Pocket Gofer 19

POCKET GOFER 19

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ON THE GRAND DECEPTION

• HISTORY
• DISTORTION OF MEANINGS
• THIEVERY
• INFLUENCE AND CORRUPTION
• POSTURING AND HYPE 
• SECRECY
• LAWS, REGULATIONS, AND TRUTH
• COOPERATIVE MEDIA
• GRIDLOCK/STATUS QUO
• INFORMATION AS A SMOKE SCREEN
• SPEAKING WITH FORKED TONGUE
• CONCLUSION
• NOT AN AFTERTHOUGHT

An Economist article (5/2010) is titled “The Sad End of the Party.”  “—– plundering of state coffers, the hiring of cronies, the abuse of public office, impunity for the powerful —– were multiplying.  A handful of Cassandras said it would all end in tears but, while the party lasted, nobody listened.”

The article is about Greece.  We dare to forecast that after reading this pocket gofer a thinking citizen will not be as surprised as he/she is at this moment.

In a dictatorship, an absolute monarchy, fascism, communism or nearly every other type of government we can think of, oppression of the people hangs out there for all to see and (damn well better) appreciate.  The natural human tendency is to dominate others every chance we get.  This doesn’t sound very nice, but nevertheless that is the reality.

This means officials in a country resembling a democracy who sense an opportunity to do this to their citizens cannot just let it all hang out.  The people can vote, so they would object strenuously and without ceremony pitch the rascals out of office that fast.

Therefore the only choice left is to get sneaky.  This pocket gofer is about sneakiness and sneaks.

HISTORY

Thomas Jefferson was American ambassador to France when the constitutional convention took place in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall.  Yet his thinking about democracy and human rights affected the deliberations.  We record here some of his wisdom.

(From an e-book: The Life and Times of Thomas Jefferson)  “At the request of his father, Jefferson wrote to his namesake, Thomas Jefferson Smith, to share the wisdom of age.

“Those which respect his religious and moral character are six:

1. Adore God.

2. Reverence and cherish your parents.

3. Love your neighbor as yourself, your country more than yourself.

4. Be just.

5. Be true.

6. Murmur not at the ways of Providence.

“He also gives him ten canons for the regulation of his practical life.  They were:

1. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.

3. Never spend your money before you have it.

4. Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.

5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.

6. We never repent of having eaten too little.

7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.

8. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.

9. Take things by the smooth handle.

10. When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.”

We have shown how well the infant America did, right up to the Great Depression (1930-1941)  The following long but thoughtful quotation illustrates our progress as a free and independent nation.

——– from Anthony Lewis’s book Freedom: For the Thought that we Hate.  “In Whitney v. California (1927, supreme court justice) Brandeis wrote an opinion, joined by (justice) Holmes, that many regard as the greatest judicial statement of the case for freedom of speech.  It said in part:

“‘Those who won our independence … believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.  They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; —–.

“‘—– that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.  They recognized the risks to which all human institutions are subject.

“‘But they knew that order cannot be secured merely through fear of punishment for its infraction; that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government

“‘…. Believing in the power of reason as applied through public discussion, they eschewed silence coerced by law — the argument of force in its worst form.  Recognizing the occasional tyrannies of governing majorities, they amended the Constitution so that free speech and assembly should be guaranteed.'”  (End quotation)

Friends, note the sharp contrast with this quote that Jack Nelson shares with us in his e-book It can’t Happen Here (published in 2013).

“Where is this going? Lunatics shooting and shot, confusion of fact and opinion in high office and in the media, fundamentalist fervors, a naive electorate, cynical manipulations, angry polarizations, vulnerable institutions … Americans feel threatened on so many fronts, and yet like the Good Germans in 1934, few would recognize tyranny’s ascendency. 

“When a society is fearful, confused, angry, the people look for a leader who by force of character will put things right.  they turn away from critical reasoning and want quick, emotionally satisfying answers.”  And then there was Trump.  Today we know where this is going, thanks to Jack’s foresight.

We have just one quibble with Mr. Nelson.  President Trump fits the bill, but he is not a leader.  Therefore we think the author should have written “ruler” instead of “leader,” because that is what Donald is.  He is running a top-down government with a sprinkling of tyranny.  See PG4.

