The Story Behind the Maxie Bawk-us Fraudulent Plan (and the Taxpayers' Demise)

(Don't Miss Michael Moore's newest expose "Capitalism: A Love Story." What a hoot that must be. As if.) (If you would like to make a contribution to this website's continuance, now is the time. Please either use the Paypal button on the top left of this site, or send me an email at susanwinstoday@yahoo.com for a snail mail address. My heartfelt thanks go out to the beautiful people who have supported me so generously in the past.) Glenn Greenwald gives us the insiders' view (although we're not supposed to know that) on exactly how democratic Maxie (Bawk-us) is. Get ready for a flood of money. No, not to you. (Emphasis marks and a bit of editing inserted - Ed.)

As previously documented, Goldman Sachs itself has a virtual lock on the top Treasury positions no matter which party is in power. The vaunted bipartisan "Baucus plan" was literally written by a Baucus aide who just left her position as Vice President of Wellpoint to write the health care reform plan for the Senate - a revelation which barely caused a ripple. And the Supreme Court is on the verge of striking down the few limits on corporate involvement in our politics, a ruling which may (or may not be) constitutionally defensible but which will flood American politics with so much corporate money that it will give new meaning to the term "oligarchy." So with this massive pillaging of America's economic security and the control of American government by its richest and most powerful factions growing by the day, to whom is America's intense economic anxiety being directed? To a non-profit group that devotes itself to providing minute benefits to people who live under America's poverty line, and which is so powerless in Washington that virtually the entire U.S. Senate just voted to cut off its funding at the first sign of real controversy - could anyone imagine that happening to a key player in the banking or defense industry? Apparently, the problem for middle-class and lower-middle-class Americans is not that their taxpayer dollars are going to prop up billionaires, oligarchs and their corrupt industries. It's that America's impoverished - a group that is growing rapidly - is getting too much, has too much power and too little accountability. Anonymous Liberal has a superb post on the manipulative inanity of the Fox-generated ACORN "scandal" (h/t D-day):

Let's take a step back and consider just what ACORN is. It is a non-profit organization whose mission is to empower and improve the lives of poor people. As with many other organizations, ACORN has a number of legally distinct parts, each of which has different sources of funding and engages in different kinds of activities (ACORN's conservative enemies routinely conflate these various parts to imply that ACORN is using federal money for improper political purposes). Since its founding the 70s, ACORN and its employees and volunteers have fought successfully to, among other things, increase minimum wages across the country, increase the quality of public education in poor areas, and protect people from predatory lending practices. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, ACORN helped rebuild thousands of homes and assisted victims in relocating and finding housing outside of New Orleans. The ACORN activity that has drawn the most conservative ire is its voter registration efforts which, consistent with ACORN's mission, are primarily aimed at low-income voters (who tend to vote Democratic). . . . But even if you take these film-makers at face value and assume the worst, the reality is that ACORN has thousands of employees and the vast majority of them spend their days trying to help poor people through perfectly legal means (and receive very little compensation for doing so). Even before yesterday's Senate vote, the amount of federal money that went to ACORN was very small. This is a relatively insignificant organization in the grand scheme of things, but it's an organization that has unquestionably fought over the years to improve the lives of the less fortunate in this country. That the GOP and its conservative supporters would single out this particular organization for such intense demonization is telling. In September of last year, the entire world came perilously close to complete financial catastrophe. We're still not out of the woods and we're deep within one of the worst recessions in U.S. history. This situation was brought about by the recklessness and greed of our banks and financial institutions, most of which had to be bailed out at enormous cost to the American taxpayer (exponentially more than all of the tax dollars given to ACORN over the years). The people who brought about this near catastrophe, for the most, profited immensely from it. These very same institutions, propped up by the American taxpayer, are once again raking in large profits. But rather than focus their anger on these folks, conservatives choose to go after an organization composed almost entirely of low-paid community organizers, an organization that could never hope to have even a small fraction of the clout or the ability to affect the overall direction of the country that Wall Street bankers have. ACORN's relative lack of political influence was on full display yesterday, when the U.S. Senate (in which Democrats have a supermajority) not only entertained a vote to defund ACORN, but approved it by a huge margin with only seven Democrats opposing).

