AUSTERITY OR DEBT: A FALSE CHOICE

Members of Congress argue that the only way out of the debt they created is to impose austerity measures that target the social safety net provided by Medicare and Social Security. These are the primary protections against the depredations of a system that puts the interests of the rich over those of ordinary citizens. Their proposed solution to the problem of their own making is to protect the wealthy individuals who fund their campaigns and neglect the needs of the people who actually elected them. While this strategy is provoking riots and international strikes in Europe, many Americans accept this as a sensible solution. They fail to understand some basic facts.

The debt that the US has accumulated since the Reagan years is the result of a system of corporate welfare that has left the American and world economy in a shambles. Both parties have promoted globalization, shifting jobs to third world nations. They have given tax breaks to corporations and “job creators” who ship these jobs overseas, deregulated banks that taxpayers had to bail out and privatized essential government functions to profited corporations by degrading services and making them more expensive, all to maximum profits for the investor class.

The real reason for the debt “crisis” is that the US government has deeply indebted taxpayers to private banks, promoting private profits over investment in the social and economic infrastructure that made America great in the first place. In Iceland, they threw out those in Parliament responsible for transferring  private debt to taxpayers and prosecuted the banksters who took illegal advantage of their privileged position. Instead of passively assuming the debt their government tried to foist on them, they repudiated much of the debt that had been assumed in their name. We can do the same here, but only by first ending the ability of special interests to buy members of Congress of their choice by financing their elections.

A look at changing US demographics shows that unregulated capitalism will inevitably fail. Developed nations always see a drop in birthrate as women are empowered to have more control over their bodies and to participate in the economy. This means that over time, a smaller and younger work force has to generate the tax base necessary to fund essential government functions and to assure that retirees have the security afforded by Social Security and Medicare. This is the reason that we are in a real crisis with Medicare. Baby Boomers are retiring in record numbers at the same time that a generation of young Americans are facing the most dismal job prospects in American history. It is unconscionable that older Americans expect their grandchildren to provide for their retirements while denying them the opportunities that allowed them to prosper during their working lives.

It will take an entirely new economic model to move the country forward and assure that our children can enjoy the American dream. We must elect leaders who will challenge the system of corporate welfare that is bankrupting the nation. We can then have an honest debate about how and why making Medicare universally available will dramatically cut the costs of healthcare, eliminate 60% of bankruptcies and assure that no one need choose between food and necessary health care. They can also fix Social Security easily by removing the cap on the FICA tax so that the rich pay their fair share.

We also have to realize that no economy can be built on the idea of endless growth. The resources of the planet are finite. If we expect human civilization to survive the coming global climate catastrophe we are beginning to see in Sandy, Katrina and a unprecedented number of other major storms, we must create an environmentally sustainable economy by promoting local production of food and goods, converting to sustainable energy sources and reducing carbon emissions through tax incentives. This will require that those who have profited in this collapsing economy pay their fair share. The Bush tax cuts must be allowed to expire and corporate tax cuts need to be tied to job creation. We cannot afford to give highly profitable corporations like Exxon and General Electric to reap billions in tax rebates while average Americans lose their homes.

To make Congress accountable to We the People, we must make them pledge to support amending the constitution to ban corporate campaign expenditures, limit individual donations to influence elections and abolish corporate personhood. It is too late to make this a campaign issue in 2012 but not too early to begin making it an issue in 2014.

You can learn more about the Pledge to Amend campaign here.

WE ARE ALL SPANIARDS NOW

   


Spain is joining the effort to oppose austerity measures that have sent shock waves throughout the European Union. The lesson from the voters in recent elections to governments that accepted austerity as the price to pay for subservience to European banksters was not lost on government leaders in Madrid. In Italy, Greece and other nations where leaders submitted to Merkel’s IMF-inspired austerity measures, those politicians and there parties lost power when the people resisted.

Spain is in a unique position to resist attempts by the European titans of banking to impose the Shock Doctrine throughout the EU. In this case, the idea is to extort taxpayer money by lending it the funds to pay back debts resulting from the fallout from the derivatives scam that these bankers profited handsomely from. The quid pro quo is the adoption of economic "reforms" that benefit international investors at the expense of the citizens of those nations who are then made to pay tribute to them in perpetuity. These payments constitute an ever-growing proportion of the GDPs of these nations because the austerity measures cripple the economies of debtor nations.

Spain’s rejection of the “generous” offer of the Central Bank of Germany and other lenders to provide loans at low interest in exchange for crippling austerity measures is a milestone  in the fight against austerity and the war against the workers of the world. It falls short of the daring open revolt against austerity in Iceland but may be the first step toward renouncing debt by other nations.

