A constant refrain repeated by some presidential candidates is to drill for oil in the USA to "generate jobs" and make us "energy independent". I’m paraphrasing here, but this is the essence of the politician's blather: “We have plenty of oil down there! Just get the EPA off our backs and we can be energy independent--and create jobs as well.”
My take on this is that the effort would not be worth the few additional years of wasteful oil consumption we would generate and the jobs produced would be mostly related to the massive environmental clean-up we would need after such an extensive program of national exploitation.
The truth is we once did have plenty of oil down there, but we have used much of it up. One of our problems is the way we use this scarce resource. Our oil consumption is the highest in the world. We got used to the idea that oil was cheap and fell in to wasteful practices. We waste oil driving oversized cars and living in McMansion-style houses. Wastefulness and a steady increase in consumption ate into those reserves which were slowly depleted. US production of domestic oil peaked in 1970 at about 10 million barrels per day (MBD) a rate at about what Russia, today’s top producer is pumping now. About that time (1970s) our wasteful, profligate usage first outstripped our domestic production and we had to begin importing oil. But importing oil did not change the way we used this commodity. At the present time we import more than half of the oil we produce.
According to the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Agency (EIA) today the US consumes 18.8 million barrels of oil a day (18.8 MBD). That is a staggering figure. To get an impression of how much oil that represents, we might imagine aligning that number of oil drums end-to-end (the drums are a standard 35” or 89 cm high) over the Earth’s surface. Were we to begin at the North Pole, the barrels would form a continuous line @10,400 miles long, stretching from the Pole to a point beyond the very tip of South America at Tierra del Fuego! [After the recent BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill which spewed a massive 460,000 barrels of oil into Gulf waters to become the nation’s worst environmental disaster after the Great Dust Bowl of the 1930s my readers should have a good image of what great volumes of oil looks like. But it is worth mentioning that the total spill-volume of that disaster, even now continuing to show up all over the Gulf, was only a bit more than 2% of what we use each day! To carry on my illustration from above, the Gulf oil spill represented by lined up barrels would stretch only over a measly 254 miles.]
One reason we use and waste so much oil here in the US is that it continues to remain relatively cheap. Yes! It is hard to believe, but by world standards our oil prices are much lower than other industrialized nations. For example, gasoline prices in the UK (at more than $8 dollars a gallon) are more than double what we pay here. One reason for the lower price is that the USA still remains one of the major producers with about 5-6 MBD of actual crude oil pumped each day. In comparison Russia pumps the most oil (9.9 MBD) and Saudi Arabia is second (@ 9.7 MBD). (You may note that some reports show that the US is producing about 9.1 MBD but that difference, from what I quote here, is the result of adding in liquefied natural gas to the totals. Since we are concerned here with only crude oil, I have used only figures, which represent that commodity.) Since the US is a significant producer of oil, our prices can remain lower and our UK friends and relatives who must pay more. But even with our domestic production (of either 6MBD or 9.1MBD) we have a daily shortfall of some 9-12(or more) MBD which must be made up by importing many, many barrels of expensive oil that accrues to our national debt, compounds our deficit, and adds to our unbalanced balance of payments.
As noted above, using nearly 19 MBD we are the world's greatest consumer of oil and as such we use more than the next three “highest usage” nations combined. Our main top competitors for this questionable accolade are China, (which consumes less than half of what we use or 8 MBD), Japan, (uses 4 MBD), and India, (3MBD). As is plain from these figures, there must be something amiss with our consumption practices when we as a nation of 314 million inhabitants use more oil than the three next greatest consumer-nations with a total population of more than 2.6 billion (for this I estimate China at 1.3 billion, India at 1.2 billion and Japan at 127 million). Our excessive consumption is plainly a function of wasteful practices. Since we produce only about 6 MBD of crude, we have a shortfall to the tune of more than 12MBD which is made up by importing from foreign producers. Thus a probable first answer for those who suggest we attempt to meet our oil needs by "drill baby drill" should be: "Hold on! Perhaps we should first become a bit more efficient in our use of this increasingly scarce and expensive commodity before we begin exploiting our last reserves."
But what about the politician's claims suggesting we can actually find enough oil right here at home (and their statements always imply that these new underground resources would be sustainable over a long time), only if we were to simply get the EPA off the oil companies' backs and let them drill anywhere in the USA?
Let’s evaluate that claim.
Best estimates of how much oil remains underground are just that, “estimates” but geologists have available a great deal of oil-well yield-data from intensively studied places such as parts of Texas and California. With these they can generate reasonable figures of how much oil might be recovered from similar underground reservoirs in other places.
The US Department of the Interior (USDI) estimates the total volume of undiscovered and technically recoverable oil (our proven reserves) in the United States at about 21 billion barrels of oil. That may seem like a great deal until you compare it to our usage of nearly 19 million bbl per day. In one year the USA consumes (19MBD x 364.25 days = 6,921 million barrels a year) or 6.9 billion barrels per year) nearly seven (7) billion barrels per year (7 BBY). Thus, were we to extract all of our proven reserves, it would net us only (21/7=3) or about three (3) years of consumption at our present rate of use.
Furthermore, were we to attempt to extract oil from every possible underground nook and cranny in the nation, (places that would include many environmentally, culturally, and aesthetically sensitive areas such as the nation's outer continental shelves, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWAR) and the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska) we might be able to produce as much as 134 billion barrels of additional petroleum. Thus, were we actually able to glean 134 billion barrels of oil, how long would it last us? Dividing that number by our annual use of seven billion barrels (134/7=19.1) we see that we would have only about nineteen (19) years of consumption at present rates of use...if we were actually able to realize that goal and mop up the last remaining drop of oil on our home continent. It is worth emphasizing that these sources are not "proven" and we might drill many dry holes. Furthermore, the extraction and transportation costs of such an effort (particularly in the Arctic) would be monstrous and the environmental impact staggering. Imagine many tragic events like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, multiplied many times over. A calculation of the cost-to-benefit analysis of such a proposition indicates only modest returns for gargantuan effort. Were we to actually unearth that volume of oil, it would provide us with less than two decades of present-style use. So after perhaps a twenty-three year period of present level use, we would have arrived at a point of total dependency on foreign resources. The costs of extraction would have been considerable, we would have depleted our means of modulating the domestic price of oil, and we would be left with a nation of despoiled and devalued shorelines, scarified landscapes, disturbed natural areas, and nature reserves bereft of life. Drill baby drill would have made some of us very rich, and permitted the rest of us to continue to drive over sized vehicles, but perhaps where would we want to go?
On the other hand were we to preserve these resources and use them wisely over the coming decades they would continue to serve us well. Perhaps in the face of some future existential threat to the USA they would be there for our nation's essential needs. But to drill them dry today for no good reason is a mistake. Those oil reserves should remain in the ground for some future, wise and careful use. So the answer to “drill baby drill” should be: NO! The oil remaining in those difficult to access, ecologically sensitive and far away places should be kept as a reserve. To exploit them now is not a sensible or well thought use of a scarce resource, particularly given our present consumption rate. Let’s keep those Alaskan, Continental shelf, and ANWAR reserves underground until we really need them. Instead of mindless exploitation, let us focus on wise conservation of oil, we can do much more with the resources we have--extending the use out many decades, were we to institute only modest conservation practices now. Perhaps our motto for this endeavor should be: "Conserve baby conserve"!
In another blog I will discuss the proposed extraction of oil from tar sands and so-called oil-shale which are even more fraught with peril. Both extraction processes use great quantities of heat and fresh water to extract the oil the contain.
Get the picture!
Monday, October 17, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
US Exceptionalism
Exceptionalism or plain old 19th century Jingoism?
Steel states: that American exceptionalism is based on “the use of individual initiative as the engine of development within a society that strives to ensure individual freedom through the rule of law.”
American exceptionalism is, among other things, the result of a difficult rigor: the use of individual initiative as the engine of development within a society that strives to ensure individual freedom through the rule of law. Over time a society like this will become great. This is how—despite all our flagrant shortcomings and self-betrayals—America evolved into an exceptional nation.
What is it?
Conservative jounalist Shelby Steele (WSJ Opinion Sept 1 2011) describes American exceptionalism as “the use of individual initiative as the engine of development within a society that strives to ensure individual freedom through the rule of law.” Individual initiative…individual freedom, rule of law..if only that were true. All that “individual initiative” and “freedom” is unfortuneately not freely available to all in this nation, but for those whose wealthy predecessors paved the way for them. So it’s not a bad theory to hold on to—if no one looks too carefully at who steadied the ladder for you, while you climbed the rungs. Most Americans and others free of social psychology’s fundamental attribution error would not agree..seeing the exceptional status of America more as “a bargain with the devil—an indulgence in militarism, racism, sexism, corporate greed, and environmental disregard as the means to a broad economic, military, and even cultural supremacy in the world” (op. cit) . Frankly, to my ears, that sounds like what Mrs. Greenburg, my former social-science teacher in New Utrecht High, would have called “jingoism” We don’t hear much of that anymore. I wonder why? Since American exceptionalism seems to fit so snugly with the actual definition of Jingoism…
Jingoism? See: http://www.globalexchange.org/resources/econ101/americandream
[Jingoism comes from a British pub song of the 19th century which went like this:
We don't want to fight but by Jingo if we do
We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too
We've fought the Bear before, and while we're Britons true
The Russians shall not have Constantinople!]
I love America dearly as a native son. I was born here more than seven decades ago in New York City, and raised and educated that City. My grandparents and parents were born there too. My maternal and paternal uncles served in WWII. I’ve traveled my beloved homeland north and south and east and west, lived in its countryside, and in one of its greatest cities. I know it as a great land, peopled with kind and decent folk. And my heart knows and loves no other place as well as this land. But loving it does not give me reason to gloss over and hide its faults, its failures and foibles, or give up wishing to perfect it.
There true are valid reasons to be proud. No one can deny that America is a unique and great land. The USA was the first “new” democratic nation. The founding fathers created a “political entity” out of whole cloth. Before we were an actual nation (such as the Germany, France or Spain) our founders forged a new political entity in 1776, and then only afterward, did we create a ‘nation’ of citizens to populate it. That is unique. To accompany that commendable history, our national ideology, based on concepts of liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism and a laissez-faire business environment, all make us the envy of the rest of the world. But, looking back at our nation’s history, we can see our course at times sometimes marred by wrong-headed policies which make a mockery of our great tradition of equality, justice for all. Yes at times we have exhibited pride, greed, injustice, and just plain stupidity.
“Critical thinking” is a much-touted mental process based on logical, unbiased and unfettered thought as well as an active, valid and probing self-evaluation. However, looking “critically” at our own homeland (as any true patriot must) is often frowned upon and viewed suspiciously. Those who hear our questions or with whom we share these ideas, often protest, “Air you with us, or against us?”
But one must ignore such objections. A nation of our size and diversity naturally encounters problems arising from those very characteristics. Others derive from an antiquated and hide-bound, bicameral, presidential system of representation (rather than more responsive, flexible, and democratic parliamentary system); our Senate is the most unrepresentative and undemocratic in the entire modern, western world; and our Electoral College is an unabashed embarrassment to a nation which wants to be considered as “democratic”. Here too we must mention our massive military—the largest, most expensive and most coddled in the entire world. We spend more on our military than all the other nations in the world combined. It consumes more than one-third of our total annual budget. That investment in naked power encourages us to see every problem in the world, as one that can be solved with military intervention. And we use it more than any other nation does. My dad used to say, “If you got a hammer in your hand, you can’t but help seeing everything as a nail.” Such massive investment robs our government and our society of funds for social development, improvement of its physical infrastructure, (roads, railroads, internet waterways, and electrical generation and grid system) and a modern social safety-net.
But whatever the source, efforts to correct and improve our nation are weakened or stymied by a pervasive myth often termed: “American Exceptionalism.” The concept of America as a “special nation” promotes the idea that the USA is the “city on the shining hill”, chosen by God to be an exemplar for others, and exempt from normal historical forces of decline, error, or need for renewal and course-correction to which other nations are subject. We like to think of ourselves as the political model to which all others either wish or (in our mind) should emulate. We are simply "The Best"! If we buy into that concept—our nation can make no mistakes—and thus there is need for corrective action or improvement. Such a concept and its consequences are a prescription for demise and failure. Too often it sounds too much like jingoistic ultranationalism.
Even worse, the myth of “exceptionalism” has fostered an arrogant foreign policy that has led us into disastrous adventures overseas. Recall the policies of a recent US government, which promulgated ideas of “regime change” (to a more compliant government) or “nation building”(into a system more congruent to our own how impossible or unlikely that is)---in independent nations of the Middle East-- all to our financial and political detriment.
The pseudo-religious basis for the concept of a “a shining city on the hill” or a God-ordained political entity, goes counter to most of our basic tenets of freedom, liberty, and separation of Church and State, as established by our founding fathers. This pernicious idea of a God ordained polity had its origin with the Puritans--the zealot Christian sect which Queen Elizabeth I of England wisely hounded out of her country. These radical Christians believed fervently that they had made a covenant with God and that the colonies they established in New England were destined to be a model (the source of the phrase "a shining city on the hill") for the rest of the world to emulate and follow. (The actual history of those colonies are shot through with bigotry, harsh imposition of religious uniformity, and the establishment of a fanatical religious oligarchy, too reminiscent of medieval Europe than of modern America. Though those early colonies are long gone, aspects of their zealotry too often raise their ugly head from deep within the heart-land’s native soils and tend to become manifest politically.
