How to End the National Debt

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One solution is to stop the war machine. At Boiling Frogs there’s a great recent post from Sibel Edmonds called “What National Debt? US Taxpayer Dollars Continue to Flow to the World’s Despots, Torturers & Human Target Practice Fields”. Among her findings:

Afghanistan gets around $7 Billion= $7,000,000,000. Now, don’t mistake this for our money spent on our war in Afghanistan. That’s in the trillions of dollars. That’s a separate deal. No, this money goes to Afghanistan’s government – known for being crooks, criminals, heroin dealers, and terrorist breeders. They take the money, and misplace it- so the money, some of it, ends up with the guys we are supposedly bombing and waging war against. Then we point at those guys and say, hey, you see these armed terrorists, and then we go bomb the hell out of them. They take the money and invest it in some highly lucrative poppy fields and heroin production, so that we can spend billions of dollars pretending to destroy those poppy fields and production centers.  And then we give more money to these government guys, so that we can go and bomb them some more, and target more poppy fields … and the cycle continues, and continues. Trust me, it makes sense …Not necessarily to you and me, but it makes lots of sense to our fat war-profiteers here at home. After all, who gives a damn if things make sense to the people-since when have they counted?

Of course Israel gets quite a lion’s share. That goes without saying. They get nearly $3 billion=$3,000,000,000, in military aid and another large sum as financial aid for …well, let’s put aside all the diplomacy and political correctness and call a duck a duck: They get all the military and foreign aid so that they can turn around and spend those dollars through their powerful network and lobby here, to make sure we are all screwed up in developing and implementing our foreign policy. Does that make sense? Just think about the billions of dollars, directly or indirectly, spent by the Israel lobby to form and control our foreign policy, aka war-war and more war. They get all those billions of dollars in foreign and military aid, come over here, get us into wars so that we go spend trillions of additional dollars in wars and screwing up the world … and ourselves… and then give Israel more in foreign and military aid. It doesn’t make sense, does it? Of course not, It’s not supposed to make sense, dude!

Egypt gets its $1 billion of our tax money for … for what? Thank God it’s been in the news lately so even the mass ignoramus population in our nation is able to have an idea: guns and bullets to kill political dissenters, tanks and tear gas to be used against civilians, helicopters to fire at civilians below … bring about a coup de tat, and then bring about another one …Okay, so that one we get. We know what they use our money and military equipment for. No brainer. As to why we would shower Egypt with all this money and military power? Why in the world do we end up giving all these dollars to the side that gets in via a coup, and to the side who takes out those who brought about the coup and gets in with its own coup … and another coup after that, and many dead … Why? Well, duh. It’s because that’s what we do. Since when has our government been in the business of providing reasons and justification to its people? Since when do they worry about having to make sense to their lowly people? Maybe, referring to the paragraph above, maybe it’s because of the billions of dollars we gave Israel, which came back here and were spent so that our government would put together this policy of giving billions of dollars to many different sides in Egypt – so that they would continue coups and butcher their people.

Pakistan gets more or less $1 Billion. They get military aid to make sure they create desirable conditions so that our military can send its drones out there and bomb the hell out of them every day. Makes sense. No? All right, try this: How else do we give these drones and our other killing machines a real-life test run? See! Like shooting ranges, our government needs to go out there, pick countries (and their inhabitants), and make them viable war-practice fields.  Call them Human Target Practice Fields. You haven’t heard?! Nothing like a real test drive. Of course these things ain’t free, so of course the money has to be spent, thus, our foreign aid to countries like Pakistan. Why is the price so high? Because Pakistan is dangerous, and it has nuclear weapons that we made sure they would get, and that makes Pakistan kinda expensive.

Those are just the largest recipients. For the complete list read the full article here: http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/10/08/what-national-debt-us-taxpayer-dollars-continue-to-flow-to-the-worlds-despots-torturers-human-target-practice-fields/#more-24922

Another way to end the national debt is to switch to government issued debt-free money. Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse Blog describes what the process might look like:

#1) The U.S. Congress votes to take back all of the functions that it has delegated to the Federal Reserve and begins to issue debt-free United States Notes.  These United States Notes would have the exact same value as existing Federal Reserve Notes, and over time all existing Federal Reserve Notes would be taken out of circulation.

#2) The U.S. Congress nationalizes all debt held by the Federal Reserve.  That would instantly reduce the national debt by 1.6 trillion dollars.  In fact, there are a few members of Congress that have already proposed this.