Veteran news reporter and columnist Bob Woodward knows Washington as well as anyone (News & Observer 1/2019). 

 “For months, —– Woodward ——– best-selling book Fear: Trump in the White House.

“’My findings ——- governing crisis.’“  He has chronicled every president from Nixon to Trump, often gaining deep access ———-.

“——– president unprepared to tackle big challenges and rejecting bipartisan orthodoxy about Americas leadership in the world. ‘People have come to accept what really should be unacceptable,’ Woodward said.

q: What scares you the most having reported on this white house and as an American citizen?

a: That the national security issues are so central and important to the position of the country and the world.  As I report ——– Mattis — his resignation letter could have come right from the book —– that he believes in alliances, he believes in trade deals, intelligence partnerships, and it’s worked. 

“In one of those meetings, July 20, 2017, he says that the greatest gift from the greatest generation is this rules-based international  order and ——— what’s kept the peace for the last 70 years, and Trump rejects all of that.  So there is an instability that I think is very, very dangerous.’”

The Economist (5/2010): “Want to talk politics with your neighbor?  Better ask permission.”  Today a citizen must register as a “grassroots lobbyist.”

“To comply —–, details such as the name, address and occupation of everyone who helps organize her campaign or who contributes more than $25 in cash —-.  ——.  —- also provide monthly reports on all the group’s activities and expenditures.  Failure to follow —–; $10,000 per violation —.

The Institute for Justice says 36 states impose restrictions on “grassroots lobbying.”  “Yet a few states even threaten criminal penalties for breaking the rules.”

Let’s see if we have this right.  It’s okay to lobby in Washington DC, where the amounts of money involved approach the astronomical, but it is a no-no out in the sticks?

In a democracy people govern themselves.  How can this be done if state governments forbid citizens from talking about politics?

Will (News & Observer 7/2010): “——— measures ostensibly aimed at eliminating corruption or the ‘appearance’ thereof illustrate the corruption inherent in incumbents writing laws that regulate political competition by rationing political speech.”  Like we said, this pocket gofer is about sneakiness.

We go to 1/16/2011 to find that columnist George Will shared another thought: “The American revolution was a political, not a social revolution; it was about emancipating individuals for the pursuit of happiness, not about the state allocating wealth and opportunity.

“Hence our exceptional Constitution, which says not what government must do for Americans but what it cannot do to them (our emphasis).”

A nation that has lost touch with its history cannot endure, much less thrive.  Both the Soviet Union under Lenin and China under Mao Zedong understood this, so they created different histories to suit them.

They wanted radical changes in their countries’ governments.  But they foresaw trouble if citizens utilized past history as a basis for challenging their policies.  Therefore they came down hard on anyone who dared to remind people of their rich former history.

After World War II high public officials in America were afraid of the public reaction if they pulled a Lenin/Mao.  Some 70 years ago a vote meant much more than it does today.

So the evolving elite class in Washington gradually discouraged the study of history and civics.  They didn’t want the riffraff talking among themselves about our heritage of democracy.

We should be especially concerned about this sneaky trend.  In a way similar to Chinese peasants and the Soviet proletariat, to the elites we are the riffraff.

Before World War II people shared their concerns directly with one another.  Differences were worked out amicably, and occasionally by force.  But the big guy could not win all because the Constitution protected the basic rights of the small guy/gal.

As the frontier was tamed towns were formed and people aired their grievances at town meetings.  It was impractical to air grievances with the state and national governments directly, and so a representative system was set up and approved by popular vote.

In this way representative democracy (also called a republic) came into being.  Because representatives governed in a faraway place it was necessary to place a lot of trust in public officials.  They in turn had to work hard at pleasing their voters as they needed to stand for re-election frequently.

Referring to the national government primarily but not to neglect state governments, the organization slowly grew larger in response to the increased desires of the people.  With this growth came increases in taxes and revenues.

All went well for a long time, actually through the 1920s.  The federal government’s take of citizens’ earnings dramatically rose during World War II, but our grandparents understood the need for this.

FROM HEALTHY SKEPTICISM TO ABIDING FAITH: The grim legacy of King George III in the late 18^th century inserted a healthy skepticism of government into people’s minds.  They watched their public servants like hawks.

