Doug Drenkow: Tea Party Hypocrisy Exposed

by Guest Author, Communications Consultant Doug Drenkow

So let me get this straight. Tea Party darling and Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul says that even though the government should not discriminate on the basis of race in public accommodations, it's "unconstitutional" for the government to stop business from discriminating on the basis of race (etc.) in its private business dealings.

I have just one question: Did President Lincoln step out of constitutional bounds with the Emancipation Proclamation? Here I'd just heard the argument from the "states rights" crowd, that the Northern states were infringing on the power of the Southern states to make their own laws.

But according to Paul and the Tea Partyers, it's even more basic than that: Apparently the government has no right to make any law that "infringes" upon the "rights" of any business or individual to do as it, he, or she pleases, the consequences to any other individuals be damned. The "marketplace" will presumably sort it all out.

News flash: It didn't. With their abominable practice having grown over the centuries into a quite "respectable" institution, the slaveowners didn't set their slaves free in the 1800s -- and innumerable department stores (etc.) didn't open their "whites only" lunch counters (etc.) to African-Americans in the 1900s -- until the federal government made them do so.

Although Rand Paul, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and the rest of the Tea Partyers are usually identified with the Right -- most by far do vote Republican -- they're actually far, far to the Left: What's "Libertarian" to some -- those left unrestrained by any meaningful laws -- is Anarchy to the rest of us -- their victims.

Ironically, insidiously, as the Tea Partyers rail against Wall Street bailouts, it is their very own philosophy that left big business far too unregulated for far too long, with catastrophic consequences for the rest of us.

--Doug Drenkow
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My two cents: The 'Tea Party' movement is neither an 'aberration' nor a grass roots 'movement'. I have alleged that it was 'cooked up' by a GOP-dependent political consulting firm and decided upon after numerous studies, analyses and focus-group sessions. It's all 'top down', the very anti-thesis of 'grass roots'.

This movement has no interest in representing the real concerns of real people. It's raison d'etre is the preservation of the welfare state and by that I mean the 'corporate welfare' state. It is also dedicated to, defined by an equal commitment to the 'warfare' state from which only the Military/Industrial Complex benefits. In fact, there is no 'aberration' so absurd, so nonsensical, so horrible in its effects, that it could not, does not follow inexorably from the right wing raison d'etre, itself best likened unto a puss filled boil crying out desperately to be lanced! The U.S. has tended toward 'fascism' since WWII where it tasted war and liked it.

The tea bagger movement owes its very existence to Fox News which it adores and depends upon for misinformation, i.e. anything designed to reinforce or encourage their prejudices. It is the 'top down' product of the corporate/fascist establishment and mentality that brought you 'corporate personhood', in fact, 'corporate privilege'/people enslavement!

The tea bagger movement is a by-product of the blind eye given Halliburton-BP, the corporate authors of disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. This is the mind-set behind the Reagan 'tax cut' of 1982 which began the transfer of wealth upward so that now just one percent of the population owns more than 95 percent of the rest of us combined.

The tea baggers are enemies of Democracy and our republic. The tea baggers are liars, bigots and hypocrites to a person. Now --we're hooked on war despite the fact that with each passing year, fewer and fewer actually benefit from it. Millions just get a vicarious and perverted thrill via the media. The boardroom perverts, however, are closer to it, benefit financially from it with profits exponentially proportional to deaths. One can almost hear the war mongers cackling among themselves in glass-steel towers, plotting new adventures, new murders, new atrocities.

Limp dicked in every other way, it is their last orgasm before dying. I wish to hell they would get on with the 'dying' part and leave good people alone to live out full and meaningful lives, free of war, lies, bullshit, and oil spills.Down with tea baggers and other traitors to the Constitution, free speech and Democracy.

--Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

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Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership, Global Issues, Updated: January 02, 2009

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Why The GOP Plots to Steal Your Social Security

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

If Social Security were not working, if Social Security were not solvent, Wall St 'fat cats' would not be scheming to steal it! Social Security is in danger of becoming a victim of its own success.

GOP supporters of the big banksters propose that Social Security be 'privatized', a code word for: "let's let the big banksters play monopoly with that money. Let's export that money, squirrel it away in offshore bank accounts where working folk will never see it or benefit from it!"

Like monies blown up and/or otherwise 'wasted' in war, monies tagged 'social security' will be secured for speculative or destructive use by the very, very rich, the only people to have benefited from ruinous wars of aggression against Iraq, et al. Should this come to pass, not a cent of that money will go toward the creation of a single job in the U.S.

The fat cats are not worried about whether Social Security works or not! That's just eye wash, a plausible sounding 'talking point', a pre-text by which the money may be seized, or, 'privatized'! The fat cats do not care about you or your retirement. If you think they do, you are incredibly and hopelessly naive.

Bush, were he not in hiding, may call this 'class warfare'. And so it is! It IS class warfare and the GOP has been waging it against anyone not financing GOP campaigns with $millions$.

What would/will/have the ruling elites do/done with your money? So far --death and destruction tops the list of America's last remaining industries. Death and destruction are, in fact, out chief exports. That's why the U.S. is at the bottom of the CIA's World Factbook - Current Account Balance with the world's largest, negative 'Current Account Balance', often called the balance of trade deficit. China is on top with the world's largest positive current account balance.

That outcome is easily traced to treasonous deals struck by George Bush Sr in advance of Nixon's largely ceremonial visit to the Forbidden City. It was later, as I recall, that Bush Sr puked in the lap of the Japanese Prime Minister, perhaps remembering the sickening deal struck earlier with China.

While China exports product, the U.S. exports death and destruction. Neither have enriched anyone but members of the U.S. ruling elite of just one percent of the total population. Their numbers are growing smaller as their 'shares' of total wealth have increased exponentially. It is this elite one percent --and only this elite-- who benefit from U.S. wars of aggression in the middle east. It is only this elite one percent who benefited from Reagan/Bush tax cuts and largesse. It is only this elite one percent who benefited from whopping tax cuts beginning with the Reagan tax cut of 1982. Class warfare? You betcha!

In the meantime, GOP types demagogue another issue: Immigration. Disingenuously, it is claimed that immigrants will steal American jobs. That might be possible, even credible were there still American jobs to steal! Check the CIA's World Fact Book again. Pop quiz time: what does the U.S. produce and export? Where is the great American steal industry? What happened to the great American automotive industry? Where are jobs that may be stolen?

The GOP exported your job, primarily to China, the biggest beneficiary. And what about IT? Those jobs went to India! Well, you may say, there is always 'tele-marketing'! Sorry --even telemarketing has been exported! To India!

Again --check the CIA's World Fact Book, previously cited, is the proof and result of that fact! The US trails the rest of the world in almost every industrial category. Steel and electronics were exported during the Reagan years. Automobile manufacturing left Detroit shortly afterward. Chrysler was in trouble in the 70s. It was never coincidental that US industry seemed to have vanished at about the same time Ronald Reagan waged war against labor and won! Uncle Hitler could not have done a better job.

