Undue Influence

Political contenders, tea partiers and free market enthusiasts are echoing what a banker said in the 1939 movie “Stagecoach”. The banker complained that the government wanted to examine his books and said rather than examine his books the government should reduce the deficit and cut taxes.

Back then, at least the government had the guts to examine the books of the banks; now, we have stress tests administered by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, a loyal friend to the banks. The results were predictable, they all passed with flying colors and are on sound footing.

What they should be examining is how the banks hijacked our economy by creating this new financial industry engineered by Wall Street and founded on sub prime loans. Mathematical wizards devised complex equations to over value our homes, then transferred the trillions in these over valuations into the hands of the few mega banks. (Which we have due to the banking deregulation of the seventies, which led to the public bail out of the Savings and Loans in the ‘80’s which then led to banks too big to fail, and another tax payer bailout).

The government has been cutting taxes on the wealthy for decades, and we see where it’s gotten us; trillion dollar deficits. According to Robert Reich, the government “halved the top income tax rate from the range of 70 to 90 percent to 25 to 39 percent; allowed many of the nation‘s rich to treat their income as capital gains subject to no more than 15 percent tax; and shrank inheritance taxes that affected only the topmost 1.5 percent.” Imagine, paying only 15 percent on profits made in the government sanctioned and bank hidden derivatives market, while the pay of common workers is reported to the government and taxed at over 30 percent.

Anyone who is against keeping the Bush tax cuts is called a socialist. Yet while the sub prime loan market was exploding, bankers were denying reality by insisting prices of houses would never come down, or if they did, they wouldn’t come down across the country all at once. Contrary to their idealistic free market beliefs, housing prices did fall and when they did it brought us this ongoing Recession.

We need a return to the realism of Marriner Eccles, former federal reserve Chairman from 1934 to 1948, who said in the 1920’s, that people with the concentrated wealth had “great economic power” and “ had an undue influence in the making of the rules of the economic game.”

This concentrated wealth and the “undue influence” it buys, caused the Great Depression. Concentrated wealth and its “undue influence” has once again caused financial catastrophe for many Americans. And just like the first time, it will be years before we get out of it.

Reforming the Entitlement Mentality

Tea Party candidates say we need entitlement reform. We need reform alright, but sadly, there isn’t much agreement on which ones should be addressed.

For instance, banks are now entitled to be bailed out. In March 2009 Paul Volcker said, “What all this amounts to is an unintended and unanticipated extension of the official “safety net”…the obvious danger is that with the passage of time, risk-taking will be encouraged and efforts at prudential restraint will be resisted. Ultimately, the possibility of further crises-even greater crises-will increase.”

There’s not much Tea Party coverage of this entitlement danger, but when it’s a social safety net like Social Security, that’s an entitlement they say we just can’t afford.

In 2009, after the tax payer bailed them out, Goldman Sachs set aside 14 billion in bonuses for their employees, which works out to 750,000 per employee. Not only are they entitled to tax payer bonuses, the banks don’t even think they should pay taxes on any of it.

In his review on the book Casualty Gap, about poorer and less educated citizens being more likely to die in America’s wars, former West Point instructor Andrew Bacevich, said, “…the powerful are determined to preserve arrangements that serve their own interests. Those who enjoy these privileges and the politicians who do their bidding-are determined to retain them.” And “…for the rich and well connected, inequality translates into privilege“. Isn’t privileged synonymous with entitled?

When it comes to this year’s campaigning, the heated rhetoric insists it’s Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid bankrupting the country, not a word about the trillions in entitlements we’re giving to Wall Street bankers and war machines.

Dislike for one another is gaining momentum, and it’s being used as a political platform for the privileged to maintain their entitlements, while the rest of us lose entitlements, like dignity in old age.

Net Control

The age of hypocrisy is alive and well. On the issue of net neutrality, Tea Party idealist Ben Cunningham of the Tennessee Tax Revolt said:
“it’s ideological: individual decisions freely made by consumers and vendors will provide the best regulation of the internet. Letting the FTC set rules will only bring out armies of lobbyists seeking to influence policy.”

This is the same hands off policy the government had towards the banks, which brought us the worldwide recession. Federal oversight and regulation of banks was bad, we were told, the markets could regulate themselves said Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan.

After the damage was done and the market crashed, the former Fed champion of deregulation admitted he had been mistaken in thinking markets could or would regulate themselves. Only a banker has the luxury of twenty-twenty hindsight without any repercussions.

And, as if on cue, here’s a supposed grass roots enthusiast telling us we should repeat the same mistake with giant Telecommunication companies.

Without rules, a few corporations will gain too much power, and in turn will control information on the web. If one wanted to look up the impact of the BP oil disaster, would it lead to a corporate propaganda site, or would it lead to a local site showing the devastation up close and personal?

If we don’t protect net neutrality, we’ll end up with covert corporate control as opposed to the overt type of control like we see in communist China.

At this very moment “armies of lobbyists” are working against net neutrality and “seeking to influence policy”. We are a nation of laws for a reason, under the right circumstances and combined with governmental hands off policies, human nature cannot and will not regulate itself. This is a truism even a former banker now admits.

We've been Warned

There is much uproar currently in the news over the president’s religion. Believe it or not, there was actually a time in this country when it was considered rude and socially unacceptable to ask which religion someone belonged to. That information is your personal business and nobody else’s.

Thomas Jefferson said “Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to our God alone. I inquire after no man's, and trouble none with mine; nor is it given to us in this life to know whether yours or mine, our friend’s or our foe's, are exactly the right“.