#3) A Constitutional amendment is passed limiting future U.S. government deficits to a reasonable percentage of GDP.  Any future deficits would not be funded by borrowing.  Rather, future deficits would be funded by newly created United States Notes.  Therefore, the federal government would never again accumulate another penny of debt.

And it would be important to inject new money into the economy from time to time.  When existing money is destroyed or when the population grows it is important to inject a certain amount of new money into the system in order to avoid deflation.

#4) The existing national debt would be very slowly paid off with newly created United States Notes.  The U.S. government spent over 454 billion dollars on interest on the national debt during fiscal year 2011, and over time this expense would go to zero.

If the national debt is paid off slowly enough, it would not create too much inflation.  I believe that it could be paid off gradually over 50 years without shocking the economy too much.

Read the full article here: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/debt-free-united-states-notes-were-once-issued-under-jfk-and-the-u-s-government-still-has-the-power-to-issue-debt-free-money

Such a solution may seem simple, but the obvious obstacle would be overcoming the immense political and economic influence of the central banks. The only U.S. presidents who challenged the central banking scheme were John F. Kennedy, James Garfield, Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson. Kennedy, Garfield and Lincoln were assassinated in office. Jackson would have been assassinated in an attempt in 1835 were it not for two guns miraculously misfiring. Jackson later famously stated:

The Bank is trying to kill me – but I will kill it!

…If the American people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system – there would be a revolution before morning.

Life Imitates “They Live”

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Melissa Melton of Truthstream Media recently posted a story about former wrestler and actor Roddy Piper going public about his Libertarian and pro-Second Amendment beliefs via twitter. Quoting from the tweets:

They can’t have my Guns! Nobody! If you try and take my Gun, I’d be all out of Bubble Gum!

[…]I need to clean something up! When I say you take my gun I’m all out of gum….I’M NOT TRYING TO BE FUNNY!! It’s a FREEDOM STATEMENT!

[…]They Live is a documentary!!

For those who haven’t seen the film They Live, this is the famous “bubblegum scene” Piper is referencing:

They Live is a cult classic sci-fi/action buddy film based on the short story Eight O’Clock in the Morning by Ray Faraday Nelson (who happened to be one of Philip K. Dick’s closest friends). Roddy Piper plays Nada, a drifter searching for work during a recession who accidentally stumbles across an alien plot to take over the world by programming the masses to obey and consume using subliminal messages. Widely considered one of director John Carpenter’s best and smartest films, it was also part of a late 80s sub-genre of films containing as a subtext sharp critiques of U.S. government policies and the Reagan administration in particular. Other films include Wes Craven’s “The People Under the Stairs”, Paul Verhoeven’s “Robocop” and Dan O’Bannon’s “Return of the Living Dead”.

Just this past May, John Carpenter did a Q&A for a 25th anniversary screening of They Live as part of The Hero Complex Film Festival in Los Angeles. He had this to say about the film:

By the end of the ’70s there was a backlash against everything in the ’60s, and that’s what the ’80s were, and Ronald Reagan became president, and Reagonomics came in,” Carpenter told the sold-out theater at the Chinese 6 Theatres in Hollywood. “So a lot of the ideals that I grew up with were under assault, and something called a yuppie came into existence, and they just wanted money. And so by the late ’80s, I’d had enough, and I decided I had to make a statement, as stupid and banal as it is, but I made one, and that’s ‘They Live.’ … I just love that it was giving the finger to Reagan when nobody else would.

Read the full article here: http://herocomplex.latimes.com/movies/john-carpenter-they-live-was-about-giving-the-finger-to-reagan/#/0

Unfortunately, since the release of They Live, the state of the union has regressed to the point where the systemic criminality of the Reagan era seems mild and quaint in comparison. In certain ways, They Live does seem like a documentary because it contains images and ideas straight out of the headlines. Scenes of the protagonists’ tent city being bulldozed look exactly like the destruction of Occupy Movement encampments and forced closures of tent cities for the homeless across the country. Images of the aliens’ secret surveillance drones are prescient as well.

Melton’s Truthstream Media post also included this analysis of subliminal messages eerily reminiscent of They Live embedded in an old video clip used as nightly “sign-offs” for national television networks:

Read the full post here: http://truthstreammedia.com/?p=6717

Podcast News Updates

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There’s been another string of relevant news podcasts in the past few days so it’s time for another roundup post.

