reflections on those in power

here are a few reflections of mine on those in power in the united states, mainly the bush administration, republicans, and big business... (the democrats in congress are unable to wield power since it requires 2/3 majorities in both houses of congress, since the president opposes everything good they ever try to do, and enough republicans go along with him in congress so he always has his way)

1) the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen year after year. people who do not have enough money to afford things like cars, houses, and computers have been given more and more credit, more loans, more debt, and bought things they cannot afford, with things such as subprime mortgages. now, this whole system of enslaving people with debt by using advertisement to trick them into buying things they cannot afford is starting to collapse, with people losing all the things they bought, and going bankrupt. who is winning? the banks are. the banks get to reposess everything the people bought that they couldn’t afford, and people will have to work the rest of their lives to pay off their debt, and all that money will go back to the banks that tricked them into getting loans. we are also seeing this happen with student loans that people use to pay for college, people being unable to pay those off for many years, and a lot of colleges actually had secret deals between their financial aid departments and banks, which was uncovered by new york state attorney general andrew cuomo. and as for the standard of living in the united states? official statistics calculate per capita gross domestic product by dividing the total value of goods and services produced in a given year inside the country’s borders by the population of the county. this includes goods and services produced by illegal immigrants, in many cases. however, illegal immigrants are not counted in the official population statistics. this makes the per capita gross domestic product, or per capita gdp, look artificially high. the effect of this flaw in how per capita gdp is caluclated is far greater in the country of luxembourg, which, according to official statistics, is the wealthiest country in the world. this is a lie. luxembourg is not that wealthy. luxembourg is a small country between france and germany, a manufacturing center, full of factories, but the country has quite a small population. a large percentage of employees in the factories of luxembourg actually live in france and germany and commute to luxembourg for their factory jobs. thus, if you divide the amount of goods and services produced in luxembourg by the population of that tiny country, you get an inflated figure, and luxembourg ends up with a ridiculously high per capita gross domestic product in the official statistics. this is despite the fact that all those factory workers from france and germany live in houses or apartments in france and germany and spend a good portion of their income in france and germany. similarly, illegal immigrants in the united states send a lot of their money back to relatives in their home countries, as a net loss to the u.s. economy. and the jobs that illegal immigrants in the united states do are ones that u.s. citizens would be willing to do if the employers paid enough. but the employers do not want to pay enough! they want to pay low wages, lower than minimum wage, and are unwilling to pay any higher, because it would cut into their profit margin and make them less competitive with other companies that also employ illegal immigrants. meanwhile, republican politicians have for years cut taxes on the wealthy while increasing the tax burden of the poor. republicans propose replacing the income tax with a national sales tax, which they call a “fair tax”, but it is anything but fair. the “fair tax” would take the same percentage of income from someone who only makes minimum wage as someone who is a billionaire. that is far worse than the progressive income tax we have today, which, at least in theory, taxes the wealthy at a higher rate than the poor, because the wealthy have enough money to afford to pay such a tax, whereas the poor need all their money just to buy the essentials to survive. why is it that poor people are able to buy houses and big flat-screen televisions and nice cars and pay for expensive private colleges? because they get loans... free money! free money that they have to pay back... with interest. people are tricked into getting loans because their stupidity is exploited... stupidity they have because they are financially illiterate and have no idea how to handle money. and the big businesses that sell them things and give them loans have no intention of teaching people how to handle money, because that would reduce their sales and their profits. our entire economy is based on people buying things they cannot afford with borrowed money, and most of the stuff they buy is imported from countries like china, made by workers in sweatshops or in other bad working conditions. we in the united states import far more than we export, and how is this all paid for? our government itself is deeply in debt and cannot manage money, year after year spending far more than it takes in in taxes, going further and further into debt. some of this debt is to wealthy banking interests in the united states who are profiting at the expense of the american people. and some of it is to other countries like the chinese communist regime. the war in iraq costs the u.s. government hundreds of billions of dollars, and will probably go over a trillion dollars, and where does the government get this money? the money is all borrowed, and none of it is paid for by taxes. future generations, young people like me, will have to pay off this debt in the future, when taxes will be much higher... that is, unless the government goes bankrupt or has debt forgiveness like some third-world countries have managed to obtain from their creditors. the wealthy banking interests who loan money to the united states government by buying treasury bonds are the ones who finance most government activity, since republican politicians keep lowering taxes, and the money has to come from somewhere. perhaps republicans periodically lose elections on purpose when the government’s finances go south, just so they can force the democracts to raise taxes to pay for the lavish spending the republicans did on wars and other things they could not pay for. and raising taxes looks bad. so then after democrats raise taxes, which is of course essential in financing the government and paying for everything the republicans put the government into debt spending money on, the republicans can use raising taxes as a cheap political issue, manipulating the public into bringing back incompetent republican mismanagement of the government in the next election.

