Pretend Outrage

An article in the Nation magazine written by Jeremy Scahill states, “I would not say that the CIA has been taken over by the military, but I would say that the CIA has become more militarized,” Philip Giraldi, a retired career case officer, told The Nation. “A considerable part of the CIA budget is now no longer spying; it’s supporting paramilitaries who work closely with JSOC to kill terrorists, and to run the drone program.” the CIA, he added, “is a killing machine now.”

“Giraldi noted on the “long term consequence” of the militarization of the CIA: “every bureaucracy in the world is best at protecting itself. So once the CIA becomes a paramilitary organization, there’s going to be built in pressure to keep going in that direction. Because you’ll have people at senior levels in the organization who have come up that way and are protective of what they see as their turf,” he told me. “That’s the big danger.”

In light of this, was Libya a CIA operation? Is anyone asking this question? Does anyone care to know the answer? Obviously not, the issue is who said what and when. That’s the sad part; we do not know what our government is doing. James Madison said, “a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives”.

We are powerless, we lack the knowledge of what the CIA is really doing. If the deficit is so important, is anyone inquiring into how much this militarization of the CIA is costing tax payers? These are some of the questions the Republicans should be asking. But they’re not asking these questions because they’re too busy performing in the political theatre of ‘pretend outrage’ directed at Susan Rice.

To invest or not to invest

Mark T. Bertolini Chairman and CEO of Aetna, said, “future generations rely on us to spend our money wisely and invest for the future.”

Sherle R. Schwenninger director of the economic growth program at the New America Foundation writes in the Nation magazine, “Over the past two decades the private sector has done a questionable job of allocating capital, over-investing in the technology sector by more that $3 trillion in the 1990’s and then recycling global surpluses into an even larger housing and mortgage bubble in the early 2000’s, all the while neglecting pressing infrastructure needs. Today, the banking and financial sector is sitting on more than $2 trillion, largely content to “arbitrage” the difference between near 0 percent short-term rates and somewhat higher longer-term rates rather than make new loans and investments in the real economy.”

Insurance companies are very much a part of the financial sector, the very same ones sitting on that capital.

Martin Leffler Professor of American history at the University of Virginia writes in the Nation magazine, “In 1959, “a congressional committee estimated that about 85 percent of electronics research was funded by the government, much of which went to major corporations like IBM, Burroughs, Control Data and Sperry. At this time, the government was paying for two-thirds of all computer-related research and development.” Government spending helped to create these mammoth corporations, banks and the financial industry who now refuse to allocate capital into investments which create jobs.

If the government can’t invest and the financial and banking industries refuse to invest, who’s left to invest in job creation?

CEO Mark Bertolini said companies like his aren’t creating jobs because they’re too concerned over the fiscal cliff. Or maybe uncertainty over Obamacare or tax rates will keep them from creating jobs.

In 1947 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. said, “there is simply not enough wealth to go around.” “If there is to be no ceiling on the amount of money a man can take out of our economy, then concomitantly there can be no firm foundation below which a human being cannot sink.”

They aren’t creating any jobs because they don’t want to, they like it just the way it is, taking wealth out of the economy and keeping it rather than investing it. We haven’t yet seen how low humans are willing to sink to maintain that control.

Immutable truths of war

Before the Vietnam war started, a fact finding mission was sent there to see if the US should become militarily involved. The report came back, either bring all the US forces up to strength and go in all at once or stay out. We did neither, we committed a grave administrative error, which is why the war ended up like it did in Vietnam. Then, through media coerced by the Administration, the country blindly blamed it on the troops. The Vietnamese were friends by day but would kill the troops by night. They hated the US soldiers, and we still don’t understand these truths of war.

Failing to learn these lessons led to the US repeating it in Iraq and Afghanistan. Invasion and occupation on behalf of Big Oil will always bring hatred and killing, it cannot be changed.