Myths of exceptionalism are not new. The Greeks of Classical times, (perhaps for obvious and good cause) thought of themselves as unique and honored by the Gods and considered Athens to be the zenith of human development. Those who did not speak Greek, and babbled unintelligibly (heard to the Greek-ear as "bar-bar-bar-bar’) were considered to be "barbarians", i.e. they did not speak Greek and thus were excluded as civilized folk. The Romans, during the Republic and on into the Imperial age, held a similar concept of political superiority, and adopted the Greek concept and term "barbarian" to denote those who were non-Roman and thus they considered outside the pale of civilization.
Perhaps such myths help to bind a nation together and were a necessary evil for the survival of its political system. But our circumstances and needs, in an interconnected multicultural world are very different. In modern times such jingoistic concepts do not help to support efforts for national renewal and self-evaluation that can lead to improvement. “Critical thinking,”and self-appraisal is not supported by such a philosophy.
But for those who can engage in critical thought, there is much to consider. Are we really so exceptional? Let us take an incomplete but unbiased look. Are we the nation that others wish to or should emulate? The following are facts about our nation that need an airing into the public for discourse and evaluation.
First let us examine the economy.
In a perceptive and revelatory piece in a January 2011, edition of ‘guardian.co.uk’, entitled: “The Myth of American Exceptionalism” by Prof. Richard D. Wolff (Economics, Univ. Mass., Amherst, ret 2008, presently Visiting Prof., New School Univ. NYC, and author of: “Captialism Hits The Fan,” (2009)) Wolff states. “Until the 1970s, US capitalism shared its spoils with American workers” but since that date, the tables have turned and now business, government and the powers that be have made the American working class pay for its failures.
Wolff states that the concept of American exceptionalism has stemed from US economic prowess. All US citizens (excepting a tiny percentage of Native Americans) are immigrants to these shores. The vast majority of our citizenry are either immigrants themselves or children or grandchildren, or great-grandchildren of immigrants who were attracted here, more often than not, as a direct result of the expanding American economy. My great-grandparents and my maternal grandfather came here from their native lands to a country they saw as a land of opportunity, where anyone who had a good idea, determination, and the ability to work, could find a job, get a foothold, and then start a business and prosper. And my grandpa did. In late 19th century America he found a nation where economic growth encouraged new-comers. He encountered near unlimited opportunity for work and personal betterment. In more recent times, America’s economic miracle arose from factors such as a rising population (growing from immigration and natural increase) which created increased demand for goods and services, which in turn fueled higher levels of real wages and a steady growth of the standard of living for all. Wolff states, “A profitable US capitalism kept running ahead of labor supply. So business kept raising wages to attract waves of immigration and to retain employees, during the 19th century and on into the 1970s.”
Those conditions of population growth and expanding economy tended to continue (with some interruptions by the economic downturns such as the Great Depression and flareups of heated growth such as WW II) into the 20th century. But it reached a watershed in the decade of the 1970s.
In the 1970s the entire business-labor equation altered. Factors that caused this change were both social and technological. One break in technology occurred in the early 1960s. It was the advent of the oral-contraceptive pill. The “pill" was approved by the FDA. Its use spread rapidly among women of childbearing age so much so that by the late 1960s Time Magazine thought it appropriate to feature a picture of “the pill” on its April 1967 front page. Today, twelve million US women use “the pill.” Many have argued that this new technology was a key element in altering women’s role in the economy. It is clear now that the new medical technology extended the years that young women could avoid childbearing and use those years to devote to education and career preparation, or to join the work force prior to having children or even forgoing childbearing entirely. At the present time there are more women undergraduates in US colleges than men. Women could decide when (or if) they wanted to marry, or when they wanted to enter the workforce to pursue a job or a career. The new technology encouraged the civil rights movement known as “women’s liberation” which helped to alter the social and political landscape and further encouraged women to enter the workforce. In 1973, the landmark US Supreme Court case of Roe v Wade held that women had a right to privacy under the due process clause in the 14th Amendment and that right extended to having an abortion. Though that controvercial ruling remains a contentious point in national politics and political debate to this day, its economic consequences, leading to increasing numbers of women in the workforce, are unchallenged.
Other technological advances were being initiated at that time as well. Beginning in the 1960s, experiments first using military computers and later commercial computers as well were wired in tandem to, over long distances were completed successfully. In the early 1970s computer engineers at several northeastern universities (particularly Dartmouth and MIT) began to link their university computers together using existing telephone and telecommunication systems such as telephone lines. The computer network produced was called ARPANET. It was this initial system which later spread to business and industry and was to become the internet we know of today. Just like the new means of travel by rail in the 19th century revolutionized communications the internet had its effects on business. Its use revolutionized many business functions by lowering transaction costs, Soon, with the advent of broadband, wifi, etc. manufacturing companies found it profitable to move much of their production to cheap-labor venues overseas. Off-shoring jobs became a common means of reducing production costs, breaking the backs of labor unions and maximizing profits for many large corporations. With no incentives business kept wages static, reduced benefits but continued to see increased productivity from workers. They had the best possible world..rising productivity, rising profits and stable or decreasing labor costs.
Thus since the 1970s we have seen technological, and social changes revolutionize the relationship between business and labor. US capitalism no longer faced a shortage of labor. These international corporations now can “thumb their noses” at labor. They have kept wages static (relative to inflation) they have reduced benefits. Their policies have tended to shift costs for needed social safety nets to local government and municipalities resulting in local higher taxes. Large corporations have little interest in paying taxes in their “home” nation, or submitting to regulations of a single nation. They as Jeff ……… from Columbia University stated (CNN/GPS August 18, 2011) “they have only one foot in this country and their other some place around the world!”. These capitalist entities now prefer smaller government, and less regulation, and those interests are reflected in the policies of the two political parties that they support financially.
But if the working classes have gotten poorer, the rich have gotten much richer since the 1970s by every measure available. One reason: Because American labor was working “scared” (when each job holder has several other applicants in line for their jog they work harder). In addition, these workers had more and better education, and were supplied with and more and better technology such as computers and computerized processes. Thus, productivity increased but wages remained flat. This scenario produced more profits for company owners and managers, shareholders, and increased profits to professionals such as architects, archaeologists, attorneys, consultants, and others).
Too often perceptions take a long time to catch up with reality. The perceptions of workers remained mired in the 1970s optimism while the reality changed slowly around them. As worker’s benefits and buying power slowly eroded they worked harder, they worked on their few annual holidays (the US workforce has the fewest paid holidays per year than any other industrialized nation (13 days) while nations of Europe range from 45 in France, 42 Germany and to 35 in the UK) and worked for longer hours per day, or had a wife or other family member move into the labor force to help maintain their “middle class” status. When such efforts were maximized they turned to increasing credit card debt, leveraging money from their residence by increasing debt. As Wolff states “By exhausting themselves , stressing family life ….taking on unsustainable amounts of debt, the US working class delayed the end of American exceptionalism –until the global crisis hit in 2007.”
How did that happen?
Between 1970 and 2007 the grand bargain forged between labor and capital in which the former worked to produce US products generated from US businessess in which US capitalists invested in and which made profits which sustained the capitalist class, and which products were consumed by the same labor force---was slowly crumbling. The top echelons of earners were growing richer and richer while lower economic levels were struggling mightily, using increased personal productivity, multiple jobs, longer hours, longer work year, fewer vacations, more members of the family working, more strees, and by leveraging money from their one main source of wealth—their homes. The capitalist class in these times were well heeled. With larger and larger sums of cash on hand they were seeking investments for their funds. Members of government were willing and able to help these rich clients who were supporting their reelection bids with bundles of cash. One major of the cause the several crises (housing bubble, financial crisis and resulting failing financial instituions) which we now call the “global crisis” was the deregulation legislation pushed by Republicans during the Clinton admistration. President Clinton eventually signed the Gramm-Leach—Bliley Act in 1999 a bill that would free banks, insurance companies and financial institutions to consolidate (Nobel Economist Paul Krugman called Senator Phil Gramm, main archtect and sponsor of the act, “the father of the Great Recession”). The Gramm bill overrode much of the safeguards of the early (1930s era) Glass-Stegall Act a bill wisely designed to prevent financial institutions from using bank depositor’s savings to make risky investments. The Gramm bill unraveled that restriction…providing investors with vast quantites of savings to invest in questionable enterprisises. And what were some of these enterprises?
Beginning in the 1960s and culminating in late 1980s US legislators introduced bills which premitted banks to bundle and sell mortgaged backed securities (MBS. These bonds were sold to investors based on the fact that similar to other securities they paid a regular monthly dividend, but outside of normally fluctuating business and stock cycle. Banks were eager to sell mortgages as MBSs and collect the cash face value from this transaction rather than having to wait to collect monthly payments until the mortgage matured. Furthermore, these MBS could be bundled into collateralized mortgage obligations (CMO) in which poor risk mortgages (from less than optimum properties and/or less secure mortgagees) could be incorporated into the bundle, spreading the risk to a large pool of investors over large geographic areas (often world wide). Using these methods, larger and larger numbers of mortgages could be processed from high risk clients creating a voluminous flow of cash with a minimal of risk to individual investors. Some of the mortgages in a bundle would invariably go bad…but the vast majority would continue to pay regularly.
On the other hand, those at the top, with the lowest taxes and the highest incomes by the early years of the 21 century, had accumulated more and more of the wealth of the nation. Unequal wealth distribution was about what it was in 1927-8 just prior to the economic collapse. Presently, the top 1% control 35% of the nation’s net worth leaving the bottom 99% to scramble over the remaining 65% of the nation’s net worth (another view sees the top 20% controll 85% of the nation’s net worth and the bottom 80% control only 15%). (See http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html) The plutocrats continued amass wealth, and used that wealth to defang and undermine government regualtions. Financiers also found novel ways to increase the overstuffed coffers of the wealthy by means of such as novel financial devices as “asset backed securites”, “hedge funds”, “credit default swaps”, and of course the now notorious mortgage backed security.
Banks and financial institutions which formerly were in the simple business of lending money to the local community to help create prosperity for all, found that they could vastly increase profits by bundling residential bank mortgages (knowing that some were going to be of good payers and others would fail to pay). Why should they hold the risk? Why not spread the risk around to reduce its impact on each investor? Sounds reasonable nes pas? So that’s what they all did. They increased their sales of mortgages (with no need to be too careful now to whom they lent money…since the downturn of such “poor borrowers” was going to be spread far and wide). Between the early 90’s and 2007 enormous numbers (some report 7-9 trillions of dollars worth) of these bundled securities were sold to investors as “AAA” stock.
Since the 1970s, most US workers postponed facing up to what capitalism had come to mean for them. They sent more family members to do more hours of paid labour, and they borrowed huge amounts. By exhausting themselves, stressing family life to the breaking point in many households, and by taking on unsustainable levels of debt, the US working class delayed the end of American exceptionalism – until the global crisis hit in 2007. By then, their buying power could no longer grow: rising unemployment kept wages flat, no more hours of work, nor more borrowing, were possible. Reckoning time had arrived. A US capitalism built on expanding mass consumption lost its foundation.
Wolff concludes that after the recent collapse of 2007-8 the rich, using their financial support as leverage, tended to widen the gulf of unequal wealth distribution…“finally burying American exceptionalism..” by through their agents in Washington encouraging President Obama to lavishly support banks, financial institutions, and the stock market, and discouraging the President to resort to massive rehiring and “make-work” programs as did FDR successfully in 1934. In addition, the Republican focus the “budget defict” and the “national debt” and its press for “austerity” has foisted the cost of the “unjustly, imbalanced response to the crisis” onto the shoulders of the very people who were passed over for help when the government resisted raising taxes on those who caused the crisis and profited the most from its effects. The people are doubly burdened with loss of jobs and revenue and loss of public services. Those Republicans who dare to even think of a tax increase (at this time September 2011) favor a “broadened tax base” (meaning increase taxes for the poor and middle class) rather than increased taxes on the very wealthy (their sponsors) who can well afford the increase but whom they are fearful of crossing.
What can these policies bring us? Economic decline and further shrinking of the USA’s minimalist safety net—the most restrictive in the industrialized western world. Reductions of Social Security, or if Medicare survives--higher co-pays are in the offing, as well as probable loss of the minimal improvements in health care-- part of what Republicans love to call “Obamacare”. Couple this with falling wages, disappearing benefits and rising taxes, as well as an increasing decline in our nation’s infrastructure, such as roads, railways and ports, make the picture of our future bleak. And when these devisive policies which separate us into a nation of “have and have nots” as they eventually will and “bite” into the very lives of our poor, workingclass and burgeoning unemployed, we will all—rich and poor alike---experience increased crime, hooliganism, and social unrest.
Get the picture?
See: Shelby Steele, Opinion, WSJ, September 1, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904787404576532623176115558.html
How do we stack up as an exceptional nation?
How does our American nation rank in Scientific thinking, Health Care, Longevity, Education, Upward Mobility, Public Transportation, Broadband Access, Crime, Science, Incarceration, Quality of Life? To be “exceptional” should not our nation be on top in these categories and others.