According to the CIA's The World Factbook - Current Account Balance our jobs have been exported to China which is listed as having the world's largest positive current account balance. Simply, that represents the transfer of US wealth to China, primarily by way of Wal-Mart, the economic Kudzu that ate the US economy.

Democrats have occupied the executive but eight of the last thirty years. The GOP, therefore, owns the decline and fall of both the American republic and its short lived empire. GOP policies are the cause of the collapse made even worse by the calamitous and lost war of aggression in Iraq. Aggravating the crash are the lasting legacy and the bone-headed policies of Reagan, Bush, and Shrub!

We are living the consequences of several major, pernicious trends that began with the inauguration of Ronald Reagan:

• the rich began to get much, much richer and the poor much, much poorer
• the labor movement was subverted and all but destroyed;
• within but a few years the US would 'boast' of the world's largest negative 'current account balance';
• US industries of all types declined or disappeared entirely;
• acts of terrorism against US interests increased.

Americans are harmed from the rise of leeches like Wal-Mart:

• Despite bringing in over $378 billion last year, Wal-Mart repeatedly underpays its American workforce. More than 80 wage & hour lawsuits, including a recently certified class action lawsuit in California, are currently pending against the company. Plus, it faces more than 200 discrimination lawsuits for unfair promotion practices, pay discrepancies and other issues, including the nation’s largest workplace gender discrimination lawsuit. By failing to fairly compensate its employees, Wal-Mart cheats states out of income tax revenues.
• Wal-Mart’s low wages means store employees have little or no disposable income to spend to stimulate the economy. Think about what even a small raise for Wal-Mart’s 1 million+ workers would mean nationally, or what it would mean to your city or town if everyone at your local Wal-Mart got a raise.
• Wal-Mart sources the vast majority of its products from countries overseas, meaning most of the cost of a given Wal-Mart product doesn’t go into the U.S. economy. Rather than boosting the U.S. economy, Wal-Mart has played a major role in exporting U.S. manufacturing jobs to countries with low labor and environmental standards. Meanwhile, the company has embraced unions in its Chinese stores and has negotiated with them to raise Chinese salaries. Apparently, what is good enough for China is not good enough here at home.
• Wal-Mart underfunds its health care plan and cuts corners whenever possible, forcing many of its employees to postpone care, thus decreasing their productivity and increasing the eventual cost of their treatment. In desperation, many of them rely on state-sponsored care and drain yet more funds from American communities. That means when Wal-Mart employees end up in emergency rooms, it’s U.S. taxpayers who end up footing the bill. If Wal-Mart were truly interested in stimulating the economy, it would begin to adequately fund its health care plan and take care of its own Associates.
• Wal-Mart routinely dodges state and local taxes, meaning money spent at a Wal-Mart store won’t end up in your community. Wal-Mart actively works to challenge property tax assessments and creates complex real estate arrangements to obscure how much taxes the company owes. When Wal-Mart dodges its tax burden, it takes precious revenues away from cities and states to pay for roads, schools and other services. In turn, individual taxpayers are forced to pay more to make up the difference (which takes more money out of their pockets) or get by with less.

--The Huffington Post, Why Wal-Mart Does Not Strengthen Our Economy

Money spent at Wal-Mart winds up in China! Monies thrown at the ruling elite who don't need a 'bailout' winds up in offshore accounts and the purchase of merchandise not produced in the United States. $billions$ are thus exported to be forever lost to the US economy, a loss no less important than $billions$ that are unfortunately spent at Wal-Mart.

--Why Tax Cuts and Ruinous War Make this Crisis Worse Than the 'Great Depression'

How the War on Iraq Continues to Depress the US Economy

It is naively suggested that the 'defense industry'--the MIC --creates jobs and stimulates the economy. In fact, the US is left with a morally moribund economy built up around a handful of robber baron corporations like Halliburton, it's subsidiary KBR and, of course, Murder Inc., otherwise called Blackwater USA.

What industries are left to America?

Answer: industrialized death and destruction! If you wish to build an entire economy upon death itself, wars of naked aggression, war crimes and outright murder, then this is definitely the way to go. But it is not a recipe upon which a viable, growing economy is based. It is not a recipe upon which a moral society is built! It is not a recipe with which a nation's future is secured, it's people productively employed or even made safe!

There is a choice to be made between 'gun's and 'butter'. Hitler tried it, invading Poland for the coal and prospects for coal liquifaction. As Bushco implied that all Arabs were 'terrorists', he forgot to mention his own business partners --Bin Laden (yep! the Cave Dweller) himself and Khalid bin Mahfouz who built a huge billion dollar plus mansion in River Oaks, a very, very posh neighborhood very near downtown Houston. Bush didn't have any problems with 'Arabs' when he was in 'bidness' with them. [pumping oil and pumping ho's] The original source for all that is the Houston Chronicle which published a series of exposes in the early 90s. Too bad, no one bothered to read them.

For additional info, I suggest the following links:

Why the GOP Nurtures Lies and Myths about Ronald Reagan

Why Tax Cuts and Ruinous War Make this Crisis Worse Than the 'Great Depression'

How the U.S. went from 'World's Number One Exporter of Terrorism' to Bankrupt

An excerpt:

Official US Army documents detail the extent to which the US has become addicted to the export of death and destruction. According to that [US Army] document, the US leads the world in the manufacture, sale and distribution of WMD, the use of 'terrorist' tactics and PSYOPS, and overt acts of aggression that when done by smaller nations are called 'terrorism'. ...

How Much Was Fox Paid to Shill Bush's War Crime in Iraq?

How K Street Pimps America

Wall Street Pulls Off the Biggest Heist in World History

An excerpt:

US Taxpayers have underwritten and/or are committed to a transfer of some 8.6 trillion dollars to Wall Street [see: 8.6 Trillion was a Drop in the Bucket]. As no 'bailout' has yet done anything but enrich Wall Street 'robber barons' who have invested their windfalls offshore, I propose that Wall Street get no more bailout monies whatsoever. I propose that the government divide up that 8.6 trillion up among all the citizens of the United States. Your share is over twenty-eight thousand dollars. I will take my share now, thank you!

If this kind of bailout were put into the hands of the folk who really drive the economy with their purchases of homes, cars, meals and clothing, the economy would literally turn around overnight. During the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes proposed that the government would do much, much worse than simply putting 'pound notes' in Mason jars, burying them in a landfill and letting people dig them up. Keynes was not kidding. Clearly, his proposals would have worked while every cockamamie GOP plan since Ronald Reagan's depression of some two years following his tax cut of 1982 has failed. [and failed miserably!]

What Happens When Your Paycheck Comes from China Why this Crisis May be Worse than the Great Depression

Some excerpts:

About one percent of the nation owning more than about 90 percent of the rest of us combined not only foresaw the impending crash but planned to benefit from it. GOP types have traditionally gotten rich by playing 'last man out loses'! A race to be first to 'get out' has triggered many a panic creating bargains to be picked up, fortunes to be made on the inevitable upside. The big difference now is that --this time --there may not be an upside.

