On Liberty: More Relevant Than Ever

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

In his classic essay "On Liberty", John Stuart Mill deals with the issue of "civil liberties" --not the metaphysical issue of "free will". While most attacks on civil liberties have historically occurred from the right within the context of a tyrannical or an aristocratic rule, Mill deals with threats against liberty from within the institutions of democracy itself. The issue is especially relevant at a time when widespread domestic wiretapping and surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The aim of early libertarians was to limit the power of the ruler over those governed; Mill, however, identifies a need to limit the power of elected governments and officials as well. Mill is not merely addressing the issue of "who should rule?", he seeks to establish limits on the power that government may exercise over minorities and individuals. His work is more relevant now than ever.

While "government of the people" is an ideal to be sought, Mill argues that such an ideal is often not the case in fact. He argues that those exerting the power of the government --elected officials, bureaucrats, the judiciary --often develop their own interests. They may be influenced by those constituencies in ways that are at odds with the interests and liberties of individuals or other groups.

Mill makes no distinction between a tyranny of one and a tyranny of many. A tyrannical majority running roughshod over the rights of individuals and minorities is no less a tyrant because it is a majority, because it is elected, or because it is elected by a majority.

While society may not tolerate criminal behavior, for example, society may not legitimately interfere with or suppress all non-conforming behaviors indiscriminately or because a majority may not approve. What then are the powers that society may legitimately exercise over the individual? Mill answers:

"The only purpose for which power can be rightly exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."

-J.S. Mill, On Liberty

James Madison --called the "Father of the Constitution" --may have anticipated Mill's ideas in his draft of the Bill of Rights --the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Implicit in the Bill of Rights is the recognition that the power of the state is a blunt instrument. Abused, it can oppress and repress individuals and minority groups alike. The Bill of Rights addresses this issue by guaranteeing "due process of law", limiting state power over individuals and groups, guaranteeing that groups and individuals may speak freely, worship freely.

The Fourth Amendment specifically is a promise that our government made to us in its very founding:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

-Fourth Amendment, Bill of Rights, U.S. Constitution

Let's make something abundantly clear: there are no "inherent powers", "implicit" authorizations" that would, in any way, overturn, limit, or repeal the Fourth Amendment. Many politicians are not only wrong about that, they may have deliberately lied about it. Moreover, Congress may not overrule the Fourth Amendment with statutory law. Constitutional Law is supreme and provisions in the Bill of Right are valid until amended as set out in the Constitution itself. Widespread domestic surveillance is illegal whatever is done by Congress ex post facto --and until the Constitution is amended, it will remain illegal. At last, ex post facto laws, themselves, are expressly forbidden by the Constitution.

Mill is all the more remarkable for his insight into issues that remain contemporary. In every literate criticism of "special interest groups", PAC's, the gun lobby, the tobacco lobby, the Military/Industrial Complex, one sees the lasting influence of John Mill.

On Liberty is essential reading for anyone interested in law, the principles of government, political science, political philosophy, indeed, freedom itself. It is also essential reading for anyone interested in learning about the intellectual underpinnings of Anglo-American civil liberties.

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A Free People?

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Democrats are unhappy. I daresay most criticism of President Obama these days is from the left wing --not the GOP! Much of this criticism of both party and the President is misplaced. As old West Texans might have said: "They would complain if they were being a hanged with a new rope!"

I daresay neither the party nor the President are responsible for conditions creating most of this 'unhappiness'. Primarily, I am reminded that just 1 percent own more than the rest of us combined. That outcome is not the result of Democratic policy but of GOP tax cuts going back to Ronald Reagan whose legacy it is. I am reminded that the Military-Industrial Complex has apparently set up shop on K-Street! But --I wonder --was this not noticed when it happened under Herrs Reagan, Bush and Bush?

As it was said in W. Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar': "The fault dear Brutus lies not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings!" That is not said to absolve the Republican party of its many sins. It does mean that we should think clearly about a President who may not have 'undone' Bush as quickly as we might have preferred. It means that we should be loath to make the wrong reforms of the right party.

From Wiki:

"The United States has had a two-party system for over a century. Following Duverger's law, the winner take all system for presidential elections and the single-seat plurality voting system for Congressional elections have over time created the two-party system.

Until these 'conditions' are changed and until MONEY is taken out of the equation, there is NO point in talking about '3rd Parties' which have the effect of splitting what little is left of the left when the GOP has sucked up all the campaign monies from elites for whom DEMS are but a hedged bet!

I have been writing about the transfer of wealth upward since the Reagan years. I witnessed the effects of much of that in Houston where, even in 'boom town', tent cities sprang up in parks, open spaces, under overpasses. The Reagan 'Recession' was clearly the worst recession/depression since the GOP-HOOVER Depression of the 1930s. There has been a 'recession' under every GOP regime since. Even Eisenhower (whom I called the last 'honest' Republican) presided over a recession/depression. By the way, the words 'depression' and 'recession' are synonyms, though folk think 'Depressions' worse. Bottom line: every Democratic President at least since WWII has presided over greater job and GDP growth than any Republican President.

From time to time you hear names of parties ---progressives, libertarian et al. Third parties have a disastrous history in the United States. That is because only the very rich have enough money to help finance campaigns of either party. Most money is concentrated at the top --the so-called 'ruling elite' of just 1 percent of the total population. This 'elite', as a result of Reagnomics specifically, owns more than the rest of us combined. To be expected, this 'elite' will vote the party that made them richer than almost everyone else in the United States. They will vote GOP.

The responses to this outcome have been irrational. Some propose that the opposition to this state of affairs be diluted even more than it already is with third, fourth, fifth parties. That's not smart! Others propose that Democrats might get more votes following a name-change. The usual suspects make the rounds: "progressive" being used from time to time to identify various shades of liberal and/or democrat. None of these 'movements' are viable because none of them have access to money!

There is no need to change the name of the 'Democratic' party. The name comes from the Greek --'demos' --for 'people'. Now --the word 'liberal' is from the Latin 'liber' for 'free'. Therefore, I am a LIBERAL DEMOCRAT. What fascist is going to convince me that there is something wrong with being FREE PEOPLE?

Ike Warns of the M.I.C.

The Military-Congressional Complex

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How the Right Wing Destroyed America

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The U.S. Supreme Court has decreed: corporations are now people. They have been given rights that only real people had before. Worse --corporations remain 'privileged' in ways that real people could only dream about! Corporations enjoy 'limited liability', a privilege which, in fact, defines them. Corporations are above the law.

Real people meanwhile may be prosecuted for murders and, if found guilty, sentenced and possibly executed. A mere legal abstraction need never fear the hand of justice. They have been made 'people' but very, very privileged people to whom the criminal laws may never be applied. Examples are Exxon with respect to the Exxon Valdez disaster and Dow Chemical, Union Carbide et al with respect to mass deaths at Bhopal.

Real people, meanwhile, have been robbed of any real power by which they may influence the direction of government. The power resides primarily among the corporations and an increasingly tiny elite which control them from the board room. This is symptomatic of dictatorial plutocracies that result when the rich are enriched! We witnessed recently the most absurd SCOTUS decision in U.S. history in which it is decreed that these mere legal abstractions --corporations --are real people to which all the Bill of Rights apply, to which the protections of Due Process of Law apply! This unconscionable outcome is the reductio ad absurdum of right wing thinking in general and fascist policies specifically. Unless this decision is reversed or may irrelevant by law immediately and a Constitutional Amendment in the longer term, you can kiss the last vestiges of American Democracy goodbye.

Today --just one percent of the U.S. population owns more than some 95 percent of the rest of us combined and the trend is toward even greater concentration of wealth into yet fewer hands. The trend began in earnest with the Reagan years --heady boom times for the idle rich, offshore banks and the Military-Industrial complex. But in real America, the growth industries were poverty and crime.

Even in the second half of the 19th Century, when big 'combines' were industrializing the world, it was not believed that these mere agreements on paper were 'people'. Even so, organized labor was in a fight for its life, a fight that it did not lose decisively until Ronald Reagan busted up a strike of air traffic controllers in the 1980s. Concurrently, the conduct of American politics morphed. Politics, over the years, ceased to address the needs of 'people'. Politics became the process by which 'money' bought influence in DC and the various state houses throughout the nation.

We'll never raise as much money as Bush is going to raise and his corporate lobbyists, I can promise you, because he has paid them back in spades.

--James Carville

Carville refers to the very purchase of the government, a purchase analogous to the sale of Rome by the Praetorian Guard which literally auctioned and sold the Empire to nobleman Didius Julianus. The sale was transacted in Greek Drachmas --not worthless Roman sesterces.

Rome was then as the U.S. is now a plutocracy.