Acceptance of Evolution:
The US ranks 33rd after most of the industrialized world and Asia and just above Turkey (34th) in its acceptance of the modern concept of evolution. http://rankingamerica.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/the-us-ranks-33rd-in-acceptance-of-evolution/
Health Care System:
In a Wall Street Journal article (“Ill Conceived Ranking Makes for Unhealthy Debate”, October 21, 2009) decrying the use of a World Health Organization ranking which placed the US health care system in an embarrassing 37th place, the author, Carl Bialik, cries “foul” suggesting that the data is old, the figures were soft estimates, and the ranking system which used as a factor the total amount of expenditure each country makes in pursuit of their health-care goals (note that in that measure the US is # 1) tends to heavily distort the rankings. To prove his point, Mr Bialik provides a graph of these data in which that factor is discounted. In that revised (Balick-WSJ) ranking the US health care system comes up to (15) fifteenth! It is below such nations as Japan (1), Netherlands (3), France(5), Canada(6), UK (8), and Italy(10). Thus we need not depend on the non-biased WHO to establish how well or poorly we are performing in this area. Even in the pro-business WSJ rankings the US health-care system does not rate! That the nation which is without question the greatest industrial power in the world and which outspends all the others in health care winds up ranking in 15th place is not something we should be proud of.
It is noteworthy that we do rank very high in one related category. The US ranks near the very top (#2) in out of pocket expenses for health care services.
What about life expectancy?
In regard to life expectancy of our citizens we are not exceptional either. We rank 24th in average life expectancy (so called HALE values). These simple figures are difficult to argue with. An average person in Japan, Australia, France, Sweden, Spain, Italy Greece , Switzerland, Monaco, Andorra, San Marino, Canada, Netherlands, UK, Norway Belgium, Austria, Luxembourg, Iceland, Finland, Malta, Germany, and tiny, militarily threatened Israel, all live longer than we do in the US where the average life expectancy is 70.0 years. Why should the most powerful nation in the world, a nation with the largest economy, and the source of so many medical innovations rank so low? Why are we not at the top--near France and Switzerland at least? Perhaps the reason is that many of these longer-lived nations have better health care systems and one might attribute such factors as quality of health care, and out of pocket expenses as a controlling factor for this poor showing. Note that these figures are derived from the WHO for the year 1999 to 2000. But since that time, more recent figures suggest we have slipped a little lower down on the scale.
What about education?
USA Today, December 7, 2010 reports :
In education as in health, the US is trailing other nations in performance and outcome -- yet we outspend them mightily. While we spend more per student than most other nations in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) (except for rich and tiny which Luxembourg spends a bit more) our results are only “average”. PISA’s high-scorers include South Korea, Finland, Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai in China, and Canada. Our system for schools is based on local property taxes means that more affluent communities can spend more and poorer communities less. The most productive and successful nations in this area are able to target spending on the most challenged students and schools. We do not do this. “United States students are continuing to trail behind their peers in a pack of higher performing nations, according to results from a key international assessment. Scores from the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment to be released Tuesday show 15-year-old students in the U.S. performing about average in reading and science, and below average in math. Out of 34 countries, the U.S. ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math. Those scores are all higher than those from 2003 and 2006, but far behind the highest scoring countries, including South Korea, Finland and Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai in China and Canada.”
But where we are undisputed leaders is in military expenditures. Today we spend more on our military than all the other nations in the world. Do you get that? Pile up the defense expenditures of all the nations in one column, China is the largest at about 60 billion dollars (1/10 of US spending), France, UK, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Saudia Arabia, etc., etc. add all the nations on top. The total comes to a very big number—about 680-690 billion dollars world-wide. Yes, we all spend too much to kill each other. But if we were to align that column with another, a column that represents USA military expenditures, the second column would equal the first. Yes, the two columns would be of equal height since we all by our selves spend just a bit more than all the other nations combined. China spends only one-tenth of what we spend and Russia, spends a fraction of what China spends. Iran—our worst enemy—its expenditures are miniscule in comparison to ours.
One question to ask here is why? Who are we gearing up to fight? We now spend ten times more than China, our only putative competitor. Russia spends less than China and is anyway our ally. Why do we spend so much? Ask you congressman to explain that. Since almost every time the Pentagon asks for money they agree to it plus an excess. Why do we need such extravagance? It is not “defence”. Think about it.
Today July 9, 2011, our local newspaper ran a piece entitled: “Military budget Grows” (Newsday 7-09-11) by Donna Cassata, in which the author states that “Money for the Pentagon and the nation’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is proving largely immune to budget cutting that’s slamming other government agencies…” The author reports that on a 336-87 vote Friday, the Republican controlled House supported a nearly 650 billion military spending bill that boosts the Defense Department budget by 17 billion dollars. The bipartisan vote came amid demands by the Republicans to slash spending in an attempt to cut the deficit. After the vote, Rep Barney Frank (D Mass) scoffed at the suggestion that “everything is on the table” in the budget negotiations between the White House and congressional leaders. This vote proves that the “military budget is not on the table” said Frank, “but the military is there at the table---eating everybody else’s lunch.’
What about our political system? We are a Republic governed by an indirectly elected president (remember the college of electors), a directly elected House of Representatives and a very much less representative—Senate. We also have a much-touted system of “checks and balances”. In the last several years, gridlock in Congress has illustrated the weaknesses of our system.
In modern times Presidents have tend to increase their power. Some have even supported their expansion of power using the questionable interpretations of historic documents, coining the term “unitary presidentialism.” Some have taken to using “signing statements” which restrict or modify the way they will implement legislation duly passed by the House and Senate.
During the recent downgrade of our credit system from AAA to AA+ , Fareed Zakaria, of Time Magazine has noted a revealing face: that the only states with AAA ratings are those with parliamentary systems. Those with presidential systems of government such as ours, do not have AAA ratings. (And now we don’t have it either). Zakaria questioned why that was the case. Were presidential systems less stable?
Parlimentary vs Presidential Systems
Most modern democratic nations in the western world have parliamentary systems of government. Germany, France, UK, Spain, Italy, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Israel, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Portugal, Greece, etc. etc. are all parliamentary systems Some like the UK, Sweden, Belgium, Spain, and others have titular monarchies. In those latter systems a monarch sits as a national figure-head, but all political power resides in the parliament and head of state, and the monarch in these systems have little or no political power. In parliamentary systems the people directly elect representatives to the parliament within a one-person-one-vote system. When the parliament meets these elected members caucus to vote for a leader, generally called the “prime minister” (PM) (or sometimes “the president”) who generally represents the majority party elected at that time. Thus the people’s voices were heard. The PM presides over the government as long as he or she can maintain a majority in parliament. The PM is both the head of state, and the head of a majority in parliament, as well as the leader of his or her party. Political scientists and theorists have suggested that in such system there is little conflict between the head of state (PM) and the parliament or representative body, since the former is actually chosen by the latter and derives its legitimacy from the latter.
On the other hand, in our presidential system, the President and the Congress are often in conflict, since they each can claim a mandate from the people. At the present time, President Obama, a Democrat who was elected in 2008, serves with a House of Representatives (elected in 2010) and now dominated by Republicans. In addition, the sharply divided Senate (some of whom were elected in 2010) is sharply divided with nearly half the seats Republican and half Democrat. The Democrats have held onto a single a one-vote majority in the last election. On top of that, since the Senate has generated its own rules of order (not indicated in the Constitution) and now insists on a sixty-vote majority for nearly all significant legislation (50% plus one was not good enough for them), in the present Senate, it is nearly impossible for the President’s party to muster the necessary (60) votes to pass significant legislation. (Keep in mind, this is just another way the Senate acts to insulate itself from the wishes of the citizens who elected them). Besides the fact that there is no one-person-one-vote rule to elect Senators, since some Senators in small states represent only thirty or forty thousand citizens, while a Senator in Texas, New York or California will represent perhaps ten times that many. For example, the two Senators from California represent 36 million citizens, or each Senator represents 18 million citizens, while the two Senators from Vermont (600,000 population) represent only 300,000 each. A Senate vote in vote California represent sixty times the number of people represented in the Vermont Senator’s vote. But both the California and Vermont Senators can each cast one vote in the Senate for or against legislation. These votes are not representative of the wishes of the total citizenry of the USA in any democratic way. Such a system in the upper house tends to award greater political power in the Senate to low density, under-populated states. Combined with the present Senate supermajority rules, and its inherent unrepresentative election system, a small, well-funded minority can control major legislation for the entire 325 million US citizens. That is not how a democracy is supposed to work. We expect that in a democracy…the majority should rule! But not in the exceptional USA. What does this do? These policies weaken our democracy. They discourage and dilute political activism, causing citizenry to feel that they have little or no impact in their once every four year vote for a president. Such behavior permits and encourages political power to move toward the elites who can pay to get the attention of Senators and Congress members.
To be continued
But do you get the picture?
Exceptionalism or plain old 19th century Jingoism?
Steel states: that American exceptionalism is based on “the use of individual initiative as the engine of development within a society that strives to ensure individual freedom through the rule of law.”
American exceptionalism is, among other things, the result of a difficult rigor: the use of individual initiative as the engine of development within a society that strives to ensure individual freedom through the rule of law. Over time a society like this will become great. This is how—despite all our flagrant shortcomings and self-betrayals—America evolved into an exceptional nation.
What is it?
Conservative jounalist Shelby Steele (WSJ Opinion Sept 1 2011) describes American exceptionalism as “the use of individual initiative as the engine of development within a society that strives to ensure individual freedom through the rule of law.” Individual initiative…individual freedom, rule of law..if only that were true. All that “individual initiative” and “freedom” is unfortuneately not freely available to all in this nation, but for those whose wealthy predecessors paved the way for them. So it’s not a bad theory to hold on to—if no one looks too carefully at who steadied the ladder for you, while you climbed the rungs. Most Americans and others free of social psychology’s fundamental attribution error would not agree..seeing the exceptional status of America more as “a bargain with the devil—an indulgence in militarism, racism, sexism, corporate greed, and environmental disregard as the means to a broad economic, military, and even cultural supremacy in the world” (op. cit) . Frankly, to my ears, that sounds like what Mrs. Greenburg, my former social-science teacher in New Utrecht High, would have called “jingoism” We don’t hear much of that anymore. I wonder why? Since American exceptionalism seems to fit so snugly with the actual definition of Jingoism…
Jingoism? See: http://www.globalexchange.org/resources/econ101/americandream
[Jingoism comes from a British pub song of the 19th century which went like this:
We don't want to fight but by Jingo if we do
We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too
We've fought the Bear before, and while we're Britons true
The Russians shall not have Constantinople!]
I love America dearly as a native son. I was born here more than seven decades ago in New York City, and raised and educated that City. My grandparents and parents were born there too. My maternal and paternal uncles served in WWII. I’ve traveled my beloved homeland north and south and east and west, lived in its countryside, and in one of its greatest cities. I know it as a great land, peopled with kind and decent folk. And my heart knows and loves no other place as well as this land. But loving it does not give me reason to gloss over and hide its faults, its failures and foibles, or give up wishing to perfect it.
There true are valid reasons to be proud. No one can deny that America is a unique and great land. The USA was the first “new” democratic nation. The founding fathers created a “political entity” out of whole cloth. Before we were an actual nation (such as the Germany, France or Spain) our founders forged a new political entity in 1776, and then only afterward, did we create a ‘nation’ of citizens to populate it. That is unique. To accompany that commendable history, our national ideology, based on concepts of liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism and a laissez-faire business environment, all make us the envy of the rest of the world. But, looking back at our nation’s history, we can see our course at times sometimes marred by wrong-headed policies which make a mockery of our great tradition of equality, justice for all. Yes at times we have exhibited pride, greed, injustice, and just plain stupidity.
“Critical thinking” is a much-touted mental process based on logical, unbiased and unfettered thought as well as an active, valid and probing self-evaluation. However, looking “critically” at our own homeland (as any true patriot must) is often frowned upon and viewed suspiciously. Those who hear our questions or with whom we share these ideas, often protest, “Air you with us, or against us?”
But one must ignore such objections. A nation of our size and diversity naturally encounters problems arising from those very characteristics. Others derive from an antiquated and hide-bound, bicameral, presidential system of representation (rather than more responsive, flexible, and democratic parliamentary system); our Senate is the most unrepresentative and undemocratic in the entire modern, western world; and our Electoral College is an unabashed embarrassment to a nation which wants to be considered as “democratic”. Here too we must mention our massive military—the largest, most expensive and most coddled in the entire world. We spend more on our military than all the other nations in the world combined. It consumes more than one-third of our total annual budget. That investment in naked power encourages us to see every problem in the world, as one that can be solved with military intervention. And we use it more than any other nation does. My dad used to say, “If you got a hammer in your hand, you can’t but help seeing everything as a nail.” Such massive investment robs our government and our society of funds for social development, improvement of its physical infrastructure, (roads, railroads, internet waterways, and electrical generation and grid system) and a modern social safety-net.
But whatever the source, efforts to correct and improve our nation are weakened or stymied by a pervasive myth often termed: “American Exceptionalism.” The concept of America as a “special nation” promotes the idea that the USA is the “city on the shining hill”, chosen by God to be an exemplar for others, and exempt from normal historical forces of decline, error, or need for renewal and course-correction to which other nations are subject. We like to think of ourselves as the political model to which all others either wish or (in our mind) should emulate. We are simply "The Best"! If we buy into that concept—our nation can make no mistakes—and thus there is need for corrective action or improvement. Such a concept and its consequences are a prescription for demise and failure. Too often it sounds too much like jingoistic ultranationalism.
