Preznit Blush had a feeling he would be missed some day.
Preznit Brump seems to be on a mission to make Preznit Blush seem to have been prescient.
The theme of the state of the onion script (SOTOS) tonight is "where in the world is wall dough?" with the more likely reply being "where did you get this sticky idea to demand play dough or zap zap until Amurka is a grape again?"
Could anyone be like one famous American? (who said and wrote some radical things, such as: “The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson)
I will offer one such person, even though there are many, who fits the bill of saying radical things about civilization:
"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown."
(A Study of History, by Arnold J. Toynbee). In Toynbee's mind, what was it that causes that widespread process of the suicide of civilizations?
The fellows of his "homeland" put it like this:
"In the Study Toynbee examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders. Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to the sins of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority. Unlike Spengler in his The Decline of the West, Toynbee did not regard the death of a civilization as inevitable, for it may or may not continue to respond to successive challenges. Unlike Karl Marx, he saw history as shaped by spiritual, not economic forces."
(Encyclopedia Britannica, emphasis added). Have you read about any past world wars associated with that trinity ... or similar talk of a possible coming war?
That trinity of "nationalism," "militarism" and "a tyrannical despotic minority" is the essence of a unification of sycophants, which I warned about in a recent post (Beware of the Sycophant Epidemic).
It is clear that the demolition of the sound mind of a culture, a civilization, is something that is perpetual (Stockholm Syndrome On Steroids, 2).
A classic example for our time was presented in "Hypothesis: The Cultural Amygdala - 2" discussing the documentary about Anwar Congo and a nation that had descended into a sycophantic group.
It is not universally recognized that academically, nationalism is a modern phenomenon:
Nationalism, ideology based on the premise that the individual’s loyalty and devotion to the nation-state surpass other individual or group interests. Nationalism is a modern movement. Throughout history people have been attached to their native soil, to the traditions of their parents, and to established territorial authorities; but it was not until the end of the 18th century that nationalism began to be a generally recognized sentiment molding public and private life and one of the great, if not the greatest, single determining factors of modern history.
(Nationalism, Encyclopedia Britannica, emphasis added). This is one reason why some people are blind to the reasons that Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel for Literature, and thereby became the first singer songwriter in history to become a Nobel Laureate (Congratulations To Bob Dylan).
And on top of that, he is "the first American to have won the prize in more than two decades. Not since novelist Toni Morrison won in 1993 has an American claimed the prize" (NPR).
He has been like the person in the photo above who refused a perverted nationalism and wrote "It Ain't Me, Babe" about it (see 1st Video below).
II. Nationalism Is A Strong American Sentiment
As modern as nationalism is internationally, it is really modern in the U.S.eh? now and then.
Various authors have discussed the two brands of American nationalism:
In this controversial critique of American political culture and its historical roots, Anatol Lieven contends that U.S. foreign policy since 9/11 has been shaped by the special character of our nationalism.
Within that nationalism, Lieven analyses two very different traditions. One is the "American thesis," a civic nationalism based on the democratic values of what has been called the "American Creed."
These values are held to be universal, and anyone can become an American by adopting them. The other tradition, the "American antithesis" is a populist and often chauvinist nationalism, which tends to see America as a closed national culture and civilization threatened by a hostile and barbarous outside world.
With America Right or Wrong, Lieven examines how these two antithetical impulses have played out in U.S. responses to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and in the nature of U.S. support for Israel.
This hard-hitting critique directs a spotlight on the American political soul and on the curious mixture of chauvinism and idealism that has driven the Bush administration.
(Good Reads). Currently, the understanding of what it is to be "American" is not a unified concept in what the Canadians call "the U.S.eh?"
III. It's The Economy Plutocratic Neofeudalism Stupid
As economics professor Dr. Reich pointed out, some aspects of economy is a point of agreement in the rhetoric of voting republicans and democrats alike (Banker Jekyll Will Hyde Your Money - 12).
