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At the point of our (early on the scene of the crime) exhaustion, we learn that some small part of the media elite is catching on, and has begun making dramatic announcements that "there has been a murder on campus".  Do I hear shots?  Have the exit doors been chained shut?

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all. Naomi Wolf Tuesday April 24, 2007 Guardian Naomi Wolf was a consulting editor at George Magazine. Her essays appear regularly in The New Republic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Glamour, Ms., and other publications. Her book "The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot" will be published by Chelsea Green in September.

Of course there is no time too dark for poetry.  Quite the opposite.  But somehow I am not up to finding, and certainly not to writing, any to post. 

I have, however, recently posted a couple of Diary entries at Daily Kos:

• Natural Man and the Glories of Hatred and
• WashPo Hatchet Job on Ayaan Hirsi Ali & the Enlightenment

Wednesday, August 18, 2004

If you are following Muqtada’s story like I am you would know that according to all the news and most of the press out there he accepted the government position by disarming his thugs and leave the Shrine. However, if you read what Al-Jazeera wrote earlier on their website, you would think that Muqtada did not accept the deal. On the other hand some of the Iraqi press is saying that Iran had a lot to do with Muqtada’s decision about accepting the deal. Take the deal now and save your guys because we need you later.

My take on this whole thing is, it is wrong to let Muqtada or any of his thugs go free just because they put their weapons down. This was the biggest test for Allawi’s government and I feel they failed miserably. Falluja got away with murder, Muqtada got away with murder, and God only knows who is going to rise up in the future and do what Muqtada did. I feel that by sparing Muqtada’s life this government is inviting all the thugs in and all around Iraq to come in and bear arms. This is the wrong message to send to all the terrorist groups out there because they will be viewed as weak and indecisive government.

I realize it is easy for me to say all this because I am sitting in a nice air conditioned office in a nice peaceful environment. And they are in the middle of the fire but I think you can not allow these group to control your destiny in life other wise might as well fold now and go home. The more I speak with people in Baghdad they say the same thing and that is please get rid of Muqtada. I called Baghdad yesterday asking about the situation and how they are doing, my older brother said to me, we are sitting and watching a volcano; if it erupts we are finished. And if does not erupts, it will in the future but we don’t know when. The situation in Iraq is fluid and it is unsafe for everyone however, the government can do something about it by winning these young poor people before someone like Muqtada recruit them all.

To be clear those are not my words.  They are more authoritative, and much clearer, than my own writing at that time and on that subject.  Tragically, they have proven accurate and prophetic, as well.  I tremble at the thought of what has happened since they were posted by an Iraqi blogger nearly two years ago.

What has happened - the enduring and perhaps irredeemable tragedy of what has happened - is squarely and exclusively the responsibility of the United States' administration of Iraq in the years since it decapitated the Iraqi government and depopulated its civil service.  At every turn the US administration in Iraq has made choices calculated to weaken Iraqi national cohesion and perpetuate and foment civil strife among Iraq's religious and ethnic groups.  It's handling of Muqtada al Sadre, and its failure to deal with al Sadre inspired militias, both in Baghdad and Basra, firmly and with finality early in 2004 has likely destroyed all hope for recreation of a viable and strong Iraqi national state, along with any prospect of either freedom or democracy, let alone both.

But, from the point of view of the Bush regime, this is what was desired.  Bush, himself afflicted with messianic delusions and aligned by personality, belief system, and political objectives with Christofascist theocrats and fundamentalist radicals in the US, has never sought a modern secular democracy in Iraq.  Rather, he and his regime have always sought to establish a weak state there, torn by conflict and riven by religious divisions. That is how he has justified the perpetuation of his long and profitable (for certain corporations, at least) war against terror, as well as the permanent occupation of Iraq. 

We are, after all, building immense "enduring" bases in Iraq.  We are building military superhighways in Iraq that bypass cities but permit the rapid movement of military materiel and personnel around the country.  And we are building the largest embassy complex in the world in Baghdad.  The Bush regime could neither accomplish nor justify these actions, were it not for the permanent destruction of Iraq's social institutions and the dissolution of Iraqi society that it has so successfully perpetrated.

We in the US are not conscious of these things.  Our media does not report them.  Our "news organizations" either do not know or pretend not to know the nature and significance of differences among major political groupings in Iraq, especially within the majority Shia population.  Even while permanent bases, highways, and military intelligence fortresses disguised as diplomatic compounds being are being built, at immense cost, they do not report on them or examine the contradiction between the facts on the ground (and in the financial accounts) and the lies the President, Vice President, and cabinet officers of the US government tell about our intention to "stand down as the Iraqi's stand up". 

