No surprise that the bloated military budget was spared.

Tom Englehart discusses the military's profligate use of $400/gallon (and even $800/gallon) gasoline in the Middle East. It's a symptom of a much bigger problem:

So here’s a question at a moment when financial mania has Washington by the throat: How would you define the state of mind of our war-makers, who are carrying on as if trillion-dollar wars were an American birthright, as if the only sensible role for the United States was to eternally police the planet, and as if garrisoning U.S. troops, corporate mercenaries, and special operations forces in scores and scores of countries was the essence of life as it should be lived on this planet?
How many military bases does the United States have, by the way? Gloria Shur Bilchik of Occasional Planet does her best to provide an answer to this straight-forward question:
You can’t get a consistent answer from news stories, that’s for sure. Recent articles, media reports and op-eds peg the number variously at 460, 507, 560, 662 and more than 1,000 . . . According to the Department of Defense’s 2010 Base Structure Report, as of 2009, the US military maintained 662 foreign sites in 38 countries around the world. . . . the official US military tally underreports our presence by nearly 500 bases.
Why not cut the military budget at this time of purported austerity? It's about what you'd expect from a bunch of psychopathic leaders, people not like you and me, people who cease serving as representatives of the People soon after hitting Washington D.C. and getting high on a non-ending hit of campaign cash.

Continue ReadingNo surprise that the bloated military budget was spared.

Insider Trading Writ Large

Imagine, if you will, a country in which banking regulations were stripped down so far that worthless paper again becomes a hot commodity. Now consider that this had (as it inevitably must) blown up and caused a crash in the lending market and equities market and thus the economy in general. Further note that a necessary result would be a rapid rise in the price of precious metals, notably gold. After a couple of years, that gold bubble would be ripe. People who had assets remaining when the junk bonds or sub-prime mortgages or whatever collapsed could have conservatively moved their money into gold, further depressing the equities market and inflating the price of gold. But, wait. Because of government investing, the market was recovering too fast! So fast that the wealthy were unable to swap their inflated gold for depressed stocks at the optimum time. What to do? Congress to the rescue! The wholly owned carriers of the banners of freedom and independence could be employed to create a palpably unnecessary crisis with a distinct deadline. Yes! This would quickly depress the markets and allow those holding too much bubble-gold to buy depressed stocks. Meanwhile, those elected to carry the load of screwing the middle class could also jump on the wagon and buy up stocks just before the deadline hits. Then the price of stocks returns to normal levels, and the gold bubble can be allowed to pop. I, for one, would like to see the trading histories of all those involved in the current crisis, and their friends and kin.

Continue ReadingInsider Trading Writ Large

Greece as dress rehearsal for the U.S.?

Michael Hudson, author of a book titled Super Imperialism,  looks to the privatization of Greece as what we should expect in the United States.   In the meantime, the media keep examining the issue from the perspective of speculators rather than ordinary citizens, who are about to be crushed with debt that they did not cause.

Continue ReadingGreece as dress rehearsal for the U.S.?

Republican War on Christmas – Part II

There is a Republican War on Christmas. It is now being acted out as part of the debt ceiling negotiations in Washington, D.C. and has been going on for over a generation all over America. This is an expanded version of a previous post I wrote. The Republican War on Christmas started in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan. Mr. Reagan ran against a $1 trillion deficit in 1980. In 1980, we heard how many times a line of money of $1 trillion would go to and from the Moon. Mr. Reagan told us that if we cut taxes for corporations and the very rich and increased defense spending by $1.2 trillion, we could balance the budget and insure the future security of all Americans. Mr. Reagan didn’t really mean all Americans because the Republican definition of an “American” doesn’t include union members, the Middle Class, seniors, the disabled, pregnant women (if unmarried), minorities, students, the young, infants, the poor and the unborn (unless threatened by abortion but, thereafter left to thrive or die as the “free market” decides), widows or orphans. George H. W. Bush called Reagan’s economic plan “voodoo economics” and predicted massive deficits. Mr. Bush was right. But, that was Reagan and the Republicans’ plan. If America ran up massive national debt, future government spending would naturally have to be diminished in areas Republicans believed were “socialism” or “communism” like Medicare and Social Security. Please let’s not forget both Medicare and Social Security were and are still attacked by Republicans and Reagan and GW Bush as “socialism,” “socialistic,” communist” and other such tommyrot. See here, here and here.

Continue ReadingRepublican War on Christmas – Part II

One year ago, Wikileaks documents showed us why we must leave Afghanistan

But we're still in Afghanistan, for no good reason at all. Greg Mitchell of The Nation tells us what we should have learned and discussed about Afghanistan one year ago, in light of the Wikileaks release of classified U.S. documents regarding Afghanistan:

[The Wikileaks release] not only recounts 144 incidents in which coalition forces killed civilians over six years. But it shows just how deeply elements within the US’s supposed ally, Pakistan, have nurtured the Afghan insurgency. . . . The Guardian carried a tough editorial on its web site, calling the picture “disturbing” and raising doubts about ever winning this war, adding: “These war logs—written in the heat of engagement—show a conflict that is brutally messy, confused and immediate. It is in some contrast with the tidied-up and sanitized ‘public’ war, as glimpsed through official communiques as well as the necessarily limited snapshots of embedded reporting.”

Continue ReadingOne year ago, Wikileaks documents showed us why we must leave Afghanistan