During the 1930s that changed.  Old folks among us still remember the Great Depression.  Unemployment was 24 percent, folks wandered city streets begging for a job, and some sold apples for a nickel.

No one had any money.  Churches and charities were overwhelmed.  Simple survival was a major challenge.

Enter President Franklin Roosevelt in March 1933, near the bottom of the depression.  In 100 days he and his congress enacted many laws and programs aimed at making work for millions.

Even today old folks perceive him as a savior, even tho economists agree that it was WWII that pulled society out of the depression.  Wars can do that, but we think there is a better way.

Introducing an amazing piece of sneakiness that came to light only 14 years ago.  Robert Stinnett had worked for years to get the information for his book Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor. (Info was declassified in 2005.)

Having read about FDR and his frustration after his social programs repeatedly failed to lift the economy out of the depression, we suspected the following but had no evidence.

“From March through July 1941, White House records show that FDR ignored international law and dispatched naval task groups into Japanese waters ——-.  ——-.  Roosevelt had carefully selected and placed naval officers in key fleet-command positions who would not obstruct his provocation policies.”

A September 1941 Gallup poll showed that 88 percent of our citizens did not want us to get involved in WWII.  Admiral Husband E. Kimmel was commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet.  Apparently, FDR could not replace him as it would have looked bad.

“Determined to plug into the loop, Kimmel tried again.  On May 26 he requested ——: ‘inform the commander-in-chief of all important developments as they occur ——-.’  His requests were ignored.

“Yamamoto (Japanese commander-in-chief) broke radio silence and directed the Japanese First Air Fleet to ————, advance into Hawaiian waters through the North Pacific, and attack the American fleet in Hawaii.”  From Stinnett, chapter 11: “The Japanese were coming and Roosevelt knew.”

On December 7^th Admiral Kimmel was still out of the loop.  The result was 2,335 gallant sailors dead and the Pacific Fleet all but destroyed.

But FDR got what he so desperately wanted: the end of the Great Depression.  We wonder if he thought about what would happen next: a total of 291,557 battle deaths and 113,842 related deaths.

Should we remember the man as a savior?  If so, of the economy or from Hitler or both?  We will not try to second-guess history, but we can’t help thinking about those folks today who worshipfully visit the tax-financed multimillion-dollar memorial to FDR on the Washington mall.

Politicians being politicians, congressmen leaped to seize credit for the economy’s recovery.  Therefore let’s have more government programs.  Having been dragged through hell during the depression, people believed.

We think this experience as told by those folks to their children and grandchildren was what causes many of us today to maintain an abiding faith in government’s ability to fix social problems.

After WWII there was a 75-year-long hiatus while the watchdogs kept the faith.  Finally today we are slowly regaining that vitally important suspicion of government.

Columnist George Will (News & Observer 11/21/10): “Fifty years ago William F Buckley ———.  —— winter evening in 1960 —– insufferably hot car on a —– commuter train.  —- no one was complaining.

“It isn’t just commuters, —–.  It is the American people everywhere.”

We may be learning over again how to complain (Will continued): “When TSA began looking for weapons of mass destruction in Tyner’s underpants, he objected —–.”  We suspect that bin Laden and Co. must have been laughing themselves silly.

Politicians pushed this faith to the hilt to avoid suspicions of shenanigans and to gain forgiveness for sins revealed.  A new invention called television helped them tremendously as they polished their telegenic images.  Their scheme (scam?) has worked well, up until recently.

The reality is that back in 1930 the government made two really dumb mistakes, and these are what plunged first America and then the world into depression.  In this pocket gofer we will take a hard look at our faith in government.  We will see how abiding it ought to be.

High war taxes stayed on the books and so great wealth accumulated in Washington.  Its presence caused politicians to think of making a career out of public service.  It occurred to them that with some of this mountain of money they could buy votes and get re-elected over and over again.  See Pocket Gofer 3.

As the tax take continued to climb, pork-barrel politics took off.  It eventually became possible for a politician to remain in office pretty much as long as he/she pleased.

Concentrated wealth continued to grow.  Elections gradually became empty gestures.