Even worse, the myth of “exceptionalism” has fostered an arrogant foreign policy that has led us into disastrous adventures overseas. Recall the policies of a recent US government, which promulgated ideas of “regime change” (to a more compliant government) or “nation building”(into a system more congruent to our own how impossible or unlikely that is)---in independent nations of the Middle East-- all to our financial and political detriment.
The pseudo-religious basis for the concept of a “a shining city on the hill” or a God-ordained political entity, goes counter to most of our basic tenets of freedom, liberty, and separation of Church and State, as established by our founding fathers. This pernicious idea of a God ordained polity had its origin with the Puritans--the zealot Christian sect which Queen Elizabeth I of England wisely hounded out of her country. These radical Christians believed fervently that they had made a covenant with God and that the colonies they established in New England were destined to be a model (the source of the phrase "a shining city on the hill") for the rest of the world to emulate and follow. (The actual history of those colonies are shot through with bigotry, harsh imposition of religious uniformity, and the establishment of a fanatical religious oligarchy, too reminiscent of medieval Europe than of modern America. Though those early colonies are long gone, aspects of their zealotry too often raise their ugly head from deep within the heart-land’s native soils and tend to become manifest politically.
Myths of exceptionalism are not new. The Greeks of Classical times, (perhaps for obvious and good cause) thought of themselves as unique and honored by the Gods and considered Athens to be the zenith of human development. Those who did not speak Greek, and babbled unintelligibly (heard to the Greek-ear as "bar-bar-bar-bar’) were considered to be "barbarians", i.e. they did not speak Greek and thus were excluded as civilized folk. The Romans, during the Republic and on into the Imperial age, held a similar concept of political superiority, and adopted the Greek concept and term "barbarian" to denote those who were non-Roman and thus they considered outside the pale of civilization.
Perhaps such myths help to bind a nation together and were a necessary evil for the survival of its political system. But our circumstances and needs, in an interconnected multicultural world are very different. In modern times such jingoistic concepts do not help to support efforts for national renewal and self-evaluation that can lead to improvement. “Critical thinking,”and self-appraisal is not supported by such a philosophy.
But for those who can engage in critical thought, there is much to consider. Are we really so exceptional? Let us take an incomplete but unbiased look. Are we the nation that others wish to or should emulate? The following are facts about our nation that need an airing into the public for discourse and evaluation.
First let us examine the economy.
In a perceptive and revelatory piece in a January 2011, edition of ‘guardian.co.uk’, entitled: “The Myth of American Exceptionalism” by Prof. Richard D. Wolff (Economics, Univ. Mass., Amherst, ret 2008, presently Visiting Prof., New School Univ. NYC, and author of: “Captialism Hits The Fan,” (2009)) Wolff states. “Until the 1970s, US capitalism shared its spoils with American workers” but since that date, the tables have turned and now business, government and the powers that be have made the American working class pay for its failures.
Wolff states that the concept of American exceptionalism has stemed from US economic prowess. All US citizens (excepting a tiny percentage of Native Americans) are immigrants to these shores. The vast majority of our citizenry are either immigrants themselves or children or grandchildren, or great-grandchildren of immigrants who were attracted here, more often than not, as a direct result of the expanding American economy. My great-grandparents and my maternal grandfather came here from their native lands to a country they saw as a land of opportunity, where anyone who had a good idea, determination, and the ability to work, could find a job, get a foothold, and then start a business and prosper. And my grandpa did. In late 19th century America he found a nation where economic growth encouraged new-comers. He encountered near unlimited opportunity for work and personal betterment. In more recent times, America’s economic miracle arose from factors such as a rising population (growing from immigration and natural increase) which created increased demand for goods and services, which in turn fueled higher levels of real wages and a steady growth of the standard of living for all. Wolff states, “A profitable US capitalism kept running ahead of labor supply. So business kept raising wages to attract waves of immigration and to retain employees, during the 19th century and on into the 1970s.”
Those conditions of population growth and expanding economy tended to continue (with some interruptions by the economic downturns such as the Great Depression and flareups of heated growth such as WW II) into the 20th century. But it reached a watershed in the decade of the 1970s.
In the 1970s the entire business-labor equation altered. Factors that caused this change were both social and technological. One break in technology occurred in the early 1960s. It was the advent of the oral-contraceptive pill. The “pill" was approved by the FDA. Its use spread rapidly among women of childbearing age so much so that by the late 1960s Time Magazine thought it appropriate to feature a picture of “the pill” on its April 1967 front page. Today, twelve million US women use “the pill.” Many have argued that this new technology was a key element in altering women’s role in the economy. It is clear now that the new medical technology extended the years that young women could avoid childbearing and use those years to devote to education and career preparation, or to join the work force prior to having children or even forgoing childbearing entirely. At the present time there are more women undergraduates in US colleges than men. Women could decide when (or if) they wanted to marry, or when they wanted to enter the workforce to pursue a job or a career. The new technology encouraged the civil rights movement known as “women’s liberation” which helped to alter the social and political landscape and further encouraged women to enter the workforce. In 1973, the landmark US Supreme Court case of Roe v Wade held that women had a right to privacy under the due process clause in the 14th Amendment and that right extended to having an abortion. Though that controvercial ruling remains a contentious point in national politics and political debate to this day, its economic consequences, leading to increasing numbers of women in the workforce, are unchallenged.
Other technological advances were being initiated at that time as well. Beginning in the 1960s, experiments first using military computers and later commercial computers as well were wired in tandem to, over long distances were completed successfully. In the early 1970s computer engineers at several northeastern universities (particularly Dartmouth and MIT) began to link their university computers together using existing telephone and telecommunication systems such as telephone lines. The computer network produced was called ARPANET. It was this initial system which later spread to business and industry and was to become the internet we know of today. Just like the new means of travel by rail in the 19th century revolutionized communications the internet had its effects on business. Its use revolutionized many business functions by lowering transaction costs, Soon, with the advent of broadband, wifi, etc. manufacturing companies found it profitable to move much of their production to cheap-labor venues overseas. Off-shoring jobs became a common means of reducing production costs, breaking the backs of labor unions and maximizing profits for many large corporations. With no incentives business kept wages static, reduced benefits but continued to see increased productivity from workers. They had the best possible world..rising productivity, rising profits and stable or decreasing labor costs.
Thus since the 1970s we have seen technological, and social changes revolutionize the relationship between business and labor. US capitalism no longer faced a shortage of labor. These international corporations now can “thumb their noses” at labor. They have kept wages static (relative to inflation) they have reduced benefits. Their policies have tended to shift costs for needed social safety nets to local government and municipalities resulting in local higher taxes. Large corporations have little interest in paying taxes in their “home” nation, or submitting to regulations of a single nation. They as Jeff ……… from Columbia University stated (CNN/GPS August 18, 2011) “they have only one foot in this country and their other some place around the world!”. These capitalist entities now prefer smaller government, and less regulation, and those interests are reflected in the policies of the two political parties that they support financially.
But if the working classes have gotten poorer, the rich have gotten much richer since the 1970s by every measure available. One reason: Because American labor was working “scared” (when each job holder has several other applicants in line for their jog they work harder). In addition, these workers had more and better education, and were supplied with and more and better technology such as computers and computerized processes. Thus, productivity increased but wages remained flat. This scenario produced more profits for company owners and managers, shareholders, and increased profits to professionals such as architects, archaeologists, attorneys, consultants, and others).
Too often perceptions take a long time to catch up with reality. The perceptions of workers remained mired in the 1970s optimism while the reality changed slowly around them. As worker’s benefits and buying power slowly eroded they worked harder, they worked on their few annual holidays (the US workforce has the fewest paid holidays per year than any other industrialized nation (13 days) while nations of Europe range from 45 in France, 42 Germany and to 35 in the UK) and worked for longer hours per day, or had a wife or other family member move into the labor force to help maintain their “middle class” status. When such efforts were maximized they turned to increasing credit card debt, leveraging money from their residence by increasing debt. As Wolff states “By exhausting themselves , stressing family life ….taking on unsustainable amounts of debt, the US working class delayed the end of American exceptionalism –until the global crisis hit in 2007.”
How did that happen?
Between 1970 and 2007 the grand bargain forged between labor and capital in which the former worked to produce US products generated from US businessess in which US capitalists invested in and which made profits which sustained the capitalist class, and which products were consumed by the same labor force---was slowly crumbling. The top echelons of earners were growing richer and richer while lower economic levels were struggling mightily, using increased personal productivity, multiple jobs, longer hours, longer work year, fewer vacations, more members of the family working, more strees, and by leveraging money from their one main source of wealth—their homes. The capitalist class in these times were well heeled. With larger and larger sums of cash on hand they were seeking investments for their funds. Members of government were willing and able to help these rich clients who were supporting their reelection bids with bundles of cash. One major of the cause the several crises (housing bubble, financial crisis and resulting failing financial instituions) which we now call the “global crisis” was the deregulation legislation pushed by Republicans during the Clinton admistration. President Clinton eventually signed the Gramm-Leach—Bliley Act in 1999 a bill that would free banks, insurance companies and financial institutions to consolidate (Nobel Economist Paul Krugman called Senator Phil Gramm, main archtect and sponsor of the act, “the father of the Great Recession”). The Gramm bill overrode much of the safeguards of the early (1930s era) Glass-Stegall Act a bill wisely designed to prevent financial institutions from using bank depositor’s savings to make risky investments. The Gramm bill unraveled that restriction…providing investors with vast quantites of savings to invest in questionable enterprisises. And what were some of these enterprises?
Beginning in the 1960s and culminating in late 1980s US legislators introduced bills which premitted banks to bundle and sell mortgaged backed securities (MBS. These bonds were sold to investors based on the fact that similar to other securities they paid a regular monthly dividend, but outside of normally fluctuating business and stock cycle. Banks were eager to sell mortgages as MBSs and collect the cash face value from this transaction rather than having to wait to collect monthly payments until the mortgage matured. Furthermore, these MBS could be bundled into collateralized mortgage obligations (CMO) in which poor risk mortgages (from less than optimum properties and/or less secure mortgagees) could be incorporated into the bundle, spreading the risk to a large pool of investors over large geographic areas (often world wide). Using these methods, larger and larger numbers of mortgages could be processed from high risk clients creating a voluminous flow of cash with a minimal of risk to individual investors. Some of the mortgages in a bundle would invariably go bad…but the vast majority would continue to pay regularly.
On the other hand, those at the top, with the lowest taxes and the highest incomes by the early years of the 21 century, had accumulated more and more of the wealth of the nation. Unequal wealth distribution was about what it was in 1927-8 just prior to the economic collapse. Presently, the top 1% control 35% of the nation’s net worth leaving the bottom 99% to scramble over the remaining 65% of the nation’s net worth (another view sees the top 20% controll 85% of the nation’s net worth and the bottom 80% control only 15%). (See http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html) The plutocrats continued amass wealth, and used that wealth to defang and undermine government regualtions. Financiers also found novel ways to increase the overstuffed coffers of the wealthy by means of such as novel financial devices as “asset backed securites”, “hedge funds”, “credit default swaps”, and of course the now notorious mortgage backed security.
Banks and financial institutions which formerly were in the simple business of lending money to the local community to help create prosperity for all, found that they could vastly increase profits by bundling residential bank mortgages (knowing that some were going to be of good payers and others would fail to pay). Why should they hold the risk? Why not spread the risk around to reduce its impact on each investor? Sounds reasonable nes pas? So that’s what they all did. They increased their sales of mortgages (with no need to be too careful now to whom they lent money…since the downturn of such “poor borrowers” was going to be spread far and wide). Between the early 90’s and 2007 enormous numbers (some report 7-9 trillions of dollars worth) of these bundled securities were sold to investors as “AAA” stock.
Since the 1970s, most US workers postponed facing up to what capitalism had come to mean for them. They sent more family members to do more hours of paid labour, and they borrowed huge amounts. By exhausting themselves, stressing family life to the breaking point in many households, and by taking on unsustainable levels of debt, the US working class delayed the end of American exceptionalism – until the global crisis hit in 2007. By then, their buying power could no longer grow: rising unemployment kept wages flat, no more hours of work, nor more borrowing, were possible. Reckoning time had arrived. A US capitalism built on expanding mass consumption lost its foundation.
Wolff concludes that after the recent collapse of 2007-8 the rich, using their financial support as leverage, tended to widen the gulf of unequal wealth distribution…“finally burying American exceptionalism..” by through their agents in Washington encouraging President Obama to lavishly support banks, financial institutions, and the stock market, and discouraging the President to resort to massive rehiring and “make-work” programs as did FDR successfully in 1934. In addition, the Republican focus the “budget defict” and the “national debt” and its press for “austerity” has foisted the cost of the “unjustly, imbalanced response to the crisis” onto the shoulders of the very people who were passed over for help when the government resisted raising taxes on those who caused the crisis and profited the most from its effects. The people are doubly burdened with loss of jobs and revenue and loss of public services. Those Republicans who dare to even think of a tax increase (at this time September 2011) favor a “broadened tax base” (meaning increase taxes for the poor and middle class) rather than increased taxes on the very wealthy (their sponsors) who can well afford the increase but whom they are fearful of crossing.
What can these policies bring us? Economic decline and further shrinking of the USA’s minimalist safety net—the most restrictive in the industrialized western world. Reductions of Social Security, or if Medicare survives--higher co-pays are in the offing, as well as probable loss of the minimal improvements in health care-- part of what Republicans love to call “Obamacare”. Couple this with falling wages, disappearing benefits and rising taxes, as well as an increasing decline in our nation’s infrastructure, such as roads, railways and ports, make the picture of our future bleak. And when these devisive policies which separate us into a nation of “have and have nots” as they eventually will and “bite” into the very lives of our poor, workingclass and burgeoning unemployed, we will all—rich and poor alike---experience increased crime, hooliganism, and social unrest.