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GOP 'trickle down' policies have had the measurable effect of enriching just one percent of the nation's population. [sources: Bureau of Labor Stats, US Dept of Commerce-BEA, Census Bureau] When the GOP has been caught holding the blood-dripping dagger over the corpse I am in no mood to listen to crap like: 'but Democrats are 'bad' too!' Not this time! Democrats were in office but eight years out of thirty! But in those short eight years the trend in which wealth flows upward was --in fact --reversed only to be undone by Bush Jr. Monies/Capital/Wealth 'trickling up' to just one percent of the population is forever lost to the US economy because it is, most often, squirreled away in offshore tax havens. Wealth thus lost results in 'contraction' of the economy, in other words, recession/depression. NO GOP TAX CUT HAS EVER CREATED A SINGLE JOB EVER! [Read anything by John Maynard Keynes]

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It was not so long ago that a Democratic president had left to his incompetent GOP successor a whopping budget surplus, a growing economy, the lowest unemployment in decades, and --for Republicans --the most worrisome trend of all: the rich were no longer getting richer as they had done during the Reagan/Bush years. I can think of only one group of people who are most miserable when times are good! REPUBLICANS! Historically, Republicans have always benefited from recessions.

1. Recessions are not caused by declining stock markets but seem always to be accompanied by them and are often predicted by them. Republicans play the game of 'last man out wind', taking their profits in numbers that often cause the panic. Only insiders benefit. Others are forced to take their losses.
2. A depressed market becomes an opportunity for the elite oligarchs to get back in. This elite, in fact, controls the market. Everyone else is exploited by the oligarchs.
3. It is easy to make money 'selling short' if you have an insider's knowledge of the market. That fortunes were made short-selling subsequent to the 911 attacks seems to me persuasive, perhaps conclusive evidence that 911 was an inside job. What was known by whom and when? No wonder Bush covered up 911. The answer to those questions would have exposed a murderous conspiracy, perhaps 'insiders' inside Bush's criminal and treasonous administration.
4. Unemployment always rises during times of recession. Should they survive, companies will hire from a larger labor pool at lower wages, lower salaries, reduced benefits, and less vacation or sick time. The GOP despises the Clinton years --not because they were bad but because they were good years and fondly remembered. Europe after the Black Death has that much in common with the Clinton years. The labor supply had been depleted by plague. A would-be employer often had to accede to a worker's demands--better working conditions, more money, a place to live! The serfs had been freed and it was the beginning of the end for Feudalism. I had hoped that a less traumatic cataclysm would have already freed modern day "corporate serfs." Alas! My hopes are dashed. If the US survives at all, you can rest assured that the ruling elite will hire from an impoverished and growing labor pool. Wages and salaries are sure to be inadequate and, as a result, the 'recovery' (should there be one) will be slower for it.
5. Only the oligarchs benefit when many businesses go out of business during depressions which have the effect of 'weeding out' the competition, consolidating oligarchical gains. A conservative, therefore, is someone who supports a free market when it benefits him and the oligarchy at every other time.
6. Recessions are not always accompanied by a decline in prices. As many businesses fail, competition is decreased and higher prices result. Given the demand for a particular product, a company may actually earn more money selling fewer units. The difference comes out of your ass. Such demand is called: inelastic, i.e. revenues increase as prices increase --even if total sales should fall.

Unless someone blows the whistle or exercises some clout, the increasingly tiny elite of just one percent of the US population will be even richer at the end of this ruinous and tragic financial collapse. You can be sure the oligarchs foresaw the collapse and hastened it. You can be sure that they alone have and will continue to benefit from it as they have benefited from every other such crisis in US history.

Depressions are defined by a 'contraction' of the supply of money. If so, where has all the money gone?. As point out, much if not most has been squirreled away in offshore bank accounts in anticipation of a domestic collapse. But much of that money didn't really exist. It was just paper. It became fashionable to consider 'debt' as money. But debt is not money and never was. Anyone who has ever considered the significance of the accounting equation --capital equals assets minus liabilities knows the truth of it. Nor is 'debt' money for those holding the paper. Loans are good only when backed up by collateral or, in some cases, one's earnings i.e, his/her ability to re-pay. As in all crashes, a 'bill' has come due but cannot be paid.

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How the War Depresses the U.S. Economy

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The cost of Bush's war on Iraq, left to Obama to 'finish' and clean up, passed the one trillion dollar mark some time ago but has yet to support or prove the old lie that 'wars are good for the economy'. Where is the evidence that the $Trillion$ spent murdering and torturing people in a nation that was, in fact, no threat to the United States, has created a single job on the home front? In fact, those $Trillion$ blown up in Iraq are lost forever --not having created a single new job.

Instead, manpower that might have been employed in productive industries was diverted to destructive and false causes. Instead of creating futures, we will be lucky to escape a tragic end!

The fact is, war is parasitic, destructive not of enemies but of the home front economy. Even if the U.S. should win militarily, the war is lost on the home front where it continues to be paid for by the subversive and depressive effect it has had upon productive industries and activities that provide real jobs, viable opportunities, exports!

War is not only a 'racket', as Gen. Smedley Butler so famously declared, it is a parasite!

What is often overlooked is the military example Bastiat uses in the essay. He discusses the demobilization of one hundred thousand soldiers from the French army – a prospect many entertain with dread, for what will these men do for a living? And what about the foregone stimulus to French businesses previously provided by the military’s expenditures on wine, clothes, and weapons for these men? Of course, such critics are focusing once again only on what is seen. They fail to consider that the money that had previously been confiscated from the taxpayers in order to support the soldiers will now be available for other purposes, including expenditures on goods that these demobilized soldiers can devote themselves to producing. Likewise, the money the military once spent on wine, clothes, and weapons can now be spent on other things, so here again economic activity is none the worse for the soldiers’ demobilization

--Thomas Woods, Jr., The Neglected Costs of the Warfare State

Only the Military/Industrial complex benefits from war; 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 in which the soul of a nation is eagerly exchanged for short-term war booty, in this case, oil! When the U.S. itself produced oil, jobs were created in the 'drilling industry'. Stealing the oil resources of a foreign nation which had nothing whatsoever to do with 911 has surely created a net deficit of jobs as the final figures, I am sure, will prove.

The war of aggression against the people of Iraq by an imperial nation will be shown to have been the primary cause of the recent economic crises, all which are related to the more fundamental fact that the U.S. is no longer a productive nation. The proof of that may be found at the CIA's 'World Fact Book' which lists the U.S. at the bottom of a list with the world's largest negative 'Current Account Balance'; China tops the list with the world's largest positive 'Current Account Balance'. If the U.S. were still productive and exporting the products of its labor, it would at least be nearer the top! But the U.S. is on the very rock bottom, a position resulting directly from the incompetence of GOP regimes: Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Bush!