Last week Rob Kall of OpEdnews.cominterviewed Peter Ludlow a professor of linguistics and philosophy, on topics including systemic evil, whistleblowers and hacktivism:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/rob-kall-bottom-up-radio-show/id359765013

On Friday, Abby Martin of Breaking the Set did an excellent job deconstructing the corporatocracy on Coast to Coast AM with John Wells:

http://www.mediaroots.org/abby-martin-deconstructs-the-corporatocracy-on-coast-to-coast-am/

On Monday Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report covered a wide range of important topics including an update on the corporate plan for Detroit (an American apartheid), the struggle to raise the minimum wage in Seattle, and Dave Swanson’s (of WarIsACrime.org) analysis of the multitude of lies in Obama’s recent UN speech : Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of 9/30/13.

From Traces of Reality there were two great consecutive shows. On 9/30 host Guillermo Jimenez interviewed Kevin Gallagher, director of Free Barrett Brown.  Brown is the journalist who faces a 105 year sentence, the bulk of which is related to charges associated with pasting a link in a chat room. On the 10/1 episode, Guillermo is joined by Vice President of The Future of Freedom Foundation, Sheldon Richman. They cover topics including the “government shutdown”, the national debt, taxation, private property, the “social contract,” and the fallacy of the “consent of the governed.”:

9/30

10/1

Government Shutdown: Hate the Players, Hate the Game

Today marks the first day of the latest government shutdown due to failure of the House and Senate to agree on a spending bill. The main point of contention was Obamacare, which Republicans fought to repeal or delay. This conflict can be seen as a symptom of political polarization which, as multiple studies have shown, increases as economic inequality increases. This might seem counter-intuitive to those aware of how both parties receive money from the same corporations. Still, they get paid varying amounts from different corporations and they need to at least appear to be responsive to needs of constituents. Differences between the majority of Democrat and Republican representatives are analogous to differences between neoliberals and neoconservatives. There’s subtle differences in approach and emphasis but both ultimately serve the corporate-security state.

Many will blame the shutdown on Republicans who oppose Obamacare, but will it really increase access to affordable healthcare? It may have been better to delay implementation in order to work out glitches in the bureaucracy and computer systems. Obamacare has already had the unfortunate side-effect of businesses replacing full-time positions with part-time positions, and without any controls over the rising cost of premiums we should expect to see further rate increases. There may be minor improvements but far less than what would have been provided through single-payer and public option alternatives. If we had a Medicare-for-all system as Green Party candidate Jill Stein proposed, we’d have a system people already support providing comprehensive coverage with far less bureaucratic waste and at a fraction of the cost.

One of the many sickening aspects of the government shutdown is that government agencies that truly need to be shutdown, like the NSA, CIA, FBI, DEA, etc., remain essentially untouched. What will be shutdown or reduced are services related to health, work safety, food assistance, housing, education, parks and museums, regulatory agencies, and labor. Once again, money junkies in power have demonstrated their incompetence at doing things they care little about (ie. providing jobs and services that actually help poor and working class people). However, they have proven to be extremely good at funneling more money to themselves and their cronies while consolidating power. On the surface, the shutdown may appear self-defeating, but both parties can benefit by blaming the other side and can more easily push through questionable legislation in an atmosphere of crisis. Just like the sequestration last Spring, it’s a form of austerity which benefits big banks while screwing over average citizens.

American Apartheid Starts in Detroit

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A recent op-ed from Glen Ford, executive editor of Black Agenda Report, describes the situation in Detroit as the nexus of a new American apartheid in which inhabitants of largely Black urban centers are denied meaningful votes and ability to defend collective and individual property from the wealthy elite. In reaction to this alarming trend, on October 5 and 6, the International People’s Assembly will hold a conference, Against Banks and Against Austerity, in Detroit. Ford describes the goals of the conference in greater detail in this excerpt:

The International Peoples Assembly conference demands that the so-called debt to the banks be canceled – not just for Detroit, which supposedly owes Wall Street $22 billion, but for cities, school systems, states and countries around the world that have been purposely made into debt slaves for the rich. Workers pensions and jobs, and the vital services they provide to the community, must be guaranteed. This is a critical demand, since the emergency management regime in Pontiac, Michigan, has stripped the municipal workforce down to only 20 people for a city of 60,000. The unemployed must be put back to work repairing the damage inflicted on Detroit by the bankers’ foreclosure and disinvestment policies. Public education, which is rapidly being privatized, must be restored to the public sphere and fully funded.

