Saturday, May 22, 2010

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.

...

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]

...

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.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

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'!

Sunday, May 16, 2010

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 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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