After all, both of those groups of voters have substantial numbers in the middle class, which is suffering.
The conservative Wall Street Journal really does agree with the liberal Dr. Reich about the economic issue of income disparity:
According to economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, the top 10% of earners captured about half of all income as of 2007. ...
The second reason is that those people in the middle- and lower-income groups are struggling to pay off debt and stay afloat amid rising unemployment, as today’s data remind us. That has crimped their spending.
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.
(U.S. Economy Is Increasingly Tied to the Rich, WSJ). The agreement that inequality in access to the economic life of the nation has led to a plutocracy is not the end of the matter.
How to fix it is the place of contention.
For one thing, conservatives have been lowering the tax rates of the uber rich but not doing the same for the working classes, while liberals want to tax the uber rich more so than the working classes.
The Speaker of The House of Representatives is an ideological fan of Ayn Rand:
In a 2005 speech to a group of Rand devotees called the Atlas Society, Ryan said that Rand was required reading for his office staff and interns. “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” he told the group.
Her psychopathic ideas made billionaires feel like victims and turned millions of followers into their doormats ...
It has a fair claim to be the ugliest philosophy the postwar world has produced. Selfishness, it contends, is good, altruism evil, empathy and compassion are irrational and destructive. The poor deserve to die; the rich deserve unmediated power. It has already been tested, and has failed spectacularly and catastrophically. Yet the belief system constructed by Ayn Rand, who died 30 years ago today, has never been more popular or influential.
Rand was a Russian from a prosperous family who emigrated to the United States. Through her novels (such as Atlas Shrugged) and her nonfiction (such as The Virtue of Selfishness) she explained a philosophy she called Objectivism. This holds that the only moral course is pure self-interest. We owe nothing, she insists, to anyone, even to members of our own families. She described the poor and weak as "refuse" and "parasites", and excoriated anyone seeking to assist them. Apart from the police, the courts and the armed forces, there should be no role for government: no social security, no public health or education, no public infrastructure or transport, no fire service, no regulations, no income tax.
Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, depicts a United States crippled by government intervention in which heroic millionaires struggle against a nation of spongers. The millionaires, whom she portrays as Atlas holding the world aloft, withdraw their labour, with the result that the nation collapses. It is rescued, through unregulated greed and selfishness, by one of the heroic plutocrats, John Galt.
(Ayn Rand: Patron Saint of The Plutocracy). It is a perplexing reality that "prosperity gospel" aficionados, within the religious conservative evangelical voting bloc, are ideologically aligned with her:
Prosperity theology (sometimes referred to as the prosperity gospel or the health and wealth gospel) is a Christian religious doctrine which claims the Bible teaches that financial blessing is the will of God for Christians.
The doctrine teaches that faith, positive speech, and donations to Christian ministries will always increase one's material wealth.
Its proponents teach that the doctrine is an aspect of the path to Christian dominion over society, arguing that God's promise of dominion to Israel applies to Christians today.
The doctrine emphasizes the importance of personal empowerment, proposing that it is God's will for his people to be happy. The atonement (reconciliation with God) is interpreted to include the alleviation of sickness and poverty, which are viewed as curses to be broken by faith.
"You say you want a revolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know you can count me out" ...
Yep ... it ain't me babe ... it ain't me you're looking for ... it ain't me man ...
But, not as many noticed when the sovereign nation of Libya was beheaded as millions lost the lives they had been living there, even though it was an example of what Arnold J. Toynbee called the murder of a society:
"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown."
That means women in that Islamic nation get a complete education for free, are cared for at no cost when their health is an issue, and can work in humane conditions, and wonder of wonders, women can drive automobiles in Libya.
At least it was that way before Libya was invaded.
In the immediate wake of the military victory, U.S. officials were triumphant.
Writing in these pages in 2012, Ivo Daalder, then the U.S. permanent representative to NATO, and James Stavridis, then supreme allied commander of Europe, declared, “NATO’s operation in Libya has rightly been hailed as a model intervention.” In the Rose Garden after Qaddafi’s death, Obama himself crowed, “Without putting a single U.S. service member on the ground, we achieved our objectives.”