KEVIN PHILLIPS: I think we have one now and we didn't, 12 years ago when I wrote THE POLITICS OF RICH AND POOR is when money has ceased just entertaining itself with leveraged buyouts and all the stuff they did in the '80s, and really takes over politics, and takes it over on both sides when money not only talks, money screams. When you start developing philosophies in which giving a check is a First Amendment right. That's incredible. But what you've got is that this is what money has done. It's produced the fusion of money and government. And that is plutocracy. ... a plutocracy in a way that we haven't had before, since the gilded age.

BILL MOYERS But the signers of the Declaration were representatives of America's first and wealthiest families.

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, they were, but, you know, a funny thing about that, because they were simultaneously people who were furious with the British. Furious with the British for taxing them, for not letting them make their pig iron into hammer and spades, for not paying the right amount of money for tobacco.

And if you read what they had to say, it sounds like the American version 100 years earlier of what the people out in the plains said about the bankers in New York and the railroad owners in Minneapolis. So they were fighters in a way. And Thomas Jefferson pretty much stuck with that. You had a divergence within the founding fathers of those who became, in the American context, pretty conservative, and those who like Jefferson maintained their anger they had against the British economic elites in the United States.

BILL MOYERS: But where is that anger today? Because the ... the two men who spoke most consistently with what you're saying in WEALTH AND DEMOCRACY in 2000, John McCain and Willi... Bill Bradley, Senator Bradley, both got defeated in their primaries. And they were the ones who were registering the discontent of which you are ... are writing about. What happened? The peop... that the majority of people don't share your convictions and mine?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, I'm not certain whether they do or they don't. But the ... the key thing in the year 2000 was that if you look at all the psychological profiles of the United States, of the electorate during that period, even though the Nasdaq had started to crash they still thought things were pretty good. The real dive didn't come until after the election when you had the miserable elections stalemate and the sagging economy.

So that basically, you never get one of these reactions against big money until you've had this speculative implosion. And normally I think if we were seeing any kind of debate in Washington, and the Democrats have all kinds of things they could say about the Bush dynasty and Enron, for example, it's mind blowing, but they don't.

BILL MOYERS: Why?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: I think partly because they're so interested in raising money that they can't see their soul in the mirror.

BILL MOYERS: What has happened to the word equality? When you and I were young men in politics it was a common reference in our political discourse. Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, a lot of others too, but you don't hear it in the political lexicon anymore.

KEVIN PHILLIPS: You hear it in twisted ways. There is a view in some conservative circles that it doesn't matter much what concentrations of wealth you have or disparities of income. It's equality of consumption. It's the right to have Nike shoes, to listen to a boom box, to take a plane ride. And ...

BILL MOYERS: Nothing wrong with that.

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, no, but on the other hand, that didn't solve problems in a depression when you had the right to watch a plane fly over Kansas. Or turn on the radio. So you've got these different ledgers that are kept. And people that try to say "consumption is the yardstick" usually have it in mind that democracy is not ... that income differentials are not, they stand for a different philosophy.

BILL MOYERS: Didn't the word "equality" disappear because the people who believe in inequality won the elections?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, there's a certain truth to that. And going back to the time when we were both in politics on different sides of the aisle, the ... one of the great weaknesses, in my opinion, in liberal politics, was to start talking about social equality in a way that had never really occurred in the United States. People came to this country as immigrants and they ... they suffered all kinds of hardships and "no Irish need apply" and everything you could name. Nobody ever tried to draw blueprints for bussing the Irish around Boston ...

BILL MOYERS: Mm-hm.

KEVIN PHILLIPS: ... or things like that. And there was a sense that equality in the social sense could be obtained through government, that became powerful in the '60s. And in my opinion, that was the beginning of the tending of the idea of equality in the sense of ... of economics. Now, conservatives will still say all that matters is equality of opportunity.

BILL MOYERS: The market will produce the equality.

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Yes, exactly.

BILL MOYERS: You ... you know that I was quite taken with your book "The Politics of Rich and Poor," what, a decade ago?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: 1990.

BILL MOYERS: 1990. In it you told of how the wealthy had made great gains in their power. They had ... are you writing the same thing now? Has it changed quantitatively and qualitatively?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: I think there are two stages, the 18- ... the 1980s were the first stage in the sense that Ronald Reagan wanted people to have a chance to get rich. He liked entrepreneurs, he liked people who owned 14 department stores or two movie studios. It wasn't for the big old steel companies or anything, but he liked money. And he and Don Regan, the Treasury secretary, created a political culture in which fashion became in, making money became in, paper entrepreneurialism was the key, all the leveraged buyouts. And that was a whole culture of... people got a lot of money at the top.

But what you got then in the 1990s was, in my opinion, stage two. And this was the technology mania, and the rise of the securities markets, taking technology and making this incredible bubble out of it. And a new crowd of people got rich. Plenty of the old people, but a whole lot of new people. New people who tended to have a more liberal politics in many cases, to name Internet companies, things like Yahoo! and AskJeeves, and what have you.

If you look at the list of new money in the Forbes 400 say in 199... 1998 or 1999, when the Internet crowd was coming in big time, we've got an awful lot of Democrats. And the Democratic Party has in its own way started to be a party of a different type of wealth. The Republicans have the smoke stacks and the polluters and the ranchers and the oil companies, and the Democrats have a lot of the communications media, a lot of biotechnology, a lot of the coming stuff ...

So what we've got are two sets of people in Washington who basically because of the whole demand of financing campaigns go to people with money. They go to different sets of money and you've sort of got what you had in politics before the Civil War: the Democratic Party, that basically was in with a southern plantation aristocracy, and Republicans who are in with the merging industry. Nobody was for the little guy.

BILL MOYERS: What's the ordinary Joe and Jane to do? I mean, the guys running these cameras working here, whom you've met, they can't write big checks to either political party or political candidates, and yet it's a struggle not to leave people despairing today when they read an analysis such as "Wealth and Democracy." What are the average folks to do?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, one thing I think they have to do is they really have to say on certain issues, which are not strictly party issues, we've just got to mobilize on the issues, whether it's campaign finance or other things like that. But secondarily they've got to work to make the party system make a difference. You can't have two parties that represent different flavors of great wealth and expect not to see all these weaknesses continue to grow.

BILL MOYERS: But you've already said that both parties spend all their time raising money. And they don't listen to the people running the cameras. They listen to the people writing the checks.

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Yeah, well, some of the time they do, because you keep reading about votes in Congress periodically, where these outrageous proposals, be they tax or trade or other things, they only make it through by one, two, three votes. People are standing there twisting arms of Presidents, giving them six post offices and three favors.

Now, if there wasn't some responsiveness to public opinion and a sense that things have gone too far, that wouldn't happen. So the trick is to mobilize somehow or other institutions in this political culture that will take those issues on which Congress ... some of them would like to be made to vote against their contributors. And, you know, I'm ... I'm not sure how to do it. I think ...

BILL MOYERS: It took a rich man, Ross Perot, to make it happen in any significant manifestation ... eight years ago, ten years ago.

KEVIN PHILLIPS: But see, part of the thing in ... in the United States, is that the minority of rich people are usually on the side of trying to make America work like America. You had in the last election, in the three people who were running sort of as populist, John McCain, millionaire, son and grandson of four-star admirals, Bill Bradley, multi-millionaire, former basketball player, even Ralph Nader's got three or four million dollars worth of investments. So all kinds of people go against what should be their interest financially because of what they think is the right thing to do. That's really something to build on.

BILL MOYERS: What's been the biggest change? You ... I was in Washington in the '60s, you came right after, helped elect Richard Nixon, we were both in our 30's then, very young 30's, what's been the biggest change in Washington since we were young men there?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: I think the entrenchment of money in ways you can't even begin to count. It used to be that when a new wave politically came to Washington they swept it out. And that was certainly true with Lincoln, it was certainly true with FDR. It couldn't happen even in the '60s, in my opinion. There's no way to sweep now. The whole structure was just a pyramid of ... of economic influence mongering.

BILL MOYERS: Do you think the new McCain Feingold ban on soft money will have any positive impact on this?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Oh, it'll have some positive impact, but in many ways, it's gonna be another version of the lawyers and accountants full employment act.

BILL MOYERS: So what do we do?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Keep fighting. I think there are signs that it's turning now. To me one of the most important milestones will be if people, and I include the media here, have the courage to document and put on the front page what they won't really touch now, which is ...

BILL MOYERS: Which is?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: All the examples of the Bush family's role in the rise of Enron. Here, we're running around, we're blaming these accountants, these tricksters that were in Enron, but George W. and George H.W., his father, were very much involved in the whole rise of Enron's influence and power in this country. But you ... you don't see that. People in the press have a lot of trouble touching these issues right where the rubber hits the road.