Combine this with the coming of television and the rapid increase in the cost of campaigning for re-election, and we see that our elected representatives had found a use for those barrels of money.  They could simply rig legislation or regulation in favor of the special interest pleaders and put the money received from their lobbyists into re-election campaign war chests.  It was, and is, a sweet system.

Except for the taxpayer, whose interests no longer counted for much.  We believe that whenever and wherever in government influence is purchased for money that is corruption.  Taxpayers continued to place their trust in their elected representatives, even though human nature had taken over and tempted politicians to betray that trust (PG 7).

Therefore our business here is also about accountability.  Most of us place our trust in God even though there is no formal accountability.

But we are all human, and therefore we are subject to the tugs of human nature.  This means that everyone must be accountable to someone.

We think we are honest, and hence we don’t like to admit this truth.  However, we have learned that when the bucks pile up high enough even otherwise impeccable people can be corrupted.  This suggests that nearly every man/woman has his/her price: a grim reality.

Those who have learned to feed off the system are understandably reluctant to accept real change.  This underlines the importance of a tradition of open minds in any evolving culture, as it will evolve with or without open minds.

If many minds do not remain open and curious about government it is relatively easy for a few to develop a conventional wisdom that suits them.  Government intervention through rigging laws and regulations is a case in point.

Apparently we are to believe that Big Brother knows what is best for us.  During the early and mid-20^th century millions of people believed in Lenin’s and Mao’s policies.

Cultures evolve while human nature practically does not, as it evolves so much more slowly.  This explains why human behavior changes over generations while human nature does not.

Human behavior has made many mistakes.  This explains why Churchill once remarked, “Men and nations govern wisely and efficiently, but only after having exhausted all other alternatives.”

It seems that in a wealthy country the number of available alternatives increases very nearly as fast as does humankind’s ability to exhaust them.  Therefore we continue to muddle through instead of manage our lives and therefore our government.

In the agrarian days life was a struggle, but skeptical folks worked at controlling their government.  They at least knew what to expect.  When they had a bitch to pitch, someone listened and often acted on it.

Today betrayal of our faith has enabled public officials to create the monster that is “our” government.  We conclude that today representative government doesn’t work unless we citizens feed it a diet of thin gruel and watch it all the time.

If naked oppression is out the government will secretly seek to control wealth and information flows.  This enables officials to sneak around and do their thing, hopefully without anyone else noticing.  PG 5 elaborates.

Over the centuries the vehicle for projecting power has evolved from priestcraft to violence to wealth to information, or reason.  Today’s Washington pretends to deal in information, but the real coins of the realm are wealth at home and violence abroad.  Our government abandoned the vehicle before it reached the Age of Reason.

This hidden agenda is kept well hidden by shoveling out tons of disinformation and calling it information.  The news media cooperate.  We will learn the reason why.  See PG5.

William Bonner in his excellent book Empire of Debt: “In America, all the restraints, inhibitions and modesty of the old republic have been blown away by the prevailing winds of the new empire.  In their place has emerged a vainglorious system of conceit, deceit, debt, and delusion.”

In 1968 William Gavin framed an excellent distinction between emotion and reason.  “Reason requires a high degree of discipline, of concentration; impression is easier.

“Reason pushes the viewer back, it assaults him, it demands that he agree or disagree; impression can envelop him, invite him in, without making an intellectual demand.”  We hope this vital distinction can guide citizens’ readings of the rest of this gofer and all of the others.  We must get our butts off the couch and put our brains back between our ears.

Barbel Bohley did precisely this, as The Economist reported an obit in 9/2010.  Unfortunately, she was not a US citizen.  She had that rare combination so well illustrated by Thomas Paine: quality of thinking and courage of convictions.

“Her object was never to get power or set an agenda, but to rescue her country, and to get its citizens thinking (our emphasis) and agitating for themselves: in the words of a friend, just ramming her ‘I’ against the ‘we’ imposed by the state.”  And in November 1989 down came the infamous Iron Curtain.

Ms. Bohley and her friends ——- found power lying in the street and picked it up.  She had no plans for it, but her message of personal dignity, civil courage (again) and independent thought had triumphed.