(Foreign Affairs). Now, the bands of believers are asking what "the meaning of IS IS" again, but in a more news-sexy context:
Marched on to a Libyan beach in now gruesomely familiar orange jumpsuits, the last moments of 21 Coptic Christians carried the vicious jolt of previous Isis
The setting, in Libya, suggested that the group was spreading further and faster than even their dramatic early advances seem possible, and it came after vows of allegiance to Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi by militants from Afghanistan to Yemen ... In Libya, where Isis now controls three towns, its roots are less clear, with some fighters signing up from a homegrown militia based in Benghazi city, and others returning from Syria. The group has advanced quickly though across a country rocked by civil war, highlighting its progress with regular displays of extreme violence.
(Guardian). Yep, Libya was freed up for some real hoots and hollers of freedom fries, while being burned at the proverbial stake:
Sekou Balde is living testimony to the increasing chaos and brutality that is sweeping Libya, as fears grow that the Islamic State terrorist group is seeking
to establish a caliphate on the shores of the Mediterranean.
Lifting up his sweatshirt, he reveals the six stab wounds he received when he was attacked by a gang of four Libyan soldiers who demanded money after they raided the house near Tripoli where he was living rough with other African immigrants.
"They said 'where is your money?'. I said that I didn't have any. Then they attacked me. It was four of them against me. They came to where we were living at one in the morning. My brother was shot dead in front of me – boom, boom – as well as two of my friends," he said.
(Migrants Tell of Deepening Chaos in Libya). The McTell News is reporting that every nation in the mid-east is on edge with excitement, and quite anxious to find out who will be so blessed to next be freed.
A common myth is that progress is fundamentally composed of time, because time only goes in one direction.
Therefore, time is God's or Evolution's way of keeping everything from happening all at once.
The post-mortem conducted on what was once the American economy has determined that inequality metastasised within our economy.
The post-mortem conducted by dreaming politicians came up with a different conclusion ("the American economy is not dead") compared to those done by others whose eyes are open to what the phrase "the American economy" means.
It does help to know what species of economy is being autopsied, I suppose, because different forms of government have different types of economy (Who Are The Job Creators?).
"The American economy" was the one that functioned to maximize or enhance "the common good" (The Common Good, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).
The way to measure the common good was to measure the degree of equality within the system.
Yes, the lifeblood of that extinct American economy was the equality that produced the common good.
Anyway, not realizing what species they were doing an autopsy on, some advocated for techniques of resurrection that do not apply to the current species of economy on the coroner's table:
In a new paper for the Institute For New Economic Thinking’s Working Group on the Political Economy of Distribution, economist Lance Taylor and his colleagues examine income inequality using new tools and models that give us a more nuanced — and frightening —picture than we’ve had before. Their simulation models show how so-called “reasonable” modifications like modest tax increases on the wealthy and boosting low wages are not going to be enough to stem the disproportionate tide of income rushing toward the rich. Taylor’s research challenges the approaches of American policy makers, the assumptions of traditional economists, and some of the
Where the money gets lost (the waste portal)
conclusions drawn by Thomas Piketty and Larry Summers. Bottom line: We’re not yet talking about the kinds of major changes needed to keep us from becoming a Downton Abbey society. [nor have we been since endless war became our foreign policy] ...
I think we need some detail to really understand what’s going on. So I look at inequality across low, middle and top groups. How does the share of income of the richest group compare to the others? Where do these groups get their income and what do they do with it? Is the middle getting squeezed? What’s driving income towards the rich?
In the U.S., if you are in the bottom 50-60 percent group of households, your main sources of income are wages and, especially for the very bottom, government transfers like Medicaid and Social Security. In the reported data, this group has a negative savings rate, meaning that people spend more than they receive. Their average wealth is close to zero.