BILL MOYERS: Well, when you've got anchors making eight, nine, ten million dollars a year, when you've got a handful of huge media corporations owning over half of the outlets in this country, do you expect much populism from those people?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: No. And that's the fundamental problem. How do you get dynasties to talk about other dynasties? I think it's a real difficulty. Unfortunately, that means that some of us have to start talking about stuff we'd rather not do all the time because if you don't make a lot of friends by doing it ... it's tough, but a dynasty is a dynasty is a dynasty and these problems are there, and this incredible amount of money is ... is just staring this country's historical role in the face

BILL MOYERS: How do you explain that the pro-wealth policies of the right, the conservatives, have endured so much support among working Americans and low income Americans?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, all I can say is if I were a Democratic senator, I would go on and make a speech that might remind Democrats of stuff they haven't heard in a long time. You get professors who are dedicated liberals and they go on and they make these speeches and nobody pays any attention. You have to basically go in there and do a number. You have to go in there and just stand there and describe who supports somebody, who is paid for and who has done this, that and the other.

If the Democrats wanted to take all these issues out and run 'em up the flagpole, there is still plenty of people ready to salute. That's why we have some of these close votes. But you've got to be willing to do it. And I understand why a lot of them don't want to do it. But, you know, who's gonna do it? Ralph Nader couldn't do it. His friends dropped him when he talked about all of this.

--Kevin Phillips, Author of 'Wealth and Democracy', Now with Bill Moyers

Why does the GOP insist upon repeating failed strategies? Reaganites promised that the stimulated economy would outgrow the deficit and the budget would be balanced "...within three years, maybe even two." It didn't! Reagan tripled the deficit and, on the way, doubled the size of the federal bureaucracy. Reagan's tax cuts were followed promptly by the longest and worst recession since Herbert Hoover's Great Depression. As Robert Freeman correctly points out: "...Jimmy Carter's last budget deficit was $77 billion. Reagan's first deficit was $128 billion. His second deficit exploded to $208 billion. By the time the "Reagan Revolution" was over, George H.W. Bush was running an annual deficit of $290 billion per year."

How will Bush the lesser compare to Reagan? By the year 2002, Citizens for Tax Justice were already writing:

Over the ten-year period, the richest Americans—the best-off one percent—are slated to receive tax cuts totalling almost half a trillion dollars. The $477 billion in tax breaks the Bush administration has targeted to this elite group will average $342,000 each over the decade.

By 2010, when (and if) the Bush tax reductions are fully in place, an astonishing 52 percent of the total tax cuts will go to the richest one percent—whose average 2010 income will be $1.5 million. Their tax-cut windfall in that year alone will average $85,000 each. Put another way, of the estimated $234 billion in tax cuts scheduled for the year 2010, $121 billion will go just 1.4 million taxpayers.

Although the rich have already received a hefty down payment on their Bush tax cuts—averaging just under $12,000 each this year—80 percent of their windfall is scheduled to come from tax changes that won’t take effect until after this year, mostly from items that phase in after 2005.

1968 was the year in which measured postwar income was at its most equal for families. The Gini index for households indicates that there has been growing income inequality over the past quarter-century. Inequality grew slowly in the 1970's and rapidly during the early 1980's. ...Generally, the long-term trend has been toward increasing income inequality. Since 1969, the share of aggregate household income controlled by the lowest income quintile has decreased from 4.1 percent to 3.6 percent in 1997, while the share to the highest quintile increased from 43.0 percent to 49.4 percent. Most noticeably, the share of income controlled by the top 5 percent of households has increased from 16.6 percent to 21.7 percent. Over the same time period, the Gini index rose 17.4 percent to its 1997 level of .459.

—Income Inequality, Census Bureau

The trend began then has continued: October 2003 figures from the US Census Bureau make stark reading:

Median household incomes are falling The number of Americans without health insurance rose by 5.7 percent to 43.6 million individuals.

The number of people living below the poverty line ($18,392 for a family of four) climbed to 12.1 percent — 34.6 million people.

Wages make up the majority of income for most American families. As "Downward Mobility," NOW's report on workers and wages illustrates, many American workers are facing corporate efforts to cut pay and benefits, which could lead to more American families struggling to stay out of poverty.

The results in black and white:

• Twenty percent of the population own 84% of our private assets, leaving the other 80 percent of the population with 15.6 percent of the assets.
• In 1960, the wealth gap between the top 20 percent and the bottom 20 percent of Americans was thirty fold. Four decades later it’s more than seventy-five-fold.
• Either way -- wealth or income – America is more unequal, economists generally agree, than at any time since the start of the Great Depression…
• And more unequal than any other developed nation today.

—Inequality.org

The most pernicious effect of GOP economic policy is the effect of declining opportunity, a corollary of declining in wealth among all but the very rich.

It is merely rhetorical to ask: why does the GOP seem to repeat ad nauseum utterly failed strategies that have never been shown to work? The answer is simple: the GOP sales pitch is what Reagan Budget Director David Stockman called a 'Trojan Horse'. The purpose of the tax cut is not to trickle down. The tax cuts always do precisely what the GOP insiders know they will do: they enrich the GOP base! Here is how someone who lived through the Reagan nightmare remembers it:

I was in the automotive field at the time, and dozens and dozens of established tool manufacturers, unionized shops, producing high quality tools, small companies with deep roots and real a commitment to the towns they were in all across the Midwest and the local communities, went out of business.

Why? Because with deregulation any hustler could get virtually unlimited financing and set up manufacturing plants overseas producing exact copies of American made tools and flood the US market with them with no fear of the Reagan administration enforcing any laws against them.

It also became easier, and far less risky, to get financing to set up a thousand junky identical chain outlets than it did for small local businesses to get credit or tax relief - restaurants, auto parts stores, hardware stores, grocery stores, florists - thousands and thousands of small businesses chewed up and destroyed.

We have a younger generation of people who have no personal experience with so many things - local businesses and tight knit communities, affordable, convenient and efficient public transportation, wages that allowed one person in a household enough income to support the family, homes that were homes, not investments, easy access to public recreation, confidence in the safety of food and other consumer items, all regulated and inspected for the public welfare, freedom from the relentless intrusion of corporations into our lives, and on and on and on.

Reagan destroyed the country, and if we try to gloss over that (which at the very least Obama's remarks have done) or if we buy into the dishonest rationales and excuses and obfuscations that the Reagan administration used to disguise their agenda and to sell it to the public, we surrender any chance at real change, we bury the coffin forever into which the right wingers have put the left - and by extension, the majority of the American people, and we condemn ourselves to living in this ongoing nightmare of destruction and human suffering.

It is not time to make nice with the Reagan legacy propagandists, even by implication or omission. It is time to relentlessly and fearlessly point out that the crisis the country is in is best described and analyzed as the chickens coming home to roost from the Reagan era.

It is time to fight. It is not time to heal or move on—no matter how attractive and appealing this may be—it is not time to paper over the profound divide in the country, it is not time to accommodate or apologize for

--Found on the Democratic Underground

Paul Krugman can always be depended upon to put this kind of thing in perspective.

Bill Clinton knew that in 1991, when he began his presidential campaign. “The Reagan-Bush years,” he declared, “have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.”

Contrast that with Mr. Obama’s recent statement, in an interview with a Nevada newspaper, that Reagan offered a “sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”

Maybe Mr. Obama was, as his supporters insist, simply praising Reagan’s political skills. (I think he was trying to curry favor with a conservative editorial board, which did in fact endorse him.) But where in his remarks was the clear declaration that Reaganomics failed?

For it did fail. The Reagan economy was a one-hit wonder. Yes, there was a boom in the mid-1980s, as the economy recovered from a severe recession. But while the rich got much richer, there was little sustained economic improvement for most Americans. By the late 1980s, middle-class incomes were barely higher than they had been a decade before — and the poverty rate had actually risen.

When the inevitable recession arrived, people felt betrayed — a sense of betrayal that Mr. Clinton was able to ride into the White House.

Given that reality, what was Mr. Obama talking about? Some good things did eventually happen to the U.S. economy — but not on Reagan’s watch.

--Paul Krugman, Debunking the Reagan Myth

Reagan/Bush tax cuts are payoffs to the very rich for their support. For everyone else, the GOP prescription is simple: just take another dose of what's making you sick.

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The Last Honest Republican?

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Dwight David Eisenhower, familiarly called 'Ike', may very well have been the last honest Republican. As both General and President, Eisenhower held his positions in 'good faith'; he was not a 'crook'.

Bertolt Brecht had said: "A man who does not know the truth is just an idiot but a man who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a crook." By that standard, Nixon. the progenitor of the modern Republican who lies to conceal his/her true position, was a crook. When Nixon said 'I am not a crook', we knew he was one.

