Jesus said, “And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:32
It may not make us free in the current circumstances but it is better to know the truth than to work from a foundation of falsehoods. Here then is a summary of several truths about the government and the current situation, which when put together may lead interesting conclusions.
It’s very hard to believe that the government thinks we are deceived by their fiasco of the week. They actually cut $38.5 billion from the budget and expect anybody who can do simple arithmetic to think that is meaningful, and that it was necessary to save the day. And they haggled about it for days and threatened to shut down the government if that little crumb wasn’t taken off the loaf that isn’t ours, all the while having secure pensions and not having to consider losing their personal financial resources.
Both Democrats and Republicans do the same thing. They try to keep their popularity among their special groups of followers by taking money from one set of people and giving it to the others. And of course their giving is always towards what keeps them in power.
The US government is currently in debt to over six trillion dollars. That’s DEBT. They cut the budget by $38.5 billion which is 1/156th of the DEBT.
Put it in terms of a family that has an income of $50,000 a year, but everyone in it is credit card crazy and the family has been spending about $12,000 a month for years with their cards and going deeper and deeper into debt as the interest on the debt compounds monthly.
So they have a family conference and decide that to save the family from bankruptcy everybody has to cut back. Of course everybody insists that their own expenditures are absolutely necessary. So they decide to cut their monthly expenditures by $77 a month. So they are still spending $11,923 a month that they don’t have. It’s all DEBT.
Has their Mickey Mouse savings actually accomplished anything towards stopping the family from going bankrupt. Of course it hasn’t. And that $77 is 1/156 of the monthly expenditures, exactly the same proportions as the national numbers in terms that people who pay taxes can understand. I owe the insight of the cogent fraction 1/156 to one of the few sites where truth is available www.naturalnews.com.
So the Republicans walked out of the haggling with a $38.5 billion reduction in a national debt 156 times bigger than that and called it a victory. And of course their own corporate and banking supporters don’t pay for any of that reduction. It’s the ones with the least income who are actually hurt by it.
And our President, wildly popular a few years ago because he was going to bring about change actually called this fiasco “The biggest annual spending cut in history.” Think about the family budget I mentioned, $77 on a $12,000 monthly and ever increasing debt.
In the 8 days before that biggest annual spending cut of $38.5 billion the debt went up by $54 billion. No headway at all whichever spin you put on it.
Obama is too intelligent to have been serious. He was just being a politician coming up for election. And nothing a politician says under such circumstances is worth considering seriously, as a possible truth. The urge to power crushes truth every time.
That family we were looking at has to cut its spending by about $7,500 a month to have any chance of overtaking the continuous increase in interest payments and avoiding bankruptcy. In government terms that means cutting trillions from government expenditure and bringing spending down to a manageable one trillion a year or so. That way we might be able to get ahead of the interest payments.
But that means doing the unthinkable and actually finding out which government expenditures are really necessary. Let’s do the unthinkable. It’s a habit I acquired when I ran a little newspaper long ago.
Can you think of any legitimate nation wide government services that are really necessary? Protecting the nation from invasion by other predator nations like us, who invade and bully others at will, might be one, and delivering the mail comes to mind.
But the annual military spending is $1,107,446,000,000. That’s just over $2 million every MINUTE, more than the combined military expenditure of all other countries combined.
Looks like that essential task has been taken over by profiteers doesn’t it. And many rich people in Congress and the millionaires in the Senate derive income from the sales of weapons and the manufacture of military equipment, not to mention the millions given to them for campaigns by the same people, so it isn’t likely to stop soon.
We had our taxes done this week and unlike some 25% of the multi-billion dollar plus corporations in this country who paid zero taxes, we two pensioners, living on a fixed income, paid more than the monthly pension of one of us to the IRS. And those who are grateful to the government for organizing their refund checks, and who may therefore consider it an essential service, usually forget that the government confiscated their money during the year and what they are paying to get back is their own. And it has lost value during the year because of the depreciation of the dollar.
