Category Archives: Government

UPDATED: The Debt Default Ruse (Obama Banana)

Barack Obama, Debt, Economy, Government, Media

The threat of a default on the debt is a political ploy and an extension of a crook’s book keeping. (The crook is the government.)

Failure to raise the debt limit would not necessarily precipitate a default by the United States–not unless the politicians orchestrate such a default, which they invariably do.

The U.S. government has debt obligations and other expenditures. It raises sufficient revenue from We The suckers to discharge its obligations.

The federal government raises trillions of dollars in tax revenue each year, though there are many different kinds of taxes. Some taxes fund specific government programs, while other taxes fund the government in general. … Total federal tax revenues in fiscal year 2014 are projected to be $3 trillion.

(National Priorities Project)

As PAT TOOMEY pointed out 2 years back, when the same “debate” was being rehashed, “If Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling, the federal government will still have more than enough money to fully service our debt.”

UPDATE (9/30): OBAMA BANANA. There once was an African “leader” by the name of Canaan Banana. Truly. He was far and away a better man than Obama. Just free associating.

Here is Mark Steyn on Obama Banana’s attitude to debt:

This is the United States of America,” declared President Obama to the burghers of Liberty, Mo., on Friday. “We’re not some banana republic.”

He was talking about the Annual Raising of the Debt Ceiling, which glorious American tradition seems to come round earlier every year. “This is not a deadbeat nation,” President Obama continued. “We don’t run out on our tab.” True. But we don’t pay it off either. We just keep running it up, ever higher. And every time the bartender says, “Mebbe you’ve had enough, pal,” we protest, “Jush another couple trillion for the road. Set ’em up, Joe.” And he gives you that look that kinda says he wishes you’d run out on your tab back when it was $23.68.

Still, Obama is right. We’re not a banana republic, if only because the debt of banana republics is denominated in a currency other than their own — i.e., the U.S. dollar. When you’re the guys who print the global currency, you can run up debts undreamt of by your average generalissimo. As Obama explained in another of his recent speeches, “Raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt.” I won’t even pretend to know what he and his speechwriters meant by that one, but the fact that raising the debt ceiling “has been done over a hundred times” does suggest that spending more than it takes in is now a permanent feature of American government. And no one has plans to do anything about it. Which is certainly banana republic-esque.

Like A Shark, Government Never Stops Moving

Debt, Economy, Government

The State never stops. Like a shark that must keep moving to keep breathing, the governmental predator never really stops.

“Here’s the truth about a government ‘shutdown,'” writes ANDREW TAYLOR of the Associated Press:

Social Security checks will still go out. Troops will remain at their posts. Doctors and hospitals will get their Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements. In fact, virtually every essential government agency, like the FBI, the Border Patrol and the Coast Guard, will remain open. Furloughed federal workers probably would get paid, eventually. Transportation Security Administration officers would continue to man airport checkpoints. … shutdowns … happened every year when Jimmy Carter was president, averaging 11 days each. During President Reagan’s two terms, there were six shutdowns, typically just one or two days apiece. Deals got cut. Everybody moved on.

Sad but true.

Mum’s The Word About The Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex

Conservatism, Critique, Ethics, Etiquette, Government, Healthcare, Military, Morality, Republicans

Mark Levin the radio Mouth could be heard inveighing against what is surely a sickening specter: “Healthcare lobbying on K Street.” As The Hill divulged:

More than 30 former administration officials, lawmakers and congressional staffers who worked on the healthcare law have set up shop on K Street since 2010.
Major lobbying firms such as Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock, The Glover Park Group, Alston & Bird, BGR Group and Akin Gump can all boast an Affordable Care Act insider on their lobbying roster — putting them in a prime position to land coveted clients.
“When [Vice President] Biden leaned over [during the signing of the healthcare law] and said to [President] Obama, ‘This is a big f’n deal,’ ” said Ivan Adler, a headhunter at the McCormick Group, “he was right.”
Veterans of the healthcare push are now lobbying for corporate giants such as Delta Air Lines, UPS, BP America and Coca-Cola, and for healthcare companies including GlaxoSmithKline, UnitedHealth Group and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.

This, no doubt, is ANC-style corruption; the stuff of banana republics, carried out with considerable aplomb and within the bounds of what is considered The Law.

You won’t hear conservatives like Mark Levin protesting or even mentioning the tentacles of The Thing that enervates every corner of the American government, economy, foreign policy, you name them: the military-industrial-Congressional complex, where corruption and “influence peddling” are the order of the day.

Over to the formidable Chuck Spinney:

… SPINNEY: Right. Let’s say I’m the program manager for the F-16 in the Pentagon. I get a call from one of my wholly owned subsidiaries over on the Hill on the armed services committee. “We got it funded for you guys, but those guys in the House are gonna screw us.” So you know, “You got to do something.”

So all I have to do is I call up the program manager at the prime contractor, who I know because I work with him on a daily basis. And say, “Hey, we got a problem.

“The House is gonna kill our program. The Senate’s on board. Turn on the pressure.” Well, at that point, I don’t have to do anything in the government. The rest of it takes care of itself because the people whose future it…are at hand are gonna work overtime to solve that.

The contractors then start calling up the subcontractors. They unleash the fax attacks. They unleash the emails. And then of course they start calling the lobbyists, the Gucci shoe crowd on K Street, and say, “Hey, you got to start beating the… beating the pavement in the halls of Congress. We need some newspaper op-eds.” The whole process takes care of itself. One phone call turns it on.