2) the war in iraq is based on lies and there is absolutely no reason for the united states to have military forces in that country. “we” took saddam hussein out of power (we is in quotes because i personally did not participate as a soldier or in the government and i did not even vote for anyone behind that war except senator hillary rodham clinton), and we caught him from his “spider hole” (what a joke, saddam looked like a crazy homeless guy when we caught him), and we put on a show trial and executed him. originally the war was supposedly about weapons of mass destruction: chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. dick cheney stated as fact that saddam hussein had reconstituted his nuclear program. we were told ridiculous tales of unmanned robotic flying machines that would spray poison around our major cities. colin powell made a presentation in front of the united nations of all the fake evidence our intelligence agencies had doctored up against saddam hussein’s regime; i watched that whole presentation, and it was obvious to me that the evidence was all fake, and i lost all respect for colin powell, who had been the only person in the bush administration i had any respect for at all. there was even talk of saddam hussein being connected to 9/11, sometimes even from president george w. bush. in fact, george w. bush continues to try to connect 9/11 and iraq in his speeches, even today, despite the fact that there is no connection and it is a big lie. none of the 19 hijackers were from iraq and there is no evidence of any connection, except for 2 smaller lies. one of the lies is about a meeting between representatives of saddam hussein’s government and al qaeda operatives that supposedly took place in the czech republic. that meeting never happened and the whole story was fabricated by an intelligence agency. another one concerns abu musab al-zarqawi. zarqawi was in northern iraq, the part saddam hussein did not control, and was in a small section that was not controlled by either of the 2 leading kurdish factions that control most of northern iraq. he was in a section controlled by ansar al-islam, an islamic fundamentalist group tied to al qaeda. and mr. zarqawi was also tied to al qaeda. however, this part of iraq was not controlled by saddam hussein, and saddam hussein had nothing to do with ansar al-islam, abu musab al-zarqawi, or al qaeda. zarqawi later went on to found a terrorist organization inside iraq that later renamed itself “al qaeda in mesopotamia”, but which is referred to as “al qaeda in iraq” by the united states government. zarqawi was used as a bogeyman by the united states, who blamed him for most of the biggest terrorist attacks inside iraq after the invasion, and his group publicly took credit for those attacks, as well. however, his group probably took credit for many attacks carried out by other groups, just to gain prestige and infamy. eventually the united states military killed mr. zarqawi, but we continue to blame most of the big terrorist attacks in iraq on his group, regardless of who actually carried them out. anyway, back in the fall of 2002, the united states was trying to get a resolution passed by the united nations security council against iraq. syria, which was on the security council, wanted nothing to do with it. our diplomats convinced syria to vote for the resolution by lying to the syrians and saying that we were not going to attack iraq if the resolution passed. of course, the resolution passed (unanimously because of our lies and manipulations towards the foreign diplomats), and we ended up invading iraq early in 2003, proving to the world that our nation was governed by untrustworthy liars and that nothing we said could be trusted. the resolution required iraq to send the united nations a report accounting for all weapons of mass destruction, and iraq complied. the resolution called for weapons inspections in iraq, which were done by hans blix and mohamed elbaradei. the weapons inspectors went to iraq and did robust inspections for a short period of time, searching all over iraq for weapons of mass destruction, with the full cooperation of saddam hussein’s government, and finding absolutely no weapons of mass destruction. the united states told the weapons inspectors to leave, while they were doing their job, and started a war based on the false premise of weapons of mass destruction, even though the weapons inspectors had been actively searching for weapons of mass destruction! president bush told saddam hussein he had 48 hours to leave iraq before they would begin bombing. that was an outright lie! we began bombing less than a day later, right where we thought saddam hussein was! and yet some idiots still trust president bush, even after he has proven himself to be an outright liar, so many times! and then we began the campaign of “shock and awe”, or, in other words, terrorism. shock and awe are very similar in meaning to terror, but basically, we were dropping giant bombs everywhere and killing innocent civilians. and our soldiers in iraq use depleted uranium munitions, which poison people, causing cancer, birth defects, and other health problems. the iraqi forces quickly surrendered to the might of the united states military and a very small number