The last thing in all creation, right now, that the Bush regime wants is for the Iraqi people to abandon their rending of their own flesh, the terrorizing of their own people, and the schismatic violence against their own religious institutions so that they can act as one people, one body politic, and take effective action to remove the United States and its enablers from their soil.

The violence filled video game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" has been found to contain embedded sexual content.  Somehow, that content us more upsetting to the media - and I presume the public upon which they feed - than the extraordinarily violent overt content which has made it the highest selling video game of recent years.  This is a game which has always concerned law enforcement officials and people working with teen agers, but which nevertheless somehow escaped the ratings process with a "mature" instead of an "Adults Only" rating. 

The game's rating has just been changed to "Adults Only" by the "Entertainment Software Ratings Board".   The ESRB obviously is responding to, and likely agrees with the popular and press judgment that sexuality is more pornographic and worthy of being censored and kept out of the hands of young people than is extreme violence, in which kids get to join gangs, steal cars, shoot up cities and kill cops.

Sorry my friends.  The idea that violence is somehow less pornographic than sexuality, and that depictions of overt sexual activity is more objectionable and more dangerous to our children than depictions of sexual acts is more than just plain wrong.  It is, in my judgment,  sick.  And an indication of the sickness of a society which is in serious danger of loosing its moral moorings, not because of any change in sexual mores and behaviors, but because of increasing acceptance and even approval of violence in media and in life. 

Sexuality is less dangerous, less immoral, less a threat to our children and our society, less worthy of censorship, and much less pornographic than is violence.  Until our media, politicians, and preachers get that simple fact through their thick skulls, we cannot hope to recreate a civil and secure society in this country of ours.  And we certainly cannot expect the producers of video games to stop recruiting our children into the army of the ignorant and violent who increasingly poison the life of our communities.

URLs:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=964189
http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2005/07/esrb_changes_gr.html

By Caren Bohan PARKERSBURG, W.Va. (Reuters) - President Bush said on Tuesday that younger workers were counting on a fictional trust fund for their future retirement benefits, as he pressed his case for changes to Social Security in the face of continuing doubts among fellow Republicans. "A lot of people in America think there's a trust," Bush told a forum here, shortly after he stopped off at the Bureau of Public Debt, the agency that keeps records on the nation's debt. "But that's not the way it works," he said. "There is no trust fund -- just IOUs."

The NY Times, in an editorial "Shameless Photo Op" notes that Shrub "wants Americans to believe that the Social Security trust fund is a joke. But if the trust fund is a joke, so is the full faith and credit of the United States."  The editorial asks us to imagine Shrub in the vault at the Bank of Japan where $712 billion in US government bonds are stored, announcing "the bonds, backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, are, in fact, worthless i.o.u.'s." 

Unfortunately the Times also claims that "the governments, institutions and individuals who hold United States debt can tell a publicity stunt from a policy statement." 

Anyone who thinks that they can reliably pin down the intent of the smirking chimp's public statements is sadly mistaken.  This man - this outlaw regime - is as capable of repudiating the debt of the United States to any other nation as it is of his bald faced and seditious repudiation of the government's debt to the OASDI trust fund.  Or of any other act that it feels will advance its medievalist social and political goals, at any time it finds such an act convenient and enforceable whether by military action or conscienceless lie.

Representatives Pelosi and DeFazio state the matter this way:

Pelosi:  So where does he borrow? He borrows from the Chinese. He borrows from the Japanese. He borrows from the trust fund. And what he is saying now to the American worker: "We will honor our debt to the Chinese and the Japanese, but we are treating you differently. We are not honoring our debt to you." These are funds that workers and their employers put in the account to have a trust fund to cover any shortfall that would be there to cover their retirement benefits. And this President is openly declaring that he has no intention of paying the trust fund back what he has taken from it.

DeFazio:  But the President did say today something extraordinary, in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and suggested something unconscionable. The President said, ``There is no trust fund.'' And then he went on to suggest that our Nation might not honor its debt to Social Security. This is what the President said does not exist.
[...]
Are we going to repay the Chinese but not the Social Security Trust Fund? Are we going to repay President Bush, he happens to have some U.S. Treasury Bonds in his personal portfolio, but not the Social Security Trust Fund? Are we going to repay other wealthy investors around the world and in the U.S., but not the Social Security Trust Fund? We are going to selectively default on our debt.