As Gore Vidal maintained in his 'Decline and Fall of the American Empire', 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. In the meantime, monies used to build the tank are lost to outcomes more productive at home and less destructive abroad, outcomes upon which a viable economy absolutely depends. In the end, only the military contractors building the tank or maintaining it have benefited but they will have done so at taxpayer expense. In the end, the building of a tank and the other weapons of war will have returned absolutely nothing for the investment. The taxpayer will have underwritten a war crime with their taxes. On a larger scale, the Pentagon itself is an economic black hole, having sucked the life blood from the US economy.

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 the 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

Sadly, few progressives have had the courage to state the obvious: the war against Iraq is 'instant Karma', its own revenge upon the deterioration of American values and its converse: the rise of imperial arrogance and the resulting fascist state! While still in office, Bush stated that "spending on the war might help with jobs"! Consider the psychopathic arrogance betrayed in that one statement alone! Bush said, in effect, that it is OK to murder people abroad if it provides jobs at home. It is OK to wage war upon civilians in order to juice up jobs on the home front. Doubly tragic, it failed even that. Chalk up yet another cold-blooded lie to Bush and his crime syndicate --the GOP!

When the stats are all in, Bush Jr will rank with his father and Ronald Reagan among the very worst U.S Presidents in terms of job growth/creation, worst among all U.S. Presidents in terms of GDP growth! Claims that the 'recession' was due to a 'housing bubble' are hollow, disingenuous, or, at best, naive! In the meantime, the GOP will willingly bomb hell out of a sovereign nation which it knew had no WMD in order to get the jobless off the streets of shell cities like Detroit and into the front lines in Iraq. Ancient Rome could not have been or done worse and didn't!

The heights of absurdity issued from the mouths of those who should know better, specifically, Desmond Lachman, economist and resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. He said that simply removing the billions of dollars a year in Iraq spending from the economy without replacing it could actually make the recession worse, because the spending drives demand and keeps people employed. "War spending helped the U.S. get out of the Great Depression," Lachman says. He misses at least two points while betraying a psychopathic lack of 'humanity'. Lachman, in effect, believes that Iraqi lives are worthless and that their deaths are but a means by which Americans may avoid an inconvenience or temporary hardship. Additionally --he is wrong about 'war' as an economic cure-all. For example, the U.S. did not begin a real or lasting recovery until about one year after World War II was over and therefore could not have contributed to the recovery. The other point missed is that those moneys 'blown up' in Iraq have now been lost forever to the U.S. economy. Result: contraction. The other word for contraction is 'depression'.

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 U.S. has been in a state of 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 a viable nation. It is fair to ask: is America a 'failed state'?

Americans are led to believe that the US can simply 'war' its way out of economic disaster. In fact, the US fights wars with monies it doesn't have in the expectation of booty it may never realize, booty that, in any case, has never benefited the economy. The Iraq war may, indeed, finish us off.

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, a war in which victory is, in fact, impossible. A war which achieves precisely what it is intended to achieve: the enrichment of a tiny ruling elite for whom your rights mean absolutely nothing.

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. They have hijacked the apparatus of state in order to wage war, and wage war in order to maintain elite status. It's a malevolent scheme in which a ruling elite of just one percent of the population benefits from the U.S. war crime against the people of Iraq. Simply, the big corporations --of late accorded rights that should, by right, belong only to real people --make their 'living' killing real people. Real people are now victimized by a souless machine with whom the U.S. Supreme Court is complicit, ergo: illegitimate! The 'Supremes' have anointed Moloch.

The most obvious beneficiaries of this new 'Moloch' are gun and armament manufacturers and the hired killers of Blackwater, Bush's Praetorian Guard.

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 coal mines 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'!

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The Terminator 'Soaks the Poor'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The terminator has terminated futures for some 1.3 million citizens with sweeping budget cuts that affect only the poor. The terminator's cuts eliminate CalWorks, the state's welfare program. Some 1.3 million --one million of which are children who will be left to fend for themselves with little choice but to turn to crime.

The rest will be unemployed, cut off, some left to starve or turn to crime. Is this what the GOP has mind? Is this an opportunistic move to fill up the corporate-owned prison, like those in Texas, in which every child that is left behind? Is this a deliberate move to provide 'corporate-persons' with slave labor because the 'state' has refused to support education?

This is slavery --pure and simple, a crime against humanity! Nothing in the old south was nearly so horrible.

The 'terminator' will have made California the only state not 'to offer a welfare-to-work program for low-income families with children.' The Neo-Nazi terminator will terminate a program which provided families with but an average $500 a month but which required that they find jobs. By terminating the program, the terminator has opted for the short-term profit and certain longer term disaster which the GOP always leaves to succeeding generations, a long term disaster from which only the GOP benefits now and in the future.

Proposing a budget that would eliminate the state's welfare-to-work program and most child care for the poor, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday outlined a stark vision of a California that would sharply limit aid to some of its poorest and neediest citizens.
His $83.4-billion plan would also freeze funding for local schools, further cut state workers' pay and take away 60% of state money for local mental health programs. State parks and higher education are among the few areas the governor's proposal would spare.

The proposal, which would not raise taxes, also relies on $3.4 billion in help from Washington — roughly half of what the governor sought earlier this year — to help close a budget gap now estimated at $19.1 billion. Billions more would be saved through accounting moves and fund shifts.

"California no longer has low-hanging fruits," said Schwarzenegger at an afternoon news conference in Sacramento. "I now have no choice but to … call for elimination of some very important programs."

--May 15, 2010|By Shane Goldmacher, Los Angeles Times,Schwarzenegger's budget is a blow to the poor!

Even fascist Texas has a better record. Fact is --Karl Marx was absolutely correct: 1) labor creates wealth i.e. 'value'. Every major economist from A. Smith to Ricardo knows this. The GOP knows this as well but will lie to you about it; 2) there are but two main classes --the productive class which does the work and the leisure leeches --GOP --who put their money offshore resulting in a 'contraction' which, in fact, causes recessions and depressions. All U.S. depression/recessions have occurred during the GOP regimes --a tradition dating back to Herbert Hoover, who was preceded by a string of incompetent, big business shills to include Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge.

That is why the U.S. is at the very bottom of the CIA's own 'World Fact Book' with the world's largest Negative Current Account Balance'; CHINA, with whom the Sr Bush cut a deal, is on top with the world's largest positive 'Current Account Balance', previously referred to as the 'balance of trade' deficit. The GOP looted the U.S. on behalf of its clients: the U.S. ruling elite of just one percent of the total population and the People's Republic of China who dumps its cheap product on U.S. shores via Wal-Mart, their fascist, cheap labor representatives.

I've been yelling about 'trickle down' crap since 1980 But people (if you can call them 'people') will believe it because it '...makes us (GOP) good about ourselves!' That line was overhead on the floor of the GOP 'National Convention' in 1992. Some 90 percent of GOP propaganda is most surely designed to make these liars and psychopaths feel good about themselves. It's how the GOP recruits from among psychopaths who literally need to be told the lies about which an entire 'party' is built.