Read the full article here: http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/detroit-nexus-new-american-apartheid

For those not familiar with the “emergency management regime” Ford referenced, it has been a topic of intense debate in Michigan for at least the past couple of years. The so-called emergency management legislation first introduced in 2011, was supposedly designed to help local government survive financial crises but also removed all powers from democratically elected officials and transferred governing power, including the power to make local laws, to appointed emergency managers (who are not required to obey local laws such as city charters or ordinances). Though the law was voted down by Michigan voters, a revised version was passed in December of 2012 during a lame duck session.

More details about Michigan’s “emergency manager” law here:

http://sugarlaw.org/projects/democracy-emergency/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-alexander-bullock/detroit-elections_b_1442049.html

This past September 11th, citizens of Detroit experienced a harmful consequence of the emergency management powers when the city lost power during a heat wave that week. As described by Randa Morris at Addicting Info.:

In the city of Detroit, power outages left people stranded in elevators, trapped four hours in the blistering heat. Hundreds were evacuated from buildings in the downtown area, traffic lights did not function, public transportation was disabled and 1,400 sites across the city were without power. Wayne State University and other key buildings still remained closed, the following day. All of this after the city’s power supply supposedly failed.

…The problem is that the city’s power supply never failed.

On September 12th, 2013, Bill Nowling casually stated that the city’s power outages were intentional. Officials and citizens working in the city were given no warning before the electricity was cut off. Law enforcement officials working in the Hall of Justice had no time to prepare. Senior citizens and disabled citizens using elevators in the city’s downtown district had no way to know what was coming. The entire criminal justice system was shut down without notice. Wayne State University Campus was just one of many sites evacuated under emergency conditions. Traffic lights across the city stopped working. 1,400 public and private locations were left without power. And the entire thing was intentional, to “send a message” to the people of Detroit. Bill Nowling works in the office of Kevyn Orr, Detroit’s Emergency Manager.

Read the full story here: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/09/14/detroit-blackout/

So this unannounced power shutdown which endangered the health and safety of an entire city can be attributed to a single individual only accountable to Governor Rick Snyder, who appointed him as Emergency Manager in March. And what are Kevyn Orr’s credentials? He was the lead attorney who collected over a million dollars representing Chrysler during its bankruptcy proceedings in 2009. Private emails uncovered by labor activist Robert Davis indicate that Orr stood to make millions more in legal fees by facilitating Detroit’s bankruptcy which was filed on July 18, 2013. Orr has also been behind efforts to privatize Detroit’s energy grid according to this WSWS.org article by Khara Sikhan:

The Detroit Public Lighting Department (DPLD), has been systematically defunded for decades, and Democratic Mayor Dave Bing proposed to fully privatize the lighting department in 2012.

In mid-August, Kevyn Orr fired DPLD director Richard Tenney as part of his plan to restructure the city government. Orr announced in June that the city would sell off the public lighting grid to DTE Energy, in line with Bing’s proposal.

The drive to privatize the city’s lighting department, far from benefiting the city’s residents, would be only another means of extracting profit from the city.

Read the full article here: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/09/14/powe-s14.html?view=print

No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is always economic. – A.J.P. Taylor

With so much attention on arguments for and against a potential World War 3, it’s almost easy to forget about economic problems though the issues overlap. To remind us (if we did need reminding), a number of great articles have come out recently.

Two headlines at OpEd News explain how economic pressures play a part in mass opposition against the war and reasons why even without another war, America is headed towards a greater financial crisis.

Though corporate media tells us we’re in an economic recovery, the truth is it’s a recovery for the rich, a recession for the rest.

A new UC Berkeley report documents the growing gulf between the rich and poor in the U.S. since 2009, while on a global scale a new “superclass” has emerged who are 94% male, white, and connected to financial corporations, governments, and the military, as reported in this expose on the Financial Core of the Transnational Capitalist Class.

On related notes, ever wonder how much money missile strikes cost and how many CEOs were prosecuted for their role in the financial crisis? The answers will tell you something about the priorities of the U.S. government.

Greg Palast article about the “End-Game” memo: http://www.gregpalast.com/larry-summers-and-the-secret-end-game-memo/