If one were to watch Fox News or listen to Rush Limbaugh - as millions do - one would believe that the burden of the ordinary American taxpayer, and the unfair plight of America's rich, is that their money is being stolen by the poorest and most powerless sectors of the society. An organization whose constituencies are often-unregistered inner-city minorities, the homeless and the dispossessed is depicted as though it's Goldman Sachs, Blackwater, and Halliburton combined, as though Washington officials are in thrall to those living in poverty rather than those who fund their campaigns. It's not the nice men in the suits doing the stealing but the very people, often minorities or illegal immigrants, with no political or financial power who nonetheless somehow dominate the government and get everything for themselves. The poorer and weaker one is, the more one is demonized in right-wing mythology as all-powerful receipients of ill-gotten gains; conversely, the stronger and more powerful one is, the more one is depicted as an oppressed and put-upon victim (that same dynamic applies to foreign affairs as well). It's such an obvious falsehood - so counter-intuitive and irrational - yet it resonates due to powerful cultural manipulations. Most of all, what's so pernicious about all of this is that the same interests who are stealing, pillaging and wallowing in corruption are scapegoating the poorest and most vulnerable in order to ensure that the victims of their behavior are furious with everyone except for them.

What nice people these white rulers of America have turned out to be. Aren't you glad we won the culture wars? Suzan _____________

Taibbi Exposes PhRMA's Big Bribe & How the GOP Pays Off its 'Base' of Elites (Existentialist Cowboy)

I think Matt Taibbi has become, in essence, the Ralph Nader of the 60's today. Yes, that public servant and -serving unbought and unpaid-for presence that Ralph represented as a consumer advocate and whom everybody trusted (except, of course, big preying-mantis businesses who were exposed for their nefarious practices) is on the move in Taibbi's works.

Taibbi's especially helpful as he describes how sometimes-but-not-often-Democratic Senator Max Baucus is rolling out the publicity wagon for Big PhRMA, which will soon obscure any type of clarity you may have thought existed on the need for health care reform, and extort Henry Waxman to accept changes made to the bill that increase the profits of Big PhRMA and decrease your chance of being covered decently in this bill at all.

It seems this always happens. Clear-eyed individuals define a public-service problem, find several solutions that would bring about some needed changes and then get derailed by the publicity emanating from Faux Snooze sources who ensure that most poorly-informed citizens believe the opposite about the issue and the solutions, ensuring that either no positive changes occur or that any changes occurring will bring further profits to the providers and the same or worse care for the needy population. (Emphasis marks and some (necessary but hopefully judicious) editing changes were added - Ed.)

PhRMA’s Big Bribe Comes In The drug industry’s trade group plans to roll out a series of television advertisements in coming weeks specifically to support Senator Max Baucus’s health care overhaul proposal, according to an industry official involved in the planning. via Drug Makers to Back Baucus Plan With Ad Dollars – Prescriptions Blog – NYTimes.com.

I’ve been completely out of the loop with the health care story these last week and half or so, out of touch actually with the entire earth (I’ve been on a deadline on another story), but upon returning to work today I began getting calls about some alarming maneuverings in congress. We’re apparently finally seeing delivery of the Big Bribe that President Obama and Rahm Emanuel extracted from that pharmaceutical industry in exchange for dropping drug-pricing reform in the health care bill.

To recap: PhRMA, the lobbying arm of the pharmaceutical industry, earlier this year announced that it would be setting aside $150 million to pay for an ad campaign supporting the President’s health care bill. The deal was apparently struck in July, after former Louisiana congressman and current PhRMA chief Billy Tauzin (Rod Blagojevich’s underdog opponent in the upcoming semifinal match of the Corrupt Scumbag of the Century So Far tournament) met with Rahm and other Obama aides in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. Also in attendance were representatives of the usual panoply of awful medical corporations, including Abbott laboratories, Merck, and Pfizer. It was in this meeting that the White House agreed to sell out health care reform in exchange for a few bucks to fund the next couple of election cycles.

Tauzin, who has never been one for subtlety or finesse (he took his $2 million-a-year PhRMA job about ten seconds after he finished pushing through the Prescription Drug Benefit bill), stupidly later revealed some of the contents of that shady meeting, saying that the White House had “blessed” a plan involving the $150 million. He disclosed to reporters that he had extracted a promise from the White House to drop two important reforms:

1. To allow the government to negotiate bulk rates for drugs in Medicare, and

2. To permit the importation of cheap drugs from Canada (which was once an Obama campaign saw).

The only problem with this plan, from the White House’s side, was that not all of the president’s fellow Democrats played along. Specifically, Energy and Commerce chair Henry Waxman put a provision in his health care bill that allowed the government to negotiate lower rates. If Waxman’s language were to be allowed to survive, it would queer the White House’s deal.