And incidentally, annually, the man hours of work needed to prepare and send those ridiculously complex forms to the IRS is more than the man hours that GM spends in producing motor vehicles. Do you remember the last article about 545. When there was no income tax and no enormous Secret Police masquerading as tax collectors, this was the most powerful and dynamic nation in the world.
Now we have thousands of taxes, that only ‘little people’ pay and we are a debtor nation, technically behind several other nations and with an education system that is a matter of laughter in countries where everyone has possibilities based on their abilities, not their father’s income. In those countries young people do not have to go into the military to finance their education.
A straight percentage tax on all income, if honestly applied would supply more than enough to drastically reduce the nation’s debt, but big money will always find legal channels to avoid paying what the little people have to pay. Getting rid of the IRS and having an added value tax to all products not necessary to survival would solve many of the problems.
Anyone who wants to buy a Mercedes or a yacht may still do so and will be able to pay the tax. Those buying mainly food would pay no taxes on this essential. Many such plans have been prepared and ignored. Politicians don’t give a fig for the people in the country who can’t donate vast sums to their campaigns, so guess whose needs are never considered.
But what about other ‘essential’ services that government agencies supply?
The Food and Drug Administration is an example. About 25 cents of every consumer dollar spent in the United States goes to products that fall under FDA purview. There are dozens of natural cures for diseases for patients in other countries that the FDA forbids here, not because of their regard for the nation’s health, but because the pharmaceutical companies into which FDA people transfer as a career move, would not profit from cures that can’t be patented. Even when the claims of a product as a disease treatment can be validated and scientifically proven the FDA prevents any such claim being made here. So there is no honest marketing of health products. Only disease care is allowed, not health care.
The FDA delays on acting on the public behalf, sometimes for years if the drug is very profitable. Examples are legion and I and many others have written about the hammer of the FDA on health products and the ignoring of dangers about drugs for years.
So a considerable savings could probably be made by abolishing the IRS and the FDA, and the health of the country would improve. But this year the FDA has asked for an increase in budget in the midst of the hoopla about cutting government spending. We’ll see if the Congress and Senate are willing to curtail the activities of people who will leave the FDA to become lobbyists for Big Pharma, giving millions to campaign funds, about 120 million dollars last time.
.The United States Department of Agriculture is totally on the side of Agribusiness and huge farms of thousands of acres. They, like the FDA and the drug companies, are the PR people for Big Agriculture. They are on the side of monsters like Monsanto and persecute small farmers chosen by Monsanto as examples to the others. They could easily be dropped with benefit to the health of the nation and the prosperity of honest farmers.
The Drug Enforcement Administration is supposed to fight to eliminate street drugs. The drug war has cost America $1 trillion in 40 years with zero impact. The U.S. federal government spent over $15 billion dollars in 2010 on the War on Drugs, at a rate of about $500 per second. The authorities will put someone passing over a gram of marijuana in jail for thirty years. A convicted rapist may get five. It’s obviously a set up.
The DEA exists only to enable the drug companies to sell the exact same street chemicals to children in fancy packaging and at monopoly prices. Check Ritalin and other antidepressants. Many ADHD drugs are the same as "Speed." Many parents get their children on Ritalin and then take it themselves because of its similarity to heroin.
The reason the war on drugs has totally failed is because there is no war on drugs, only protection for one special group to sell them and persecution for the others. And the public of course pays and pays.
Legalizing the current forbidden set of drugs would solve the problem immediately, as has been done elsewhere. The lies the government told about marijuana which is far less addictive than alcohol were due to political pressure from DuPont and the Hearst newspapers to destroy the hemp industry. A matter anyone can look up and which I have written about for years. It won’t be on Fox News or in the People or the Enquirer. My latest article on it was .Crime awareness week posted on http://gatesofhorn.com on May 16, 2010.