Suggesting something like that, if the bond markets believed the President, the dollar would drop to near zero tomorrow, and there would be an economic catastrophe, but they do not believe him.

OK, then.  How many of these repudiated government "IOUs" has Shrub's regime given the OASDI Trust Fund, in return for the privilege of spending your withheld earnings? 

Thanks to the folks at the Ruth Group we know that Max Sawicky has some answers: 

$639 BILLION

That's how much in "worthless IOUs" our President has given to the Social Security Trust Fund (FY2002-2005), in exchange for your payroll taxes.

Over the next five years, our President proposes to add another $1,061 billion to this crime spree. (President's Budget, Summary Table S-10)

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the projected ten year total Trust Fund swindle (FY2006-2015) is $2,554 billion. (CBO March, p. 2, Table 1-1)

What are these "IOU's," in truth?  William L. Watts at Marketwatch.com notes:

At issue are the special-issue Treasury bonds - now totaling around $1.7 trillion - that make up the trust fund. Paper facsimiles of the bonds, which like most modern-day securities are issued in electronic form, are held in a file cabinet at the Office of Public Debt in Parkersburg. That's what Bush visited earlier in the day.

As Dr. Irwin Kellner at Marketwatch.com notes

Critics claim that the trust fund has no real assets, since the securities it holds are IOUs -- nothing but empty promises. They point out that the system's funds have already been used to finance the operations of the government.

In may be true that Social Security's revenues have been commingled with the rest of the federal government. But it does not follow from this that the system has no assets -- it most certainly does, and they are in the form of government bonds.

. . .
(These bonds are) issued by the federal government to the Social Security system in return for its surplus cash.

The idea of putting Social Security's excess cash into government securities stems from the law that created Social Security. It stipulated that Social Security tax revenues could only be invested in government securities because they are the safest investment around.

(How is that for irony?  Apparently the folks who designed the system never considered the possibility that the President of the United States would unilaterally assert the intent to repudiate these securities, in order to panic the people who have paid their earnings into the Trust Fund into supporting his plans for the destruction of the Old Age and Survivors Disability Insurance system.  JP)

These investments earn interest just like any other government security. In 2004 the trust fund earned 5.7 percent on its holdings of government securities, says the Social Security Administration.

. . .
Some would say that these bonds are worthless because the government does not have the cash on hand to pay the trust fund when it redeems them. What they mean is that the government has a deficit in its budget, thus it has no spare cash.

So what's new about this? Since 1969, you could count on the fingers of one hand the number of years that Washington's budget has been in the black.

Lack of cash on hand has never prevented the government from paying off any of its securities in the past. What it has generally done was borrow from the financial markets here and abroad to make these payments.

The government will do the same for the bonds held by the Social Security trust fund, when and if the system needs the money.

What about the supposed "shortfall" in the flow of funds into and out of the Trust Fund?  Here is Marketwatch's William Watts again:

Revenues from the Social Security payroll tax currently exceed outlays. The Social Security trustees' annual report issued last month projected that the program would see outlays begin to exceed revenues in 2017. 

By redeeming the bonds, the trust fund would be able to continue paying full benefits until 2041. At that point, the trust fund would be exhausted, the trustees said, and the law would require an across-the-board cut in Social Security benefits to bring outlays into line with revenues, the trustees estimated. 

The supposed "total" shortfall of $10.4 trillion is both distorted and meaningless:

It's arrived at by projecting the system's shortfall over infinity, rather than the usual 75-year time frame - as if the system's finances 10,000 years from now are a legitimate policy concern. Moreover, no less an authority than the American Academy of Actuaries is already on record debunking infinite projections as conveying "little if any useful information about the program's long-range finances" and "likely to mislead anyone lacking technical expertise ... into believing that the program is in far worse financial condition than is actually indicated."  NY Times; 3-24-2005

Moreover - as has long been known - the trustee assumptions on which this shortfall is based, which would still permit payment of 74% of scheduled benefits, are far too low in their 1.9% per year estimate of economic growth.  In fact, they are about one half the rate that has occurred over the last 50 years and is actually expected to occur in the future.  Even a 2.7% average rate of growth, only three quarters the historical rate, would mean that the system would never run out of money!

