On The Size of "Government" - 4

Sycophantia

In the previous post of this series we discussed size of "government" in terms of certain portions of the government growing out of proportion, like a cancer.

But we did not define what "government" means to many of the voices who are shouting that word out loud in public.

I finally figured out what "government" means to the "small-government" hard right-wing of the "conservative movement", who use that word within the context of an obvious agenda.

I think that the word "government" means the 1% who own or control 90% or so of the wealth of America who have by now turned the once "democratic economy" of the USA into a plutonomy.

They are the government now, in the sense that "money talks and bullsh*t walks", or "the golden rule is, whomever has the 'gold' makes the rules":

I could go on and on, but the bottom line is this: A highly complex and largely discrete set of laws and exemptions from laws has been put in place by those in the uppermost reaches of the U.S. financial system. It allows them to protect and increase their wealth and significantly affect the U.S. political and legislative processes. They have real power and real wealth. Ordinary citizens in the bottom 99.9% are largely not aware of these systems, do not understand how they work, are unlikely to participate in them, and have little likelihood of entering the top 0.5%, much less the top 0.1%. Moreover, those at the very top have no incentive whatsoever for revealing or changing the rules. I am not optimistic.

(Investment Manager View). The "federal government" (including the politicians, the military and the vast spy realm), as well as state governments, are essentially the tools of these plutocrats who really run The American Plutonomy Show (think plutarchy).

Regular readers of Dredd Blog know we call the hard core within this small meme complex, MOMCOM.

That core neoCon hard right wing is composed of the plutocrats who use the politicians, the military, and the vast spy-on-America agencies, as puppets.

Their agenda is to make "the government" smaller, evidently meaning that the 1% want to push downward on the 99% (the upper middle class, the middle class, the lower middle class, and the poor).

There are some indications that there are even some within the 1% of prominence who feel that some of that 1% should be pushed down too, purifying the plutocracy down perhaps to a holier-than-thou elite:

This document focuses on the "Top 1%" as a whole because that's been the traditional cut-off point for "the top" in academic studies, and because it's easy for us to keep in mind that we are talking about one in a hundred. But it is also important to realize that the lower half of that top 1% has far less than those in the top half; in fact, both wealth and income are super-concentrated in the top 0.1%, which is just one in a thousand.

(Who Rules America). Of course their dogma is that they worked hard to do this, to pull it off, to become different from the other 99% of America.

If we ask the question "who knew?", the answer for the most part is probably "only them", because they own and control the media:

Some of the information may come as a surprise to many people. In fact, I know it will be a surprise and then some, because of a recent study (Norton & Ariely, 2010) showing that most Americans (high income or low income, female or male, young or old, Republican or Democrat) have no idea just how concentrated the wealth distribution actually is.

(ibid, Who Rules America). Their hue and cry this election season is to rid the nation of the scourge of "entitlements", not mentioning that the 1% acquire the largest entitlements of all, or that workers pay for their Social Security retirement all of their working lives.

In addition to their hue and cry this election season, they have been pushing their number one product, their brand, what they use to justify their plunder, which is our liberty:

The military portion of MOMCOM has from 800 to 1000 bases around the world that depend on free handouts from the public trough.

They are not required to pay it back.

Food, weapons, housing, weapons, clothing, weapons, and careful MOM control is always free in the sense the military does not pay back the money that comes its way from the taxpayers.

It is like Wall Street bonuses with khaki on.

The main claim to fame is that the military portion of MOMCOM gives new meaning to freedom, which is what they claim is their number one product: MOMCOM Freedom.

It is what you get instead of getting your money back. No refunds from MOMCOM.

MOMCOM Freedom is not free, they like to say. Clearly they are right because their brand (MOMCOM Freedom) costs us more than all the rest of the world combined pay for it.

The president, congress, and the judiciary think this is a real bargain, exclaiming "you get the freedom you pay for".

(MOMCOM: A Mean Welfare Queen). Yes, they have the hubris to try to take our freedoms as their own creation.

Their oil wars which they fight with our kids and our tax dollars are called wars to "bring democracy to the world" or "war on terror".

Based on that death circus they claim they are producing our freedom, then selling it back to us at a bargain price.

That bargain price is the massive loss of our jobs, our homes, our savings, and a better life for our children.

They are too proud of "their" product.