of coalition partners, the so-called “coalition of the willing”, mostly tiny countries who had been bribed by our government into giving us token assistance of very small numbers of troops. the only major contribution from another country was from the united kingdom, led by tony blair, who was stupid enough to fall for the neoconservative theories of foreign policy and become a true believer in neoconservatism, completely brainwashed. of course, now that the united kingdom is led by gordon brown, he is trying to end british involvement in iraq as fast as possible, falsely claiming that the british have achieved victory in the area they controlled, mainly basra, when in fact they are fleeing in defeat. anyway, before the war, dick cheney formed his own miniature intelligence agency, inside the vice president’s office, because he did not like what was coming out of the cia and did not think they justified the war strongly enough or had a strong enough case against saddam hussein. so dick cheney brought in people like ahmed chalabi to give evidence against iraq. ahmed chalabi is a chameleon-like figure... in washington, he is a neoconservative who advocated war with iraq and produced false evidence against saddam hussein justifying a war. in iraq, he is a politician who distances himself from the united states and tries to pretend he is independent and a patriot. and in iran, he cozies up to the mullahs and tries to show that he is really one of their allies. dick cheney’s chief of staff, “scooter” libby, was deeply involved in all of these operations of producing false evidence to justify a war with iraq, and later he was convicted of perjury in the investigation of the affair of how the bush administration leaked the identity of cia agent valerie plame as revenge against her husband joseph wilson, who had written an article detailing how the bush administration lied to get us into war in iraq. the forces of saddam hussein’s government disbanded and refused to fight us, keeping their guns and weapons and going into hiding, thus allowing us to appear to win the war against them quite quickly. within less than a month the former regime was completely toppled. and then george w. bush dressed up like an air force pilot and landed on an aircraft carrier for a big photo op with a giant “mission accomplished” banner where he declared “major combat operations in iraq are over”. of course he was never a real soldier, and had used his family connections to get into the texas air national guard during the vietnam war to avoid serving in vietnam, and then he actually went awol, but his official records did not say he went awol, because, again, he used his family connections. george w. bush is a man who, throughout his life, just like j. r. “bob” dobbs, made a million bucks every time he screwed up. always an incompetent fool, who had a c average at yale, he kept getting onto corporate boards despite his stupidity and lack of business sense... all the businesses he ever ran went bankrupt. anyway, “major combat operations in iraq are over” turned out to be a big lie, and we have actually increased troop levels since that declaration, most notably in this so-called “surge” that bush started in early 2007, even though the voters in the 2006 elections elected democrats who promised to end the war. the whole “surge” is bush’s way of saying “fuck you” to the american electorate who elected candidates who promised to end the war just 2 months before the surge started. and who is profiting off this war? well, the war is not financed by taxpayers, since republicans have not only failed to raise taxes in order to pay for the war. they actually lowered taxes while we were at war, the first time in our nation’s history. that is their way of saying “fuck you” to the young people of our country like me who will have to work hard and pay taxes in future years in order to pay off the massive national debt these idiots keep racking up every time they lower taxes and increase spending with their voodoo economics and their fuzzy math and their laffer curve. and as dick cheney said, “reagan proved deficits don’t matter”. thanks a lot, asshole. democrats had to raise taxes to keep the government from going bankrupt, due to the massive deficits year after year caused by reagan’s voodoo economics, and the democrats’ reward in 1994 was newt gingrich and the republicans coming to power. anyway, this war just keeps on going and going and going, like an energizer battery with that pink bunny that keeps hitting its drum. at first, the iraqis were fighting an insurgency against our occupation forces, while paul bremer made himself emperor of iraq and there was a council of iraqi exiles brought in to advise him who had no real power. and paul bremer disbanded the iraqi military and did de-baathification and tried to privatize the iraqi oil industry so that big oil companies could buy up iraqi oil fields cheaply. all of those policies of paul bremer turned into massive failures and fueled the insurgency against our troops. just like when president bush said “bring ’em on”, inviting terrorists to attack our troops. but what does he care, since neither of his kids has any chance of being sent to war, since they are both girlies? he cares nothing about our