Arguably a great general, it was  Ike who supervised the allied forces landing in Normandy in preparation for the final assault on Hitler's Third Reich, Eisenhower made the best case for world peace, putting forward five 'precepts' in what is often called the 'Cross of Iron Speech'. Tragically, Eisenhower's five principles have been hypocritically eschewed. It is symptomatic that the GOP leadership fell to the likes of Nixon, Reagan. Bush Sr and the Shrub --all of whom failed the economy, failed the people, failed the Constitution. All were crooks who whored themselves to the Military-Industrial Complex that Ike had warned about. The GOP has been crooked ever since.

In that spring of victory the soldiers of the Western Allies met the soldiers of Russia in the center of Europe. They were triumphant comrades in arms. Their peoples shared the joyous prospect of building, in honor of their dead, the only fitting monument-an age of just peace. All these war-weary peoples shared too this concrete, decent purpose: to guard vigilantly against the domination ever again of any part of the world by a single, unbridled aggressive power.

This common purpose lasted an instant and perished. The nations of the world divided to follow two distinct roads. The United States and our valued friends, the other free nations, chose one road. The leaders of the Soviet Union chose another. The way chosen by the United States was plainly marked by a few clear precepts, which govern its conduct in world affairs.

• First: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.
• Second: No nation's security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only ineffective cooperation with fellow-nations.
• Third: Any nation's right to form of government and an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable.
• Fourth: Any nation's attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.
• And fifth: A nation's hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.

In the light of these principles the citizens of the United States defined the way they proposed to follow, through the aftermath of war, toward true peace.

--Cross of Iron Address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower "The Chance for Peace" delivered before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16,1953.

It is not my position that I agree with every thing Ike did or said nor is it my purpose in this short article to analyze his every position with respect to a world view or my values in particular. It is, rather, important to point out that people of 'good faith' may disagree honorably. That Nixon failed the standards Ike lived up to defined the course of U.S. history and showed us a glimpse of a demise that we may very well be experiencing now.

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The Imperial Origins of Feudal America

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Any politician can cook up a run o' the mill recession, but it requires the GOP to revert an entire people to feudalism. Our status as vassal of China is the evidence and result of our feudal status. GOP policies from which a ruling elite of just one percent benefit are responsible; the results may be seen at the CIA's 'World Fact Book' which lists China at the very top with the World's largest positive Current Account Balance and the U.S. on bottom with the world's largest negative Current Account Balance. Related to this is China's support for the U.S. dollar, a situation that China tolerates so that American consumers can buy Chinese product at Wal-Mart. If China should find this arrangement inconvenient, as many have said it is becoming, then China may 'pull the plug' and the dollar will collapse.

The economic decline of America is behind and the result of U.S. imperialism, a path about which we were well warned by a man that I have called the 'last honest Republican' ---Dwight David Eisenhower.

The way chosen by the United States was plainly marked by a few clear precepts, which govern its conduct in world affairs.

First: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.

Second: No nation’s security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only ineffective cooperation with fellow-nations.

Third: Any nation’s right to form of government and an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable.

Fourth: Any nation’s attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.

And fifth: A nation’s hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.

--Ike's Cross of Iron speech

My facebook friend, calling himself Abbie Hoffman, points an accusing finger at 'military Keynesianism', also called 'barracks socialism':

"One could argue that the US got addicted to it after WWII, that we haven't resolved the issues and problems of the postwar era. Maybe that's obvious?"

That said, we have a long history of war-profiteering stretching back to the American Civil War, and a war about ever generation of our history.

--"Abbie Hoffman"(FB id),

The recovery from the Great Depression was slow. World War II created a fully employed economy seemingly overnight. New industries sprang up, new products invented, most memorably the Higgins Boat, the landing craft, manufactured in Louisiana remembred primarily for the drop down front that allowed US troops to disembark on the heavily fortified beaches of Normandy.

The lesson learned was the wrong one. A war time economy like that created in response to Pearl Harbor cannot last. Perpetual prosperity via Orwellian perpetual war is not possible.

It [military Keynesianism] unfolded primarily during George W. Bush's administration with legislation signed in to law by William Jefferson Clinton and the bills to continue this trend are still on the books! Scary, hey? This is why we have to break from spending our energy fighting the left vs. the right fight because it's just an illusion of smoke and mirrors and is taking our focus off of the real culprit; the super class, those who posses over 80% of the world's money supply and ehat needs to be done to reverse the ugly economic trends we now suffer.

--Nancy My Country ‘Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Oligarchy ~ Purchased By ‘The MIC’

Many colonial businesses, including Shipbuilders, made a good living off the 'Revolutionary' war. Rome, arguably, had been bankrupt long before the Praetorian Guard auctioned it all off to Didius Julianus for Greek currency --not worthless Roman sesterces. Much earlier, Rome invaded Dacia for its gold. Rome makes for thrilling movies and gripping TV series. But actually living in it was not nearly so glamorous. Like the U.S. today a tiny and shrinking aristocracy alone benefited from Roman conquest. The currency was all but worthless. Poverty was rampant and growing as 'aristocrats' seized small farms!

Empire is surely the last step toward feudalism --at least in the 'empire' scenario. A 'feudal' Europe filled the vacuum resulting from the fall of decadent Rome. A 'feudal America' may arise amid the ruins of the huge, flashy skyscraper-filled corporate empire of America. In his 'Decline and Fall of the American Empire', Gore Vidal puts a date upon the fall of the American Republic --1950. The 'imperial system', the 'security state' resulting, became the self-reinforcing mechanism by which the US would justify intervention against its 'interests' in far flung reaches --Korea, Viet Nam, the Middle East. The last President to eschew American interventions in various crises was JFK who refused US air cover for a CIA operation called the Bay of Pigs.

Many believe that one motive of several for his assassination, his cold blooded murder in Dallas on November 22, 1963. And Mr. Bugliosi, please don't try to tell me that Mr. Zapruder's camera movements 'explain' the apparent motion of JFK's head backward. I have practiced high-level, exacting photography with still cameras of all formats from 8mm motions picture to 4x5 large format product photography for commercial clients in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas and Houston. Put me on the stand as an expert and I will testify, based upon my own frame by frame analysis of high rez Zapruder images that there is simply no way that camera movement will account, i.e, explain the movement of JFKs head backward upon being hit on Z -313. More on that in a future article.

Vidal points out that the USA has intervened aggressively, waging at least 300 wars in every part of the world despite the fact that the US Constitution requires a Declaration of War by Congress. The last time an American president sought and obtained congressional approval for a war was in 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Today --US Presidents don't bother. My first recollection of the word 'intervention' was the use of US troops in Lebanon by Dwight David Eisenhower. It was not a war, we were told. It was just an 'intervention'.

Later, the US would intervene in Viet Nam, a failed and lost war, a perpetual war by Orwellian standards, a tragic loss of thousands of American lives for no good purpose whatsoever. When the US eventually withdrew, the 'two Viet Nams' united, predictably and what had been a killing field is now a prosperous and peaceful nation. We, America, lost that war but from the ashes a prosperous nation flourished. But --it must be pointed out --that result is an effect of our leaving Viet Nam --not our staying. Based on the facts of history, I will wager that when the U.S. leaves the middle east and the CIA is, likewise, muzzzled or, better, smashed 'into a thousand pieces, that part of the world, too, will rebound and prosper.

It is time that someone speak the unspeakable and painful truth: American citizens, some of them my classmates, were sacrificed for nothing in Viet Nam! American citizens, primarily those who could not afford to stay in school and thus 'earn' a deferment, were sacrificed for vainglorious, imperial ambitions. I deny that 'right' of nations and/or empires to to sacrifice its youth, its talent, its wealth for the benefit of the very, very few, an 'elite' few.

Viet Nam was the crime of murder committed by arrogant, vainglorious empire upon its people. It was a crime upon the people by the privileged which makes up just one percent of the US population. Shame! It is time that a real revolution --not a focus group approved, cooked up, top down bullshit propaganda stunt called 'tea baggers' --to put an end to his Leviathan called 'empire'!

'Tea Baggers' will not solve the problems of America

They are, rather a part of the problem.Tea baggers embrace a panoply of lies and various forms of bigotry to include racism at home and the demonization of 'Islam' abroad. Tea baggers are wrong, wrong-headed, mis-informed, perhaps, just plain stupid. They are not the solution; they ARE the problem, a cancer, a sore, an open wound, a scab that was picked.

Keynes himself would not have approved of 'Military Keynesianism' which follows from misconceptions about Keynes, often thought of by 'conservatives' as being just short of communist if not communist outright. It must be pointed out however, that it was a Republican --Richard NIxon --who opined "We are all Keynesians now!"

NOT!

Militarists, by way of the lobbies who benefit most from military spending, 'hijacked' Keynes and drag out his corpse to justify increases in the huge US military budget. Keynes, himself, would have known better. Keynes would have supported expansions of the economy but, as Gore Vidal pointed out, military spending actually represents a contraction --not an expansion, certainly not an expansion that benefits anyone but the rich ruling elite of just one percent of the total US population.