DISTORTION OF MEANINGS 

Rose Wilder Lane wrote in 1942 (The Discovery of Freedom): “—– members of the Communist Party in these States have been deliberately following Lenin’s instruction, ‘First confuse the vocabulary.’

“Accurate thinking requires words of precise meaning.  Communication —– is impossible without words whose precise meaning is generally understood.

“Confuse the vocabulary, and people don’t know what is happening; —–.  —– millions are helpless against a small, disciplined number who know what they mean when they speak.  Lenin had brains.

Peter Pomerantsev wrote a book This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality, He explains the nature of today’s post-truth/disinformation/fake news society.  As fascinating as it is tragic.  Unless something huge happens society will continue to deteriorate until nothing true and real can be recognized.

“——– Dmitry Kiselev, as he spins between tall tales that dip into history, literature, oil prices, and color revolutions, always returning to the theme that the world has it in for Russia.  And as a worldview it grants those who subscribe to it certain rewards: if all the world is a conspiracy, then your own failures are no longer all your fault.  The fact that you achieved less than you hoped for, that your life is a mess —- it’s all the fault of the conspiracy.

 “And the net effect of all these endless pileups of conspiracies is that you, the little guy, can never change anything.  For if you are living in a world where shadowy forces control everything, then what chance do you have to turn it around?  In this murk, it becomes best to rely on a strong hand to guide you.  ‘Trump is our last chance to save America,’ is the message of his media hounds.  ‘Only Putin can raise Russia from its knees,’ say Trump’s Moscow counterparts.

“The public investigation managed to establish the essential truth about what happened at the fire.  But when the findings were presented, few were interested.  ‘There’s no unity here,’ Tatyana Gerasimova, one of the instigators of the public investigation, told me as we sat in a café by the opera house.  ‘Everyone lives in their own reality, everyone has their own truth, there is no reconciliation.  We created the investigation to show that there is a difference between truth and lies.  In that sense we failed.’”    

“He increasingly was thinking that the digital age meant redefining alliances.  NATO had made sense when aggression was physical; it was called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for a reason.  But now that you could have interference anywhere, did geography make sense as a main principle of unity?  Since 1991 we have argued for retiring NATO; the only enemy its charter identified had vanished.  Here is another suggestion. 

“When I talk to BBC editors and managers, the architectural disproportion seems to mirror a media one: the world has changed and the old values of the BBC, of accuracy, impartiality, and fairness leading to democracy, reasonableness, and debate, have been upended.

“During the Cold War, the BBC defined ‘impartial’ as balance between left-wing and right-wing opinions.  Left and right were clearly defined political positions represented by political parties and newspapers.

“In the 1990s and 2000s, things got more complicated.  There was no clear left or right wing anymore  Economic interests did not necessarily equal party affiliations.  In the late 2010s, audiences have broken down into mini-values that they cling to and that define them.”                    

 “In his study ‘Emotional Dynamics and the Age of Misinformation,’ Walter Quattrociocchi of the University of Venice analyzed 54m comments over four years in various Facebook groups.  He found that the longer a discussion continues in a Facebook group, the more extreme peoples’ comments become: ‘Cognitive patterns in echo chambers tend towards polarization,’ he concluded.  ———-.  Social media is (sic) a sort of mini-narcissism engine that can never be quite satisfied, leading us to take up more radical positions to get more attention.  It really does not matter if stories are accurate or not, ——–.”

“So, the politician who makes a big show of rejecting facts, who validates the pleasure of spouting nonsense, who indulges in a full, anarchic liberation from  coherence, from glum reality, becomes attractive.  That enough Americans could elect someone like Donald Trump with so little regard for making sense, whose many contradictory messages never add up to ay stable meaning, was partly possible because enough voters felt they weren’t invested in any larger evidence-based future.” —————————-.  And it’s no coincidence that so many of the current rulers are also nostalgists.  Putin’s internet troll armies sell dreams of a restored Russian Empire and Soviet Union; Trump tweets to ‘Make America Great Again;’ ——.” 

Well, anyone can now see why Pomerantsev’s writing impressed us.  He included a thought that may have potential for improvement.