Get the picture?
See: Shelby Steele, Opinion, WSJ, September 1, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904787404576532623176115558.html
How do we stack up as an exceptional nation?
How does our American nation rank in Scientific thinking, Health Care, Longevity, Education, Upward Mobility, Public Transportation, Broadband Access, Crime, Science, Incarceration, Quality of Life? To be “exceptional” should not our nation be on top in these categories and others.
Acceptance of Evolution:
The US ranks 33rd after most of the industrialized world and Asia and just above Turkey (34th) in its acceptance of the modern concept of evolution. http://rankingamerica.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/the-us-ranks-33rd-in-acceptance-of-evolution/
Health Care System:
In a Wall Street Journal article (“Ill Conceived Ranking Makes for Unhealthy Debate”, October 21, 2009) decrying the use of a World Health Organization ranking which placed the US health care system in an embarrassing 37th place, the author, Carl Bialik, cries “foul” suggesting that the data is old, the figures were soft estimates, and the ranking system which used as a factor the total amount of expenditure each country makes in pursuit of their health-care goals (note that in that measure the US is # 1) tends to heavily distort the rankings. To prove his point, Mr Bialik provides a graph of these data in which that factor is discounted. In that revised (Balick-WSJ) ranking the US health care system comes up to (15) fifteenth! It is below such nations as Japan (1), Netherlands (3), France(5), Canada(6), UK (8), and Italy(10). Thus we need not depend on the non-biased WHO to establish how well or poorly we are performing in this area. Even in the pro-business WSJ rankings the US health-care system does not rate! That the nation which is without question the greatest industrial power in the world and which outspends all the others in health care winds up ranking in 15th place is not something we should be proud of.
It is noteworthy that we do rank very high in one related category. The US ranks near the very top (#2) in out of pocket expenses for health care services.
What about life expectancy?
In regard to life expectancy of our citizens we are not exceptional either. We rank 24th in average life expectancy (so called HALE values). These simple figures are difficult to argue with. An average person in Japan, Australia, France, Sweden, Spain, Italy Greece , Switzerland, Monaco, Andorra, San Marino, Canada, Netherlands, UK, Norway Belgium, Austria, Luxembourg, Iceland, Finland, Malta, Germany, and tiny, militarily threatened Israel, all live longer than we do in the US where the average life expectancy is 70.0 years. Why should the most powerful nation in the world, a nation with the largest economy, and the source of so many medical innovations rank so low? Why are we not at the top--near France and Switzerland at least? Perhaps the reason is that many of these longer-lived nations have better health care systems and one might attribute such factors as quality of health care, and out of pocket expenses as a controlling factor for this poor showing. Note that these figures are derived from the WHO for the year 1999 to 2000. But since that time, more recent figures suggest we have slipped a little lower down on the scale.
What about education?
USA Today, December 7, 2010 reports :
In education as in health, the US is trailing other nations in performance and outcome -- yet we outspend them mightily. While we spend more per student than most other nations in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) (except for rich and tiny which Luxembourg spends a bit more) our results are only “average”. PISA’s high-scorers include South Korea, Finland, Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai in China, and Canada. Our system for schools is based on local property taxes means that more affluent communities can spend more and poorer communities less. The most productive and successful nations in this area are able to target spending on the most challenged students and schools. We do not do this. “United States students are continuing to trail behind their peers in a pack of higher performing nations, according to results from a key international assessment. Scores from the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment to be released Tuesday show 15-year-old students in the U.S. performing about average in reading and science, and below average in math. Out of 34 countries, the U.S. ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math. Those scores are all higher than those from 2003 and 2006, but far behind the highest scoring countries, including South Korea, Finland and Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai in China and Canada.”
But where we are undisputed leaders is in military expenditures. Today we spend more on our military than all the other nations in the world. Do you get that? Pile up the defense expenditures of all the nations in one column, China is the largest at about 60 billion dollars (1/10 of US spending), France, UK, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Saudia Arabia, etc., etc. add all the nations on top. The total comes to a very big number—about 680-690 billion dollars world-wide. Yes, we all spend too much to kill each other. But if we were to align that column with another, a column that represents USA military expenditures, the second column would equal the first. Yes, the two columns would be of equal height since we all by our selves spend just a bit more than all the other nations combined. China spends only one-tenth of what we spend and Russia, spends a fraction of what China spends. Iran—our worst enemy—its expenditures are miniscule in comparison to ours.
One question to ask here is why? Who are we gearing up to fight? We now spend ten times more than China, our only putative competitor. Russia spends less than China and is anyway our ally. Why do we spend so much? Ask you congressman to explain that. Since almost every time the Pentagon asks for money they agree to it plus an excess. Why do we need such extravagance? It is not “defence”. Think about it.
Today July 9, 2011, our local newspaper ran a piece entitled: “Military budget Grows” (Newsday 7-09-11) by Donna Cassata, in which the author states that “Money for the Pentagon and the nation’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is proving largely immune to budget cutting that’s slamming other government agencies…” The author reports that on a 336-87 vote Friday, the Republican controlled House supported a nearly 650 billion military spending bill that boosts the Defense Department budget by 17 billion dollars. The bipartisan vote came amid demands by the Republicans to slash spending in an attempt to cut the deficit. After the vote, Rep Barney Frank (D Mass) scoffed at the suggestion that “everything is on the table” in the budget negotiations between the White House and congressional leaders. This vote proves that the “military budget is not on the table” said Frank, “but the military is there at the table---eating everybody else’s lunch.’
What about our political system? We are a Republic governed by an indirectly elected president (remember the college of electors), a directly elected House of Representatives and a very much less representative—Senate. We also have a much-touted system of “checks and balances”. In the last several years, gridlock in Congress has illustrated the weaknesses of our system.
In modern times Presidents have tend to increase their power. Some have even supported their expansion of power using the questionable interpretations of historic documents, coining the term “unitary presidentialism.” Some have taken to using “signing statements” which restrict or modify the way they will implement legislation duly passed by the House and Senate.
During the recent downgrade of our credit system from AAA to AA+ , Fareed Zakaria, of Time Magazine has noted a revealing face: that the only states with AAA ratings are those with parliamentary systems. Those with presidential systems of government such as ours, do not have AAA ratings. (And now we don’t have it either). Zakaria questioned why that was the case. Were presidential systems less stable?
Parlimentary vs Presidential Systems
Most modern democratic nations in the western world have parliamentary systems of government. Germany, France, UK, Spain, Italy, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Israel, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Portugal, Greece, etc. etc. are all parliamentary systems Some like the UK, Sweden, Belgium, Spain, and others have titular monarchies. In those latter systems a monarch sits as a national figure-head, but all political power resides in the parliament and head of state, and the monarch in these systems have little or no political power. In parliamentary systems the people directly elect representatives to the parliament within a one-person-one-vote system. When the parliament meets these elected members caucus to vote for a leader, generally called the “prime minister” (PM) (or sometimes “the president”) who generally represents the majority party elected at that time. Thus the people’s voices were heard. The PM presides over the government as long as he or she can maintain a majority in parliament. The PM is both the head of state, and the head of a majority in parliament, as well as the leader of his or her party. Political scientists and theorists have suggested that in such system there is little conflict between the head of state (PM) and the parliament or representative body, since the former is actually chosen by the latter and derives its legitimacy from the latter.
On the other hand, in our presidential system, the President and the Congress are often in conflict, since they each can claim a mandate from the people. At the present time, President Obama, a Democrat who was elected in 2008, serves with a House of Representatives (elected in 2010) and now dominated by Republicans. In addition, the sharply divided Senate (some of whom were elected in 2010) is sharply divided with nearly half the seats Republican and half Democrat. The Democrats have held onto a single a one-vote majority in the last election. On top of that, since the Senate has generated its own rules of order (not indicated in the Constitution) and now insists on a sixty-vote majority for nearly all significant legislation (50% plus one was not good enough for them), in the present Senate, it is nearly impossible for the President’s party to muster the necessary (60) votes to pass significant legislation. (Keep in mind, this is just another way the Senate acts to insulate itself from the wishes of the citizens who elected them). Besides the fact that there is no one-person-one-vote rule to elect Senators, since some Senators in small states represent only thirty or forty thousand citizens, while a Senator in Texas, New York or California will represent perhaps ten times that many. For example, the two Senators from California represent 36 million citizens, or each Senator represents 18 million citizens, while the two Senators from Vermont (600,000 population) represent only 300,000 each. A Senate vote in vote California represent sixty times the number of people represented in the Vermont Senator’s vote. But both the California and Vermont Senators can each cast one vote in the Senate for or against legislation. These votes are not representative of the wishes of the total citizenry of the USA in any democratic way. Such a system in the upper house tends to award greater political power in the Senate to low density, under-populated states. Combined with the present Senate supermajority rules, and its inherent unrepresentative election system, a small, well-funded minority can control major legislation for the entire 325 million US citizens. That is not how a democracy is supposed to work. We expect that in a democracy…the majority should rule! But not in the exceptional USA. What does this do? These policies weaken our democracy. They discourage and dilute political activism, causing citizenry to feel that they have little or no impact in their once every four year vote for a president. Such behavior permits and encourages political power to move toward the elites who can pay to get the attention of Senators and Congress members.
To be continued
But do you get the picture?
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
WHAT THE REPUBLICANS STAND FOR TODAY
Last week I cringed as I watched the early Republican debates on TV. What has happened to the Grand Old Party, the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Nixon and yes even Reagan? The shades of those earlier GOP presidents must be sitting up in their tombs, with quizzical expressions on their faces, mumbling “Did I hear that right?”. There is no line, ever so contorted, which seems able to connect the policies of these past leaders to this new crop of hopefuls.
Here’s what I gather from listening to these men (and one woman) who represent modern-day Republicanism.
Today Republicans have no use at all for government. They have taken Reagan’s plea for smaller government to a ”reductio ad absurdum” conclusion.
They would either throttle Ben Bernanke, (Chairman of the Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System) or threaten him as “treasonous”. The FED is supposed to be a body which is indepenedent of government intervention, tasked with promoting the objectives of maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates. Bernanke’s past use of “quantitative easing” (QE) is one way of stimulating the economy by increasing money in the system. In effect, decreasing the value of the dollar (inflation) so as to undermine the great overhang of debt that is stifling public demand and spending. Of course, the “rentier” class of oligarchs who favor and support the Republicans are not in favor of even minor increases in inflation, since that would mean that they are paid back in dollars which have a slightly lower value than what they had invested. So all the Republican candidates would have the FED focus its policies only on what favors the rich. They want Bernanke to just keep inflation low and ignore the task of promoting maximum employment. To sustain that goal, they have not shirked from actual threats against the Chairman, such Rick Perry's comment about “getting ugly” with Bernanke were he to increase inflation.
They are opposed to almost all government spending and all taxation--for the rich. They would “broaden and flatten the tax base” meaning that the wealthy (so called “job generators”) would continue to have low taxes and those in the bottom half of income distribution would pay more in taxes. But there is no evidence at all that over the last decades, when wealth has been concentrated in the hands of the wealthy, that the rich have used those resources to generate jobs. Jobs have decreased steadily for the middle and working classes over those years, while money has concentrated steadily in the coffers of the wealthy. The Republicans of today steadfastly ignore the fact that wealth in this country has been more and more concentrated in the upper levels of income classes, so that today the top 20% of income earners control 80% of the nation’s wealth, leaving the lower 80% of the population to squabble over the remaining 20%. (In another view, the top 1% control 40% of the nation’s wealth--leaving the lower 99% only 60% of the “pie”.) The Republicans continue to repeat the inaccurate claim that “50% of the population pay no taxes at all”. This is a distortion and a lie. Those at the bottom who pay little or no income taxes are the working poor, (those below the poverty level), the indigent, very poor, or disabled. Can you get blood from a stone? However, all these low tax payers all pay state and local taxes, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, et cetera. These flat rate taxes are less just since they cut more deeply into the pocketbooks of the poor than of the wealthy. In regard to the working and middle class tax payers they pay a greater proportion of their income on taxes than the wealthy classes (who are most often taxed at the 15% capital-gains rate), while salaried workers, pay social security, payroll taxes and are hit with income taxes at a rate of 30-35%. Thus the working and middle classes are the ones who pay the most--yet they are the ones who stupidly support the Republican candidates the most avidly. Are they stupid or simply less informed?
Today's Republicans are all anti-environment, favoring quick profits for (their business clients) the exploiters of our water, air, forests, wildlife and mineral resources over the wise, clean, and long-term, multi-generational use of these resources. They would all hobble our government environment-protection agencies and pack them with business advocates so to undermine their regulatory function as watchmen over these resources. I need not state here—but I can not contain the urge—that such behavior in the former G.W Bush administration (but which continued into the Obama administration) led to the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
This crop of Republicans are all anti-science. They are unwilling or unable to distinguish between political and religious dogma and scientific fact. They would take us back in time and logical processes to before Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum in 1620 where Bacon outlines the syllogism of scientific reasoning, and before Galileo who in 1632 questioned the authority of Aristotle and the Church. Their thinking is at a pre-Gallileo “pseudo science” level where religious dogma controlled what a scientist could think, rather than what logic dictated.