A 'tank', Gore says, is an economic black hole. And so it is returning nothing but 'booty' benefiting only the ever shrinking elite. During the Reagan years, an elite of just 20 percent benefited from the highly touted but unfair and unjust tax cuts. Everyone else lost ground as wealth trickled UP --not down! Things are worse now! Last time I checked, just one percent of the total US population owned more than about 95 percent or more of the rest of us combined. That is called an 'L - curve' in contrast to the normal distribution curve commonly referred to as a 'Bell Curve'. This outcome is the opposite of Keynesianism --an effective contraction of moneys spent, a contraction of the economy as a whole. The L - curve is the result.

The MIC will always create isolated pools here and there. For example, every half-assed town in TX used to compete, lobby and scramble for a 'military base'. Local businesses love it until the base closes down at which time the localized bubble bursts. It is a phony prosperity based upon a bubble that, of late, is created by war crimes. I always hated base towns where merchants always raised prices upon news of military pay raises and cut back jobs upon news of troop reductions.

As odious as are the 'military economies' found in base towns, congressmen exploit local fears of base closings, 'baracks' economics at its worst. Almost every congressman I knew in Texas would campaign on promises of new bases and/or expansion of current bases. Clearly --the modern Praetorians were not, are not content with a one-time sell-out; rather, they conduct an an on-going auction of empire. It's called Congress. Are we beyond reform? We will have to begin and/or restore some of the industries we've lost to China and Japan from scratch. Who will invest in us? Can we trust the liars and clowns who created all this mess to reform themselves? I doubt it.

My friend Abbie wrote: "The rich are going to be holding monopoly money". Indeed, and that is yet another way in which the rich will have screwed us over. The rich will sellout short and thus get even richer. That will, of course, result in a monetary collapse that will swamp everyone. Right now, we are all playing chicken. Millions --who bought into this while thinking themselves rich --will learn otherwise and quickly. As Billie Holiday sang: God bless the child that's got his own!

Why I moderate comments

• SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
• Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

• A Spiritual Mind Movie
• How the US Became a Vassal State of China
  
• Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes
  
• The US Army Document That Proves the US is the World's Number One Sponsor of World Terrorism
• Dissecting the Scrambled Brains of the GOP
  
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization
  [w/LINKS]
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization [PDF]
• How the GOP Pays Off its 'Base' of Elites
  

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Revolution Delayed: Remembering Stokely Carmichael

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Kwame Ture, better known to the American public as Stokely Carmichael, gave the Civil Rights movement its most memorable phrases and slogans, most notably, 'Black Power" and "Black is Beautiful". It was on the campus of the University of Houston that I heard Carmichael urge the 'radicalization' of every college and university campus in the nation. Many feared that the idea would catch on. But for the local and national media reps, I may have been the only 'white' face in the auditorium --a sign of
troubled times.

In the video following this article, he is similarly impassioned, warning of possible 'genocide' against the black man, as in fact, genocide had been perpetrated against my own ancestors -- the Native Americans. On yet another occasion, Carmichael quoted the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre --and added that he did not need a law from the 'white man' to tell him that he was free. "I know that I am free!" He didn't need a law --a 'honky' law -- to tell him what he already knew.

Later, white students, perhaps inspired to exercise 'student power', protested the US quagmire against the various 'peoples' in Southeast Asia. When they were fired upon at Kent State, four students were killed and nine others wounded. They died martyrs to the cause of free speech in America.

White students were inspired to exert 'power' -- if not 'black power'. Both faced a common oppression, a Military/Industrial complex which by way of a 'draft' sent young men of both races to SE Asia to fight yet another war of US imperialism in defense of a string of faceless Viet Namese generals --all US stooges. In response, an entire generation proposed to change the world.

Despite the best efforts of a generation, we are now dictated to by a ruling oligopoly that represents but one percent of the nation's population. The oligopolists have partnered with their military wing --the 'Military/Industrial Complex'. This unholy alliance is supported by and benefits only the increasingly tiny, ruling elite of just one percent of the nation's population and more specifically a right wing media owned by just seven major, powerful corporations. It is an environment in which your so-called 'representatives' in Washington may ignore you with impunity.They no longer have to care and don't.

Your only chance of making your preferences known are all but nullified by an obstacle course called the 'primary process', the object, the measured effect of which is to marginalize the independent vote, i.e, any candidate not issuing from either wing of the establishment, that is, the Democrats or the Republicans. Meaningful 'campaign reform' requires the outright abolition of the absurd, seemingly endless and prohibitively expensive 'primary' process. It's only effect is a bad one: it guarantees a corrupt two party system in which just two parties compete for crooked money.

In a race to the rear, both parties are corrupt. The only logical choice --the Democrats --are desirable or better but only because they are merely 'less bad'. It's a fucked up system! Our only choice is not between better or worse but between crooked on the one hand and utterly beyond all redemption on the other. Even in the thirties, humorist Will Rogers would assure us: "I am not a member of any organized political party! I am a Democrat!" Another, more recently, defended his support of Democrats: "...at least they are our crooks!" The reductio ad absurdum of American politics sounds like an early 1960s TV game show: "Choose Your Crook!"

Carmichael, the flamboyant civil rights leader, died of cancer in Conakry, Guinea at the age of just 57. In the mid-1960's he may have ignited a white backlash and alarmed even the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Nevertheless, he understood what every revolutionary of the period understood: the US 'establishment' is corrupt and illegitimate. His words are just as relevant today as they were when they were spoken. He spent his last 30 years in Guinea, advocating revolutionary agenda that was all but ignored in the US.

He joined the SNCC --the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee --in 1960 while a student at Howard University. By 1961, he had became a member of what is remembered as the 'Freedom Riders --black and white volunteers who sat next to each other as they traveled throughout the Deep South. Initially, the 'white' community regarded the tactic as a deliberate provocation. And so it was! The tactic had roots in Thoreau and Ghandi. Violent reactions to it merely proved the point. Arguably, the tide had turned. Bigotry had been exposed; point made!

It was in 1966 that James Meredith began a solitary March Against Fear from Memphis to Jackson. He was soon shot by a sniper. Immediately, other campaigners, including Carmichael and Dr. Martin Luther King took up the banner in Meredith's name.

It was the 27th time that Carmichael had been arrested. Upon his release --on June 16th --Carmichael made his historic 'Black Power' speech.

Upon his release from jail on June 16, 1966, Carmichael made an impassioned speech on the topic of Black Power, railing against advocates of integration and calling instead for black rage and militancy:

"The advocates of Black Power reject the old slogans and meaningless rhetoric of previous years in the civil rights struggle. The language of yesterday is indeed irrelevant: progress, non-violence, integration, fear of 'white backlash,' ... One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that up to this point there has been no national organization which could speak to the growing militancy of young black people in the urban ghettos and the black-belt South. There has been only a 'civil rights' movement, whose tone of voice was adapted to an audience of middle-class whites.... We had only the old language of love and suffering. And in most places -- that is, from the liberals and middle class -- we got back the old language of patience and progress.... There is no black man in the country who can live 'simply as a man.' His blackness is an ever-present fact of this racist society, whether he recognizes it or not.... 'Integration' as a goal today speaks to the problem of blackness not only in an unrealistic way but also in a despicable way.... 'integration' is a subterfuge for the maintenance of white supremacy."

By this time, Carmichael had clearly rejected nonviolent civil disobedience as a vehicle for black progress. His desire instead was to burn all bridges between black and white America. Establishing himself as a committed black separatist, he denounced the integrationist Martin Luther King, Jr. as an "Uncle Tom" and began advocating armed violence as the favored means of promoting civil rights.

--Stokely Carmichael, A Guide to the Political Left

A book followed in 1967: Black Power. It was not universally embraced. The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), called Carmichael's ideas 'black racism' Nevertheless, 'black power' is more readily remembered than his other slogan: "Black is Beautiful". Madison Avenue failed to equal either slogan for their ability to 'brand' and 'position' not just a product but a movement and, at the same time, putting all opposition in a defensive posture from which they never recovered.

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Why the Iraq War is Destroying the US Economy

The cost of Bush's war on Iraq has surpassed one trillion dollars but there is no evidence of it benefiting the US economy. It is time to drive a stake through the heart of the malicious lie that wars are good for the economy. Only the Military/Industrial complex benefits from war and what is good for the MIC is NOT good for the country.

The MIC is a drag on the economy, an economic black hole into which is drained the economic and creative resources of the nation. War itself is a Faustian bargain. The hour of midnight is approaching.

The economic benefits of building a tank are temporary. Once built, the tank is a drag, requiring more to upkeep than war booty can justify. It returns absolutely nothing for the investment. In the end, only the military contractors building the tank or maintaining it have benefited and they will have done so at taxpayer expense. On a larger scale, the Pentagon is an economic black hole, having sucked the life blood from the US economy.