So here’s what started happening to kill Waxman’s language. First of all, PhRMA started paying its bribe.

The $150 million it committed to support Obama’s bill is now being rolled out in pro-reform ads, which are being aired mostly in the districts of freshman congressmen. The ads are cheesy, half-hearted tripe blandly supporting the weak-as-fuck remnants of Obama’s health care plan, an example being this “Eight Ways Health Reform Matters To You” ad that salutes the end of coverage denials for those with pre-existing conditions.

Now we’re also seeing pressure from a group of freshmen and Blue Dogs, who have composed a letter to a quartet of House Committee chairs requesting that the Waxman language be removed from the health care bill and replaced with the PhRMA language, which happens to be the language the White House is pushing and which will appear in the Baucus bill in the Senate. The pro-PhRMA language retains the preposterous government subsidy to the pharmaceutical industry in the form of laws banning Medicare from negotiating market rates. It is completely useless and of no possible social benefit to anyone except pharmaceutical companies, but this group still managed to get 60 people to sign this letter.

What does this letter say? Does it argue that the PhRMA language is better for America than the Waxman language? Does it say it will cost taxpayers less and provide cheaper drugs to more people? Hilariously, no. What it says is that this PhRMA language, while worse than the Waxman language, is not quite so bad as you think (it doesn’t save as much as the Waxman language, but it still has a 50 percent price reduction, which isn’t terrible!). Moreover, the letter says, substituting this language will help the bill get passed!

Here’s the actual language, addressed primarily to Waxman:

“Your efforts to remove this onerous burden on Medicare beneficiaries . . . are to be greatly commended. However the commitment by President Obama and the AARP to support legislation that would provide a 50 percent reduction is a dramatic step forward in helping fill the doughnut hole. Equally important, it moves us toward our goal of health care legislation.”

In other words, your attempt to put in a real reform is cool and all, but PhRMA has us by the balls, so help us out.

Interestingly, the congressmen who wrote the bill — former NFL bust Heath Shuler and Illinois Democrat Debbie Halvorson — did not post the letter on their web sites, which is very unusual. One guesses that they are not particularly proud of this particular bit of shameless whoring.

Progressives this week are fighting to accumulate the votes needed to stop any health care bill that doesn’t have a public option. Hopefull they can stop this PhRMA payoff as well. If you’ve got a phone, call your congressman and give him/her hell about this. . . .

Another great source of public information, Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy, has documented for our edification (as if we needed it) the not-so-inside information anymore about How the GOP Pays Off its 'Base' of Elites and why the ill-informed and just plain not-paying-attention populace is unaware of this truth about how tax cuts depress the economy for everyone except the ones getting them.

When more and more have less and less to spend, what is an economy to do but shrink? Economists call it 'contraction' but by any term, it results in recession/depression.

When workers are not FAIRLY compensated for their labor and productivity, the income and wealth inequalities that result lower GDP and official INDICES measuring the national standard of living. This has been the case following every GOP tax cut.

GOP tax cuts either bribe or pay off the shrinking class of ruling elites that currently make up just one percent of the US population. This class of ruling oligarchs owes its existence to Ronald Reagan's infamous tax cut of 1982 which initially benefited the upper quintile. Subsequent tax cuts have enriched this class even as the percentage benefiting has shrunk - from 20 percent to just one percent. Every member of this class should be asking themselves: when do I fall off the bottom rung? As a result of GOP largesse, this 'ruling' elite of just one percent owns more than 95 percent of the rest of us combined. Clearly - everyone not a member of this class amounts for very, very little among the leadership of the GOP. The US 'ruling elite' have become oligarchs.

Bush Jr said: 'You are either for us or you are agin' us'. Surely, he had his base in mind. He waged war on their behalf just as Rome waged war to benefit the nobles, as Rome had invaded Dacia for the gold! If you are not 'elite', you are, like most of us, among the ass-kissin' paupers. Revolutions have begun upon less cause! GOP inequities depress the economy.

Deficits Caused by Tax Cuts Negate Any Potential Economic Benefits

Studies by the Joint Committee on Taxation (JTC), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirm the common sense conclusion that GOP deficits undermine the alleged economic benefits of GOP tax cuts.