With the fourth largest economy in the European Union, Spain can put real pressure on European banksters to lend money without austerity conditions that have proven a disaster in Greece, Ireland and elsewhere. It is a simple maxim of economics that the only sane response to economic contraction in the private sector is expansion of the government’s role in providing jobs. That is a notion that seems difficult for banksters and other international corporate terrorists to understand. To them, life is a game of Monopoly and helping others achieve and maintain a decent lifestyle at the expense of their bottom lines is cheating.

The Greek economy is collapsing and with it Greek society is falling apart. With soaring unemployment and a shredded social safety net, the suicide rate is dramatically increasing. Those who can afford it are hoarding money in anticipation of default and a return to a drachma drastically reduced in value by the debts a profligate government has accumulated. It is ironic that in the birthplace of democracy the People’s voice has been drowned out by the cries of foul of the banksters in other EU nations. The same is true in the US, the birthplace of the experiment in modern democracy that appears to be failing since corporations were handed the reins of government there.

It can truly be said that we are all Greeks now, at risk of having the wealth produced by the worker stolen by the parasite class who control government in nations around the world. Those who profit from the sweat of others do so by bribing politicians to put the interests of multinational corporations over those of their own citizens. In the US and some other nations, this has been accomplished by financing the campaigns of those willing to be their Puppets in return for wealth and power. That is why the people of the United States must come together to Take Back America for the People, if not for the sake of the Peoples of the world then in their own self-interest, which are in the end are one and the same.

It will require constitutional change to ban all expenditures by special interest groups in American elections. That is why we are all Egyptians now as well. Egypt’s bid for democracy has been stymied by the military rulers’ defiance of calls for fundamental constitutional change that would allow for democratic elections and lead to a government of, by and or the People. Having become dependent on US taxpayer money used to bribe them to guard Israel’s southern border, the leaders of the Egyptian military are understandably reluctant to allow real democracy to undermine their privileged positions.

The only way that the Peoples of Earth will ever gain sovereignty in their own nations is for them to come together to build a united international front against fascism and war. Having suffered decades of fascist rule, Spaniards have a special responsibility. Descendents of the victims of the massacres in the Spanish Civil War have a moral responsibility to lead the effort to create a democratic New World Order. Together we can end the dreams of the international corporate terrorists who seek to establish a permanent fascist New World Order in which we are all economic slaves of a small cabal of elites.

There is hope that we will be aided by the blindness of those who would become Masters of the Universe. It is clear that they cannot foresee the imminent demise of their plans for conquest in the global game of Risk as the long game of Monopoly winds down to its predictable end. The leaders of the war against the workers of the world do not seem to understand a fundamental principle of warfare: The aggressor has no real allies, only other nations that will play along when it suits the purposes of their leaders. As the global economy collapses, expect to see these self-appointed Masters of the Universe turn on one another in a feeding frenzy.  As in any game of Monopoly, there is after all only one winner. If we refuse to play by their rules, it is we who will come out winners.

It may be a good time to invest in popcorn. It should be quite a show.

WE ARE ALL GREEKS NOW

The Peoples of the United States and the world are faced with a stark choice between liberating ourselves from a future of debt slavery or freeing ourselves at last from the twin scourges of fascism and war. If we choose to do the latter, it will require educating the common class of the need to give up cherished delusions of radical individualism, national exceptionalism, free markets, the sanctity of private property and the inevitability of war.

Rulers once understood that when a small group arises that seeks to make debt slaves of its People, that system of government is doomed to collapse. Hammurabi established the principle that a ruler had the absolute right to renounce debts and the responsibility to do it when the People could not free themselves from debt bondage. This idea did nor represent an enlightened philosophy but arose from the recognition of the simple fact that the fate of a nation and its government depended on the government’s willingness to protect the basic rights of a People it might someday rely on to fight its wars of conquest.

The tradition continued in ancient Israel, where the tradition of Jubilee required the wealthy to forgive unpayable debts every seven years, ensuring that a lender class did not arise to control the People through usury. When Islam arose, faithful Muslim adherents were required to give a certain amount to assure that family, friends and the poor in general were always able to meet their basic needs. Such governments thrived until they clashed with more powerful debtor nations who used the credit of monarchs to build Armies that could conquer more egalitarian societies and force them to pay tribute in the form of taxes.

The problem with these systems from the point of view of the creditors was that nations which lost wars of Empire could not always afford to pay tribute sufficient to make a profit, and conquerors could choose to renege on their debts, which they often did, remembering the lessons of the past. Nations which forgot the past were inevitably felled when the debt slaves rose in open revolt against the oligarchies that naively assumed they could not unite to defeat them and their powerful Armies.

