two choices: eat up other nations in a more openly imperialistic manner, or collapse with the rest of the American economy.
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