The so-called Laffer Curve is crap! Arthur Laffer drew a hypothetical curve in which additional revenues would be derived by cutting taxes for the 'investor' class. The curve is said to have shown how by cutting taxes for an 'investor' class, the increased investment thus stimulated would increase both employement and GDP while reducing federal deficits in the bargain.

Reagan's tax cut of 1982 put Laffer to the test and his curve failed miserably. GDP did not increase; rather, a depression of some two years - the longest and most severe since the Great Depression - resulted! It was accompanied by massive job losses and homelessness. Tent cities sprang up in boomtowns like Houston.

GOP Tax Cuts For Cronies Cause Recessions

Recessions and depressions have followed every GOP tax cut.

In 1978, capital gains tax was cut - 39% to 28%, GDP growth % fell from 5% to 2.9% in one year.

1981, capital gains tax was cut from 28% to 20% and GDP growth % fell from 2.5 to -2.1% in 1982.

In 1997, when capital gains taxes were cut from 28% back to 20%, GDP GROWTH FELL about 0.2% from 1997 to 1998.

It has been said that if you charge too much for something you will make $0 and if you charge too little - same thing. That thought process may apply to a small manufacturer; it does not describe or predict the effects of US tax policy. It is, rather, a simplistic demand curve - not the Laffer Curve which presumed to predict the effect of tax cuts. It was - in fact - a baseless rationalization for making the rich even richer.

Politicians saw in it the perfect cover, a way to 'launder' a pay off to the base!

Aside from inflicting upon the US economy what may yet prove to be a mortal blow, Unca Ronnie sold arms to Iran, an avowed enemy of the US. Alone, that is treason as defined by US Codes. But Reagan was not done. He funneled the proceeds to a right wing insurgency in Nicaraugua. All 'off the books'. Reagan arranged billions of dollars in unreported loans to Saddam Hussein for the purchase of military tech. [See: Lawrence Walsh, Iran-Contra Report, Concluding Observations]

Later, Bush would accuse Saddam of having WMD! Who but Reagan, the US in general, could have have armed Saddam? If WMD had been found, what are the chances that they would have come from any other nation BUT the nation that has sought to arm insurgencies all over the world - not in defense of Democracy but in defense of a US ruling elite of just one percent of the total population!

Weapons for his oil was surely a part of the 'sweet deal' GOP regimes cooked up with Saddam Hussein.

Reagan removed Iraq from the list of known terrorist nations in 1982 despite objections from Congress. A bargain had been struck!

Defense contractors, the de facto enforcement arm of the GOP, shipped helicopters and howitzers to Baghdad in the 1980s, even as the U.S. Dept. of Commerce gave its stamp of approval to the shipment of weapons-grade botulin poison, anthrax, nerve agents and chemicals needed for mustard gas. If WMD had been found in Iraq (they were not), chances are, they would have been traceable to either the Senior Bush or Unca Ronnie Ray-guns, terrorists of the GOP brand!

Until Bush Jr, Reagan had been the very worst President in US history.

Bush Jr was not to be outdone. Both idiot-criminals enriched just just one percent of the US population - robber barons, insiders and arms merchants who were already rich. Under both so-called 'Presidents', every one but the very, very rich got poor! The middle class was left behind and falling off the bottom rung.

Surely, you figured that out when you tried to re-finance your big house recently. OFFICIAL STATS from the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the US Commerce Dept et al., prove conclusively that the age of US egalitarianism ended with the rise of Reagan Republicanism. It's all been downhill for America since then. You can thank the GOP.

Take action against the forces of darkness, Luke!

Arise and resist! (And contact your Congress members!)

Now may be your generation's last chance.

Suzan ____________________

A "Fool's Errand" Guaranteed as "Moderates" (NOT) Are Exposed

A choice between the crazies and the corrupt is not much of a choice.

I am just enormously enamored of Brad and his Bradblog, and if I weren't also lazy (not really, but I'm working on a long essay based on Russ Baker's (Bush) Family of Secrets which will be much more complete as a compelling argument the longer I work on it), I wouldn't run as much of Brad's latest as I do below. The content of his blog makes me hopeful that if reporters of integrity can once again be heard clearly throughout the U.S., that maybe, just maybe, we can stop this onrushing spiral to the end of our existence as a decent place to live, democracy and sometime world leader for promoting what used to be thought of positively as the American Dream. (Emphasis marks and some editing were inserted - Ed.)