troops, and keeps sending more and more of them off to get killed senselessly in pursuit of a failed strategy. and what about the no-bid contracts to companies like dick cheney’s halliburton? rather than having competitive bidding so that the most qualified company that is most efficient and best able to contain costs wins military contracts in iraq, the bush administration gave out contracts without bidding, to companies run by their friends. and everyone knows that a large number of top bush administration officials are former oil company executives... and bush himself was good friends with ken lay, the ceo of enron when it went bankrupt, the company that manipulated california’s energy markets, one of the companies whose leaders probably participated in dick cheney’s secret energy policy meetings back in early 2001. but war profiteers are not just limited to companies that have contracts with the defense department. the state department, too, is wasting taxpayer money on war profiteers, with its contracts with companies like blackwater. blackwater is the company that the iraqi government wants out of the country within 6 months, because they killed innocent civilians using excessive force, in several separate incidents. and blackwater employees are paid much higher salaries than u.s. soldiers, who are just as well qualified to do the same job protecting our diplomats in iraq. these excessive salaries are part of the war profiteering... it would make much more sense and be much cheaper to have u.s. soldiers do the same job that blackwater has been doing. and the same goes for other private security contractors used by the united states in iraq. why, then, do we use these private security contractors, if they are such a waste of our government’s limited financial resources? for one reason, the companies are led by people with close ties to the republican party who give a lot of donations to republicans (at least that is true for blackwater and halliburton). another reason to use these private mercenary armies is that the united states military simply does not have enough soldiers for iraq. we might have enough soldiers if we withdrew our troops from all the other countries around the world where we have troops stationed. over half the countries in the world have united states troops stationed in them, by the way. we have over half the world under military occupation (although perhaps that language of “occupation” is a bit strong for me to use). anyway, the iraqis do not want us there, according to all the opinion polls in that country. the iraqis think of us as their enemy and think it is justified to kill our forces. so actually, the people killing our troops are not terrorists. they are fighting to free their country from foreign military occupation. the patriots who founded the united states similarly fought to free the united states from british military occupation. of course, the iraqi government wants to keep our troops there, but only because that is the only thing protecting the iraqi politicians from all the people who want to kill them. iraq has become the most violent country in the world, since we invaded it, and our military is the only thing protecting the iraqi politicians, who get to meet in the green zone, the only safe part of iraq. so of course the iraqi politicians want us to stay, because if we leave, their own citizens will rise up in arms and kill them, because hardly any iraqis view their government as legitimate. the iraqi government is viewed as american puppets, and rightly so. as for all the sectarian violence between sunnis and shiites, i think that was actually instigated by our military as part of a “divide and conquer” strategy against the insurgents. originally, sunnis and shiites fought an insurgency against our troops, side by side, fighting for national liberation from their foreign occupiers. but the united states managed to turn the sunnis and shiites against each other and get them to fight each other, rather than our troops, as part of a strategy to reduce the killings of our own troops so we could establish permanent bases and occupy iraq forever. now more recent developments in northern iraq are interesting: the kurdish separatist group known as the pkk, which the united states and turkey both call a terrorist group, is holed up in mountainous areas in the border region between kurdish-controlled northern iraq and turkey. the pkk are carrying out terrorist attacks against turkey, and turkey has already started making military incursions into northern iraq, although they are trying to keep that from being reported on. the turkish parliament has authorized a full-scale invasion of iraq, and there is public outcry all over turkey calling for an invasion of iraq, calling for war, protesting against the inaction of the turkish government and its failure to have already invaded northern iraq. the united states commander for northern iraq has said that he will do absolutely nothing to fight the pkk, and will not interfere if the turks invade, or offer any support to either the turks or the pkk. so it seems the conflict in iraq is spilling out into neighboring countries already, and destabilizing the entire region, which is actually what the neoconservatives wanted to happen all along.