One of the most pernicious economic myths is the idea that war helps the economy. In reality, war is destructive and it always results in economic retrogression and misery.

The US economy didn’t really recover until 1946, when the immediate postwar period witnessed the dismantling of the command economy in favor of a much more liberalized market economy. Peace brought military demobilization, deregulation, and perhaps most importantly, a seventy-five percent reduction in government spending. This was a genuine peace dividend and it set the stage for America’s legendary post-war economic boom.

--War and Economic Decline

The idea that wars and military spending increases are good for the economy is sold and promoted. In fact, new studies now confirm what I have always believed and what Gore Vidal had stated in his classic: The Decline and Fall of th American Empire.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has blamed the Iraq war for sending the United States into a recession. On Wednesday, he told a London think tank that the war caused the credit crunch and the housing crisis that are propelling the current economic downturn. Testifying before the Senate's Joint Economic Committee the following day, he said our involvement in Iraq has long been "weakening the American economy" and "a day of reckoning" has finally arrived.

--Is the Economy a Casualty of War?

Now --war critics have the economic data and models proving that military spending 'diverts resources from productive uses, such as consumption and investment, and ultimately slows economic growth and reduces employment.' This thesis is likewise confirmed in a paper by Thomas E. Woods at: http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/woods2.pdf

The obvious lies about the war have been exposed. Not enough attention has been focused on the one of the biggest con jobs of them all ---right up there with WMD.

White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey was the exception to the rule, offering an "upper bound" estimate of $100 billion to $200 billion in a September 2002 interview with The Wall Street Journal. That figure raised eyebrows at the time, although Lindsey argued the cost was small, adding, "The successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy.”

--Cost of Iraq war could surpass $1 trillion

The US has been in a state of near perpetual war since the so-called Spanish-American war made of this nation an empire. But it was, specifically, according to Gore Vidal in The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, the moment at which the US became a net debtor nation that the US empire ceased to be an 'empire'. Americans are led to believe that the US can simply 'war' its way out of economic disaster. In fact, the US has been fighting wars with monies it doesn't have. The Iraq war may, indeed, finish us off before Bush even has a chance to compound his idiocy against Iran.

For Immediate Release: May 1, 2007

Contact: Lynn Erskine, 202-293-5380 x115

Washington, DC: The Center for Economic and Policy Research released a report today estimating the economic impact of increased US military spending comparable to the spending on the Iraq war. The report, presenting the results of a simulation from the economic forecasting company Global Insight, shows the increased level of military spending leads to fewer jobs and slower economic growth.

For the report, The Economic Impact of the Iraq War and Higher Military Spending, by economist Dean Baker, CEPR commissioned Global Insight to run a simulation with its macmacroeconomic del. Global Insight's model was selected for this analysis because it is a commonly used and widely respected model. It estimated the impact of an increase in annual US military spending equal to 1 percent of GDP (approximately equal to the military spending increase compared with pre-September 11th baseline).

The projections show the following:

-- After an initial demand stimulus, the effect of increased military spending turns negative around the sixth year. After 10 years of higher defense spending, there would be 464,000 fewer jobs than in the baseline scenario with lower defense spending.

-- Inflation and interest rates are considerably higher. After 5 years, the interest rate on 10-Year Treasury notes is projected to be 0.7 percentage points higher than in the baseline scenario. After 10 years, the gap would rise to 0.9 percentage points.

-- Higher interest rates lead to reduced demand in the interest-sensitive sectors of the economy. After 5 years, annual car and truck sales are projected to go down by 192,200 in the high military spending scenario. After 10 years, the drop is projected to be 323,300 and after 20 years annual sales are projected to be down 731,400.

-- Construction and manufacturing are the sectors that are projected to experience the largest shares of the job loss.

"It is often believed that wars and military spending increases are good for the economy," said Baker. "In fact, most economic models show that military spending diverts resources from productive uses, such as consumption and investment, and ultimately slows economic growth and reduces employment."

The report recommends that Congress request the Congressional Budget Office produce its own projections of the economic impact of a sustained increase in defense spending. If wars are disastrous for the economy, then why does government insist upon fighting them when clearly 'national security' is simply not at risk?

--Report Shows Increased US Military Spending Slows Economy

America's ruling elite have found nirvana --a war which need never end, a war in which victory is impossible to define and would not be recognized if it occurred. But --have they killed the goose that laid the golden egg? A war in which victory is, in fact, impossible. A war which achieves precisely what it was intended to achieve: the enrichment of a tiny ruling elite for whom your rights mean absolutely nothing. It is to this elite that wealth flowed profusely. It did NOT trickle to you.

For big government we now have "The Perfect War," everywhere and nowhere, secret and interminable. The war will justify ever expanding police powers, higher taxes, and more controls over the citizenry. You can see easily how Washington thrives on war. Since Sept 11th, there have been no nasty challenges to government spending and waste, no tedious debates over things like social security "lockboxes," nor "political" attacks upon the Presidency. Congressmen and Think Tank experts get lots of TV time and most everyone jumps to obey government orders and support more regulations. Any groups opposed to American military interventions overseas appear unpatriotic and are marginalized, while press coverage of the war is restricted, using the last Gulf War as a model. Big Government, as Orwell wrote, thrives from unwinnable wars; it doesn't get any better than this.

--John Basil Utley, Alternative to Unending War, Ludwig von Mises Institute

War is no longer waged by nations but by huge multi-national corporations hijacking the apparatus of state for the purposes and aims of war. Simply, the big corporations make their 'living' killing people. The most obvious beneficiaries are gun and armament manufacturers and the hired killers of Blackwater, Bush's Praetorian Guard. The manner in which John McCain has whored himself out to various huge corporation --all benefiting from Iraq --is a case worthy of careful study. The amount of money that McCain has raised by selling out to the war lobbies and profiteers is enough to make true patriots puke.

If you’re a CEO of one of America’s largest corporations and have enjoyed the Presidency of George W. Bush, a contribution to the McCain campaign is looking like a pretty good investment.

A new report from the Center For American Progress Action Fund finds that a key piece of John McCain’s tax plan — cutting the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25% — would cut taxes by almost $45 billion every year for America’s 200 largest corporations as identified by Fortune Magazine.

Eight companies — Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips Co., Bank ??of America Corp., AT&T, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Microsoft Corp. — would each receive over $1 billion a year.

The following table shows the tax savings to America’s five largest firms. See a full list of all 200 companies and their savings under McCain here:

These giveaways are just one part of McCain’s doubling of the Bush tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy which would create the largest deficits in 25 years and drive the United States into the deepest deficits since World War II.

A recent analysis by the Public Campaign Action Fund found that John McCain’s campaign has received $5.6 million from the PACs and executives of the Fortune 200.

Over the past eight years, under George W. Bush, American workers have seen their wages stagnate as corporate profits have skyrocketed. John McCain’s misguided priorities show he’s more of the same: the same $45 billion in tax cuts for America’s 200 largest companies could be used to lift over 9 million Americans out of poverty

--NEW REPORT: McCain Would Give America’s 200 Largest Corporations $45 Billion In Tax Breaks»

The fact that the MIC is enriched by a war that depresses, in fact, destroys the economy is the picture of a parasite which kills its host! It's also the very image of tyranny.

A tyrant is a single ruler holding vast, if not absolute power through a state or in an organization. The term carries connotations of a harsh and cruel ruler who place their own interests or the interests of a small oligarchy over the best interests of the general population which they govern or control. This mode of rule is referred to as tyranny. Many individual rulers or government officials get accused of tyranny, with the label almost always a matter of controversy.

- Tyranny

One is reminded of John Maynard Keynes' prescription for full employment.

If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.

Certainly --there are more productive, meaningful and creative ways of keeping the genius and labor of good people employed for the greater good of our species and the precious earth we live on. Keynes was correct, however, when he proposes that just 'digging' up bank notes in a landfill is preferable to the destructive and insidious 'industry of war'!

Published Articles

• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part I, Police States Begin With False Flag Attacks
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part I, Police States Begin With False Flag Attacks
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part III, In Fascist Dictatorships Telling the truth becomes a crime
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part IV, the state forces an 'existential' choice
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part V, Public Opinion Becomes Irrelevant
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part VI, The government places itself above the law
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part VII, The Government Denies 'Due Process of Law'
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State Part VIII: Atrocities are justified with lies, myths or propaganda

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Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

It's hard to stop buying oil when the world's economy is based on it. But --start! An economy based upon oil will have to fall before anything is done or changed. As long as the US economy is based upon a resource that it cannot produce economically, the US will continue to blackmail oil producing nations with nukes.

The US has become MUGGER NATION!.

Why is a different standard applied to gangs of crooks than apply to crooks individually?