[The effort to satisfy both corporate greed and the health care needs of our people is a fool's errand.]

This back-room deal was, in large measure, cooked up by Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) and Sen. Charles "I-killed-the-death-panels" Grassley (R-IA) inside the corporate-occupied confines of the Senate Finance Committee - a development that should surprise no one given the Washington Post's report that the health and insurance lobby "gave nearly $170 million to federal lawmakers in 2007 and 2008, with 54 percent going to Democrats..." An additional $15.3 million was doled out to federal lawmakers between April and June of this year by the health care sector.

Wing-Nut Mobs Provide Cover for Obama/Baucus Health Care Betrayal

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

In the final analysis, the ideological differences between Republicans and the corporate/controlling sector of the Democratic party are relatively narrow and insignificant as compared to the bi-partisan link to corporate wealth and power - a link both share with the corporate-owned, mainstream media.

In 2008 it was the insanity that was the Bush/Cheney flirtation with fascism. Today, it's imaginary "death panels" and the undereducated, easily manipulated wing-nut mobs sent to shut down one of the oldest forms of American democracy - the town hall meeting.

These provide the perfect cover. They permit the more gifted corporate Democrats, for example Barack Obama, to seduce the great masses of working stiffs who make up the American electorate with soaring, but ultimately deceptive, rhetoric; producing brief euphoria on the eve of the last election, followed by no real substantive change.

As the corporate media misdirects focus on brown shirt-like disruptions at the town halls, the real "death panels" - the corporate profiteers and their bought-and-paid-for politicians - hammered out a pseudo-reform package that will perpetuate a corrupt, dysfunctional and deadly health care system which kills more than 18,000 Americans each year simply because they can't afford coverage and countless more when carriers refuse to authorize vital, life-saving procedures... A Business Week piece, "The Health Insurers Have Already Won” reported: "The carriers have succeeded in redefining the terms of the reform debate to such a degree that no matter what specifics emerge in the voluminous bill Congress may send to President Obama this fall, the insurance industry will emerge more profitable."

This back-room deal was, in large measure, cooked up by Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) and Sen. Charles "I-killed-the-death-panels" Grassley (R-IA) inside the corporate-occupied confines of the Senate Finance Committee - a development that should surprise no one given the Washington Post's report that the health and insurance lobby "gave nearly $170 million to federal lawmakers in 2007 and 2008, with 54 percent going to Democrats..." An additional $15.3 million was doled out to federal lawmakers between April and June of this year by the health care sector.

While "30...lawmakers [involved in drafting] health-care legislation have financial holdings in the industry, totaling nearly $11 million worth of personal investments" and while Grassley has certainly collected tidy sums from all sectors of the health care industry, Baucus is the number one recipient of health insurance lobby campaign funds.

Huffington Post exposed an internal White House memo which showed that the President entered a back-room deal with the pharmaceutical industry "to oppose any congressional efforts to use the government's leverage to bargain for lower drug prices or import drugs from Canada."

This was followed late Sunday evening by a revelation that the White House was poised to abandon the "public option."

During a recent appearance on Democracy Now, Dr. Howard Dean, the former DNC chairman observed:

72 percent of the American people, including more than 50 percent of Republicans, believe that they ought to have the choice between a public or a private system. This is not a liberal-conservative thing. This is whether you’re going to vote with the health insurance companies or whether you’re going to vote for what 72 percent of your constituencies want.

In light of the numbers, there is only one word to describe these back-room deals - betrayal!

Perhaps the time has come for Americans, this writer included, to stop accepting the lesser-evil electoral choice and to start paying greater attention to independents like Ralph Nader, beginning with his powerful Aug. 14, 2009 appearance on Democracy Now!.

A choice between the crazies and the corrupt is not much of a choice.

Epilogue: In an Aug. 16, 2009 New York Times editorial, President Obama writes: "In the end, this isn't about politics. This is about people's lives and livelihoods."

I would dare to go one step further, Mr. President. This is about whether we value the health and very lives of our people above the obscene wealth of a few insurance carrier CEOs and their Wall Street investors.

The history of the corrupt, dysfunctional and deadly U.S. health care system; the repeated failures of expensive "hybrid" plans which simply pour public monies into the coffers of the for-profit carriers by way of subsidies, reveals that the effort to satisfy both corporate greed and the health care needs of our people is a fool's errand.