From time to time, tyrants would arise who would assume control of an oligarchy by appealing to the citizenry by forgiving them their debts. This is the principle by which Athens and many other city-states in Greece and later Rome were founded. Greece was laid waste by Rome when the oligarchy there decided that conquest was a way to endless riches that would always be able to meet the needs of both the ruling class and average citizens by taking it by force from the People’s of other nations. It was the rise of a powerful and unchecked creditor class that spelled the end of the Roman Empire when its subjects in other lands, with nothing to lose, arose in open rebellion.

We find ourselves now in the position of the Roman Empire just before the fall of the Republic. A creditor class with no allegiance to the United States, its people or any of the nations or Peoples of the world has arisen and is fighting among itself for control of what they believe will be a permanent fascist New World Order. They forget that in the game of Monopoly, there is only one winner. In their arrogance, each assumes that the alliances they form now will enable them to turn on the weakest nations among them and that in the end, they alone will emerge victorious.

In England before the American Revolution and in the United States after, bankers were forced to accommodate to the prospect of democratic control of the governments of debtor nations. In characteristic fashion they found a way to make a virtue out of what should have spelled their doom. When a people voluntarily incorporated as a democratic nation, they assumed by choice the debts incurred as the result of war and other government functions that were seen as necessary and inevitable but which in fact served the interests of the moneyed class. This was the first step toward self-imposed national debt slavery.

When the United States and other ostensibly democratic nations allowed their monetary systems to come under the direct control of the lending class, they took the next step. When their corporate-controlled governments renounced sovereignty over their own trade policies to an oligarchy of lenders who constructed the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, they took the next step toward creating a one world government that is totally out of control of the Peoples of the world. The World Trade Organization was created to promote a fictional free market that has never existed in reality. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, ostensibly formed to help emerging countries, became tools to make them nations of debt slaves. We are now witnessing the inevitable result of our allowing central control of the world economy: The United States and Europe too are becoming slaves in a fascist New World Order.
In Europe we can see the seeds of a revolt against an Empire controlled by the creditor class of international corporate terrorists. These are the parasites that control the governments of the US and its current allies in the War of Terror, which is being waged to control the resources necessary to prevent the rise of any challenge to their collective power. In Greece, the hardest hit of the nations of the European Union and the birthplace of democracy, the People have not forgotten that the right of the People to determine their own destiny is absolute. Rather than giving in to austerity measures that amount to paying tribute to the banking cartels that dictate to their government, they are standing up to demand economic and social justice.

In Iceland, the People have already spoken. They took back their own government and renounced the crushing debts imposed by the creditor class that controls the IMF, as Argentina did when subjected to the cruelties of the economic straightjacket the International Monetary Fund demands to bail out the very nations whose economies they have crushed. In Greece, Spain, Ireland and other nations threatened with economic devastation by a ruling class with no regard for their welfare, the People are rising in open revolt to the Anglo-American Empire that is threatening human civilization with its ability to wage world war economically and militarily.

Once upon a time in America there were nations where the People ruled themselves and where for the most part, nations lived together in peace and prosperity. These were the first truly democratic societies, with absolute equality, a voice for women in government, a natural aristocracy where the Peoples chose their leaders and a common recognition that the fate of each member of society could not be separated from the fate of the group, its neighbors, or the planet itself. This awareness led them to create a system of government where what was necessary for an individual to survive and thrive was considered the common property of all. These were the nations of the Native Americans.

The US constitution is a hodgepodge of compromises between leaders impressed by the governments they found in America and those who wanted to preserve the privileges of the wealthy and in particular the wealthy slave owners who lived in luxury from the toil of those who they forced to do their work for them. This grand compromise fell far short of the democratic ideal, but had the saving grace of incorporating a means of evolving as the nation progressed toward true democracy. It is through the amendment process that the US constitution has been altered to guarantee rights to former slaves and to women. Had the Supreme Court in its infinite arrogance not resisted the tide of history in granting constitutional rights to corporations, we might now be enjoying the blessings of freedom and democracy for ourselves and our posterity.

The price of the original sin of slavery was a bloody Civil War that cost the lives of more Americans than all of the wars before and since. This was the cost of achieving a more just nation, one which must ultimately repay the debt owed to the martyrs of that war by ensuring that the last, best hope for Mankind does not perish from the Earth. If we can end the current Civil War between liberals and conservatives, we can finish the Revolution by working together to pass a constitutional amendment that will abolish corporate personhood, wrest control of the US government from the hands of international corporate terrorists and for the first time in human history establish a true democracy.

We are fighting this time not only for the freedom of one group but for the freedom of Mankind. If we put aside the artificial distinctions that we allow to divide us, we can take back America for the People, help the nations of the world free themselves and together leave our children a future devoid of the threats of slavery, famine, environmental destruction and war.