If you’re in the “middle class” — households between the 61st and 99th percentiles — wages are your main income source, though you may get some capital income from interest and dividends. In recent decades, people in this group have been getting squeezed as income flows shift toward profits for business owners rather than wages for employees. The variation in wages has been increasing among this group as well. The middle class has positive saving rates and visible net worth, largely concentrated in housing. [Whoopie we're all gonna die]
If you’re in the top one percent group, you get income from wages, with a lot of variability among individuals. But bigger chunks come from interest and dividends along with proprietors' incomes, like lawyers’ fees and big farmers’ subsidies and sales. These people have high saving rates and substantial wealth, including equity. The top group holds one-third of total equity in the U.S. and receives large capital gains. Their share of total disposable income (not including capital gains) has jumped by around ten percentage points since the mid-1980s. This is an enormous change in shares, very unusual in historical terms. The top group’s income now exceeds three trillion dollars, one-fifth of the total.
The picture we get from making these comparisons can be captured in a ratio named for Gabriel Palma of the University of Cambridge, the “Palma ratio” which draws a contrast between the rich and poor. It tells us that in the U.S., the income per household of the top one percent compared to the bottom 40 percent has more than doubled since the 1980s, while incomes at the bottom were virtually flat. Compared to other rich countries, the ratio here is very high.
(What Piketty & Summers Don’t Tell You - INET, emphasis added). The "American economy" is dead and stinking, so, what is this remaining thing we still call an economy (More Evidence That 'Centrist' Solutions Can't Save Us - Economic Inequality)?
In the previous post we talked about how the old congress attacked pensions of workers and retired people in a serious way (& Mr. Preznit "compromised").
The new congress (led by the right-wing) on its first day in office, opened up an attack on the Social Security System, which is insurance purchased by Americans with funds withheld from their pay-checks.
Not only that, this attack is mounted against disabled Americans, those who are the most vulnerable:
As one of its first orders of business upon convening Tuesday, the Republican House of Representatives approved a rule that will seriously undermine efforts to keep all of Social Security solvent.
The rule hampers an otherwise routine reallocation of Social Security payroll tax income from the old-age program to the disability program. Such a reallocation, in either direction, has taken place 11 times since 1968, according to Kathy Ruffing of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
But it's especially urgent now, because the disability program's trust fund is expected to run dry as early as next year. At that point, disability benefits for 11 million beneficiaries would have to be cut 20%. Reallocating the income, however, would keep both the old-age and disability programs solvent until at least 2033, giving Congress plenty of time to assess the programs' needs and work out a long-term fix.
The procedural rule enacted by the House Republican caucus prohibits the reallocation unless it's accompanied by "benefit cuts or tax increases that improve the solvency of the combined trust funds," as paraphrased by the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
In practical terms, the advocacy committee says, that makes the reallocation impossible; it mandates either benefit cuts across the board, which aren't politically palatable, or a payroll tax increase, which isn't palatable to the GOP.
(On Day One, emphasis added). The congressional cowards who did this are also bullies who learned their wickedness from their spiritual mentors who are bereft of the traditional American conscience.
The next thing they want to do is cut taxes for the 1%, the extremely wealthy plutocrats:
"Republicans today are extending their embrace of voodoo economics by wrapping their arms around voodoo scorekeeping. They are changing House rules to be able to cook the books to implement their long-held, discredited notion that tax cuts pay for themselves. I think that former Reagan and George H. W. Bush administration official Bruce Bartlett said it best: 'It is not about honest revenue-estimating; it's about using smoke and mirrors to institutionalize Republican ideology into the budget process.' That's what this is all about." -(NPR) Call it the Brownback effect.
Republicans once idolized Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback as a tax cutting superstar — now he’s a lesson in what not to do.