As Reagan's Budget Director --David Stockman --admitted 'supply side' theory is a 'trojan horse' which seems in retrospect deliberately designed to create an exploitable 'poor' class. The terminator will fill up the corporate owned prisons with millions which he must surely know will fall off the ladder and, thus, become vulnerable to the corporate/state machine! There is no 'invisible hand' which makes one class extremely wealthy and many more extremely poor and much more numerous. It's done by policy and design.

Those falling off the first rung will become the GOP's source of slave labor. This is a crime against humanity.

The Terminator Terminates Futures in CA

The terminator may have learned from the Texas 'model' of fascism. Texas has not occupied a position of prominence with regard to petroleum production since it was discovered that bombing Iraq and killing civilians was not only cheaper it was in itself profitable. Just ask Dick Cheney how profitable both Halliburton and Blackwater are! The GOP has learned that warehousing slaves in corporate-owned prisons is much cheaper than expensive secondary recovery methods by which the liars of 'big oil' squeezed a few more gallons out of abandoned oil fields in West Texas. Why spend millions exploring for oil when you can just bomb hell out of civilians in the Middle East, steal the oil from productive oil fields? The cost of bombing the crap out of the oil's rightful owners?? The corporations don't care. They have stuck the U.S. tax payer with the tab!

So-called 'free enterprise' robs millions of children of a decent education and as many poor of justice in a state ruled by the oil elites.

• Texas --Bush style --provides the residents of Texas with some of the nation's very worst crime and incarceration rates;
• Texas subjects the residents of Texas to deteriorating air quality and wanton ecosystem destruction;
• Texas can boast of the the nation's very worst murder, crime and incarceration rates!
• Texas --a state that now leads the nation in pollution, crime, and illiteracy --should be studied by any other state wishing to avoid a similar disastrous fate.

The rise of Texas' crime is concurrent with the rise of the Texas GOP. It is no accident that fascist policies now dominate the political and cultural life and environment of Texas and in turn spawns crime, creates the conditions in which it is nurtured and survives.

Still, most people are now ashamed to admit that punishment is based on vengeance and, for that reason, various excuses and apologies have been offered for the cruelty that goes with it. Some of the more humane, or “squeamish,” who still believe in punishment, contend that the object of this infliction is the reformation of the victim. This, of course, cannot be urged of the death penalty or even punishment for life, or for very long-term sentences. In these cases there is neither inducement to reform nor any object in the reformation. No matter how thorough the reform, the prisoner never goes back to society, or he returns after there is no longer a chance for him to be of use to the world or to enjoy life.

--Clarence Darrow, Crime: It's Cause and Treatment

By ensuring that millions will fall off the ladder, the terminator has guaranteed the corporate prisons a seemingly endless supply of slave labor. Down with the GOP! Down with slavery! Down with the 'Terminator'. Down with lies and 'supply side bullshit'.

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Nasa Seeks 'Warp Drive', Anti-Gravity Space Craft

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The state of Texas and NASA hope to take an early lead in interstellar space travel with technologies that sound like dialogue from Star Trek or Star Wars peppered with terms like "Warp Drive" and "anti-gravity". Simplistically, a new generation of space-craft may produce "tuned" gravity waves with which it may surf a "grid" of gravity waves. Some writers have referred to this as a cosmic, universal net.

The term breakthrough propulsion refers to concepts like space drives and faster-than-light travel, the kind of breakthroughs that would make interstellar travel practical.

For a general explanation of the challenges and approaches of interstellar flight, please visit the companion web site: Warp Drive: When? The Warp-When site is written for the general public and uses icons of science fiction to help convey such notions. This web site, on the other hand, is intended for scientists and engineers.

This research falls within the realm of physics instead of technology, with the distinction being that physics is about uncovering the laws of nature while technology is about applying that physics to build useful devices. Since existing technology is inadequate for traversing astronomical distances between neighboring stars (even if advanced to the limit of its underlying physics), the only way to circumvent these limits is to discover new propulsion physics. The discovery of new force-production and energy-exchange principles would lead to a whole new class of technologies. This is the motivation of breakthrough propulsion physics research.

--National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA], Breakthrough Propulsion Physics [See also: Prospects for Breakthrough Propulsion From Physics, Marc G. Millis, Founder and Manager, Breakthrough Propulsion Physics (BPP) Project, NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field, PDF]

NASA is quick to point out that something like the Space Ship "Enterprise" is not imminently feasible but points out that "new possibilities continue to emerge". NASA confirms that it supported the breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project from 1996 to 2002.

Setting Goals Beyond Existing Limits

Prospects for Breakthrough Propulsion From Physics, Marc G. Millis, Founder and Manager, Breakthrough Propulsion Physics (BPP) Project, NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field, PDF]

Should NASA get into "anti-gravity", the way might have been paved by the work of Raymond Chiao

Chiao argues that a superconductor could transform radio waves, light or any other form of electromagnetic radiation into gravitational radiation, and vice versa, with near perfect efficiency. Such a feat sounds as amazing as transmuting lead into gold--and about as plausible." It is fair to say that if Ray observes something with this experiment, he will win the Nobel Prize," says superconductivity expert John M. Goodkind of the University of California at San Diego. "It is probably also fair to say that the chances of his observing something may be close to zero."

--Scientific American, A Philosopher's Stone: Could superconductors transmute electromagnetic radiation into gravitational waves?

The University of Houston has been researching "super-conductivity" for over ten years and just recently received a large grant to continue and expand it's research.

The University of Houston has received a Research Superiority Award from the exas Emerging Technology Fund (ETF), announced today by Gov. Rick Perry on behalf of the ETF board. The University of Houston's Texas Center for Superconductivity (TcSUH) will receive $3.5 million over a five-year period to help establish TcSUH's Applied Research Hub (TcSUH-ARH) and recruit stellar scientists and researchers in superconductivity and related materials.

"The Texas Emerging Technology Fund has helped create an unparalleled research environment in our state by encouraging innovation and providing a path for bringing emerging technologies from the laboratory to the marketplace," Perry said. "The University of Houston is a worldwide leader in superconductivity technology, and this grant will help expand its research capabilities while encouraging the commercialization of this promising technology."

Established by Perry and the Texas Legislature in 2005, the ETF is bringing the best scientists and researchers to Texas, attracting high-paying jobs and helping start-up companies get off the ground faster.

--February 3, 2010, UH Superconductivity Center Receives $3.5M ETF Grant, UH Superconductivity Center Receives $3.5M ETF Grant

Superconductors capable of converting electromagnetic radiation into 'gravitational radiation' (and vice versa) promise to open up an new era in space exploration. The known universe is a veritable 'Moire pattern' of electromagnetic energy. Intersteller travel may become a matter of surfing the 'gravity waves' that permeate the universe.