But surely the Center for Disease Control is helpful to the public. No it isn’t. It’s the marketing arm of the vaccine industry, billions a year. And many of those vaccines are dangerous to the people who receive them. Some used in this country have been banned in others because of the documented dangers to children. But the propaganda of the CDC is dedicated to promoting that particular branch of the pharmaceutical industry. If the CDC had been eliminated decades ago lots of people with swine flu vaccine problems would be healthy today. Many damaged by the flu vaccines that had bird flu virus mixed in with it would be healthy today, and the autism epidemic in American children wouldn’t have happened.
All the agencies I’ve just mentioned are called regulators and pose as protectors of the public. Every one is actually an enforcer of marketing for some particular set of corporations that hold a monopoly in some market or other. Without them we would be better off.
As most of you know I am currently 81 years old and my Social Security pension has over a thousand dollars taken from it before I receive the taxable remainder, to give me the precious health care benefit of Medicaid. But Medicaid only pays a portion of the cost of disease care, not health care. It doesn’t pay for preventive medicine, only for allopathic treatment of symptoms. It’s a fake, like Medicaid.
It is the government interference in health matters through the FDA and other agencies that prevents people in this country from accessing much cheaper and safer treatments available in other countries. An estimated 80% of the cancers in this country could be eliminated safely and cheaply if the people were allowed access to the treatments in other countries. Instead they get the continuous propaganda that America has the greatest health care system in the world. And they don’t connect the dots that the major cause of bankruptcies is the expense involved in what passes for health treatment.
Remember what I said a few paragraphs back…The FDA and the FTC take legal action against anyone who makes a claim for a disease treatment for any natural product, even though that claim can be validated as scientific fact. Only patented treatments are allowed so that Big Pharma can make its obscene profits, and people don’t get better.
Just about everything the government is involved in concerning the health of the people we would be better off without. Everyone would be healthier if the interference of the government with what is available elsewhere were to cease.
Most of the money generated by these agencies from the public ends up in the hands of the Wall Street Harlots. And the government backs them, not us, with our money. Even those with bad memories must be able to remember the first $1 trillion bailout to the wealthy 1% in Washington. And then when things got worse because of their continued chicanery they got a second $1 trillion bailout.
Isn’t it obvious by now that the government, no matter its label, is concerned only with defending its corporate friends.
Surely even celebrity addicts whose main reading is People magazine can see that the government had no problem finding a trillion dollars to give away to a small group of extremely wealthy people, mostly the elite in the banking industry. They have no problem giving the Pentagon a trillion for useless wars. But they are pretending that they need to tax you and me to get the funds to operate.
They can give away 1/6 of our national debt to the rich, with no return except access to power, but we have to be taxed to find 1/156 of the national debt so that these charlatans can continue feeding at the public trough. And they have not addressed at all the problem of the national debt.
Just connect the last few dots. The total income tax revenues in a year are roughly $2 trillion, and the feds invented $1 trillion in a 24-hour period to bail out Wall Street. It looks like there is no need to tax anyone at all. The federal government could simply create all the money it needs each year to run itself, like it did to satisfy the bankers. So why not just invent $2 trillion each year and get rid of the IRS and the tax system altogether.
Sounds interesting on the face of it, but doing that would debase the currency and ultimately lead to too many dollars being in circulation. Each dollar would be worth less than the dollar of the previous year so the price of goods would go up.
That would be a valid objection except that the government is already doing that. They are printing trillions of dollars of paper money and inventing new debt instruments every year. But they still pretend that they need my money and your money to pay the nation’s bills. Isn’t that a little fishy to you?
The last posting pointed out that all the problems we have are there because the 545 people in power in the government want them to be there. The conclusion about the nonsense of the trifling budget cut trumpeted as a big deal and the ability of the government to print money to give away to the bankers is pretty clear.
The whole tax system must exist for some reason other than raising money to fund government? A government that has buyers for its debt can simply fund its own functions by selling more debt. In so doing of course they debase the value of the money the people do have, but that is another issue.
Obviously the tax system exists only as a system of social control. There is no economic reason for the government to take money from you and me to fund its day by day operations. Look at in the light of just the few dots in this article and you will see that the whole idea is a myth, the kind of myth that I call a lie.