“It’s a cautionary tale on a national scale … Many of us felt that [Kansas] had been too aggressive,” said Indiana Senate Majority Leader and tax committee chairman Brandt Hershman, who helped GOP Gov. Mike Pence cut corporate taxes last spring. “We all like low taxes … but we have to ensure the stability of a revenue stream to provide basic services that our citizens expect.” -(GOP Doesn't Learn From Sam Brownback's Tax Debacle)
They also want to pass the Oil-Qaeda inspired Keystone XL pipeline bill:
One of the first pieces of legislation on the calendar for the new Congress would give a green light to the Keystone XL oil pipeline. It's been held up by court challenges and a regulatory review for more than six years. Backers hope to change that through legislation, but the White House is threatening a veto ...
In today's post Dredd Blog is warning Americans that plunder is still happening to them (see the video at the bottom of the post for more info).
Basically, pensions of retired people can now be cut by as much as 60% under new laws passed in the "new budget."
If pension overlords think that the pension funds are encumbered (by their bad investments on Wall Street), then they change your life:
The legislation permits deep pension cuts to retirees in certain financially-troubled multiemployer plans. Financially-troubled plans are plans expected to not have enough money to pay 100% of benefits within 15 and, in some cases, 20 years. There are instances where the cuts could be more than 60% of a participant’s benefits. To find out how much your benefits could be cut use this calculator.
The decision to cut benefits is made by plan trustees, who are typically more aligned with active workers and employers than with retirees.
Retirees who are age 80 or over, or who are receiving a disability pension, are not subject to benefit cuts. Retirees ages 75-79 are subject to smaller cuts than retirees under age 75.
How big or small the cuts are for those under age 75 is determined by the trustees. The cuts are subject to certain legal limits, the most important of which is that benefits cannot be cut below 110% of the amounts that the federal pension insurance agency guarantees.
Plan trustees decide how to allocate the cuts. For example, they can cut retirees’ benefits more than those of active workers, and they can decide whether and how much to reduce survivors’ benefits.
Plan trustees are required to reduce the benefits of participants whose employers went out of business (or withdrew from the plan for other reasons without paying all of their obligations) first, before they reduce the benefits of any other plan participants. This will mean that those retirees whose companies went bankrupt will have greater reductions than other retirees.
UPS retirees in the Central States Teamsters plan are given special protection: their benefits are last in line to be cut. This provision is reportedly the result of a last-minute deal that will save UPS an estimated $2 billion that it would otherwise have been contractually be required to pay to its retirees.
There is no provision for automatic restoration of lost benefits if a plan’s funding status improves.
A trustees’ decision to cut benefits can only be reversed by the Department of Treasury, and then only if the Treasury concludes that the decision is based on a determination that is “clearly erroneous.”
Before cutting benefits, the trustees must provide information to all plan members about the cuts, and plans with 10,000 or more participants must appoint a retired plan participant to represent the interests of pensioners. The trustees appoint this representative and can even appoint a trustee or former trustee of the plan.
Plan trustees must allow all participants to vote on cuts before they are
Pirate Blackbeard
implemented. However, this right is largely illusory. First, a majority of all workers and retirees in a plan – not just a majority of the ones who vote – is required to block cuts. Thus, a vote to block cuts fails even if 100% of those voting oppose the cuts, if only 49% of participants actually vote. Moreover, ballots can be distributed by e-mail, which means that retirees who don’t use the Internet might not vote.
Even if all participants vote against cuts, the Treasury Department, in consultation with the Department of Labor and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC, the federal pension insurance program) can override the vote and uphold the trustees’ decision to make cuts if it concludes that the plan’s insolvency would increase the PBGC’s projected liabilities by $1 billion or more.
The insurance premiums that multiemployer plans pay to the PBGC are increased from $13 to $26 per participant per year. In contrast, premiums paid to the single-employer plan program are between $57 and $475 per participant per year.
Retirees, widows, and widowers whose benefits are reduced cannot bring a lawsuit under the federal private pension law, ERISA, to challenge the legality of the reductions.
(Pension Rights Center, emphasis added). If you "[r]etirees, widows, and widowers" don't like the pain you feel when your pension is cut, you can't sue for redress (You Are Here).