MOYERS: Who gets the money?

SPINNEY: The contractors get it. The Congressmen get it, you know through… they get the power because they keep getting voted back in office. They may also get some Congressional contributions. But I think the bigger benefit is the power, the stability of their job.

And remember the people in the Pentagon that are promoting this thing are basically… they’re also creating a situation where they can roll over and get into that sector and make the big bucks. All you have to do is look at the number of retired generals working for defense contractors.

MOYERS: The revolving door?

SPINNEY: Yeah, yeah. The revolving door.

… Over in the Pentagon, we’re not holding people accountable.

I think basically here is you have in Congress the oversight committees for defense, which are essentially the armed services committee. And the defense appropriations subcommittees in both houses are so tied in to the Pentagon and the defense contractor base that essentially oversight has been displaced by what some of us call overlook. They’re basically watching the money flow out the door and encouraging it to go.

And basically it’s in members of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s best interest to keep the money flowing. It’s in the Pentagon’s best interest to keep the money flowing.

MOYERS: Because?

SPINNEY: It’s in the defense contractors’ best interest to keep the money flowing. Because it’s the military industrial Congressional complex and this is their way of life. They live on the money flow.

MOYERS: The military industrial Congressional complex?

SPINNEY: Right. Which I believe was a term that Eisenhower considered using in his speech, but he dropped the reference to Congress.

MORE WITH MOYERS.

Long Live Big Brother

Government, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Intelligence, Internet, Law, Liberty, Media, Propaganda, Regulation, Terrorism

Long live Big Brother
By Myron Pauli

In 1788, Jefferson observed: “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground”. Now, apparently, our National Security Agency might be compiling a Yottabyte of data – a trillion trillion bytes which is over 3000 trillion bytes per American. Consider that to store a 9 digit zipcode on you every minute for 100 years is only 1 billion bytes (without data compression), that is a lot of information – “We want information”.

Banks, FBI, IRS, and “Fair-Tax advocates” want to eliminate cash – thus, everything you spend can be monitored. Devices in your car, phone, person, and probably soon clothing can track you 24/7. Like Santa Claus, the government knows when you are sleeping and knows when you’re awake – and stores that knowledge indefinitely.

Search engines can find out who you call, where you go, what you read and write, your friends, your relatives, your medical records, your purchases – all accessible. Is Joe Biden a stingy tipper or did Rand Paul ever set foot in a strip club – ask Uncle Sam? Blackmail-R-Us.

And who has access – potentially millions of people – J Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, Bradley Manning, IRS, Barack Obama, Verizon, Vladimir Putin, FBI, CIA, BATF, Alabama State Police, Citigroup, who knows… – and anyone that one of these people gives information to! Search for “libertarian Jews” or “anorexic Ukrainian lesbians” or imagine a Chinese agent in Utah searching for “Chinese grad students in America who read Ayn Rand” – all inside that Yottabyte – soon to be expanded to kilo-Yottabytes.

With new laws and “administrative regulations” passed each year, more and more Americans are probably in some degree of non-compliance. In the past, of course, surveillance was confined to hard core terrorists such as Wendell Willkie, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Robert Bork, and Martha Stewart.

Now it is YOU!

Just contemplate all the info in the hands of prosecutors such as Michael Nifong, Angela Corey, Torquemada, and John Yoo – exercising their prosecutorial discretion. America already holds 25% of jail inmates worldwide and the Yottabyte archive can assure our global leadership in this category for years to come.

The mainstream media, however, seems to care little. From FOX through MSNBC, the focus is not on the 4th Amendment (what’s that??) but just how “Snowden is evil” (24-1 in Washington Post op-eds). Harassing the lover of reporter Glenn Greenwald (is David Miranda a terrorist?) only receives minor attention.

When the media focuses on human rights, it concentrates on the specks and logs in overseas eyeballs and not in our own. We are told how things are bad for blacks in Libya or Christians in Egypt (sometimes as a result of our own meddling!). That is the “safe” human rights advocacy – it not only does not challenge the American power structure but actually supports the Department of Defense.

“Fight mistreatment of gays in Russia with the Lockheed F-35 fighter” or “Build the Zumwalt destroyer to liberate women in Afghanistan.” Where popular opinion could make a difference – that is, our own country. – we can just be told “Shut up – it is always worse in North Korea”.

Then we can add in “Stop-and-frisk.” Rightists love anything that involves police and military. Leftists only care if it is “fair” – frisking black “youths” at midnight is OK if you frisk oriental grandmothers at noon. Harassing Farouk from Yemen, when boarding an airplane is fine as long as 5-year-old Suzi from Ashtabula also gets the rubber hose. An Equal-Opportunity-Gestapo – hallelujah!

There are some signs that some Americans are changing their minds on the limitless Yottabyte Archive State. Unfortunately, there will always be “threats” – some wacko will shoot up a school periodically or a Boston Marathon bomber or DC Sniper will strut his stuff. In between the low-level carnage, the FBI can always find (typically) ex-con addicted minority dimwits and convince them to try to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge with wire cutters or drive a bus into the Sears Tower. The trillions of $$ spent on defense can never be enough and the Yottabyte Archive needs more info on all of us. As they might say in Casablanca, “Round up the usual 313,900,000 subjects”.

Long live Big Brother!

******
Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.