Make-Believe Crises That Are Being Hyped In Order To Force Cutbacks In Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security & Murdoch Finally Brought Down?

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts knows that "The Enemy Is Washington." Wish I could disagree after this week's kabuki dramas concerning raising the debt ceiling once under Obama (which was raised 9 times under not-so-Dumbya, who added over 4 trillion to the debt without raising a hackle among the Tea Partying righties (Ronnie Rayguns raised it 19 times!)), and destroying the rest of our social safety net by giving the righties more than they asked for, which we've paid for all our working lives (and tiny fixes could make gold plated for 100 years). Particularly at the time when the Murdoch media disinformation mechanism has been exposed and the house of cards portraying false crises is falling fast.

An Economy Destroyed The Enemy Is Washington Paul Craig Roberts July 22, 2011 Recently, the bond rating agencies that gave junk derivatives triple-A ratings threatened to downgrade US Treasury bonds if the White House and Congress did not reach a deficit reduction deal and debt ceiling increase. The downgrade threat is not credible, and neither is the default threat. Both are make-believe crises that are being hyped in order to force cutbacks in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. If the rating agencies downgraded Treasuries, the company executives would be arrested for the fraudulent ratings that they gave to the junk that Wall Street peddled to the rest of the world. The companies would be destroyed and their ratings discredited. The US government will never default on its bonds, because the bonds, unlike those of Greece, Spain, and Ireland, are payable in its own currency. Regardless of whether the debt ceiling is raised, the Federal Reserve will continue to purchase the Treasury’s debt. If Goldman Sachs is too big to fail, then so is the US government. There is no budget focus on the illegal wars and military occupations that the US government has underway in at least six countries or the 66-year old US occupations of Japan and Germany and the ring of military bases being constructed around Russia. The total military/security budget is in the vicinity of $1.1-$1.2 trillion, or 70% -75% of the federal budget deficit. In contrast, Social Security is solvent. Medicare expenditures are coming close to exceeding the 2.3% payroll tax that funds Medicare, but it is dishonest for politicians and pundits to blame the US budget deficit on “entitlement programs.” Entitlements are funded with a payroll tax. Wars are not funded. The criminal Bush regime lied to Americans and claimed that the Iraq war would only cost $70 billion at the most and would be paid for with Iraq oil revenues. When Bush’s chief economic advisor, Larry Lindsay, said the Iraq invasion would cost $200 billion, the White House Moron fired him. In fact, Lindsay was off by a factor of 20. Economic and budget experts have calculated that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have consumed $4,000 billion in out-of-pocket and already incurred future costs. In other words, the ongoing wars and occupations have already eaten up the $4 trillion by which Obama hopes to cut federal spending over the next ten years. Bomb now, pay later. As taxing the rich is not part of the political solution, the focus is on rewarding the insurance companies by privatizing Medicare at some future date with government subsidized insurance premiums, by capping Medicaid, and by loading the diminishing middle class with additional Social Security tax. Washington’s priorities and those of its presstitutes could not be clearer. President Obama, like George W. Bush before him, both parties in Congress, the print and TV media, and National Public Radio have made it clear that war is a far more important priority than health care and old age pensions for Americans. The American people and their wants and needs are not represented in Washington. Washington serves powerful interest groups, such as the military/security complex, Wall Street and the banksters, agribusiness, the oil companies, the insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, and the mining and timber industries. Washington endows these interests with excess profits by committing war crimes and terrorizing foreign populations with bombs, drones, and invasions, by deregulating the financial sector and bailing it out of its greed-driven mistakes after it has stolen Americans’ pensions, homes, and jobs, by refusing to protect the land, air, water, oceans and wildlife from polluters and despoilers, and by constructing a health care system with the highest costs and highest profits in the world. The way to reduce health care costs is to take out gobs of costs and profits with a single payer system. A private health care system can continue to operate alongside for those who can afford it. The way to get the budget under control is to stop the gratuitous hegemonic wars, wars that will end in a nuclear confrontation. The US economy is in a deepening recession from which recovery is not possible, because American middle class jobs in manufacturing and professional services have been offshored and given to foreigners. US GDP, consumer purchasing power, and tax base have been handed over to China, India, and Indonesia in order that Wall Street, shareholders, and corporate CEOs can earn more. When the goods and services produced offshore come back into America, they arrive as imports. The trade balance worsens, the US dollar declines further in exchange value, and prices rise for Americans, whose incomes are stagnant or falling. This is economic destruction. It always occurs when an oligarchy seizes control of a government. The short-run profits of the powerful are maximized at the expense of the viability of the economy. The US economy is driven by consumer demand, but with 22.3% unemployment, stagnant and declining wages and salaries, and consumer debt burdens so high that consumers cannot borrow to spend, there is nothing to drive the economy. Washington’s response to this dilemma is to increase the austerity! Cutting back Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, forcing down wages by destroying unions and offshoring jobs (which results in a labor surplus and lower wages), and driving up the prices of food and energy by depreciating the dollar further erodes consumer purchasing power. The Federal Reserve can print money to rescue the crooked financial institutions, but it cannot rescue the American consumer. As a final point, confront the fact that you are even lied to about “deficit reduction.” Even if Obama gets his $4 trillion “deficit reduction” over the next decade, it does not mean that the current national debt will be $4 trillion less than it currently is. The “reduction” merely means that the growth in the national debt will be $4 trillion less than otherwise. Regardless of any “deficit reduction,” the national debt ten years from now will be much higher than it presently is. (Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, and professor of economics in six universities.)