And if you get mavericky and begin to do the marching in the streets thingy, first think about what they spent your plundered pension money on, and be careful (Will The Military Become The Police? - 10).
All we citizen journalists can do is inform you, as Dredd Blog has done for free for years (you are welcome).
You have even been warned that psychopaths are running the show, and that they are dangerous to your freedom:
... 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. ...
A new report by the U.S. Army War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks.
“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” said the War College report.
The study says economic collapse, terrorism and loss of legal order are among possible domestic shocks that might require military action within the U.S.
One out of every 10 Wall Street employees is a clinical psychopath, the CFA Institute (an investment and financial analysis organization) reports in the latest issue of CFA Magazine. That makes psychopathy 10 times more prevalent among New York’s financial elite than among us plebeians, for which the accepted statistic is a more palatable one in 100. [Update]
Over the years Dredd Blog posts have stopped from time to time to consider Detroit.
This is the city of the GM bailout, the city with a walled castle inside, and at the same time a city of ruins outside those walls.
If you want something to cry about, a place to be empathetic about, a place where you can look deep into the economic culture of America, a place to see our
Outsiders: Ninety-Nine-percentville
American Feudalism posing as the American Dream, then check out Detroit.
I have mentioned Detroit in some previous posts in this and other Dredd Blog series (e.g. The Common Good - 8).
The Detroit Chapter Nine Bankruptcy shows how the laws have been constructed to extract plunder from the working class; where pensions of workers are taken, then given as plunder to the plutocrats via a cultural circuitry, a neofeudal structure reminiscent of a plutonomy.
A type of structure which is always rife with negative feedback loops that perpetuate or increase the feudal state's inequality until that state collapses.
As a result of this cultural cannibalism the U.S. is no longer the greatest economy, having very recently dropped to number 2:
Hang on to your hats, America.
And throw away that big, fat styrofoam finger while you’re about it.
There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just say it: We’re no longer No. 1. Today, we’re No. 2. Yes, it’s official. The Chinese economy just overtook the United States economy to become the largest in the world. For the first time since Ulysses S. Grant was president, America is not the leading economic power on the planet.
It just happened — and almost nobody noticed.
The International Monetary Fund recently released the latest numbers for the world economy. And when you measure national economic output in “real” terms of goods and services, China will this year produce $17.6 trillion — compared with $17.4 trillion for the U.S.A.
As recently as 2000, we produced nearly three times as much as the Chinese.
To put the numbers slightly differently, China now accounts for 16.5% of the global economy when measured in real purchasing-power terms, compared with 16.3% for the U.S.
This latest economic earthquake follows the development last year when China surpassed the U.S. for the first time in terms of global trade.
"Detroit is struggling with the largest municipal bankruptcy in the nation's history, which was brought on in part by the flight of both residents and businesses in recent decades. But Detroit's downtown area is enjoying rapid growth. The busy, 7.2-square-mile area stands in sharp contrast to the stretches of abandoned homes, closed factories and urban decay that dominate most of the city.”
But their serfs and peasants outside the walls in the ruins will have to continue to worry:
If all goes as planned ... the pension system that the settlement leaves behind has some of the same problems that plunged the city into crisis in the first place — fundamental problems that could also trip up other local governments in the coming years. Like many other public systems, it relies on a funding formula that lags the true cost of the pensions, and is predicated on a forecast investment return that the judge, Steven W. Rhodes, himself sharply
"Mmmm ... we taste good"
questioned during the trial on Detroit’s bankruptcy plan.
Moreover, if Detroit finds itself confronting another fiscal crisis in the near future, it can no longer tap the museum’s art collection, which many saw as its top asset.
These risks might not matter if Detroit’s pension obligations were just a marginal part of the city’s finances. But they are not. Even after the benefit cuts, the city’s 32,000 current and future retirees are entitled to pensions worth more than $500 million a year — more than twice the city’s annual municipal income-tax receipts in recent years. Contributions to the system will not be nearly enough to cover these payouts, so success depends on strong, consistent investment returns, averaging at least 6.75 percent a year for the next 10 years. Any shortfall will have to ultimately be covered by the taxpayers.