Lost in the blame game in the deaths of four Americans in Libya, is this same immutable truth, friends by day, enemy by night.

As reported in the Washington Spectator, Dan Senor who spent 13 months in Iraq as “senior advisor“ to Paul Bremer and the failed CPA “left behind a great deal of damage, yet learned nothing from Iraq.” Senor is Romney’s Middle East expert. The Spectator continues; “In an alternate universe of some GOP elites, the CPA, which Iraqis dubbed “Cant’ Provide Anything, remains a nation-building model, a deep well of neocon wisdom”. “Even as he rails about Iran, he is never questioned about the Iraqi regime he and Bremmer helped put in place, an instant Iranian ally that is now accused of aiding Syria’s regime.”

According to the Nation magazine neighborhoods where Sunnis, Shiites and Christians lived together peacefully, are now segregated, people are walled off from one another and are divided up. Bet the Iraqis are friends by day and enemies by night.

A Romney win could mean this same Middle East neocon wisdom will prevail with Dan Senor as head of the highly secretive NSA.

Vietnam is ancient history, but that doesn’t mean the lessons we should have learned do not apply to this day. Will Dan Senor understand that continued global conquest for Big Oil brings friends by day and enemies by night?

Numbers, they don't add up

On the NewsHour, former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin said, “the top 5 percent pay the vast majority of income taxes, over 60 percent at this point.”

Candidate Romney said forty seven percent of the country pay no income taxes. Sixty percent and forty seven percent equals one hundred and seven percent.

If 47 percent pay no taxes, then that leaves 53 percent paying taxes. Sixty percent and fifty three percent equals 113 percent.

If it’s only the top five percent paying 60 percent, then does that mean the remaining 95 percent pay forty percent? So how does candidate Romney come up with 47 percent when it’s forty percent not paying their fair share?

If the percentages were true, we’d have an extra percentage being collected in taxes. These numbers don’t reconcile very well. Math doesn’t lie, but the Republicans do, they skew the statistics to score points.

Transference of Wealth

The sub prime mortgage scheme was one of the greatest transferences of wealth this country has ever seen. According to an AP article in the MWDN 9-23-2012-“Collapsing house prices destroyed $6.5 trillion worth of home equity - the biggest source of wealth for most families. More than 1 in 5 home-owners is stuck with a house worth less than the mortgage on it. Feeling poorer, families have limited their spending and paid down debts.”

Money doesn’t disappear, so where did the 16 $trillion go? There are those who will disregard the numbers, saying it wasn’t really there in the first place. If that‘s so, then it’s okay to make up numbers in home value? Doesn’t this mean the over inflated prices of homes were just made up numbers? If that’s he case, then reduce principal, it’s just a made up number anyway. Either that or that $16 trillion is sitting somewhere. Just where it’s sitting is the question. It’s sitting in the banks is where. Just because the house is worth less doesn’t mean a thing to the banks, it’s still owed to them and even though they caused the housing bubble and crashed it with the subprime mortgages, they say the numbers are real to them and they expect to get paid even though they’re the culprits who destroyed the value.

Seventy percent of the economy is consumer spending, and with trillions lost to consumers no wonder spending is down. Either the government does the spending or the people do the spending. Since neither one can, let’s leave it to the financial industry; now there’s signs hanging outside banks to refinance auto loans! According to NPR news, people are refinancing auto loans for up to seven years. The same thing that happened with mortgage loans will happen all over again with auto loans. We’ll wind up with Americans owing trillions in auto loans for something worth thousands less that what they paid for it. The banks will get their bail outs with the taxpayers footing the bill while more unsustainable debt will be strapped to the backs of unsuspecting citizens.

All aspects of life from cradle to grave are now swamped in debt; this is how trillions in consumer debt translates into “redistribution of wealth”, the very thing candidate Romney is against; Guess it must be okay when wealth is transferred from the citizens to the banks for the privilege of existing; but when anyone starts talking about leveling the playing field, well, then it’s redistribution of wealth from those who work to those who don’t. That’s not the real story, and it’s an intellectually weak and morally flawed defense on behalf of those who control that $16 trillion.