And speaking of all mysteries finally being exposed in the cold light of day . . . .

The Murdoch editor who had supervised electronic hacking at "The News Of The World," but then went to work for Scotland Yard, but then spied on the Scotland Yard hacking investigation for Murdoch's men, but then tried to suppress media coverage of the Scotland Yard hacking investigation, now found himself in exactly the same kind of candy store over climate change denial. And he was the chief kid!

Thank you, Keith! Good to have you back.

Murdoch Henchman Responsible for Climate-Gate? Keith Olbermann July 21, 2011 "Current TV" The Murdoch Phone-Hacking Scandal may have just metastasized. The so-called "Climate-Gate" controversy - in which e-mails about global warming were stolen from researchers at Britain's University of East Anglia in November, 2009 - now turns out to bear the stamp of Neil Wallis, one of the key figures in Murdoch's hacking of the phones, voicemails, and other electronic communications of thousands of people.

Wallis is unique in this scandal. He had been the Executive Editor of Murdoch's News Of The World when hacking was at its peak. Yet in 2009 he wound up being hired by the police as a public relations consultant while the police investigated the hacking scandal. And he wound up spying for Murdoch's people on what Scotland Yard was investigating.

Wallis was, as the New York Times put it, "reporting back to News International while he was working for the police on the hacking case."

Moreover, while Wallis was keeping Murdoch's organization apprised of what and whom the police were investigating, the police were trying to convince other news organizations not to cover the story - a suppression of evidence that benefited both the police and Rupert Murdoch. As the British newspaper The Guardian reported last Friday: "Scotland Yard's most senior officers tried to convince the Guardian during two private meetings that its coverage of phone hacking was exaggerated and incorrect without revealing they had hired Neil Wallis ..."

It was neither exaggerated nor incorrect. Last Thursday, Neil Wallis was arrested. Last night, it was revealed that while acting as a double-agent for Scotland Yard and Murdoch, Wallis was also consulting Conservative Party Leader David Cameron during the 2010 election that saw Cameron rise to become the nation's Prime Minister.

Today, bobbing up to the surface through this vast ocean of ethical filth, comes Neil Wallis's role ... in "Climate-Gate."

On November 20th, 2009, somebody broke into a computer server at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, and stole thousands of emails and computer files. The documents were leaked to Climate Change Deniers, and although exhaustive analysis later proved that the emails merely revealed scientists' anxiety that Climate Data and Research were being properly handled and studied, the Deniers have treated those emails as if they were a kind of Holy Grail of fraud. They claim the emails not only disproved all of climate change, but also that they proved that scientists had doctored data in order to exaggerate the urgency of an international conference on climate change coming up the next month in Copenhagen in Denmark.

As the corporations and lobbyists who sought to feed the myth that there is no man-made climate change disseminated, exploited and deliberately misinterpreted the stolen e-mails - and used Fox News and other Murdoch enterprises as their principle venues - the victims, the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, decided they'd better hire a public relations pro to help them fight back. They hired ... Neil Wallis.

The Murdoch editor who had supervised electronic hacking at "The News Of The World," but then went to work for Scotland Yard, but then spied on the Scotland Yard hacking investigation for Murdoch's men, but then tried to suppress media coverage of the Scotland Yard hacking investigation, now found himself in exactly the same kind of candy store over climate change denial. And he was the chief kid!

As it was phrased in a gushing review last year in "Music Week Magazine" of Neil Wallis and his PR firm "Outside Organization": "Wallis led on the University of East Anglia's 'Climategate' job, when Outside was drafted in to help the university's Climatic Research Unit defend itself against charges of scientific misconduct."

Climate change scientists and outside experts agree that, with Neil Wallis at the helm, the Climatic Research Unit couldn't have done a worse job defending itself. The myth that its emails "disprove" Global Warming persists today.

In the Murdoch Hacking Scandal, Wallis has already been shown to have been undermining the efforts of the people for whom he'd been hired to work - the police. In the Murdoch Hacking Scandal, Wallis has already been shown to have been feeding information from the investigators, to those being investigated. In the Murdoch Hacking Scandal, Wallis has already been shown to have been working for Rupert Murdoch, long after he claimed he wasn't working for Rupert Murdoch. And in the Murdoch Hacking Scandal, Wallis was an executive editor in charge of having people illegally hack phones, voicemails, and other electronic communications, and then publicizing the data and details that the hacking had produced.

And yet it was to him that climate scientists turned ... to defend themselves against hackers.

What, if anything, Neil Wallis had to do with the original hacking of the climate emails at the University of East Anglia, is still speculative ... just as whether or not he was a double-agent for Murdoch in this hacking case, just as he had been a double-agent for Murdoch during Scotland Yard's hacking investigation. But it may not be speculative for long. There is the news from The Financial Times: a possible FBI/DOJ investigation of a Murdoch subsidiary hacking the computers of a business rival. And earlier today, PC World Magazine reported that while we've all been working with a number of 3,870 hacking victims in the Murdoch Scandal, data released by Britain's Home Affairs Committee suggests the number may actually be as high as 12,800.

Only 170 of the victims have yet been notified. If any of the others among the "Hacked Twelve Thousand" turn out to be scientists at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, Rupert Murdoch may be in a lot bigger trouble than he is, even tonight.

He may be the man ultimately responsible for the illegal and inaccurate attempt to dismiss climate change as a scientific fraud.

(Countdown with Keith Olbermann/Current TV)

Give a few moments, if you please, to the concentration of power that has brought US to this crisis. ____________________