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Will Copenhagen Be Snuffed Out? - 2

Two years ago on this date we pondered the fate of the Copenhagen talks concerning global warming.

That post, reposted below, held out hope that politicians would be mature, but Copenhagen went badly.

Now it may get worse when the talks in South Africa take place because "Obama's envoy for climate change casts doubt on Kyoto protocol".

The South Africans do not want it to go bad again, but "Copenhagen’s dark cloud looms over SA".

Here is the post from two years ago on this date:

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The photo is of a continent of garbage where there are plenty of Copenhagen snuff cans floating around, but that is not the Copenhagen where a meeting of world leaders will take place soon, even though that would be an excellent place to have the meeting.

Gordon Brown, who will be among the participants, is concerned that the Copenhagen Convention under the auspices of The United Nations may fail:

It is a historic moment: the ultimate test of global cooperation. Yet the negotiations are proceeding so slowly that a deal is in grave danger.

If we miss this opportunity, there will be no second chance sometime in the future, no later way to undo the catastrophic damage to the environment we will cause. So when world leaders gather this week, first at the United Nations in New York and then at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, it is essential that we move toward resolving the issues that still divide our nations. As scientists spell out the mounting evidence both of the climate change already occurring and of the threat it poses in the future, we cannot allow the negotiations to run out of time simply for lack of attention. Failure would be unforgivable.

(Newsweek). We can be sure that elements in the U.S. Government, such as Senator Inhofe, will fight this "communist fascist socialist lefty liberal conspiracy" called global warming and global climate change.

But if President Obama's speech to the United Nations today is any indication, the United States is committed Mr. Brown.

As we most certainly should be.

We share a common destiny as members of the human species, which is to survive together or to become extinct together in this cosmos.

MOMCOM And The Sins of Libya - 2

In the first post of this series Dredd Blog focused on the "sins" the people of Libya enjoyed before they were invaded in order to be saved.

In that post Dredd Blog hypothesized that the embarrassment that Libya caused (to the "advanced nation" that invaded her) was not the cause of the invasion.

That is, the fact that the Libyan people were cared for by their government (they shared in the revenue when their oil was sold, and it was deposited into their bank accounts; they had benefits at no cost to them such as health care, full education, zero interest loans, $50,000 upon marriage, free land use for farmers together with seeds and tools, cheap gasoline at .14 cents per liter, half of the purchase of a vehicle provided to them, and on and on) was not the reason they were invaded "in order to save them from their government".

Beyond the fact that they were better off than most Americans (in the context of those economic areas) "saving them from their government" does not pass the smell test (See: Scoop, New Zealand).

In further support of that hypothesis, Dredd Blog notes that many nations would have to be invaded to stop that type of embarrassment (here are a few example nations) [before "ObamaCare"]:

Uninsured people in USA: 50 million. Uninsured people in Britain: 0. Uninsured people in Germany: 0. Uninsured people in Canada: 0. Uninsured people in Israel: 0. Uninsured people in Italy: 0. Uninsured people in Libya: 0. Uninsured people in Iraq: 0. Uninsured people in Kuwait: 0. Uninsured people in Spain: 0. Uninsured people in France: 0. Uninsured people in Cuba: 0.

(see Wikipedia, Universal Health Coverage). Whew, that would be hard work to invade the world, so Dredd Blog hypothesized instead in that first post of this series, that the invasion was because of oil.

Specifically, as we pointed out in the first post, the Libyan government had indicated a notion of nationalizing the Libyan oil system.

While that would be enough to incur the wrath of MOMCOM in and of itself, other folks think, and some even say, that Libya also was going to rid themselves of international banking (talk about a twofer!).

Another big plus to support the Dredd Blog theory, is that the 1-2% who have 90% of the USA's wealth (MOMCOM plutonomy) do not embarrass easily, if at all.

But they most assuredly do know when their control of the drugs of choice is threatened.

In any such case, the MOMCOM plutonomy will not hesitate to "save the people of any nation" who have a government that wants to nationalize "their" oil to take it away from MOMCOM control and/or "ownership".

Oilah Akbar is the sacred MOMCOM mantra, and MOCMOM DNA is so widespread within and about us that we are subservient to it, are we not?

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

The W Direction = The Perilous Path

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog has talked about the direction in which the USA has been going.

We noted that it is a heading which Dredd Blog has called "The W Direction".