New Republicans are all opposed to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security and would either shrink these popular programs to a near-ineffectual status, or do away with them all-together. They love to attack Social Security (some call it a "Ponzi scheme") which is a government run, pay-as-you-go-insurance system. It is not in trouble. I recall well all that big chunk of money withdrawn from my meager monthly checks. Amounts that I could have used to better feed and house my family. Each social security recipient paid for what he or she gets. The only reforms which are needed (and not until 2030s) are minor adjustments to future payments and withdrawls. Just leave SS alone. It works.
What all the current crop of Republicans should be looking at and which they all ignore is military spending, which has gone through the roof. Military spending eats up more than one third of the federal budget. What do we get for it? We have no existential threats out there. The Russians and Chinese are our friends now. The few hundred al Qaieda running around in Afghanistan and the borderlands of Pakistan in sandals and rags on their heads are not an existential threat to our nation, and their threat certainly does not justify an expenditure over more than $600 billion dollars annually in "defense spending". Why do we spend more on our military than all the other nations in the world combined? To believe that it is for defense is silly. Why do we need a $400 billion dollar compound the size of the Vatican in Iraq? Or the vast military and naval base we have made out of the nation of Japan? Why is Germany such a huge hole in the ground for our military dollars? Ask that same question for nearly a thousand US military intallations around the world. There are no justifiable reasons for such expenditures when we are laying off teachers, librarians, firemen and policemen here at home and when more than 16 million of our citizens are either under-employed or idle. But no Republicans care. They would like to undermine the middle class and pick their pockets for taxes before they would even talk about military spending.
They are all in favor of “old-time Christian values” as well as “freedom” and “personal responsibility” and yet forget the explicit commands of the Good Book (to which they all seem to give excessive fealty) to give succor to your neighbor, as they vote to remove or defund government programs to aid people who have for some reason or other, bad luck, accident or poor decisions find themselves poor, sick, disabled or destitute.
They are all for "privacy" but not in the bedroom where they are concerned what goes on in there.
They are pro-life to a man (and woman) for the unborn. And they ignore the right of women to determine their own reporductive future. Yet they are pro-death and perfectly happy to kill off adults (the elderly and children too) particularly individuals of other cultural and religious backgrounds, often these are muslims and of a deeper-brown skin-shade who succumb to aerial bombs, drone strikes, or other means, if these brown people have the audacity to oppose US interventionism, expansionism, exploitation and occupation of their lands. They favor taking the lives of adults incarcerated for violent crimes by legal executions too, either by electrocution or lethal injection.
Here’s what I gather from listening to these men (and one woman) who represent modern-day Republicanism.
Today Republicans have no use at all for government. They have taken Reagan’s plea for smaller government to a ”reductio ad absurdum” conclusion.
They would either throttle Ben Bernanke, (Chairman of the Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System) or threaten him as “treasonous”. The FED is supposed to be a body which is indepenedent of government intervention, tasked with promoting the objectives of maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates. Bernanke’s past use of “quantitative easing” (QE) is one way of stimulating the economy by increasing money in the system. In effect, decreasing the value of the dollar (inflation) so as to undermine the great overhang of debt that is stifling public demand and spending. Of course, the “rentier” class of oligarchs who favor and support the Republicans are not in favor of even minor increases in inflation, since that would mean that they are paid back in dollars which have a slightly lower value than what they had invested. So all the Republican candidates would have the FED focus its policies only on what favors the rich. They want Bernanke to just keep inflation low and ignore the task of promoting maximum employment. To sustain that goal, they have not shirked from actual threats against the Chairman, such Rick Perry's comment about “getting ugly” with Bernanke were he to increase inflation.
They are opposed to almost all government spending and all taxation--for the rich. They would “broaden and flatten the tax base” meaning that the wealthy (so called “job generators”) would continue to have low taxes and those in the bottom half of income distribution would pay more in taxes. But there is no evidence at all that over the last decades, when wealth has been concentrated in the hands of the wealthy, that the rich have used those resources to generate jobs. Jobs have decreased steadily for the middle and working classes over those years, while money has concentrated steadily in the coffers of the wealthy. The Republicans of today steadfastly ignore the fact that wealth in this country has been more and more concentrated in the upper levels of income classes, so that today the top 20% of income earners control 80% of the nation’s wealth, leaving the lower 80% of the population to squabble over the remaining 20%. (In another view, the top 1% control 40% of the nation’s wealth--leaving the lower 99% only 60% of the “pie”.) The Republicans continue to repeat the inaccurate claim that “50% of the population pay no taxes at all”. This is a distortion and a lie. Those at the bottom who pay little or no income taxes are the working poor, (those below the poverty level), the indigent, very poor, or disabled. Can you get blood from a stone? However, all these low tax payers all pay state and local taxes, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, et cetera. These flat rate taxes are less just since they cut more deeply into the pocketbooks of the poor than of the wealthy. In regard to the working and middle class tax payers they pay a greater proportion of their income on taxes than the wealthy classes (who are most often taxed at the 15% capital-gains rate), while salaried workers, pay social security, payroll taxes and are hit with income taxes at a rate of 30-35%. Thus the working and middle classes are the ones who pay the most--yet they are the ones who stupidly support the Republican candidates the most avidly. Are they stupid or simply less informed?
Today's Republicans are all anti-environment, favoring quick profits for (their business clients) the exploiters of our water, air, forests, wildlife and mineral resources over the wise, clean, and long-term, multi-generational use of these resources. They would all hobble our government environment-protection agencies and pack them with business advocates so to undermine their regulatory function as watchmen over these resources. I need not state here—but I can not contain the urge—that such behavior in the former G.W Bush administration (but which continued into the Obama administration) led to the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
This crop of Republicans are all anti-science. They are unwilling or unable to distinguish between political and religious dogma and scientific fact. They would take us back in time and logical processes to before Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum in 1620 where Bacon outlines the syllogism of scientific reasoning, and before Galileo who in 1632 questioned the authority of Aristotle and the Church. Their thinking is at a pre-Gallileo “pseudo science” level where religious dogma controlled what a scientist could think, rather than what logic dictated.
New Republicans are all opposed to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security and would either shrink these popular programs to a near-ineffectual status, or do away with them all-together. They love to attack Social Security (some call it a "Ponzi scheme") which is a government run, pay-as-you-go-insurance system. It is not in trouble. I recall well all that big chunk of money withdrawn from my meager monthly checks. Amounts that I could have used to better feed and house my family. Each social security recipient paid for what he or she gets. The only reforms which are needed (and not until 2030s) are minor adjustments to future payments and withdrawls. Just leave SS alone. It works.
What all the current crop of Republicans should be looking at and which they all ignore is military spending, which has gone through the roof. Military spending eats up more than one third of the federal budget. What do we get for it? We have no existential threats out there. The Russians and Chinese are our friends now. The few hundred al Qaieda running around in Afghanistan and the borderlands of Pakistan in sandals and rags on their heads are not an existential threat to our nation, and their threat certainly does not justify an expenditure over more than $600 billion dollars annually in "defense spending". Why do we spend more on our military than all the other nations in the world combined? To believe that it is for defense is silly. Why do we need a $400 billion dollar compound the size of the Vatican in Iraq? Or the vast military and naval base we have made out of the nation of Japan? Why is Germany such a huge hole in the ground for our military dollars? Ask that same question for nearly a thousand US military intallations around the world. There are no justifiable reasons for such expenditures when we are laying off teachers, librarians, firemen and policemen here at home and when more than 16 million of our citizens are either under-employed or idle. But no Republicans care. They would like to undermine the middle class and pick their pockets for taxes before they would even talk about military spending.
They are all in favor of “old-time Christian values” as well as “freedom” and “personal responsibility” and yet forget the explicit commands of the Good Book (to which they all seem to give excessive fealty) to give succor to your neighbor, as they vote to remove or defund government programs to aid people who have for some reason or other, bad luck, accident or poor decisions find themselves poor, sick, disabled or destitute.
They are all for "privacy" but not in the bedroom where they are concerned what goes on in there.
They are pro-life to a man (and woman) for the unborn. And they ignore the right of women to determine their own reporductive future. Yet they are pro-death and perfectly happy to kill off adults (the elderly and children too) particularly individuals of other cultural and religious backgrounds, often these are muslims and of a deeper-brown skin-shade who succumb to aerial bombs, drone strikes, or other means, if these brown people have the audacity to oppose US interventionism, expansionism, exploitation and occupation of their lands. They favor taking the lives of adults incarcerated for violent crimes by legal executions too, either by electrocution or lethal injection.
Friday, September 16, 2011
JAPAN MANAGES SUMMER HEAT WITHOUT NUKES
WITH HALF OF ITS NUKES IDLE JAPAN MANAGES WELL WITH CONSERVATION ALONE
Over the last few months, since the disastrous March 11 earthquake and tsunami, Japan's shattered Fukushima Diichi nuclear plant continues to emit radioactive gases and particulate matter which spreads out contaminating a fifty kilometer wide zone. In the rest of the nation more than 30 of Japan's 54 other nuclear plants, (many of them aging GE models similar to those we have here in the US), lay idle in cold-shutdown, while their siting-suitability and safety are reevaluated. This long and slow process has forced Japan into an unwanted, unplanned nationwide summer conservation program. The good news is that the nation's efforts have been highly successful.
I hear through my Nipponese friends, (as well as the Sept 17, 2011 "Economist", iphone editors highlights) that one striking difference you may observe were you to have visited corporate Japan this summer is that everyone was going about tieless and in shirtsleeves rather than in the traditional business suit. The reason? No air conditioning.
It is a tribute to the Japanese that they have managed to continue their personal lives, busineses and vital activites with most of their nuclear plants shuttered and idle. It is remarkable that Japan, a modern, top-tier industrialized nation, has come through the hot summer, when demand is highest on its nuclear-power-driven electrical generation system, unscathed, with its people working, its factories operating, and its infrastructure and society intact . It is a tribute to the Japanese national character which prizes social cohesion, cooperation, and hard work, but it is also encouraging that a modern industrialized nation can give up 55% of its electrical power generation and still manage to avoid dreaded brownouts and blackout--over a hot summer. How?
Japan put into place a wide-ranging set of simple conservation measures, such as having some employees limit daily travel to work from home, by closing certain factories in the day and operating them at night when electrical demand is low, limiting use of air conditoning and excess lighting, and by broadcasting the nation's peak electrical demand figures over over TV and radio stations to encourage citizen cooperation and compliance. An enormous amount of electricity goes to waste in our modern usage. Contrary to what the nay-sayers claim, simple conservation measures can be significant. Conservation can and should be seen as another energy resource--that part of what we produce, but which is generally wasted--which, as the Japanese experiment this summer seems to prove--is a significant fraction of the whole. Other industrialized nations can use less electricity (much less) and continue to thrive.
Do the Japanese want to live under strict conservation all the time? It depends on where you are coming from and what choices you have. But without significant fossil fuel resources Japan must turn to its existing efficient use of its wind, tidal, hydropower resources--as well as conservation. There are few places in Japan---which is geologically, essentially a series of merged volcanic cones--where nukes can be safely sited. But as Father Michael often encouraged us: "make a stepping stone out of every stumbling block". For the Japanese that would be to make use of the great pool of subterranean heat which causes its earthquakes and tsunamis and which lies under its surface. Geothermal energy can be used either to directly heat homes and factories, or to generate electricity. After all that is what is accomplished in a nuclear plant-- water is heated by nuclear fission to make steam to drive generators--. The irony is that directly under the Fukishima Diichi plant there is an enormous amount of free, safe, and unlimited heat to drive all of Japan's electric generation needs.
What is your preference? Continual anxiety, uncertainty and business disruption and an existential threat by the danger of exposure to nuclear melt-down and radiation poisoning, or tapping into geothermal heat?
In the interim, as geothermal, wind, tidal and hydropower are developed...Japan will probably continue to have to cope as they have this summer with conservation---and the electricity generated from those nuclear plants which are considered safe--for now.
The good news is that there are good options for Japan.
Get the picture?
Over the last few months, since the disastrous March 11 earthquake and tsunami, Japan's shattered Fukushima Diichi nuclear plant continues to emit radioactive gases and particulate matter which spreads out contaminating a fifty kilometer wide zone. In the rest of the nation more than 30 of Japan's 54 other nuclear plants, (many of them aging GE models similar to those we have here in the US), lay idle in cold-shutdown, while their siting-suitability and safety are reevaluated. This long and slow process has forced Japan into an unwanted, unplanned nationwide summer conservation program. The good news is that the nation's efforts have been highly successful.
I hear through my Nipponese friends, (as well as the Sept 17, 2011 "Economist", iphone editors highlights) that one striking difference you may observe were you to have visited corporate Japan this summer is that everyone was going about tieless and in shirtsleeves rather than in the traditional business suit. The reason? No air conditioning.
It is a tribute to the Japanese that they have managed to continue their personal lives, busineses and vital activites with most of their nuclear plants shuttered and idle. It is remarkable that Japan, a modern, top-tier industrialized nation, has come through the hot summer, when demand is highest on its nuclear-power-driven electrical generation system, unscathed, with its people working, its factories operating, and its infrastructure and society intact . It is a tribute to the Japanese national character which prizes social cohesion, cooperation, and hard work, but it is also encouraging that a modern industrialized nation can give up 55% of its electrical power generation and still manage to avoid dreaded brownouts and blackout--over a hot summer. How?