3) the libertarians pose quite a problem. libertarians are people who claim they want to maximize individual liberty and freedom. libertarians want to shrink the size of government to be very small, legalize as many illegal things as possible, cut both taxes and government spending as much as possible, and deregulate everything. they want to take us as close as possible to anarchy without actually having anarchy, while still preserving a minimalist government, one that is just barely big enough to prevent any rival governments from trying to establish themselves, just barely big enough to maintain order. now, while i agree with libertarians on social issues, on drug legalization and things like that, i think they are completely wrongheaded when it comes to economic issues. libertarians, just like republicans, have a faith-based approach to economics, putting all their faith in the free market and the invisible hand of adam smith, thinking it is best to deregulate and privatize everything, and accusing anyone who disagrees with this as being a socialist. they view economics in black and white and not shades of gray, thinking you either support capitalism or socialism, and there is nothing in between, and that capitalism is much better. libertarians have a presidential candidate running in the republican primaries, ron paul. many libertarians rightly oppose the war in iraq and the patriot act and illegal warrentless wiretapping and other abuses of power by the bush administration. libertarians get pretty much everything right, except for anything that has to do with economics or the environment. libertarians have a long history of opposing the environmental movement and a lot of them are skeptics of global warming, or even if they believe in global warming, they do not want the government to do anything at all about it. the basic flaw with their view of economics is they do not account for 2 things: negative externalities and market failure. negative externalities and market failure are the 2 circumstances where free market capitalism fails and government intervention is required. one type of negative externality is pollution. if a factory is dumping toxic waste into a lake that people like to swim in that is used for a town’s water supply, libertarians would not do anything at all to stop this. if we followed their policies of deregulation and legalizing everything, there would be no punishment for poisoning everyone in your town. libertarians also want to privatize the educational system, and some even want to privatize the entire military. libertarians have some influence in the republican party, but only on economic issues. only on the issues libertarians are wrong about. not on the issues they are right about. on most of the issues libertarians are right about, democrats agree. of course there are a few exceptions, such as legalizing things like drugs and prostitution and gambling. but democrats are definitely more permissive in social issues about legalizing things than republicans are. republicans want to regulate sex. they do not like birth control or family planning or abortion or homosexuality or sex outside of marriage. republicans think that the only sex anyone should ever have is with someone they are married to, who is of the opposite sex, who is not part of a polygamous marriage, where no birth control is involved, no condoms, and it has to be standard coitus, where the penis goes into the vagina, and both people are 18 years of age or older, and all other types of sexual intercourse are outlawed. at least that is the view of the religious right, which is the largest republican constituency and the 2nd most powerful, after big business. perhaps republicans do not actually agree with these regressive policies towards sex, but only pretend to, and do token gestures to appeal to the religious right without actually enacting anything into law to further regulate sex. libertarians correctly oppose regulation of sex, as do democrats, but many libertarians wrongly vote for republicans, simply because of their wrongheaded ideas on economic issues. libertarians, in voting republican, fail to realize that democrats agree much better with libertarians on most other issues besides the economic ones. the punishment for drug users/abusers ought to be drug treatment and rehab, not going to jail (especially not a long jail sentence under new york state’s rockefeller drug laws). why not simply legalize drugs? a main part of the appeal of drugs, especially to younger people, is that they are illegal, which makes them cool, something rebellious, a way to stand up to authority. well what if authority and the laws said drugs are legal? then it isn’t so cool anymore. then