“In Denmark, I had first been told about ‘constructive news,’ a journalism that goes beyond merely balancing one set of opinions against another, but is always trying to find practical solutions to the challenges that face its audience, forcing politicians to make evidenced-based proposals, which one could evaluate over time, pegging their words back to reality, generating a conversation where facts become necessary again.”  He doesn’t say who will provide that force.  In America every thinking citizen knows.

His approach could help reinspire trust (our emphasis) in journalism, because we trust those who work together with us for some greater goal.  And by putting change back into our own hands, it can overcome the sense of helplessness ————.”  Audiences will demand truth from these new media.  If they don’t get it from medium A, they will quickly switch to B. 

“Today, when you hear the word ‘democracy,’ what does it mean?”

Paul Johnson in his book Modern Times: “A man who deliberately inflicts violence on the language will almost certainly inflict violence on human beings if he acquires the power.  Those who treasure the meaning of words will treasure truth, and those who bend words to their purposes are very likely in pursuit of anti-social ones.”  Top-down public officials don’t want educated citizens; see PG10.

We think it is important for us to learn ‘Washingtonspeak,’ so we can understand what is really going on behind the smoke and mirrors.  Lesson #1 follows.  Class is in session; Professor Publius II on the podium:

FREEDOM: What the government tells us- freedom from necessity, release from the hard knocks of life that inhibit our choices.

FREEDOM: The reality- Our personal freedoms are gradually being undermined as BIG GOVERNMENT keeps passing more and more laws and regulations.  Gradually, we are able to do less of what we want with less and less of the money that we earn.

LIBERAL: What the government tells us- welfare state caring for the poor, entitlements, and extra rights for everyone without obligations.

LIBERAL: The reality- This term was originally used to apply to individual freedom of choice in a free market which included political freedoms as well as economic.  The Democratic Party distorted its meaning during the 1930s under FDR: freedom from want.

TAX CUT: What the government tells us- Reduction in the volume of that sucking sound as government takes it out of our pockets.

TAX CUT: The reality- either a reduction in the rate of increase in taxes or a myth clothed in smoke and mirrors.  The same twisted reasoning applies to program “cuts.”

FARM PROGRAMS: What the government tells us- Assistance to small farmers, to help them ensure a steady food supply for all of us.

FARM PROGRAMS: The reality- Routes our wealth to big, full-time farmers who are already richer than nearly all of us.  (Race horses are tax-deductible as part of a farm program, so the rich don’t pay and we make up the deficiency.)

SOCIAL SECURITY: What the government tells us- A program where we workers and our employers “contribute” into government trust funds during our working lives, from which we can draw out money in old age or disability.

SOCIAL SECURITY: The reality- Beginning before the 1950s, the congress changed the retirement part from a pension fund into a tax on the young to support cushier lifestyles for the old.  Old folks vote a lot, and so members of congress bought their votes by increasing benefits to a point way beyond what an old person paid in during his/her working life (including employer payments and accumulated interest).  Up to 70 years later the young are still being taxed in part to pay for those 1950s votes.

This is not the only abuse of Social Security.  For years the government annually ripped off every surplus dollar from the old age, survivors, and disability trust funds, so that year’s national budget deficit would not look so bad.  This means they are not funds, and surely there is no “trust” in this sneaky operation.

We might observe that during each of those years the government also raided the airport and highway “trust funds” for an average grand total of about $180 billion each year.  This means that government fiscal deficits were actually about that much worse than Washington would have us believe.  Sneaky.

The central government filched these funds and left unsecured IOUs in their places.  Who did officials expect would end up paying later on, when the post-war baby boomers retire and the social security funds operate in deep deficits?

No prizes for guessing: our children, grandchildren, and probably their children if this charade keeps going long enough.  If we think we have difficulty with the generation gap now, we haven’t seen anything yet.

We heard the current promises during fiscal 2000 not to touch these funds.  Due to the smoke screen spread around by the news media, we could not determine for sure whether this one joined the swelling ranks of past empty promises.

REPUBLICAN REVOLUTION: What the government tells us- We hear you citizens.  We know you want a revolution in government, so here it is for you: a brilliant CONTRACT WITH AMERICA.

REPUBLICAN REVOLUTION: The reality- Zip.  Politics as usual.

OATH OF OFFICE: What the government tells us- A solemn statement that deeply commits public servants taking it to faithfully and truthfully serve the public as guided by the Constitution.