Japan put into place a wide-ranging set of simple conservation measures, such as having some employees limit daily travel to work from home, by closing certain factories in the day and operating them at night when electrical demand is low, limiting use of air conditoning and excess lighting, and by broadcasting the nation's peak electrical demand figures over over TV and radio stations to encourage citizen cooperation and compliance. An enormous amount of electricity goes to waste in our modern usage. Contrary to what the nay-sayers claim, simple conservation measures can be significant. Conservation can and should be seen as another energy resource--that part of what we produce, but which is generally wasted--which, as the Japanese experiment this summer seems to prove--is a significant fraction of the whole. Other industrialized nations can use less electricity (much less) and continue to thrive.
Do the Japanese want to live under strict conservation all the time? It depends on where you are coming from and what choices you have. But without significant fossil fuel resources Japan must turn to its existing efficient use of its wind, tidal, hydropower resources--as well as conservation. There are few places in Japan---which is geologically, essentially a series of merged volcanic cones--where nukes can be safely sited. But as Father Michael often encouraged us: "make a stepping stone out of every stumbling block". For the Japanese that would be to make use of the great pool of subterranean heat which causes its earthquakes and tsunamis and which lies under its surface. Geothermal energy can be used either to directly heat homes and factories, or to generate electricity. After all that is what is accomplished in a nuclear plant-- water is heated by nuclear fission to make steam to drive generators--. The irony is that directly under the Fukishima Diichi plant there is an enormous amount of free, safe, and unlimited heat to drive all of Japan's electric generation needs.
What is your preference? Continual anxiety, uncertainty and business disruption and an existential threat by the danger of exposure to nuclear melt-down and radiation poisoning, or tapping into geothermal heat?
In the interim, as geothermal, wind, tidal and hydropower are developed...Japan will probably continue to have to cope as they have this summer with conservation---and the electricity generated from those nuclear plants which are considered safe--for now.
The good news is that there are good options for Japan.
Get the picture?
Thursday, September 15, 2011
GLASS STEAGALL ACT REINTRODUCED---IN BRITAIN!
THE UK RETURNS TO A “GLASS-STEAGALL-LIKE ACT” TO PROTECT THEIR BANKS--THE USA DOES NOTHING.
One major cause of the Great Recession of 2007-8 was the deregulation of banks, successfully pushed by Republicans during the Clinton administration. A Republican mantra since before the Goldwater nomination in the 1960s has always been "too big government" and "too much regulation". They couldn't get their wish to gut federal banking regualtions with wiser, earlier Presidents from both parties. But it was wily, (and politically comprimised) President Clinton who eventually signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, a bill that freed investment commercial banks and financial institutions (which issued and sold securities) to own and interact with savings banks (which accepted citizen deposits). The resulting free-for all in our banking and financial sector is often sited as a prime cause of the Great Recession of 2007. (In fact, Nobel Economist Paul Krugman called Senator Phil Gramm, main architect and sponsor of the act, “the father of the Great Recession”).
The Gramm bill overrode most of the safeguards of the 1934 Glass-Steagall Act, a bill written just after the bank failures of the Great Depression to prevent the recurrence of collusion and interaction of high risk, unregulated, financial institutions with retail and savings banks. It was that legislation which over the intervening decades had prevented risk-prone financial institutions from using bank depositor’s savings to make high risk investments. The Gramm bill unraveled those restrictions…providing banks and investors access to vast quantities of savings money to invest in questionable securities and enterprises. There is little doubt that the free-wheeling, no-holds barred, casino-like and risky behavior unleashed by US bankers and their financial collaborators fed the housing bubble and ushered in a near-decade long period of greed and excess which most economists concede was a major factor contributing to the collapse of 2007-8.
But not only did we stupidly let Senator Gramm undermine our banking system's stability, but after the collapse, we added insult to injury by bailing-out those corporations responsible (or irresponsible) for the disaster! Yes, the big banks, financial institutions, and investment houses that generated the problem were awarded bail-out funds to the tune of more than three-quarters of a trillion dollars. Money which came from the pockets of the middle-class taxpayers of this nation--the very ones who have taken the brunt of the economic downturn.
As President Bush (and later President Obama) handed over that money, they foolishly demanded no quid pro quo in return. At that low point, a wise government should have required the system to accede to a reinstatement of those sensible regulations of the 1933 Act. But we did nothing, and since then there has been no appetite for re-regulation of our banking system from either Republicans or Democrats. We continue to remain in dire financial jeopardy of a similar event reoccurring. Furthermore, the lack of confidence in our banking system may even be a contributory factor in our stuttering recovery.
However, even if we didn't learn from our mistakes, others have. Today I read in the UK “Telegraph” (September 15, 2011) that Sir John Vickers (economist at All Souls College, Oxford, and Chair of the UK's Independent Commission on Banking (ICB) has released that august group's report on a recent investigation into British banking. “Sir John Vicker's ICB published its final report on Monday, recommending that banks should protect their retail operations from riskier investment banking units and raise capital levels to protect taxpayers from future crises.”
The ICB has concluded that they need more protection from the possible collusion of banks and financial institutions and have published a report that in effect reproduces a form of the US 1933 Glass Steagall Act for the British banking system. Aware that in the future, “high street” savings and retail banks (read “Main Street banks”) and the citizen’s savings upon which the local economy is based, must be protected from risky investments, the ICB wisely recommended "ringfencing" the retail banks.
Some of the prime provisions of the ICB report: The need is immediate and widespread with the new regulations to take effect as soon as 2019. Retail banks should be “ringfenced” to be isolated and protected from interaction with financial institutions. Services such as stock trading, market activities and especially use or sale of derivatives are excluded from the retail banks. One third of banks would be placed within the ringfence. Ringfenced banks must have separate boards with independent directors. Ringfenced banks shall have higher equity capital requirements.
These ICB proposals are very sound ones. It is a sad commentary that the USA pioneered this very idea nearly eighty years ago, and it operated successfully for more sixty years (with only minor revisions) but succumbed to greed, hubris, bad politics and simple stupidity in 1999 only eight years before it was really needed. Like Germany, Australia, and several other nations which had strong banking regulations, were it not for Senator Gramm and his ilk we too might have missed the "Great Recession bullet".
I recommend that we either dig up the old Glass Stegall Act and reintroduce that legislation, or follow the British lead on "ringfencing" our banks. We will all feel a lot more confident about our savings, our future and our children's futures. That confidence may help buoy this faltering economy as well.
Get the picture?
One major cause of the Great Recession of 2007-8 was the deregulation of banks, successfully pushed by Republicans during the Clinton administration. A Republican mantra since before the Goldwater nomination in the 1960s has always been "too big government" and "too much regulation". They couldn't get their wish to gut federal banking regualtions with wiser, earlier Presidents from both parties. But it was wily, (and politically comprimised) President Clinton who eventually signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, a bill that freed investment commercial banks and financial institutions (which issued and sold securities) to own and interact with savings banks (which accepted citizen deposits). The resulting free-for all in our banking and financial sector is often sited as a prime cause of the Great Recession of 2007. (In fact, Nobel Economist Paul Krugman called Senator Phil Gramm, main architect and sponsor of the act, “the father of the Great Recession”).
The Gramm bill overrode most of the safeguards of the 1934 Glass-Steagall Act, a bill written just after the bank failures of the Great Depression to prevent the recurrence of collusion and interaction of high risk, unregulated, financial institutions with retail and savings banks. It was that legislation which over the intervening decades had prevented risk-prone financial institutions from using bank depositor’s savings to make high risk investments. The Gramm bill unraveled those restrictions…providing banks and investors access to vast quantities of savings money to invest in questionable securities and enterprises. There is little doubt that the free-wheeling, no-holds barred, casino-like and risky behavior unleashed by US bankers and their financial collaborators fed the housing bubble and ushered in a near-decade long period of greed and excess which most economists concede was a major factor contributing to the collapse of 2007-8.
But not only did we stupidly let Senator Gramm undermine our banking system's stability, but after the collapse, we added insult to injury by bailing-out those corporations responsible (or irresponsible) for the disaster! Yes, the big banks, financial institutions, and investment houses that generated the problem were awarded bail-out funds to the tune of more than three-quarters of a trillion dollars. Money which came from the pockets of the middle-class taxpayers of this nation--the very ones who have taken the brunt of the economic downturn.
As President Bush (and later President Obama) handed over that money, they foolishly demanded no quid pro quo in return. At that low point, a wise government should have required the system to accede to a reinstatement of those sensible regulations of the 1933 Act. But we did nothing, and since then there has been no appetite for re-regulation of our banking system from either Republicans or Democrats. We continue to remain in dire financial jeopardy of a similar event reoccurring. Furthermore, the lack of confidence in our banking system may even be a contributory factor in our stuttering recovery.
However, even if we didn't learn from our mistakes, others have. Today I read in the UK “Telegraph” (September 15, 2011) that Sir John Vickers (economist at All Souls College, Oxford, and Chair of the UK's Independent Commission on Banking (ICB) has released that august group's report on a recent investigation into British banking. “Sir John Vicker's ICB published its final report on Monday, recommending that banks should protect their retail operations from riskier investment banking units and raise capital levels to protect taxpayers from future crises.”
The ICB has concluded that they need more protection from the possible collusion of banks and financial institutions and have published a report that in effect reproduces a form of the US 1933 Glass Steagall Act for the British banking system. Aware that in the future, “high street” savings and retail banks (read “Main Street banks”) and the citizen’s savings upon which the local economy is based, must be protected from risky investments, the ICB wisely recommended "ringfencing" the retail banks.
Some of the prime provisions of the ICB report: The need is immediate and widespread with the new regulations to take effect as soon as 2019. Retail banks should be “ringfenced” to be isolated and protected from interaction with financial institutions. Services such as stock trading, market activities and especially use or sale of derivatives are excluded from the retail banks. One third of banks would be placed within the ringfence. Ringfenced banks must have separate boards with independent directors. Ringfenced banks shall have higher equity capital requirements.
These ICB proposals are very sound ones. It is a sad commentary that the USA pioneered this very idea nearly eighty years ago, and it operated successfully for more sixty years (with only minor revisions) but succumbed to greed, hubris, bad politics and simple stupidity in 1999 only eight years before it was really needed. Like Germany, Australia, and several other nations which had strong banking regulations, were it not for Senator Gramm and his ilk we too might have missed the "Great Recession bullet".
I recommend that we either dig up the old Glass Stegall Act and reintroduce that legislation, or follow the British lead on "ringfencing" our banks. We will all feel a lot more confident about our savings, our future and our children's futures. That confidence may help buoy this faltering economy as well.
Get the picture?
Monday, September 12, 2011
PAUL KRUGMAN SAID IT, WE ARE ALL THINKING IT
I reprint Paul Krugman's Blog from the 9-11-11 NYT below.
September 11, 2011, 8:41 am
The Years of Shame
Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?
Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.
What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.
A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?
The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.
I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.
.
September 11, 2011, 8:41 am
The Years of Shame
Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?
Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.
What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.
A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?
The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.
I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.
.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
WHY WE ARE IN AFGHANISTAN AND WON'T LEAVE
July 13, 2011
I can’t seem to make sense of our policy in Afghanistan. Each month we read reports of the loss of our soldiers to treacherous IEDs. The men who do survive such attacks may come home as broken shells of their former selves, often with need for long-term medical care. But that is only one part (a hear-rending one) of the tragedy. The cost of fielding troops in that distant mountainous land is staggering--one million dollars per trooper. With our present (post-Obama) troop surge- we spend over 10 billion dollars a month or 120 billion dollars annually in far off Afghanistan. But the real costs are much greater. A recent, detailed study by the Eisenhower Research Project at Brown University revealed that the war on terror (of which the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are part) has cost the US economy so far about 4 trillion dollars. Another trillion dollars is estimated for the long-term interest payments on the loans we took out to finance the wars. Oh yes, these “Bush” wars were “on the cuff” affairs. And by the way, while we were borrowing for these wars our leadership in the Bush White House also decided to cut taxes on the wealthy. Those polices, borrowing for the war on terror and cutting taxes at the same time, were the sinister plans of the Republicans to drive the Democrats against a rock and hard place and try to undo the 80 years of FDR progressive domestic spending that reactionary Republicans so loathed.
But back to our reasons for being in Afghanistan. Why are we there? President Obama’s stated reason is to neutralize al-Qaeda—an alleged threat to our security. But since it is well established (CIA and Pentagon reports) that there are perhaps one-hundred (100) al-Qaeda operatives in that nation. One finds that reason incredulous. Or one must conclude that he al-Qaeda (and the Pashtun Afghans who associate with them) must be supermen—if indeed they can be worth the cost of 1.2 billion dollars each to take down. Think of it. One-hundred-twenty thousand (120,000) modern American troops armed to the teeth, with the latest technical devices for dealing death and destruction chasing one-hundred towel-headed men in rags and sandals armed with home-made A-K47 rip-offs and a belt of cartridges. If the al-Qaeda and Taliban had some expertise in movie making they could produce some block-buster comedies out of that scenario. Sadly, it is not a comedy.
Does our government really expect our US citizenry to believe such nonsense? Apparently they do. But by making use the old rule of “follow the money” may help clarify the situation.
