The Money Was There All Along

Downsize our military, keep our troops home, start making cool useful stuff locally, and redirect those trillions to schools, healthcare, and alternate energy and we wouldn't have to raise a dime of new taxes.

Please read and distribute this article The God That Failed widely.

From Counterpunch

QUOTE This was the cult that captured the governments of the United States and Britain (among others), as well as the Republican and Democratic parties, and the Conservative and Labour parties as well. And for almost thirty years, its ruthless doctrines have been put into practice. Regulation and oversight of financial markets were systematically stripped away or rendered toothless. Essential public services were sold off, for chump change, to corporate interests. Public spending on anything other than making war, threatening war and profiting from war was pared back or eliminated. Such public spending that did remain was forever under threat and derided, like the remnants of some pagan faith surviving in isolated backwaters.

Year after year, the ordinary citizens were told by their governments: we have no money to spend on your needs, on your communities, on your infrastructure, on your health, on your children, on your environment, on your quality of life. We can't do those kinds of things any more.

Of course, when talking amongst themselves, or with the believers in the think tanks, boardrooms -- and editorial offices -- the cultists would speak more plainly: we don't do those things anymore because we shouldn't do them, we don't want to do them, they are wrong, they are evil, they are outside the faith. But for the hoi polloi, the line was usually something like this: Budgets are tight, we must balance them (for a "balanced budget" is a core doctrine of the cult), we just can't afford all these luxuries.

But now, as the emptiness and falsity of the Chicago cargo cult stands nakedly revealed, even to some of its most faithful and fanatical adherents, we can see that this 30-year mantra by our governments has been a deliberate and outright lie. The money was there -- billions and billions and billions of dollars of it, trillions of dollars of it. We can see it before our very eyes today -- being whisked away from our public treasuries and showered upon the banks and the brokerages.

Let's say it again: The money was there all along.

Money to build and generously equip thousands and thousands of new schools, with well-paid, exquisitely trained teachers, small teacher-pupil ratios, a full range of enriching and inspiring programs.

Money to revitalize the nation's crumbling inner cities, making them safe and vibrant places for businesses and families and communities to grow.

Money to provide decent, affordable and accessible health care to every citizen, to provide dignity and comfort to the elderly, and protection and humane treatment for the mentally ill.

Money to provide affordable higher education to everyone who wanted it and could qualify for it. Money to help establish and sustain local businesses and family farms, centered in and on the local community, driven by the needs and knowledge of the people in the area, and not by the dictates of distant corporations.

Money to strengthen crumbling infrastructure, to repair bridges, shore up levies, maintain roads and electric grids and sewage systems.

Money for affordable, workable public transport systems, for the pursuit of alternative sources of energy, for sustainable, sensible development, for environmental restoration.

Money to support free inquiry in science, technology, health and other areas -- research unfettered from the war machine and the drive for corporate profit, and instead devoted to the betterment of human life.

Money to support culture, learning, continuing education, libraries, theater, music and the endless manifestations of the human quest to gain more meaning, more understanding, more enlightenment, a deeper, spiritually richer life.

The money for all of this -- and much, much more -- was there, all along. When they said we couldn't have these things, they were lying -- or else allowing themselves to be profitably duped by the high priests of the market cult. When they wanted a trillion dollars -- or three trillion dollars -- to wage a war of aggression in Iraq, they found it. Now, when they want trillions of dollars to save the speculators, fraudsters and profiteers of greed in the global market, they suddenly have it. UNQUOTE
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We Need to Cast "Precious" Into the Cracks of Doom

Will Congress have any power to stop this terrible juggernaut? Will they even really try? I'm afraid the more I hear about the bailout, the worse it gets. Details of the Act were released by the NY Times over the weekend, and section 8 includes the following statement:
" Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." Essentially, the Act will give the Secretary of the Treasury dictatorial power over our economy, and his decisions will not be subject to review or approval by the president, the courts, or the Congress (who have a Constitutional right and obligation to oversee Federal spending). This is a frightening development to say the least.

Senators and Representatives: The One Ring of the Tolkien mythology is emblematic of the human tendency to covet wholeness and power from an outside object, wealth, trophies. It is especially the aggressive characters who become most vulnerable to becoming possessed by the Ring. Jonathan Zap points out in his fine essay Casting Precious Into The Cracks Of Doom http://www.zaporacle.com/textpattern/article/43/castingprecious

that

"Boromir who is described as '…taking no wife and delighting chiefly in arms; fearless and strong, but caring little for lore, save the tales of old battles.' ” Not surprisingly, he is the member of the ring fellowship who most easily falls under the spell of Ring lust. In violation of everything he has agreed to at the ring council, he presses Frodo to give him the Ring. Frodo responds,
“ Were you not at the Council? … Because we cannot use it, and what is done with it turns to evil.”

Fast forward from the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien's most excellent and apropos parable, to today. We must cast our wealth of this world aside, and focus on the humane and human. We must save our country.

From Counterpunch. Please read the whole thing.

Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street
By MIKE WHITNEY
QUOTE

"One bank to rule them all; One bank to bind them..."

These are dark times. While you were sleeping the cockroaches were busy about their work, rummaging through the US Constitution, and putting the finishing touches on a scheme to assert absolute power over the nation's financial markets and the country's economic future. Industry representative Henry Paulson has submitted legislation to Congress that will finally end the pretense that Bush controls anything more than reading the lines from a 4' by 6' teleprompter situated just inches from his lifeless pupils. Paulson is in charge now, and the coronation is set for sometime early next week. He rose to power in a stealthily-executed Banksters’ Coup in which he, and his coterie of dodgy friends, declared martial law on the US economy while elevating himself to supreme leader. UNQUOTE

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