Not so today where too many bombard us with their brand of religion, like Glenn Beck, who said during his speech on the Washington Mall “it’s not about politics, it’s about God.” Glenn Beck started out as a radio stunt man. Now he’s continuing his antics by using religion as a prop to convince the easily swayed citizen that Glenn’s a ‘shepherd of the people‘, all in his zealous pursuit to merge his brand of religion with politics.

James Madison reminded us what happens when religious and civil power were entwined “What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution”. Madison knew that one day the country would confront “the danger of a direct mixture of religion and civil government.”

That day is now here. The corporations are the leaders, the journalists and politicians are their minions, and the rest of us are the sheep being fleeced by false gods in the name of salvation. It's so ironic that the Founding Fathers predicted this and warned us all, long ago, of the extreme danger of mixing politics with religion.

Deficits Matter Sometimes

When this president was on the campaign trail, he said he’d get rid of President Bush’s tax cuts for the rich. Then after Obama won the election that promise turned into well, he’d wait and let them expire.

Now expiration time has arrived, and the Republicans are calling to make them permanent, but when a jobs bill comes up for a vote, the Republicans block it because they’re worried about the deficit. Deficits in federal and state governments have been gaining momentum because the federal government has steadily decreased taxes on the monied minority, ever since Reagan was President.

According to Robert Reich former Secretary of Labor, “the rich have been getting a larger and larger portion of total income. From 9 percent in 1980, the top 1 percent’s take increased to 23.5 percent by 2007.”

A hedge fund manager making a billion a year pays less in taxes than his secretary does, whose income is taxed at a higher rate than the billionaire’s 17 percent .

Another component in the Bush tax cuts is the estate tax, created to keep dynasties from forming by passing a family’s wealth from one generation to the next. If the Bush tax cuts are made permanent, the estate tax (inheritance tax) will be repealed.

People were up in arms when Senator John Kerry and Congressman Charlie Rangel failed to pay taxes on property they own. If the tax cuts are made permanent, this means family members of John Kerry or Charlie Rangel stand to inherit millions of dollars in property with none of them paying any taxes on it, ever. Meanwhile, ordinary Americans have paid tax on any property they’ve inherited.

The monied minority assaults us with Orwellian double speak, turning the estate tax into the “death tax”, and it’s working as many Americans agree with this double speak. Even if they don’t understand the truth about it they are against the estate tax. The super-rich own the propaganda machines, the politicians and the media.

Former Vice president Dick Cheney said President Reagan proved deficits don’t matter, when it suited the republican cause. Now, because Democrats added to the deficit, they suddenly matter. Why weren’t they important during the Bush years, when he was tilting the odds in the favor of his friends, the monied minority, with tax cuts?

Islam's Inflammatory Issue

The inflammatory issue of the day is the building of the mosque at “Ground Zero”.

When the banks stole our money it was free market capitalism. Private property owners rent space for a mosque, it’s not free market capitalism anymore, now it’s a matter of public concern, and it‘s up to the public to decide.

Try convincing the public to recoup our money from the banks, try bringing that up to a public vote, ha, that’ll never happen. Unfortunately, because ‘secrecy’ is our government’s ally when it comes down to political crooks; thieves and it‘s agenda, there’s not too much behind the scene news coverage on the banks or the war in Afghanistan, but there’s plenty of coverage over a mosque.

It just seems funny that this mosque is in the forefront, especially when public support for the war in Afghanistan is waning.

Rather than concentrate on ending this obscenely immoral war, the public attention is diverted to a debate on religion, specifically Islam, when the real issue of concern should be the fact that Afghanistan’s government is rotten to the core; starting at the bottom and going all the way to the top, and we‘re giving them billions.

Where’s the incensed public debate on the continued squandering of American tax dollars and patriotic lives for a corrupt government? There isn’t any, and yet everyone in the country has an opinion on the mosque.

Bring back the draft and everyone will have an opinion on the “war” in Afghanistan and voila, it’ll be a public concern, and it‘ll quickly be over, then the mosque will be a distant memory.

Transporting Murder

Thomas Jefferson said “Educate and inform the whole mass of the people…They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.”

WikiLeaks shows us how little information we’re receiving about Afghanistan. The administration doesn’t want us to know what is going on, which is reminiscent of the deceit; payoffs, contractor scamming and theft during Vietnam.

The Pentagon Papers proved that what the government knew about Vietnam, and what they were telling the American public was a whole different story. Now this administration and even journalists are calling for WikiLeaks to shut up.

Where are the journalists covering the transportation schemes; which are costing the tax payers billions to pay off Taliban war lords to transport supplies to the US troops?

Bordering Afghanistan, the government in Kyrgyzstan was overthrown and a new government was threatening to shut down a key supply base or change the terms of the lease. The US has negotiated a one year lease, so now the new ruling is that crooks can extort even more money from us. Meanwhile, the crook who was overthrown, fled the country with billions we paid him to lease the base.

Because of WikiLeaks info, when asked if the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI, is helping the Taliban, the head of the ISI replied “that’s absurd”, then followed with the statement “the world hates America for what they’ve done“. We’re paying the Pakistanis to help us in this “war on terror” and they hate us.

A marine reservist who served in Afghanistan said the batteries in the IED’s (implemented explosive devices) go dead and have to be replaced. Logic dictates it is the Afghani ‘civilians’ who are resetting the IED’s, which means we are fighting the Afghani population just like the US fought the Vietnamese people, many who were friendly to US soldiers by day for pay, but at night would don the black pajamas and were VC. The Afghanis hate us ‘occupiers’ like the Vietnamese hated us being there. They just want our money.

Just like Vietnam and once again, we have to ask ourselves, why are brave Americans dying for people who hate us, and why is the government lying about it?