The source of most US crookery abroad is the 'Military/Industrial Complex' --a high sounding name for a gang of ruthless, venal corporations who openly conspire to hijack the apparatus of state for business purposes. The enforcement arm of the MIC is 'Blackwater USA' a private firm best described as 'paid thugs', professional muggers! Individuals who do that are called either 'criminals' or 'terrorists'.

Any political party supporting this arrangement is a criminal conspiracy. Any individual providing material support is a crook! The GOP is a criminal conspiracy and its leadership should be prosecuted under RICO statutes. Sadly, Democrats will never change anything as long as they are content to lick up the leavings.

Though M*A*S*H informed us that 'Suicide Is Painless", it solves nothing. The cure for addiction is never painless but must begin if the US has any hope of surviving. Suffer a little pain for a better world. Stop feeding the beast! Stop addressing him as 'The Great and All Poweful Oz'! He's a hologram!

The machine cannot continue unless you continue. You are the power that turns the wheel. Step away from the wheel. As one more slithering entity calls out for the murder of a truthseeker you must now call out for justice. We are in dire need of a new Nuremberg. Those who have killed without conscience must be called into the dock. Justice must be done for the dead and dishonored. The evidence is vast and convincing; the perpetrators known and identified.

Can you hear the rushing of the waters? Can you see the events near and far that tell you the water, which is not water, is uncomfortably close? Can you feel the wind that drives the specters in the mist? Will you go or will you step away from the wheel?

--Les Visible, The Creeping Madness of the Collectively Unhinged Mind.

Michael Reagan is a product of the 'machine'. The radio stations that carry his venom sell advertising that shills the products of an economy that is utterly dependent upon the continued theft --by the US --of the resources of other nations and other individuals. Theft! In fact, a mugging. The US overtly threatens other nations with nukes! 'Give us your oil or a fat juicy cut or get nuked!' Millions deplore such tactics yet they remain in the play book. Too few have stepped away from the wheel.

The Wizard of Oz was written at the turn of the century, so how could the author have known America was going to be drugged? The Crown has been playing the drug cartel game for centuries. Just look up the history of Hong Kong and the Opium Wars. The Crown already had valuable experience conquering all of China with drugs, so why not the rest of the world? What was the Emerald City? The Federal Reserve System. [note: the author quoted cites the 'Fed'. I think the machine if much bigger even and includes the Fed, the MIC, the US 'corporotacracy', et al.]

Who finally exposed the Wizard for what he really was? Toto, the ugly (or cute, depending on your perspective) and somewhat annoying little dog.

Toto means "in total, all together; Latin in toto." What was it that the witch wanted after she alleged that the little dog had bitten her? TOTO. ... everything. Notice how Toto was not scared of the Great Wizard's theatrics, yet he was so small in size, compared to the Wizard, that no one seemed to notice him? The smoke, flames and holographic images of Oz were designed to frighten people into doing as the Great Wizard commanded. Toto simply padded over, looked behind the curtain (the COURT, etc.), saw it was a scam, started barking until others paid attention to him and came to see what all the barking was about.

Who was behind the curtain? Just an ORDINARY PERSON controlling the levers that created the illusion of the Great Wizard's power and authority. When Toto pulled back the curtain and completely exposed him, the charade was at an end. (The veil hiding the corporate legal fiction and its false courts was removed.) The Wizard's game was UP. What was he after all? ... a con-man. A FRAUD. We can see, in this tale, just how loud the bark from a little dog can be.

Start thinking about the various ways in which you have supported this "hologram", this phony wizard, this great beast and then stop doing it. Stop supporting the machine and stop supporting it's "mugger" government. When enough people have stoppedfeeding this beast, the beast will die!

Trailer: The Wizard of Oz

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"When the government murders truth"

The significance of Jim Garrison is not that he solved a murder, but that he stated the greater truth about a murder than was witnessed by the world on November 22, 1963. It was not only John F. Kennedy who was murdered that day but American democracy itself. It was, in Garrison's words, a coup d'etat!

It is easier to prove who did not murder JFK than it is to prove who did, just as it is easier now to prove who didn't pull off 911. It is clear by now that Lee Harvey Oswald, like the debate about 'magic bullets', is almost irrelevant to the bigger issue: who fired the fatal shot? Who benefited? What was it about JFK that threatened the 'secret societies' that the young President had warned about? What was it about his Presidency that so disturbed a Military/Industrial complex so feared by Dwight Eisenhower?

Certainly, the debate about a 'magic bullet' is as irrelevant as are the post hoc convolutions it is hoped will paper over the holes in the "official theories". On March 6, 1975, Geraldo Rivera broadcast a bootlegged version of the famous Zapruder film. Admittedly, it has not forever shut up the dwindling number of those die hards who have a vested interest in promoting a pitifully inadequate theory not supported by fact, science or observation. Indeed, the Zapruder film depicts --unambiguously --a devastating, dramatic shot from the front, the grassy knoll specifically. This shot strikes the President in the head, explodes it, and drives it backward. We know that shots were fired from the rear! It is that single dramatic shot from the front that proves conspiracy.

The cold blooded murder of JFK, like 911 more recently, divided our nation. Both terrorist acts were papered over with absurd cover stories by an 'establishment' with a vested interest in the promotion of an absurd version of events. Just as George W. Bush has a vested interest in destroying physical evidence related to 911, the proponents of the Warren Commission report were equally compromised. Just as the Bush administration interfered with the 911 Commission, the CIA and the Military/Industrial Complex had much to hide back in 1963.

President Kennedy was killed by a small group coordinated by rogue but powerful members of the CIA, Military Intelligence, the FBI, and the Mafia. Primarily, this was a CIA murder against its own President. There were several reasons - Kennedy posed a major threat to the establishment - he sought peace with the Soviets, to bring about the end of the Cold War. He refused to provide air cover for the exiled Cubans in the Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961. He passed National Security Action Memos 55, 56, and 57, which basically ended the reign of the CIA - splintering it into a thousand pieces. The memos basically stated that all intelligence activities in peacetime would be transferred to the military. He fired Allen Dulles, head of the CIA, as well as Richard Bisell and General Charles Cabell - all powerful people. And finally, he set out to withdraw from Vietnam - ordering the first 1,000 troops home for Christmas

--What Really Happened

It was the American philosopher Georges Santayana who said: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it." There is no better argument for recalling Jim Garrison's brilliant indictment of this 'establishment' in Oliver Stone's 1991 film: JFK.

May it please the court. Gentlemen of the jury. I know you're very tired. You've been very patient. This final day has been a long one, so I'll speak only a few minutes. In his argument, Mr. Edmond posed one final issue which raises the question of what we do when the need for justice is confronted by power. So, let me talk to you about the question of whether or not there was government fraud in this case--a question Mr. Dymond seems to want us to answer. A government is a great deal like a human being. It's not necessarily all good, and it's not necessarily all bad. We live in a good country. I love it and you do too. Nevertheless, the fact remains that we have a government which is not perfect.

There have been indications since November the 22nd of 1963--and that was not the last indication--that there is excessive power in some parts of our government. It is plain that the people have not received all of the truth about some of the things which have happened, about some of the assassinations which have occurred--and more particularly about the assassination of John Kennedy.

Going back to when we were children, I think most of us--probably all of us here in the courtroom--once thought that justice came into being of its own accord, that virtue was its own reward, that good would triumph over evil--in short, that justice occurred automatically. Later, when we found that this wasn't quite so, most of us still felt hopefully that at least justice occurred frequently of its own accord.

Today, I think that almost all of us would have to agree that there is really no machinery--not on this Earth at least--which causes justice to occur automatically. Men have to make it occur. Individual human beings have to make it occur. Otherwise, it doesn't come into existence. This is not always easy. As a matter of fact, it's always hard, because justice presents a threat to power. In order to make justice come into being, you often have to fight power.

Mr. Dymond raised the question: Why don't we say it's all a fraud and charge the government with fraud, if this is the case? Let me be explicit, then, and make myself very clear on this point.

The government's handling of the investigation of John Kennedy's murder was a fraud. It was the greatest fraud in the history of our country. It probably was the greatest fraud ever perpetrated in the history of humankind. That doesn't mean that we have to accept the continued existence of the kind of government which allows this to happen. We can do something about it. We're forced either to leave this country or to accept the authoritarianism that has developed--the authoritarianism which tells us that in the year 2029 we can see the evidence about what happened to John Kennedy.

Government does not consist only of secret police and domestic espionage operations and generals and admirals--government consists of people. It also consists of juries. And cases of murder--whether of the poorest individual or the most distinguished citizen in the land--should be looked at openly in a court of law, where juries can pass on them and not be hidden, not be buried like the body of the victim beneath concrete for countless years.