And that’s just concerning the federal budget not the CAFR (Comprehensive Annual Financial Report) of the states.
The CAFR provides information about all of these other government agencies that may have their own budgets and separate investment accounts but their financial holdings are NOT combined with the general purpose budget that the same government presents to the public. More places to hide spending.
The obvious solution is to get rid of Congress and the Senate. Just about nobody there represents or understands the viewpoint of anyone not already a millionaire. Most of them are total corporate sellouts saying and legislating whatever brings them and their friends the most income. Getting rid of them all would end the system of government by bribery.
But Congress will never allow that. It is a political axiom that the most important goal of every government is the perpetuation of its own power, whatever the cost.
A simple example is the TSA, the Transportation Security Administration which allegedly protects the nation's transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce.
If you’ve been to an airport recently you know how much nonsense is concentrated in that definition of the function of the TSA. They are like the Nazi police in Germany whose main political function was to get people used to obeying ridiculous or humiliating orders without question. When they began as an organization of fewer than 200 people they did what all government departments do. Now there are more than 60,000 of the monsters, terrorizing senior citizens and molesting little children under the guise of security. Yet you must have heard of many tests in which they did not notice even heavy caliber handguns being carried onto planes.
Government agencies always grow like cancers on the body politic and each one defends its budget ruthlessly. We have all heard of how the CIA and the FBI have failed to communicate with each other in case the other gets the credit. All government agencies become paranoid about secrecy…unless it’s someone else’s secrets.
If we got rid of all the government agencies mentioned in this short article the country would be much better off, and in better financial shape.
But they do protect us from enemy attack don’t they? I don’t think so. By starting wars all over the world and making Americans hated everywhere they are goading other people to think of striking back at the bully of the world. And no doubt anyone thinking about it is encouraged by the hysterical reaction of the whole nation to a minor incident concerning only about 3000 people and a couple of buildings. Other countries that have endured carpet bombing, millions of casualties and thousands of soldiers fighting through their cities and fields regard the American hysteria when someone actually hit them back, as a weapon in hand.
Maybe even the American public would become incensed if say Iraqi or Libyan planes began bombing civilians or some S. American dictator began sending drones over New York and Chicago, killing civilians and claiming that it was to liberate American citizens.
Yet our governments have done this to other countries for decades now and have lied again and again to make some war or other plausible. Of course it is the poor who are sent to fight the conflicts of the rich as usual. No surprise there for anyone who reads history.
Today is the anniversary of the start of the only modern war on American soil. Some 620,000 people died in the war between the States, which was started by the propaganda and money of the Northern industrialists. America has been at war somewhere in the world since that time, and it’s the same people making money from the wars who keep inciting them, no matter the color, shape or label of the government.
Don’t forget we spend over $2,000,000 a minute keeping American troops active in other countries that desperately want us out. That money would pay for our crumbling infrastructure, could give every kid free tuition at college or trade school and every citizen paid up health care, even the money grubbing American variety.
The government is no help in any of these areas. It causes more problems than it solves. It has spent future generations into impossible debt, has destroyed the Constitution that was supposed to protect us, has given religious fanatics entry into the halls of power, and of course taxes our money before we get it.
If you read the story of income tax you will find that the income that was supposed to be taxed was PROFIT from business. The man who agrees with an employer for a wage to do a job is NOT making a profit and his earnings are not actually liable to income tax under the current law. But the bullies of the IRS spread fear everywhere, the usual government method of control.
Remember my example of TSA that started off with 200 people and in a very short time is now a monster with 60,000 plus creatures doing its bidding. Big Government suffers from the same problem. It MUST get bigger and bigger. It is now so huge that it offers 1/156 of its debt to be cut. This will make no difference to the express train of financial bankruptcy coming down the track. Bush and his family have already bought their hideaway in Paraguay. People whose houses have been repossessed have nowhere to go.
Doesn’t look like the government is interested in the people any more, except as a pretty dry sponge from which to squeeze the last drop of money.