An estimate of the transducer conversion efficiency on the order of unity comes out of the Ginzburg-Landau theory for an extreme type II, dissipationless superconductor with minimal coupling to weak gravitational and electromagnetic radiation fields, whose frequency is smaller than the BCS gap frequency, thus satisfying the quantum adiabatic theorem. The concept of ``the impedance of free space for gravitational plane waves'' is introduced, and leads to a natural impedance-matching process, in which the two kinds of radiation fields are impedance-matched to each other around a hundred coherence lengths beneath the surface of the superconductor. A simple, Hertz-like experiment has been performed to test these ideas, and preliminary results will be reported. (PACS nos.: 03.65.Ud, 04.30.Db, 04.30.Nk, 04.80.Nn, 74.60-w, 74.72.Bk)

--Conceptual tensions between quantum mechanics and general relativity: Are there experimental consequences, e.g., superconducting transducers between electromagnetic and gravitational radiation?

Superconductivity is defined by little or no electrical resistance. Reducing resistance allows electrons to carry large amounts of electric current with minimal or no "heat loss".

Supporters of "super-conductivity" hope the new research will find obvious applications to the development of new energy sources and applications --transformers, wind generators, cables and magnetic energy storage as well as the more spectacular spin-off: intersteller space travel.

A craft with a sufficient energy source might produce gravity waves relative to a local field wherever it might be in the universe. The degree to which the generated field is either negatively or positively in or out of phase with the surrounding field, it is hoped, will get future astronauts from planet to planet, or as Klaatu ("The Day the Earth Stood Still") told an Earth-bound physicist:

Barnhardt: Have you tested this theory?
Klaatu: I find it works well enough to get me from one planet to another.

Anyone writing or speaking of the exploration of the universe cannot escape the issue of time --the time required to reach a destination, the time required to return. Anyone who has read Einstein is familiar with the "time paradox" in which a space traveler returns to earth as young as the day he/she left home only to discover that everyone else has either aged or died.

[Julian] Barbour's central argument is that a mistaken belief in the reality of time prevents physicists from achieving their ultimate goal: the unification of the submicroscopic atomic world of quantum mechanics with the vast cosmic one of general relativity. The problem arises because each theory provides a radically different conception of time, and physicists simply don't know how to reconcile the two views. Until they do, they will never have one seamless theory of the universe comprising the very smallest objects to the very largest. And certain middling-sized objects— human beings— will never understand the true nature of time and existence.

What makes the two versions of time so different? Time in the quantum realm has no remarkable properties at all. In theories of quantum mechanics, time is essentially taken for granted; it simply regularly ticks away in the background, just as it does in our own lives. Like a clock at a sporting event, it provides an invisible framework in which events unfold. That's not the case in Einstein's general theory of relativity.

To describe the universe on the largest scale, Einstein had to weave time and space together into the very fabric of the universe. As a result, in general relativity, there is no invisible framework, no clock ticking outside the universe against which to measure events. How could there be? Time and space joined together have weird consequences: Space and time curve around stars and other massive bodies and make light bend away from straight-line paths. Near black holes, time seems to slow down or even come to a full stop.

--Discover, From Here to Eternity

Time --on a craft 'surfing' the gravity waves of space-time --will have stopped. I have always liked the description of "gravity waves" --that they are ripples in the fabric of space-time. The above quoted and referenced sources lead to the inevitable conclusion that if a craft is built utilizing the interference patterns generated by dissimilar wave fronts, inter-stellar travel will be akin to surfing the universe.

Just as wave forms on an oscilloscope may be "tuned" to appear to move either forward or backward, a craft generating a "tuned" local field would be capable of moving forward, backward, up or down. If, as Einstein proposed, time is a fourth dimension, such a craft may be capable of moving freely in all four dimensions.

Also see: Truth, Time and 'Absolute Space'

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Texas Governor Blames 'God' for BP-Halliburton Screw Up

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Texas Governor Rick Perry claims that the BP-Halliburton oil spill is an act of God! An act of God? Since when did God buy shares in BP and Halliburton? Is Mr. Hair Club for Men trying to tell us that Dick Cheney is God?

He said: "From time to time there are going to be things that occur that are acts of God that cannot be prevented."

Later, explaining himself outside the Texas Capitol, Mr Perry said the phrase is a legal definition and his point was that "nobody knows what happened."

He said: "If you will go look up the definition of 'Act of God' we've used it in legal terms for a long time in this state. It may be an accident and it may be something else."

The Democratic group Lone Star Project accused the Republican Governor of "detached arrogance."

Spokesman Matt Angle said: "The families of those who died and the victims of the environmental damage deserve a full accounting for the human errors that caused the failure at the rig." The governor cautioned against stopping oil drilling because of the spill, and suggested others were speculating about what happened to further their political agenda.

He said: "I go back to the safety of those workers, the safety of our coast, but you balance that with the impact of a knee jerk reaction to stop all drilling."

--Texas Governor calls Louisiana oil spill 'act of God'

As Michael Linnerd, responding to my comments, put it:

Shifting blame onto someone who doesn't exist is close to the edge of insanity... mind you in Texas this what passes for intelligent, rational, thoughtful and technical evaluation of human and mechanical failure.

--Michael John Linnard

Perry's comments are expected in a state that can boast that it has beat out Mississippi for last place in high school graduations. This is the 'crowning achievement' of the GOP in Texas that it has failed to educate an entire generation or perhaps more! The GOP does not value education but for the rich who send their 'tax deductions' to trendy private schools. Their attitude is 'fuck public education!' Our attitude should be: fuck the GOP and kick their sorry asses out of office.

Is anyone surprised that with the rise of Mr Hair Club Perry and, before him, the Gawd fearin' Bush Jr that education in TX declined? As education declines, crime increases. The increase in crime has become, in the meantime, a windfall for the corporate run prison system, the so-called 'Prison Industrial Complex'. The Bush/Perry era has thus ensured that their corporate sponsors will always have a full dorm of convicted prisoners with which it will make a guaranteed profit. There is money to be made in warehousing the children who were --in fact --left behind, forgotten and betrayed!

Let's tell it like it is: these children were left behind because many, perhaps most, are black, others merely because their parents are poor and made poorer by incompetent right-wing, GOP bullshit economics and focus group tested 'theories', 'trickle-down' theory primarily.

After eight years of Bush, I have grown very, very weary of hearing about God. Bush, Perry and similar ilk have nothing of substance or interest to tell me or any intelligent person about God! Nothing that has ever been said about 'God' by anyone at anytime has been meaningful in anyway --least of all the idiot southern evangelists who insist upon pronouncing God as if it were two syllables: GAH - UHD!

If there were no God, mass murderers, perverts and liars would have to invent him. I wait in vain for that one day when some psychopath, like Bush, invokes 'God' [GAH-UHD] in defense of mass murder and wars of aggression and gets struck by a lightning bolt from on high!

If there were a God or had been a 'God' he would have tired of his name used to invoke a million atrocities, crimes and outrages and would have wiped the earth of the human race long ago. It may be the sad fate of Texas, however, that it is forever consigned to a 'last place' educational system. The current political establishment, controlled as it is by big oil, dare not educate the population. An informed, educated population would turn them out of office and deny the assholes their pensions.