Taxing issues

If Romney ever gets in the White House, Grover Norquist’s dream of shrinking government down so he can drown it in a bath tub, will come true. A majority of Republicans have pledged their loyalty and devotion to an individual who holds the purse strings to their campaigns, in exchange for no new taxes on the obscenely wealthy.

Eric Alterman writes in the Nation magazine, “Romney’s tax proposals would mean those making $3 million annually will save $250,000” and Republicans call for “raising taxes on 20 million American families by eliminating the tax credits for the middle class, according to Seth Hanlon the director of fiscal reform at the Center for American Progress.”

So when Romney pledges not to raise taxes on anyone, he’s correct he won’t in theory “raise” taxes; he’ll just eliminate the credits that’ll help the poor and the middle class, essentially raising taxes for ordinary citizens.

Another misleading tax issue is the estate tax; initially enacted to prevent dynasties from forming with vast wealth accumulating in the hands of one family over decades. The US is supposed to be an equal society, the current frenzy over the “death tax” is propaganda peddled by the “money power” of mega conglomerates.

Alterman continues, “slashing taxes on the super wealthy means $9 trillion in lost revenue over the coming decade according to the Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center.” Which when translated means that a Romney-Ryan win would slash all government spending except defense. Candidate Romney pledges to increase defense spending to $2 trillion over the coming decade. We’ll have no government spending on social programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and all of those funds and our taxes will go instead to wars.

Quoting Alterman’s article Grover Norquist said “We just need a president who can sign legislation that the Republican House and Senate pass. We don’t need someone to think. We need someone with enough digits on one hand to hold a pen.”

Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged is coming to life, only the rich can save us… with austerity cuts. Yeah, right. Goodbye cruel world!

Retroactive

Just as the banks eliminated regulations which protected the American populace from their arrogance and greed, many corporations and companies have eliminated pension regulations which protect employees against ‘retroactive’ retirement losses. Maybe Ed Gillespie’s announcement that Mitt Romney ‘retroactively’ retired from Bain Capital isn’t all that odd in today’s politically charged and hostile business climate.

According to Ellen Shultz in “Retirement Heist”, “Under pension law, it’s illegal to retroactively cut someone’s pension. However, Cash balance plans provide a way around this prohibition…” “Cash balance accounts are complex. When companies switch to a cash balance account they essentially freeze the old pension, ending it’s growth. They then convert the frozen pension to a lump sum, which they call the “opening account balance”. The lump-sum amount doesn’t grow each year by multiplying years and pay, both of which would be growing, and thus generating the leveraged growth seen in a traditional pension.”

While millions of employees around the country are experiencing ‘retroactive’ pension losses, this new ‘retroactive’ descriptive adjective certainly gives pause for thought. What they’re doing is just getting the public used to the idea of ‘retroactive’ happenings of any kind, and the changing of the rules so those corporate sponsored changes in the rules enable them to benefit financially. Again, according to Ellen Schultz, “…accounting rules turned retiree benefits plans into cookie jars of potential earnings enhancements, and provided employers with the means to convert the trillion dollars in pension and retiree benefits into an immediate, dollar for dollar benefit for the company.”

Companies have been able to use the earnings of their employee’s pension plans for corporate gain and executive pay, hence we now have the “trillion dollar” under-funding of pension plans. the newest latest reality catch phrase circling in the news cycle is “looming liabilities” which is what the retirement account, now looted of it’s funds is called. But the corporate mouthpiece which from the media has one message: “blame the people” just don’t blame the companies…and their lobbyists…and your representatives…and your senators…and your judges who allowed these rules for under-funding to be created. The banks have already taken their savings, so if pension plans and Social Security are eliminated, how are retirees supposed to survive when they can no longer work?