druggies are losers. then there is no point in doing drugs in the first place. this is just about the only issue that libertarians get right that most democrats get wrong. but if we followed libertarian economic policies, it would simply make the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. and the minimum wage and child labor laws are both things libertarians want to get rid of... bad idea. i see the libertarians as a problem because i think people might become libertarians as a reaction against republicans and neoconservative foreign policy and big brother and the government doing warrentless wiretaps and detaining people indefinitely without trial in defiance of habeas corpus. and then they would be misled and end up fighting against the environmental movement and fighting for lower taxes on the wealthy and deregulation and other things that help big business and hurt everyone else. one of the major influences on many libertarians is ayn rand and her objectivist movement, who advocate a back-asswards system of morality where selfishness is good and actually giving a damn about other people is evil. to objectivists, the most moral person is the greediest person, and the least moral person is the most generous person. ayn rand escaped the soviet union to come to the united states, and her entire philosophy is based around her strong opposition to communism, and her desire to form a philosophy that is the exact opposite of communism. but it is an overreaction, and is reactionary, and goes too far towards the extremes of “free” market capitalism and radical individualism. libertarians fail to recognize that if they dismantle the government and prevent it from oppressing the people, the corporations and all the former government entities that got privatized will oppress people even worse. corporations are theoretically only accountable to their shareholders, but most corporations are not even accountable to them. there have been some shareholder revolts lately, with shareholders upset with how the corporations they owned were won, but lately it seems top corporate executives have been able to outmaneuver shareholder activists who try to hold them accountable. corporate executive salaries are going through the roof despite declining incomes for average people, and shareholders are unable to do anything about it, despite the fact that they own the corporations. it is madness to put more power in the hands of corporations, since they are, in practice, accountable to nobody at all. that is why i do not want people to be misled into becoming libertarians or supporting ron paul. people ought to be democrats. sure, the democrats are not perfect. nobody is. but at least democrats want to take us in the right direction, even if they do not fight hard enough. at least they want to end the iraq war, even if they continue to fail to do so. most of the failures of the democratic congress that took office in january of this year are due to republican obstructionism, both by republicans in the senate who filibuster everything, and by the president who vetoes everything. if it weren’t for republican obstructionists, we democrats could get a lot more good things done for this country. of course the republicans have every right to be obstructionists, under our constitutional system. it just means the people need to vote them all out of office in the next election. if democrats had a 2/3 majority in both houses of congress and had the presidency, then maybe we could start getting things done for real. maybe we could do something about how only 2 out of 9 supreme court justices were appointed by democrats, and 7 out of 9 were appointed by republicans. and 4 of the 7 appointed by republicans are right-wing extremists: antonin scalia, clarence thomas, john roberts, and samuel alito. 4/9 of our supreme court are right-wing extremists. it just takes one more and then you can say goodbye to all your freedoms like habeas corpus, and all the rest. and republican presidential candidates, except for ron paul, all support the president’s failed strategy in iraq, the “surge”, and are very hawkish towards iran, meaning, if one of them gets elected, it will mean more pointless and stupid wars based on lies that waste countless lives and countless billions of dollars, and a supreme court filled with right-wing extremists. and if ron paul became president? well then you can say goodbye to the united states government. of course, you probably hate the united states government and would like to get rid of it. so then go ahead, vote for ron paul. but then don’t come crying to me about negative externalities and market failure once everything is privatized and deregulated and legalized.