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Death to 'Corporate Comrade' Halliburton

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Halliburton, for whom George W. Bush hijacked the US military to wage war and perp capital crimes against the people of Iraq, may be and should be subject to severe penalties, perhaps death, as a result of the 'personhood' granted them recently by the US 'Supreme' Court. If Halliburton is a 'person', then Halliburton must be charged with multitudinous crimes, tried, found guilty and 'put to death' but not before it is literally 'fined' out of existence for the monetary damages it has inflicted upon the world environment.

The oil well spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico didn't have a remote-control shut-off switch used in two other major oil-producing nations as last-resort protection against underwater spills.

The lack of the device, called an acoustic switch, could amplify concerns over the environmental impact of offshore drilling after the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig last week.

The accident has led to one of the largest ever oil spills in U.S. water and the loss of 11 lives. On Wednesday federal investigators said the disaster is now releasing 5,000 barrels of oil a day into the Gulf, up from original estimates of 1,000 barrels a day.

U.S. regulators don't mandate use of the remote-control device on offshore rigs, and the Deepwater Horizon, hired by oil giant BP PLC, didn't have one. With the remote control, a crew can attempt to trigger an underwater valve that shuts down the well even if the oil rig itself is damaged or evacuated.

The efficacy of the devices is unclear. Major offshore oil-well blowouts are rare, and it remained unclear Wednesday evening whether acoustic switches have ever been put to the test in a real-world accident. When wells do surge out of control, the primary shut-off systems almost always work. Remote control systems such as the acoustic switch, which have been tested in simulations, are intended as a last resort.

--Leaking Oil Well Lacked Safeguard Device

Let's clear up an important point at the outset. No corporation has an inherent 'right' to exist. Since their inception as 'Royal Charters', corporations have been and remain 'artificial creations' and, as such, have no rights whatsoever but the 'privileges' that are extended to them by the 'sovereign! In the U.S., the 'sovereign' is the 'people' collectively. SCOTUS is wrong. Corporations have no rights whatsoever!

I might not oppose 'corporate personhood' if corporations were held to the same laws as are 'real people'. But ---clearly ---they are not and never have been. No corporation committing murder has ever been put to death by electrocution, hanging or the current 'fashion': the lethal needle.

Either the law applies equally or it does not. If not then the resulting inequities are unjust and, by common law, render the inequitable laws moot! Ergo: if corporations are to be considered people, then, by law, they should be subject to the same penalties and sentences that are exacted of real people for the same crimes! Clearly --the Supreme Court had no such intention. Clearly --the Supreme Court had precisely the opposite outcome in mind. Clearly the high court ruled unjustly, not upon law but upon prejudices, their preference for the corporate position, corporate rule.

Moreover --the 'privileged' position presently enjoyed by corporations violates the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which guarantees 'Equal protection' under the law! In other words --no person (real or otherwise) is either exempted or singled-out. Justice applies equally or, by definition and the 14th amendment, it does not apply at all!
Halliburton's latest outrage lies just offshore in the Gulf of Mexico where due to indifference and/or incompetence, an oil spill threatens marine life throughout the gulf, the southern coast of the United States from Florida to Brownsville, TX, and the eastern coast of Mexico.

The leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico did not have a remote-control shut-off switch used in two other major oil-producing nations as last-resort protection against underwater spills, reports The Wall Street Journall.

The article, which is available today on the Journall's Web site, states that the lack of the device, called an acoustic switch, could amplify concerns over the environmental impact of offshore drilling after the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig last week.

Some 5,000 barrels a day are now estimated to be leaking from the well, Coast Guard officials said Wednesday night. Officials had been saying for days that it was 1,000 barrels a day.

The resulting slick on the Gulf surface is expected to touch the southern tip of Louisiana as early as Friday afternoon. If it hits Mississippi, it will likely do so over the weekend.

--Leaking oil well lacked safeguard device, reports Wall Street Journal

As a 'corporate person' Halliburton should be tried for crimes that when 'real' people commit them are charged, tried and when found guilty locked up or, in cases of murder, executed!

The US 'adventure' in Iraq was inspired and urged by Dick Cheney whose 'Energy Task Force' met to 'carve up the oil fields of the middle east'. As this 'war of aggression' had nothing whatsoever to do with 911, the attack violates US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441 which requires the death penalty.

TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 118 > §2441. War crimes (a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

The 'corporate person' Halliburton conspired to seize the oil fields of Iraq. The 'corporate person' Halliburton and Halliburton in the 'person' of Dick Cheney urged and/or advised the sitting President of the United States, George W. Bush, to order the attack and invasion; therefore: Halliburton must be charged with murder for each Iraqi death at the hands of any US soldier.

The 'corporate person' --Halliburton --resides in Texas where 'persons' convicted of murder are given the 'lethal needle'. For the many deaths resulting from Halliburton --now a person residing physically in Texas --I demand that the corporate person Halliburton be arrested, charged, tried and when found guilty of mass murder and war crimes in Iraq be given the 'lethal needle'.

That means the corporation cease and desist all corporate operations immediately upon being found guilty. That means that Halliburton cease to exist as a legal and/or business entity in any form whatsoever. It means that all contracts entered into are made null and void upon conviction except those Halliburton liabilities to be paid by the complete liquidation of all 'corporate' assets. It means that culpable, convicted decision makers be imprisoned on Texas death row until they can be executed for murder.Those those having guilty knowledge and benefiting most by the capital crimes committed by Halliburton are to be charged as co-conspirators or accessories and tried.

Now --about conspiracies. Don't even think about telling me that they do not exist. Secondly, if you don't think they exist, I suggest you visit Findlaw or the Cornell University Law Library online. You will find hundreds if not thousands of cases of 'conspiracy' case law. In fact, almost all crimes of any significance are conspiratorial. One person alone has difficulty robbing a convenience store. Who will drive the get-away car if not a co-conspirator? Conspiracies exist!

Dare we hope that the idiots on the high court outsmarted themselves? Dare we suppose that the right wing criminals in charge are fallen into their own trap? Dare we suspect that the gang of fascists, liars and criminals who have seized power in the United States have tripped themselves up?

Last year, Halliburton was implicated for its cementing work prior to a massive blowout off the coast of Australia, where a rig caught fire and spewed hundreds of thousands of gallons into the sea for ten weeks.

In that incident, workers apparently failed to properly pump cement into the well. That's according to Elmer Danenberger, former head of regulatory affairs for the US Minerals Management Service, who testified to an Australian commission probing that accident.

Giant oil-services provider Halliburton may be a primary suspect in the investigation into the oil rig explosion that has devastated the Gulf Coast, the Wall Street Journall reports.

Though the investigation into the explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon site is still in its early stages, drilling experts agree that blame probably lies with flaws in the "cementing" process -- that is, plugging holes in the pipeline seal by pumping cement into it from the rig. Halliburton was in charge of cementing for Deepwater Horizon.