By the way: These annual costs for the Afghanistan war should be viewed in context. This fiscal year (14 trillion dollar national debt, a 1.4 trillion dollar deficit) the President has proposed a nearly 4 trillion dollar budget, but tax receipts are expected to be only less than 3 trillion dollars (for a cause of this short-fall think back to the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy of 2001 and 2003). To quiet his detractors Obama has proposed spending-cuts in many entitlement programs (health, education, etc) but has not dared cut the military and Pentagon budgets. They all got a 1.6% raise and there were no cuts. Furthermore, the promised reduction of troops in Afghanistan has been only a nominal drawdown-- some ten thousand are expected to depart but these are mostly support and training men and women. Thus in a situation where our revenues only cover 75% of our expeditiures and we are now spending about a third more than what we take in. Beside the horrible waste of life on both sides, we must ask ourselves, can we afford to blow away 120 billion dollars a year? I think not.
But back to Afghanistan and our costs there. When we ask, “who is profiting from this spending?” We find the bloated Pentagon (the real largest cost element of our annual Federal budget), and the military industrial companies with which the Pentagon has such a cozy relationship. I believe it was President Eisenhower who first used the term "military-industrial complex" and fingered it as a problem for our democracy. Today, the MIC are even bigger and more powerful. They are the US companies who make huge profits out of war-spending (we euphemistically call them “defense contractors”) and those in the banking and financial sector that finance and invest in these companies with close ties to the military, and the facilitator members of Congress and the Senate (mostly Republicans--though the Democrats are in there too).
Pepe Escobar the roving correspondent for the Asia Times has a theory. (Contact: pepeasia@yahoo.com ) He states “The notion that the US government would spend $10 billion a month just to chase a few "al-Qaeda types" in the Hindu Kush is nonsense. This is a war between a superpower and a fierce, nationalist, predominantly Pashtun movement - of which the Taliban are a major strand; regardless of their medieval ways, they are fighting a foreign occupation and doing what they can to undermine a puppet regime (Hamid Karzai's).”
I can’t seem to make sense of our policy in Afghanistan. Each month we read reports of the loss of our soldiers to treacherous IEDs. The men who do survive such attacks may come home as broken shells of their former selves, often with need for long-term medical care. But that is only one part (a hear-rending one) of the tragedy. The cost of fielding troops in that distant mountainous land is staggering--one million dollars per trooper. With our present (post-Obama) troop surge- we spend over 10 billion dollars a month or 120 billion dollars annually in far off Afghanistan. But the real costs are much greater. A recent, detailed study by the Eisenhower Research Project at Brown University revealed that the war on terror (of which the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are part) has cost the US economy so far about 4 trillion dollars. Another trillion dollars is estimated for the long-term interest payments on the loans we took out to finance the wars. Oh yes, these “Bush” wars were “on the cuff” affairs. And by the way, while we were borrowing for these wars our leadership in the Bush White House also decided to cut taxes on the wealthy. Those polices, borrowing for the war on terror and cutting taxes at the same time, were the sinister plans of the Republicans to drive the Democrats against a rock and hard place and try to undo the 80 years of FDR progressive domestic spending that reactionary Republicans so loathed.
But back to our reasons for being in Afghanistan. Why are we there? President Obama’s stated reason is to neutralize al-Qaeda—an alleged threat to our security. But since it is well established (CIA and Pentagon reports) that there are perhaps one-hundred (100) al-Qaeda operatives in that nation. One finds that reason incredulous. Or one must conclude that he al-Qaeda (and the Pashtun Afghans who associate with them) must be supermen—if indeed they can be worth the cost of 1.2 billion dollars each to take down. Think of it. One-hundred-twenty thousand (120,000) modern American troops armed to the teeth, with the latest technical devices for dealing death and destruction chasing one-hundred towel-headed men in rags and sandals armed with home-made A-K47 rip-offs and a belt of cartridges. If the al-Qaeda and Taliban had some expertise in movie making they could produce some block-buster comedies out of that scenario. Sadly, it is not a comedy.
Does our government really expect our US citizenry to believe such nonsense? Apparently they do. But by making use the old rule of “follow the money” may help clarify the situation.
By the way: These annual costs for the Afghanistan war should be viewed in context. This fiscal year (14 trillion dollar national debt, a 1.4 trillion dollar deficit) the President has proposed a nearly 4 trillion dollar budget, but tax receipts are expected to be only less than 3 trillion dollars (for a cause of this short-fall think back to the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy of 2001 and 2003). To quiet his detractors Obama has proposed spending-cuts in many entitlement programs (health, education, etc) but has not dared cut the military and Pentagon budgets. They all got a 1.6% raise and there were no cuts. Furthermore, the promised reduction of troops in Afghanistan has been only a nominal drawdown-- some ten thousand are expected to depart but these are mostly support and training men and women. Thus in a situation where our revenues only cover 75% of our expeditiures and we are now spending about a third more than what we take in. Beside the horrible waste of life on both sides, we must ask ourselves, can we afford to blow away 120 billion dollars a year? I think not.
But back to Afghanistan and our costs there. When we ask, “who is profiting from this spending?” We find the bloated Pentagon (the real largest cost element of our annual Federal budget), and the military industrial companies with which the Pentagon has such a cozy relationship. I believe it was President Eisenhower who first used the term "military-industrial complex" and fingered it as a problem for our democracy. Today, the MIC are even bigger and more powerful. They are the US companies who make huge profits out of war-spending (we euphemistically call them “defense contractors”) and those in the banking and financial sector that finance and invest in these companies with close ties to the military, and the facilitator members of Congress and the Senate (mostly Republicans--though the Democrats are in there too).
Pepe Escobar the roving correspondent for the Asia Times has a theory. (Contact: pepeasia@yahoo.com ) He states “The notion that the US government would spend $10 billion a month just to chase a few "al-Qaeda types" in the Hindu Kush is nonsense. This is a war between a superpower and a fierce, nationalist, predominantly Pashtun movement - of which the Taliban are a major strand; regardless of their medieval ways, they are fighting a foreign occupation and doing what they can to undermine a puppet regime (Hamid Karzai's).”
Thus Washington is fighting a Pashtun nationalist insurgency. But why? According to Escobar, Afghanistan must be “neutralized” i.e. the Pashtun tribal elements must be either bribed, exterminated or beaten into submission so that we can keep our bases in an area we deem essential for our plan of world domination of natural resources. Yes! The Pentagon’s plan called “Full Spectrum Dominance” is designed to encircle our competitors in the east:Russia and China…and prevent them from getting resources that we and our client-states may want or need. That plan has of course led to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Yemen, Pakistan-borderlands and now in Libya and who knows where else?”
According to Escobar, that is only the strategic reason. There is tactical and proximate reason as well. This is what Escobar calls “Pipelinestan”. This reason for war in Afghanistan is heard very little of in the timid and controlled US and Murdock press. And when it is discussed, it is described as the west’s attempts at “democratizing” the east. According to Escobar Pipelinestan is his term for the Trans-Afghan Pipeline, a gas line proposed early in the Clinton Administration and which is still on the “planning table” books. The gas line would connect Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan and would permit a flow of natural gas from landlocked and isolated Central Asia to global markets in the west, bypassing both Russia and Iran and siphoning off gas reserves from areas which China might have considered in its own sphere of influence.
Escobar states: “Washington has badly wanted TAP since the mid-1990s, when the Clinton administration was negotiating with the Taliban; the talks broke down because of transit fees, even before 9/11, when the Bush administration decided to change the rhetoric (an offer) from "a carpet of gold" to "a carpet of bombs".”
But to accomplish “Pipelinestan” the US needs a totally pacified Afghanistan and the acquiescence of a Pakistan which must give up using Afghanistan as a vassal state in its confrontation with India. Escobar sees the US and Pakistan’s relationship as two nations both bent on nullifying Pashtun nationalism. This correspondence of goals may explain why the Pakistani Army and the Pentagon enjoy such a close working relationship. (Which is only now showing some signs of strain and diversion after the US’s killing of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan.) Both Washington and Pakistan see Pashtun nationalism as a thorn in their sides.
The way Escobar sees it: “The 2,500-kilometer-long, porous, disputed border with Afghanistan is at the core of Pakistan's interference in its neighbour's affairs.
Washington is getting desperate because it knows the Pakistani military will always support the Taliban as much as they support other hardcore Islamist groups fighting India. Washington also knows Pakistan's Afghan policy implies containing India's influence in Afghanistan at all costs.
Just ask General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan's army chief - and a Pentagon darling to boot; he always says his army is India-centric, and, therefore, entitled to "strategic depth" in Afghanistan.
It's mind-boggling that 10 years and $5.4 trillion dollars later, the situation is exactly the same. Washington still badly wants "its" pipeline - which will in fact be a winning game mostly for commodity traders, global finance majors and Western energy giants.
From the standpoint of these elites, the ideal endgame scenario is global" (that the US will continue to be) "Robocop NATO - helped by hundreds of thousands of mercenaries - "protecting" TAP (or TAPI) while taking a 24/7 peek on what's going on in neighbours Russia and China.”
Escobar adds: “Sharp wits in India have described Washington's tortuous moves in Afghanistan as "surge, bribe and run". But Escobar redefines it as rather "surge, bribe and stay". He adds that "This whole saga might have been accomplished without a superpower bankrupting itself, and without immense, atrocious, sustained loss of life, but hey - nobody's perfect.”
According to Escobar, that is only the strategic reason. There is tactical and proximate reason as well. This is what Escobar calls “Pipelinestan”. This reason for war in Afghanistan is heard very little of in the timid and controlled US and Murdock press. And when it is discussed, it is described as the west’s attempts at “democratizing” the east. According to Escobar Pipelinestan is his term for the Trans-Afghan Pipeline, a gas line proposed early in the Clinton Administration and which is still on the “planning table” books. The gas line would connect Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan and would permit a flow of natural gas from landlocked and isolated Central Asia to global markets in the west, bypassing both Russia and Iran and siphoning off gas reserves from areas which China might have considered in its own sphere of influence.
Escobar states: “Washington has badly wanted TAP since the mid-1990s, when the Clinton administration was negotiating with the Taliban; the talks broke down because of transit fees, even before 9/11, when the Bush administration decided to change the rhetoric (an offer) from "a carpet of gold" to "a carpet of bombs".”
But to accomplish “Pipelinestan” the US needs a totally pacified Afghanistan and the acquiescence of a Pakistan which must give up using Afghanistan as a vassal state in its confrontation with India. Escobar sees the US and Pakistan’s relationship as two nations both bent on nullifying Pashtun nationalism. This correspondence of goals may explain why the Pakistani Army and the Pentagon enjoy such a close working relationship. (Which is only now showing some signs of strain and diversion after the US’s killing of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan.) Both Washington and Pakistan see Pashtun nationalism as a thorn in their sides.
The way Escobar sees it: “The 2,500-kilometer-long, porous, disputed border with Afghanistan is at the core of Pakistan's interference in its neighbour's affairs.
Washington is getting desperate because it knows the Pakistani military will always support the Taliban as much as they support other hardcore Islamist groups fighting India. Washington also knows Pakistan's Afghan policy implies containing India's influence in Afghanistan at all costs.
Just ask General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan's army chief - and a Pentagon darling to boot; he always says his army is India-centric, and, therefore, entitled to "strategic depth" in Afghanistan.
It's mind-boggling that 10 years and $5.4 trillion dollars later, the situation is exactly the same. Washington still badly wants "its" pipeline - which will in fact be a winning game mostly for commodity traders, global finance majors and Western energy giants.
From the standpoint of these elites, the ideal endgame scenario is global" (that the US will continue to be) "Robocop NATO - helped by hundreds of thousands of mercenaries - "protecting" TAP (or TAPI) while taking a 24/7 peek on what's going on in neighbours Russia and China.”
Escobar adds: “Sharp wits in India have described Washington's tortuous moves in Afghanistan as "surge, bribe and run". But Escobar redefines it as rather "surge, bribe and stay". He adds that "This whole saga might have been accomplished without a superpower bankrupting itself, and without immense, atrocious, sustained loss of life, but hey - nobody's perfect.”
On another front: Iraq where we see a very similar endgame playing out. The last news reports I read seem to suggest that the Iraq troop pull-out, scheduled for the end of this year, forged in a formal agreement by the Bush presidency, is now considered to be on shaky ground under Obama(the "peace president" who was elected on his stated objection of initiating the Iraq fiasco). It seems that the military types close to the Obamians in Washington are angling for some way to keep their massive bases and a sizable troop deployment there permanently! The number they bandy about seems to be about 10,000 battle ready troops. Their stay would be long term. PS 10,000 times a million dollars/troop/year = ten thousand million or ten billion annually! Ten billion dollars that will come out of our tax payer’s pockets, and will not be available for our schools, our infrastructure, our broadband, our transit, our nation’s health, or the development of energy industries for the 21st century.
If Washington’s real goal is a pacified Afghanistan for the benefit of the oil and gas cartels and for a strategy of global domination…..that should have been brought into the open and debated. It never was. This is supposed to be a DEMOCRACY. The people should have a say in major decisions of war and peace. But what appears to be the case now is that our government has been usurped by the powerful corporations who simply make up the story they want. It seems they have no interest in bettering our nation but want only to use this geographic location as a base of supply, a good place for corporate headquarters, as a source of cheap manpower, and a staging ground for their business activities, and those of the world’s other giant corporations, its global media, and elite clients---and perhaps for its plan of world domination. But as citizens of such a nation we do not get the benefits which accure to their success, such as decent health care, a working and up-to-date infrastructure, clean water and safe food, education and others). Do we want that kind of nation? Let’s ask ourselves, “What’s in it for us?”
Get the picture?
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