(Detroit ... Bankruptcy ... Pension Risks Linger, emphasis added). The pensioners who (all of their working lives) paid premiums taken from each pay-check were stabbed in the back by their overlords.
This Dredd Blog series deals with the reality that our feeble democracy does not afford us a choice among candidates in primaries who would have a positive effect on the direction the nation has been going.
And as today's photo shows, when the primaries are over and it is time to choose between two candidates, the choice of the "lesser evil" is of no consequence either.
We are at a pivotal moment when it comes to maintaining and modernizing our nation’s infrastructure. Many of our roads, bridges, water systems, and our national electric grid were put into place over fifty years ago, and these systems are simply overwhelmed or worn out. ... For the most part, the problem is hidden. Most of us do not notice infrastructure until it stops working – when a bridge is closed causing us to be late for work, when the lights go out, or when there is no water for your morning shower. But failing infrastructure is not only an inconvenience, it financially impacts our families and our country. Our infrastructure is the foundation of our economy and our quality of life, and repairing and modernizing it has exponential benefits, including: increasing our gross domestic product, growing household income, protecting jobs, and maintaining a strong U.S. position in international markets. Unless we address the backlog of projects and deferred maintenance throughout the country, the cost to each American family will reach $3,100 per year in personal disposable income. As civil engineers, ASCE’s 140,000-plus members are stewards of our nation’s infrastructure – charged with the design, construction, operation and maintenance of these critical systems. We developed the Report Card for America’s Infrastructure to give the public and decision-makers a comprehensive assessment of the conditions of the nation’s infrastructure across many sectors.
(President ASCE, emphasis added). A "report card" for the government sounds like a good idea, so how is it going?
In the first and second posts of this series Dredd Blog considered the science fiction series Star Trek.
More specifically, that subject was narrowed down to a look at a species of humanoids called the Ferengi.
The Ferengi humanoids had a culture that was driven by what could be described as a "benign laissez faire capitalism" fused with a religion which could be called "the prosperity gospel."
More on those concepts in a moment.
But first, I wanted to inject something that the Star Trek episodes never considered: what if the Ferengi took over the United Federation of Planets ("the Federation") after becoming militant?
In short, what would a Ferengi coup, so as to take over the Federation, look like once it had settled in?
In today's post I will argue that it would look like The United States of Military Empire which is now entering into the final phase of the modern resource wars.
Wars that feed a planet destroying frenzy which will eventually bring down current civilization, and take it back to the Stone Age (at best ... and if we are "lucky").
Before we go there, let's remember what the Ferengi were like prior to the coup:
Their home planet ... is the center of the Ferengi Alliance and is governed by the Grand Nagus and a Commerce Authority made primarily of the Council of Economic Advisors (formerly Board of Liquidators). Like most of their culture, their religion is also based on the principles of capitalism: they offer prayers and monetary offerings to a "Blessed Exchequer" in hopes of entering the "Divine Treasury" upon death, and fear an afterlife spent in the "Vault of Eternal Destitution".
Prosperity theology (sometimes referred to as the prosperity gospel or the health and wealth gospel) is a Christian [or Mithraic] religious doctrine which claims the Bible teaches that financial blessing is the will of God for Christians.
The doctrine teaches that faith, positive speech, and donations to Christian ministries will always increase one's material wealth.
Its proponents teach that the doctrine is an aspect of the path to Christian dominion over society, arguing that God's promise of dominion to Israel applies to Christians today.
The doctrine emphasizes the importance of personal empowerment, proposing that it is God's will for his people to be happy. The atonement (reconciliation with God) is interpreted to include the alleviation of sickness and poverty, which are viewed as curses to be broken by faith.