Dr. Kellner notes that the date the system was supposed to run out of money has receded into the future with each new projection, and that:

The system's actuaries actually produce three long-range projections. The one that's been picked by the politicians, pundits and the press and turned into the conventional wisdom is their intermediate projection -- the one that expects the trust fund to be depleted by 2042.

But the assumptions underlying these projections are very pessimistic -- especially when it comes to economic growth.

The actuaries assume that the U.S. economy will grow by an annual rate of 1.9 percent per year over the next 75 years. This is far below the 3.6 percent average of the past 75 years -- a period that includes the Great Depression.

The system's actuaries have a somewhat more optimistic projection. It assumes, among other things, a slightly faster rate of growth of 2.7 percent per year over the same period.

While this, too, is below the economy's 75-year average, it shows that the system never runs out of money. That's right, never.

What's the bottom line, regarding the OASDI trust fund?

1. There is indeed an OASDI trust fund.  Bush lied.  Again.  The man is amazing. 
   
2. The "IOUs" are real financial obligations of the United States government, and will not, in the end, be repudiated, any more than the government bonds Bush hold in his investment portfolio will be. 
3. The estimates of the growth of the US economy on which projections of shortfalls in OASDI receipts are based are far below the actual growth we have experienced in the past and which we can expect to experience in the future.  The truth about those projections is almost always concealed. 
   
4. Statements that the system is on the verge of bankruptcy, is in crisis, or must be fixed immediately are at the very least misleading,  And usually they are purposeful lies through omission of known facts. 
   
5. If the US economy grows at only three quarters the rate it has grown in the past, the OASDI trust fund will never be exhausted, and a reduction in scheduled benefits will never be necessary.
6. The Social Security "crisis" as presented by the Bush regime is a falsehood - a pretext designed to scare the people of the US into permitting the destruction of the OASDI system. 
   
7. The only "fixes" of the system needed are those that make it less possible to run these scams on the public, and make it even more clear that trust fund assets are real financial assets, embodied in real financial instruments.  A number of options to accomplish that are available<>.
   
8. <>Bush's proposal is not among them.  "If there is a remarkable achievement of the Bush proposals, it is this: they simultaneously undermine the solvency of the Social Security system, worsen the fiscal deficit, diminish the security of the elderly and increase the incidence of poverty."  Joseph Stiglitz, University Professor at Columbia University; awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001
   

Reference URL's http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=8092787 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/07/opinion/07thu3.html http://blog.dccc.org/mt/archives/002556.html http://www.ruthgroup.org/ http://maxspeak.org/mt/archives/001298.html http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B9CB230F3%2D3236%2D4864%2DAAE6%2D8C513068C191%7D&siteid=mktw&dist= http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B6F5DFB45%2D3900%2D440C%2D9DC8%2DA8219EA920E4%7D&garden=&minisite= http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/24/opinion/24thu3.html http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7BB1935269%2D866A%2D491F%2D90A6%2DA4A1F46B8EBB%7D&siteid=mktw http://news.ft.com/cms/s/642f479a-9970-11d9-ae69-00000e2511c8.html

How the Numbers Are Adding Up

    STAYING: US 150,000 (military personnel); Britain 8,850; South Korea 3,600; Italy 3,000; Australia 900 (up to 1,350 by April); Romania 800, up to 900; Japan 600; Denmark 500; Bulgaria 380; El Salvador 380; Georgia 300, up to 800; Mongolia 180; Azerbaijan 150; Latvia 120; Lithuania 100; Slovakia 100; Czech Republic 90; Albania 70; Estonia 50; Tonga 40; Kazakhstan 30; Macedonia 30; Moldova 25

    GOING: Netherlands 1,500; Ukraine (1,650 leaving by October); Poland 1,700 (reducing by half)

    GONE: Spain 1,300; Thailand 460; Hungary 300; Honduras 370; Dominican Republic 300; Nicaragua 115; Portugal 127; New Zealand 60; Philippines 50; Norway 10

The Times Online; March 15, 2005. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1525997,00.html

The New York Times article on the Vietnam election in 1967 was first located and published by patachon on the DailyKos blog forum.

This index is chronological (earliest is first), while the the postings are in reverse chronology (most recent is  first).

Contents of next weblog file: (Not Yet Archived)
Contents of prior weblog file: (Archived)

Oil prices, trade deficits, interest rates, and inflation - facts and fictions (Link) revised.
The "West Wing" Scenario: The Language of Politics and the 2004 Campaign (Link) reposted.