We have blogged over and over, continually warning Obama not to continue down that Bush II war trodden path, urging instead a change to a proper direction, but to no avail.

We began by asking the president to remember that his election had been due to a rejection, by the people, of Bush II policies (What Was Rejected In The Election, 3/31/09).

That issue of direction was revisited, pointing out the results of the traditional Newsweek poll which asked the populace about how they felt about our national direction, to which only 26% said we were heading in the proper direction, 74% indicating we were headed in the Wrong direction (The Circle W Cowboys, 6/25/10).

Those policies actually define what we call The W Direction (Titanic Mistakes Using The W Compass, 9/23/10).

Eventually, Obama went so far to the "right" (wrong) that Dredd Blog was forced to hope that he would run as the Republican candidate, so a Democrat could run against him (Obama: The Republican Candidate in 2012? - 2, 4/27/11).

Likewise, the base of the democrats, as well as independents finally realized the W direction was a deep rut, so Obama polled downward sharply (Obama Polls Downward - 2, 8/24/11).

The situation was so "exciting" that Dick Cheney stopped bragging about how many people he ordered to be tortured, and instead began to call for Hillary Clinton to run against Obama in 2012.

That engendered the notion of peril in the White House, so Obama got a brand new bag.

All of a sudden Obama seemed to realize that our "united" direction, one he has whole heartedly adhered to, was in need of change:

President Barack Obama warned Monday that the United States is headed down a "perilous path" if its leaders cannot move quickly and responsibly to help people get back to work.

(Obama says Perilous Path). Actually we have been on that perilous path for several generations in some national policies, for over a decade in other national policies, and back and forth on yet others.

But who controls the direction, who actually steers the ship of state is the big question, because if Obama does not, if congress does not, then the public back and forth debate between the president and the congress never means anything real.

Who are the masters of The W Direction?

In several previous, recent posts on Dredd Blog we have addressed the issue squarely (There Our Flag Was Still, Wee The People, The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy, Security: Familyland, Fatherland, or Homeland?, In Loco Parentis & Parens Patriae).

The recent post that sums it up quite well is Myth Addiction Is Establishment's LSD, which concludes with a video of an exasperated Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski commenting, as it were, on The Perilous W Direction.

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The gentleman in the following interview has this to say about the perilous path:

A global jobs war is coming, and there's no time to waste. Cities are crumbling for lack of good jobs. Nations are in revolt because their people can't get good jobs. The cities and countries that act first -- that focus everything they have on creating good jobs -- are the ones that will win.

(The Jobs War). And be sure to note what has changed from all those previous times they talk about when "we" came back.



The difference is that then there was no 1% - 99% plutonomy, but now there is.

That is a catastrophic difference.

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There Our Flag Was Still

The flag to the left is called the "American Corporate Flag".

It would be just as accurate to call it the flag of The American Plutonomy.

Regular readers here know that Dredd Blog began to talk about the plutonomy, using that word for the first time, a little over a year ago:

The data may be a further sign that the U.S. is becoming a Plutonomy – an economy dependent on the spending and investing of the wealthy. And Plutonomies are far less stable than economies built on more evenly distributed income and mass consumption. “I don’t think it’s healthy for the economy to be so dependent on the top 2% of the income distribution,” Mr. Zandi said. He added that, “In the near term it highlights the fragility of the recovery.”

(The Graphs of Wrath, quoting the Wall Street Journal). Our most recent post concerning the plutonomy was last Friday in the post Wee The People, where the prediction was made that we have evolved into our final economic format here within "The American Republic", and that final economic format is a plutonomy.

I should explain that what Dredd Blog means by "final format" is that the people no longer have coherent force with which to hold "the powers that be" accountable.

Therefore, American citizens must simply ride out the storm of plutonomy (like we did this year with the hurricanes, tropical deluge, floods, tornadoes, droughts, and wild fires) then clean up anything that remains after the storm has stormed itself out.

The view which Dredd Blog expressed in that post is contrary to the more optimistic view expressed by Karl Marx as well as American economists and activists, who see the recent protests and demonstrations on Wall Street as one means of solving the problem.

Of course Dredd Blog loves it when we Americans express ourselves by demonstrations, but Dredd Blog also knows that we Americans are not so exceptional that there is no time in our history where the phrase "too little and too late" does not apply.

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In the following short video, Bill Moyers addresses the concept of a plutocracy and/or a plutonomy:

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