Let's review a description of that one final additional ingredient:
"The Worldwide control of humanity’s economic, social and political activities is under the helm of US corporate and military power. Underlying this process are various schemes of direct and indirect military intervention. These US sponsored strategies ultimately consist in a process of global subordination.
Where is the Threat?
The 2000 Global Report published in 1980 had outlined “the State of the World” by focusing on so-called “level of threats” which might negatively influence or undermine US interests.
Twenty years later, US strategists, in an attempt to justify their military interventions in different parts of the World, have conceptualized the greatest fraud in US history, namely “the Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT). The latter, using a fabricated pretext constitutes a global war against all those who oppose US hegemony. A modern form of slavery, instrumented through militarization and the “free market” has unfolded.
Major elements of the conquest and world domination strategy by the US refer to:
1) the control of the world economy and its financial markets,
2) the taking over of all natural resources (primary resources and nonrenewable sources of energy). The latter constitute the cornerstone of US power through the activities of its multinational corporations.
Geopolitical Outreach: Network of Military Bases
The US has established its control over 191 governments which are members of the United Nations. The conquest, occupation and/or otherwise supervision of these various regions of the World is supported by an integrated network of military bases and installations which covers the entire Planet (Continents, Oceans and Outer Space). All this pertains to the workings of an extensive Empire, the exact dimensions of which are not always easy to ascertain." (American Feudalism - 6)
----//----
"In terms of pure projectable power, there’s never been anything like it. Its military has divided the world -- the whole planet -- into six “commands.” Its fleet, with 11 aircraft carrier battle groups, rules the seas and has done so
largely unchallenged for almost seven decades. Its Air Force has ruled the global skies, and despite being almost continuously in action for years, hasn’t faced an enemy plane since 1991 or been seriously challenged anywhere since the early 1970s. Its fleet of drone aircraft has proven itself capable of targeting and killing suspected enemies in the backlands of the planet from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and Somalia with little regard for national boundaries, and none at all for the possibility of being shot down. It funds and trains proxy armies on several continents and has complex aid and training relationships with militaries across the planet. On hundreds of bases, some tiny and others the size of American towns, its soldiers garrison the globe from Italy to Australia, Honduras to Afghanistan, and on islands from Okinawa in the Pacific Ocean to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Its weapons makers are the most advanced on Earth and dominate the global arms market. Its nuclear weaponry in silos, on bombers, and on its fleet of submarines would be capable of destroying several planets the size of Earth. Its system of spy satellites is unsurpassed and unchallenged. Its intelligence services can listen in on the phone calls or read the emails of almost anyone in the world from top foreign leaders to obscure insurgents. The CIA and its expanding paramilitary forces are capable of kidnapping people of interest just about anywhere from rural Macedonia to the streets of Rome and Tripoli. For its many prisoners, it has set up (and dismantled) secret jails across the planet and on its naval vessels. It spends more on its military than the next most powerful 13 states combined. Add in the spending for its full national security state and it towers over any conceivable group of other nations.
In terms of advanced and unchallenged military power, there has been nothing like the U.S. armed forces since the Mongols swept across Eurasia." (Epigovernment: The New Model - 5)
In other words, the final fusion is composed of:
1) a once-benign laissez faire capitalism that has morphed into unrestrained cancerous plunder,
3) a morph from "defense of self" into a military-power based imperialism that basically has the crude, infantile philosophy of "me like, so me can take."
In short, the return of feudalism, or if you prefer, the advent of neo-feudalism, which is in essence the use of military power to accumulate a new type of concentrated wealth based upon the military control of environmental resources.
The kicker in this movie is that this takes place on a planet with an environment that must be healthy and undamaged to support those Ferengi and everyone else.
However, in their psychopathic state they can no longer see the relevance of that issue.
In other words, it is a cognitive-storm-surge engendered by cultural amygdala circuits in people in power who can no longer fathom the importance of anything other than consumption of resources in order to make more profit to become even more wealthy and powerful.
That they are animating the death of their civilization is of no moment to them, which brings up a parenthetical question ("where are the 99 percent?").