The back-room deals you and Senator Baucus cut with the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries reveal that you have no right to label what you are doing as "reform." And you know this to be true, Mr. President.

When you were simply a member of the Illinois state legislature, you supported single-payer, which you concede is the only system that would provide coverage for every American. But that was before you envisioned your place in the White House and recognized the corporate monies it would take to get there.

So I'm sorry, Mr. President. I don't buy "this isn't about politics." It goes to the core of American politics - the politics of corporate wealth and power.

UPDATE 08/17/09: An Aug. 17, 2009 front page article in The New York Times, “'Public Option' in Health Plan May be Dropped” by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, reveals how the corporate media has conflated the health insurance industry-funded, wing-nut mobs into an excuse for describing “betrayal” as “compromise” - justified because the “’public option’ . . . emerged as a flashpoint for anger and opposition.”

Stolberg conveniently forgets that a June 2009 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll revealed that 76% of all Americans support a "public option." A Feb. 2009 New York Times/CBS News poll [PDF] revealed that 59% of all Americans favored a national health care system. A Feb. 2009 Grove Insight Opinion Research poll [PDF] found that 60% of all Americans favor Medicare for All, the single-payer concept embodied in H.R. 676.

What we are seeing is a classic case of perception management by the corporate-owned, mainstream media. The same media, which inundates prime time news hours with wing-nut, town hall protests, failed to so much as mention that, in the span of one week, thirteen single-payer advocates were arrested for protesting their exclusion from the discussions of health care "reform" taking place in the Baucus-led Senate Finance Committee.

Indeed, as I noted in "Single-Payer and the 'Democracy Deficit,'" the words "single-payer" are rarely mentioned by the corporate media, MSNBC providing the occasional against-the-grain exception. The corporate media essentially ignored the large July 30, 2009 single-payer protest in Washington DC, staged as part of the celebration of the 40th Anniversary of Medicare.

By extensive coverage of wing-nuts, the corporate media skewed reality. The "opposition" to a "public option" comes from a tiny but very vocal minority. The Democrats who entered a Faustian bargain that will perpetuate a corrupt health care system that, annually, kills nearly seven times the number of Americans who lost their lives on 9/11 are not, as the Washington Post would have us believe, "moderates."

Corruption and betrayal can, by no stretch of the imagination, be seen as a reasonable "compromise." Ernest A. Canning has been an active member of the California state bar since 1977. Mr. Canning has received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science as well as a juris doctor. He is also a Vietnam vet (4th Infantry, Central Highlands 1968).

Suzan __________________

Will They Continue to Rule America?

I don't usually use the entire essay of anyone (no matter what you've heard), but yesterday, Paul Craig Roberts, reformed rightwing enabler of Reaganism, led the charge on what must become more widely disseminated knowledge if we are to recover the United States of America from the banksters and their enablers who have led us off the cliff of catastrophe and are collecting winning bets on the way down.