No government in the world history has ever spent its way out of debt. This one won’t either. So, take everything the government says about finances with an ounce of salt and watch out for their other lies too, because now it is easier for politicians to tell lies than it is to tell the truth. The corporations own the public media except for a couple of exceptions that they are trying to destroy.
Example…remember our President telling the people on the West coast that they need not take any precautions about radiation from the Fukushima fallout. Well this week in April 2011, radiation has been detected in U.S. milk products at nearly 300% of EPA maximums. That milk comes from American cows, not supermarkets. The cows acquired that radiation by eating grass or corn products. Radiation and other pollutants like mercury are always concentrated up the food chain.
Big fish have more mercury in them because they eat lots of little fish with mercury in them. The cows that graze are eating lots of small amounts of radiation in each blade of grass. If the milk is already radioactive, then what about the beef? Not to mention the spring calves. Maybe the EPA will do their little conjuring trick again and just raise the levels of radiation they say are safe.
As a last resort the government always resorts to fear. Now it’s the Department Of Homeland Security that says things like: There is a moderate to good chance that there will be a terrorist attack somewhere, soon. Be on the alert! CODE ORANGE….What on earth are we meant to do with a statement like that? It’s an utter generalization that can only make people anxious if they pay any attention to it and so non- specific that it cannot be of any practical help. If that is the best intelligence we have it would be better to say nothing at all. All that it really does is to make people think that life is dangerous and they are not safe! And that’s the point. A fearful public is easier to control than a calm one.
But one branch of the economy is doing well. Are you involved? Just take a look at the latest reports on the salaries of the top hedge fund managers. In 2010 John Paulson was top of the list with a record $4.9 billion in personal earnings. Do the math, no don’t bother, I will. That’s $2.4 million an HOUR. Statistics on the income of the average income of American families show that it would take the median US household over 47 years to earn as much as Paulson got, I won’t say earned, in just 60 minutes. And, every hedge fund manager with billions a year income, and there are many, pays a lower tax rate than the average family.
The top 25 hedge fund earners took in $22.07 billion in 2010. By taking advantage of a tax loophole organized by bought and paid politicians these billionaires will pay a top tax rate of 15 percent instead of 35 percent. Just fixing just that loophole on just those 25 individuals would raise $4.4 billion, which is enough to rehire 126,000 laid-off teachers.
And the hedge fund managers produce NOTHING that benefits people. Just bits of paper that legal chicanery translates into bank balances. They make no machinery, no clothing, do no farming, support no utilities, don’t help you or me in ANY way and make billions a year by financial trickery based on insider trading and cheating the systems.
Maybe, just maybe, what happened to the civilized British MIGHT happen here. The British government, 29 cabinet members, 23 of whom are millionaires, introduced a severe austerity regime, for the poor and middle class of course. They raised university tuition rates by 300%, attempting to do what is already pretty successful here, putting education beyond the middle class and poor, no matter how talented the scholar.
The young people did what the adults were too inert to do. They led protests, they closed down big department stores, they picketed banks, telling bystanders why. Some spectators, now educated about the facts joined the picket lines.
Finally, on Saturday, March 26, the trade union movement joined the fight for its children and called it the March for the Alternative, it saw 500,000 people take to the streets – the biggest trade union march in decades, and the largest protest in Britain since 2 million people marched against the Iraq war in 2003. How many marched here?
You won’t get any coverage of this sort of material from the American media which is now composed of lackeys of corporate America. Try places that aren’t hamstrung by ad revenues, Magazines like Mother Jones or In these Times or The Nation. Read European newspapers and the Arab press if you know other languages, and check websites like www.alternet.org and www.naturalnews.com.
Democracy needs an informed electorate not a hypnotized electorate dedicated to knowing the life adventures of celebrities. Become informed and you may survive. If you do not do so you will have no assistance in surviving from the current government or any that I can see coming down the pike. But of course I’m an alien. I couldn’t vote however well informed I was. But maybe I can help you along the road of insights. Happy trails.