"The initial likely cause of gas coming to the surface had something to do with the cement," said Robert MacKenzie, managing director of energy and natural resources at FBR Capital Markets and a former cementing engineer in the oil industry.

The problem could have been a faulty cement plug at the bottom of the well, he said. Another possibility would be that cement between the pipe and well walls didn't harden properly and allowed gas to pass through it.

The possibility of Halliburton's culpability was first reported Monday by HuffPost's Marcus Baram.

According to a lawsuit filed in federal court by Natalie Roshto, whose husband Shane, a deck floor hand, was thrown overboard by the force of the explosion and whose body has not yet been located, Halliburton is culpable for its actions prior to the incident.

--Halliburton May Be Culprit In Oil Rig Explosion

The war against the people of Iraq was fought for the benefit of Dick Cheney's Halliburton, the world's second largest oil field services corporation. Subsidiary KBR was given no bid contracts.

Do we all remember the Cheney Energy Task Force? That was at the beginning of the regime, when The Bush Grindhouse became an Energy Jamboree, so evil were the wheeling-and-dealing, so many hands were stained with the payola, that they went to court to suppress having any of the information of the meetings see the light of day

A few years later, we got a glimpse' Papers Detail Industry's Role in Cheney's Energy Report

In all, about 300 groups and individuals met with staff members of the energy task force, including a handful who saw Cheney himself, according to the list, which was compiled in the summer of 2001. For six years, those names have been a closely guarded secret, thanks to a fierce legal battle waged by the White House. Some names have leaked out over the years, but most have remained hidden because of a 2004 Supreme Court ruling that agreed that the administration's internal deliberations ought to be shielded from outside scrutiny.

--Cheney, Baby Cheney

Among many reasons to smash up the biggest corporations and deny them 'personhood' is this: urged by then V.P. Dick Cheney, Congress granted Halliburton a BIG LOOP HOLE excluding Halliburton from the Clean Water Drinking Act. This has placed Halliburton above the law. As a result, Halliburton may pollute the environment at will.

Yet, in 2005, at the urging of Vice President Dick Cheney, Congress created the so-called "Halliburton loophole" to the Clean Water Drinking Act (CWDA) to prevent the US Environmental Protection Agency from regulating this process, despite its demonstrated contamination of drinking water. (In 2001, Cheney's "energy task force" had touted the benefits of hydrofracking, while redacting references to human health hazards associated with hydrofracking; Halliburton, which was previously led by Cheney, reportedly earns $1.5 billion a year from its energy operations, which relies substantially on its hydrofracking business.)[4]

--Halliburton, Polluting the Environment, and the "Halliburton loophole"

As Congress placed Halliburton above the law, SCOTUS was busy turning mere legal abstractions into people, granting 'corporations, rights to include free speech. But should real persons pollute the waters --as Halliburton is licensed to do --the 'real person' would be arrested and prosecuted! 'Real persons' would be locked up! So --is Halliburton a real person or not? SCOTUS, and the co-conspirator Halliburton, want it both ways.

These exceptions have created and given official blessings to an unacceptable and utterly repugnant 'two-tiered' system of justice in which the business community may ravage the environment, cheat its customers, purchase the services of the government and the MIC for the purposes of looting foreign nations, seizing their natural resources, torturing their citizenry for daring to oppose our corporate aggressions! Revolutions have begun for much, much less. In a stroke, SCOTUS confirmed the fascist nature of the American 'state'.

The Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded last week was not outfitted with a safety device that might have prevented the massive oil spill now nearing the US Gulf Coast. The device, known as an acoustic switch, is a last-resort protection against underwater spills, and is required by regulators in Norway and Brazil. Unfortunately, the US has no such regulation for oil wells operating off of its shores.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, an acoustic switch is a remote control device that a crew can use in an attempt to trigger an underwater valve that shuts down a well that’s damaged. The switch is meant as a last resort, as the primary shut-off systems almost always work on wells when they are out of control. It can be triggered from a lifeboat if an oil platform has to be evacuated.

According to the Journal, U.S regulators did consider requiring the acoustic switch on offshore wells, but drilling companies resisted because of its cost, and questions about its effectiveness. To be fair, the switches have never been tested in real-world situations, only simulations. US regulators also maintain they are prone to causing unnecessary shutdowns.

Still, while US regulators and some oil producers have doubts about the acoustic switch, a spokesperson for Norway’s Petroleum Safety Authority told the Journal the switches have a good track record in the North Sea. In addition to mandates in Norway and Brazil, some oil producers, including Royal Dutch Shell PLC and France’s Total SA, sometimes use the device even when it’s not required, the Journal said.

Industry critics cite the lack of the device as a sign US drilling policy has been too lax, and say it shows the oil industry has too much say in what regulations are adopted here.

A spokesperson for the US Minerals Management Service told the Journall that the agency ultimately decided against requiring acoustic switches because it determined most rigs already had back-up systems of some kind.

BP, which leases the Deepwater Horizon rig from TransOcean Ltd, has had no success using such back-up systems to stem the oil leaking from that well. As a result, the well is now spilling as much as 5,000 barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico. The oil spill is moving closer to shore, and could hit the coast tomorrow. An environmental disaster of epic proportions may be in the offing.

--Could Additional Safety Device Have Prevented Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill?

This is utterly and without exception unacceptable in a 'free' society, a 'Democracy' as we were once told America was. Now --even the crassest liars seem embarrassed when they try to tell us that the United States is 'free', that it is a 'Democracy', that the government is subject, as are all of us, to the 'rule of law'! How utterly hollow those words seem now!

When a corporation commits a crime, nobody goes to jail. When wars come, they don’t fight, they simply rake in cash. When children are poisoned or workers are killed, they seldom even pay a fine. However, when they want something, billions in tax money for “bail outs” or fat contracts or special laws, they have always gotten it. It has been a battle to control corporations for 140 years. Sometimes the American people have lost, sometimes they have won. Our greatest presidents are the ones who reined in corporate power and kept the influence of money over humanity in check. Think of Theordore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy.

--Veterans's Today, Call for Immediate Arrest of 5 Supreme Court Justices

As Albert Speer said of Hitler's Third Reich, we must now say of the US government that it is built upon utterly 'meaningless platitudes'!

At the end of a revolution in which 'real people' require power to assert the 'sovereignty' that was stolen from them, it would be irresponsible of the provisional tribunal to let stand an idiotic decision of an incompetent, criminal 'supreme' court. At the end of a real revolution, the slate is wiped clean and no precedents written or influenced by Antonin Scalia, Roberts, Alito et al remain to pervert future generations.

There are no guarantees. Things will surely get worse, decisions more absurd, the economy more inequitable (if that's possible), futures even bleaker! That and more will happen before anything is or can be done. The entrenched power not only has all the money (or some 99.9999 percent of it) and all the guns. Kent State proved that --yes --civilians daring to exert their rightful power over 'their' government will be fired upon and killed. It is the price that the few have paid for the freedoms of the many.

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