Who Rules America? By Paul Craig Roberts May 14, 2009 "Information Clearing House" - What do you suppose it is like to be elected president of the United States only to find that your power is restricted to the service of powerful interest groups? A president who does a good job for the ruling interest groups is paid off with remunerative corporate directorships, outrageous speaking fees, and a lucrative book contract. If he is young when he assumes office, like Bill Clinton and Obama, it means a long life of luxurious leisure. Fighting the special interests doesn’t pay and doesn’t succeed. On April 30 the primacy of special over public interests was demonstrated yet again. The Democrats’ bill to prevent 1.7 million mortgage foreclosures and, thus, preserve $300 billion in home equity by permitting homeowners to renegotiate their mortgages, was defeated in the Senate, despite the 60-vote majority of the Democrats. The banksters were able to defeat the bill 51 to 45. These are the same financial gangsters whose unbridled greed and utter irresponsibility have wiped out half of Americans’ retirement savings, sent the economy into a deep hole, and threatened the US dollar’s reserve currency role. It is difficult to imagine an interest group with a more damaged reputation. Yet, a majority of “the people’s representatives” voted as the discredited banksters instructed. Hundreds of billions of public dollars have gone to bail out the banksters, but when some Democrats tried to get the Senate to do a mite for homeowners, the US Senate stuck with the banks. The Senate’s motto is: “Hundreds of billions for the banksters, not a dime for homeowners.” If Obama was naive about well-intentioned change before the vote, he no longer has this political handicap. Democratic Majority Whip Dick Durbin acknowledged the voters’ defeat by the discredited banksters. The banks, Durbin said, “frankly own the place.” It is not difficult to understand why. Among those who defeated the homeowners bill are senators Jon Tester (Mont), Max Baucus (Mont), Blanche Lincoln (Ark), Ben Nelson (Neb), Many Landrieu (La), Tim Johnson (SD), and Arlen Specter (Pa). According to reports, the banksters have poured a half million dollars into Tester’s campaign funds. Baucus has received $3.5 million; Lincoln $1.3 million; Nelson $1.4 million; Landrieu $2 million; Johnson $2.5 million; Specter $4.5 million. The same Congress that can’t find a dime for homeowners or health care appropriates hundreds of billions of dollars for the military/security complex. The week after the Senate foreclosed on American homeowners, the Obama “change” administration asked Congress for an additional $61 billion dollars for the neoconservatives’ war in Iraq and $65 billion more for the neoconservatives’ war in Afghanistan. Congress greeted this request with a rousing “Yes we can!” The additional $126 billion comes on top of the $533.7 billion “defense” budget for this year. The $660 billion--probably a low-ball number--is ten times the military spending of China, the second most powerful country in the world. How is it possible that “the world’s only superpower” is threatened by the likes of Iraq and Afghanistan? How can the US be a superpower if it is threatened by countries that have no military capability other than a guerilla capability to resist invaders? These “wars” are a hoax designed to enrich the US armaments industry and to infuse the “security forces” with police powers over American citizenry. Not a dime to prevent millions of Americans from losing their homes, but hundreds of billions of dollars to murder Muslim women and children and to create millions of refugees, many of whom will either sign up with insurgents or end up as the next wave of immigrants into America. This is the way the American government works. And it thinks it is a “city on the hill, a light unto the world.” Americans elected Obama because he said he would end the gratuitous criminal wars of the Bush brownshirts, wars that have destroyed America’s reputation and financial solvency and serve no public interest. But once in office Obama found that he was ruled by the military/security complex. War is not being ended, merely transferred from the unpopular war in Iraq to the more popular war in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Obama, in violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty, continues to attack “targets” in Pakistan. In place of a war in Iraq, the military/security complex now has two wars going in much more difficult circumstances. Viewing the promotion gravy train that results from decades of warfare, the US officer corps has responded to the “challenge to American security” from the Taliban. “We have to kill them over there before they come over here.” No member of the US government or its numerous well-paid agents has ever explained how the Taliban, which is focused on Afghanistan, could ever get to America. Yet this hyped fear is sufficient for the public to support the continuing enrichment of the military/security complex, while American homes are foreclosed by the banksters who have destroyed the retirement prospects of the US population. According to Pentagon budget documents, by next year the cost of the war against Afghanistan will exceed the cost of the war against Iraq. According to a Nobel prize-winning economist and a budget expert at Harvard University, the war against Iraq has cost the American taxpayers $3 trillion, that is, $3,000 billion in out-of-pocket and already incurred future costs, such as caring for veterans. If the Pentagon is correct, then by next year the US government will have squandered $6 trillion dollars on two wars, the only purpose of which is to enrich the munitions manufacturers and the “security” bureaucracy. The human and social costs are dramatic as well and not only for the Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani populations ravaged by American bombs. Dahr Jamail reports that US Army psychiatrists have concluded that by their third deployment, 30 percent of American troops are mental wrecks. Among the costs that reverberate across generations of Americans are elevated rates of suicide, unemployment, divorce, child and spousal abuse, drug and alcohol addiction, homelessness and incarceration. http://www.truthout.org/051209J?n In the Afghan “desert of death” the Obama administration is constructing a giant military base. Why? What does the internal politics of Afghanistan have to do with the US? What is this enormous waste of resources that America does not have accomplishing besides enriching the American munitions industry? China and to some extent India are the rising powers in the world. Russia, the largest country on earth, is armed with a nuclear arsenal as terrifying as the American one. The US dollar’s role as reserve currency, the most important source of American power, is undermined by the budget deficits that result from the munition corporations’ wars and the bankster bailouts. Why is the US making itself impotent fighting wars that have nothing whatsoever to do with is security, wars that are, in fact, threatening its security? The answer is that the military/security lobby, the financial gangsters, and AIPAC rule. The American people be damned. Comments (153) Comment (0)