You men in these recent weeks have heard witnesses that no one else in the world has heard. You've seen the Zapruder film. You've seen what happened to your President. I suggest to you that you know right now that, in that area at least, a fraud has been perpetrated.

That does not mean that our government is entirely bad; and I want to emphasize that. It does mean, however, that in recent years, through the development of excessive power because of the Cold War, forces have developed in our government over which there is no control and these forces have an authoritarian approach to justice--meaning, they will let you know what justice is.

Well, my reply to them is that we already know what justice is. It is the decision of the people passing on the evidence. It is the jury system. In this issue which is posed by the government's conduct in concealing the evidence in this case--in the issue of humanity as opposed to power--I have chosen humanity, and I will do it again without any hesitation. I hope every one of you will do the same. I do this because I love my country and because I want to communicate to the government that we will not accept unexplained assassinations with the casual information that if we live seventy-five years longer, we might be given more evidence.

In this particular case, massive power was brought to bear to prevent justice from ever coming into this courtroom. The power to make authoritive pronouncements, the power to manipulate the news media by the release of false information, the power to interfere with an honest inquiry and the power to provide an endless variety of experts to testify in behalf of power, repeatedly was demonstrated in this case.

The American people have yet to see the Zapruder film. Why? The American people have yet to see and hear from the real witnesses to the assassination. Why? Because, today in America too much emphasis is given to secrecy, with regard to the assassination of our President, and not enough emphasis is given to the question of justice and to the question of humanity.

These dignified deceptions will not suffice. We have had enough of power without truth. We don't have to accept power without truth or else leave the country. I don't accept either of these two alternatives. I don't intend to leave the country and I don't intend to accept power without truth.

I intend to fight for the truth. I suggest that not only is this not un-American, but it is the most American thing we can do--because if the truth does not endure, then our country will not endure.

In our country the worst of all crimes occurs when the government murders truth. If it can murder truth, it can murder freedom. If it can murder freedom, it can murder your own sons--if they should dare to fight for freedom-- and then it can announce that they were killed in an industrial accident, or shot by the "enemy" or God knows what.

In this case, finally, it has been possible to bring the truth about the assassination into a court of law--not before a commission composed of important and powerful and politically astute men, but before a jury of citizens.

Now, I suggest to you that yours is a hard duty, because in a sense what you're passing on is equivalent to a murder case. The difficult thing about passing on a murder case is that the victim is out of your sight and buried a long distance away, and all you can see is the defendant. It's very difficult to identify with someone you can't see, and sometimes it's hard not to identify to some extent with the defendant and his problems.

In that regard, every prosecutor who is at all humane is conscious of feeling sorry for the defendant in every case he prosecutes. But he is not free to forget the victim who lies buried out of sight. I suggest to you that, if you do your duty, you also are not free to forget the victim who is buried out of sight.

You know, Tennyson once said that, "authority forgets a dying king." This was never more true than in the murder of John Kennedy. The strange and deceptive conduct of the government after his murder began while his body was warm, and has continued for five years. You have seen in this courtroom indications of the interest of part of the government power structure in keeping the truth down, in keeping the grave closed.

We presented a number of eyewitnesses as well as an expert witness as well as the Zapruder film, to show that the fatal wound of the President came from the front. A plane landed from Washington and out stepped Dr. Finck for the defense, to counter the clear and apparent evidence of a shot from the front. I don't have to go into Dr. Finck's testimony in detail for you to show that it simply did not correspond with the facts. He admitted that he did not complete the autopsy because a general told him not to complete the autopsy.

In this conflict between power and justice--to put it that way--just where do you think Dr. Finck stands? A general, who was not a pathologist, told him not to complete the autopsy, so he didn't complete it. This is not the way I want my country to be. When our President is killed he deserves the kind of autopsy that the ordinary citizen gets every day in the State of Louisiana. And the people deserve the facts about it. We can't have government power suddenly interjecting itself and preventing the truth form coming to the people.

Yet in this case, before the sun rose the next morning, power had moved into the situation and the truth was being concealed. And now, five years later in this courtroom the power of the government in concealing the truth is continuing in the same way.

We presented eyewitnesses who told you of the shots coming from the grassy knoll. A plane landed from Washington, and out came ballistics expert Frazier for the defense. Mr. Frazier's explanation of the sound of the shots coming from the front, which was heard by eyewitness after eyewitness, was that Lee Oswald created a sonic boom in his firing. Not only did Oswald break all of the world's records for marksmanship, but he broke the sound barrier as well.

I suggest to you, that if any of you have shot on a firing range--and most of you probably have in the service--you were shooting rifles in which the bullet traveled faster than the speed of sound. I ask you to recall if you ever heard a sonic boom. If you remember when you were on the firing line, and they would say, "Ready on the left; ready on the right; ready on the firing line; commence firing," you heard the shots coming from the firing line--to the left of you and to the right of you. If you had heard, as a result of Frazier's fictional sonic boom, firing coming at you from the pits, you would have had a reaction which you would still remember.

Mr. Frazier's sonic boom simply doesn't exist. It's part of the fraud-- a part of the continuing government fraud.

The best way to make this country the kind of country it's supposed to be is to communicate to the government that no matter how powerful it may be, we do not accept these frauds. We do not accept these false announcements. We do not accept the concealment of evidence with regard to the murder of President Kennedy. Who is the most believable: a Richard Randolph Carr, seated here in a wheelchair and telling you what he saw and what he heard and how he was told to shut his mouth--or Mr. Frazier with his sonic booms? Do we really have to reject Mr. Newman and Mrs. Newman and Mr. Carr and Roger Craig and the testimony of all those honest witnesses--reject all this and accept the fraudulent Warren Commission, or else leave the country?

I suggest to you that there are other alternatives. One of them has been put in practice in the last month in the State of Louisiana--and that is to bring out the truth in a proceeding where attorneys can cross-examine, where the defendant can be confronted by testimony against him, where the rules of evidence are applied and where a jury of citizens can pass on it--and where there is no government secrecy. Above all, where you do not have evidence concealed for seventy-five years in the name of "national security."

All we have in this case are the facts--facts which show that the defendant participated in the conspiracy to kill the President and that the President was subsequently killed in an ambush.

The reply of the defense has been the same as the early reply of the government in the Warren Commission. It has been authority, authority, authority. The President's seal outside of each volume of the Warren Commission Report--made necessary because there is nothing inside these volumes, only men of high position and prestige sitting on a Board, and announcing the results to you, but not telling you what the evidence is, because the evidence has to be hidden for seventy-five years.

You heard in this courtroom in recent weeks, eyewitness after eyewitness after eyewitness and, above all, you saw one eyewitness which was indifferent to power--the Zapruder film. The lens of the camera is totally indifferent to power and it tells what happened as it saw it happen--and that is one of the reasons 200 million Americans have not seen the Zapruder film. They should have seen it many times. They should know exactly what happened. They all should know what you know now. Why hasn't all of this come into being if there hasn't been government fraud? Of course there has been fraud by the government.

But I'm telling you now that I think we can do something about it. I think that there are still enough Americans left in this country to make it continue to be America. I think that we can still fight authoritarianism--the government's insistence on secrecy, government force used in counterattacks against an honest inquiry--and when we do that, we're not being un-American, we're being American. It isn't easy. You're sticking your neck out in a rather permanent way, but it has to be done because truth does not come into being automatically. Individual men, like the members of my staff here, have to work and fight to make it happen--and individual men like you have to make justice come into being because otherwise is doesn't happen.

What I'm trying to tell you is that there are forces in America today, unfortunately, which are not in favor of the truth coming out about John Kennedy's assassination. As long as our government continues to be like this, as long as such forces can get away with such actions, then this is no longer the country in which we were born.

The murder of John Kennedy was probably the most terrible moment in the history of our country. Yet, circumstances have placed you in the position where not only have you seen the hidden evidence but you are actually going to have the opportunity to bring justice into the picture for the first time.

Now, you are here sitting in judgment on Clay Shaw. Yet you, as men, represent more than jurors in an ordinary case because of the victim in this case. You represent, in a sense, the hope of humanity against government power. You represent humanity, which yet may triumph over excessive government power-- if you will cause it to be so, in the course of doing your duty in this case.

I suggest that you ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.

What can you do for your country? You can cause justice to happen for the first time in this matter. You can help make our country better by showing that this is still a government of the people. And if you do that, as long as you live, nothing will ever be more important.

--Jim Garrison's closing summation

The Loss of Our Republic
Then and Now Depicted in Movies and in Life

Additional resources

• A Nixon-Ruby Connection: JFK Murder Solved?
• A Genius, A Saint, and SCOTUS Agree: Conspiracies Exist!
• How the GOP Benefited and Continues to Benefit From Lincoln's Assassination
• Jim Garrison Interview Playboy magazine, October 1967
• On the Trail of the Assassins
• The Good Shepherd

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