OATH OF OFFICE: The reality- President Clinton redefined this oath to rob it of its meaning.  He was not alone in this.  Previous politicians started hollowing out the meaning long ago.  Today lawyers and policemen routinely lie under oath.

TRUTH: What the government tells us- They “honestly” expect us to believe all that —- er, krud.  We seem to be getting so much “truth” from Big Government that it threatens to gag us.

TRUTH: The reality- Damned if we can figure this one out.  The government has over several decades succeeded in blurring the distinction between truth and lies just as Lenin did.

We don’t know.  We do know that we don’t like not knowing.  Many years ago a famous journalist and columnist named Walter Lippmann said “A community that lacks the means to detect lies also lacks the means to preserve its own liberty.”  We have lost our b-s meter.

Today taxes are called spending cuts.  Spending is called investment.  Budget arithmetic no longer makes any sense, and all this is intentional.

For lesson #2 we call on columnist Richard Reeves (January 1997); he referred to Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton: “The two leaders, —– national polls, or having persuaded more than 60 percent of responding Americans that they’re not to be believed; that they simply are not honest men.

“It would be nice if some of that changed with different politicians in office today.  But the new political generation has created its own language to fuzz up the corruption at the core of their business.

“The new career politicians are very much everybody-does-it moralists.”  Who is up for lesson #3?

Whenever we hear words like “respect,” “values,” or “responsibility,” from a politician on the tube a thinking citizen goes either to the toilet or to the frig for a cold one.  He/she knows the clown has nothing interesting to say.

But politicians continue to serve up this baloney anyway.  They must figure there aren’t that many thinking citizens watching.

THIEVERY

Ralph Waldo Emerson: “The louder he spoke of his honor the faster we counted our spoons.”

Overheard: Old veteran to rookie congressman: “Honesty and sincerity are the keys to success in Washington.  If you can fake these your future is assured.”

Today’s voters and “our” representatives are no longer connected; we are alienated from them.  We have the idea that in a government of the people and by the people there should not be a “we” and “them.”  See the essay “Society vs Government.”

George Will (News & Observer [Washington] 3/2013): “Progressives are remarkably uninterested in progress.  They say the voting rights act, ——– must remain unchanged, despite dramatic improvements in race relations.”

“The 2006 house vote was 390-33, the senate vote was 98-0; obviously, the political class’s piety about the act has extinguished thought about its necessity.”  Seems to follow the time-worn rule in congress: never repeal any law.  This handy policy keeps thousands of lawyers in great wealth courtesy of the taxpayer. 

Today there is contempt keenly felt on both sides.  They think we are a bunch of dumb and bitchy peasants; we think they are a bunch of arrogant thieves.

They can and do take gobs of money from us through force.  They know we can’t do the same to them.  Then they pass laws and regulations that grant special and unearned favors to interest groups, who buy them with dirty money.

Members of these groups therefore pay lower taxes, and to make up the difference our taxes rise.  Not just this; these laws and regulations distort markets so prices that we pay are higher than they would be otherwise.

Bonner in Empire of Debt: “The most popular presidents were those who stole most bountifully.  The logic of democratic larceny is that there are always more voters receiving tax money than getting it taken from them.

“That’s the real reason democrats favor doing something ‘to help the poor’ — there are more of them; you can buy their votes cheaply.”  This truth tempts the socialists among us.

Polls of citizens show that we believe nearly half of the money they take from us is wasted.  This means they take perhaps 40 percent more from us than they would need if they ran efficient government services.

We feel uncomfortable about this.  Knowing human nature and as we struggle to grasp just how much loot gets funneled daily into Washington, we suspect that other things that should be ours are getting ripped off.

Maybe we ought to sue.  Seems to be the thing to do these days.

But around 40 percent of congress is lawyers, so that body is more interested in making life sweet for lawyers than for us.  Also it is a piece of cake to make any sneaky trick they dream up legal.

To the courts then.  Well, most judges are lawyers, so we are off to a shaky start here.

Those nine people of the American Supreme Court who wear flowing robes and sit in big chairs are human and hence subject to the tugs of human nature.  They don’t have to run for election, so even that minimal risk is absent.

The reality is that the Court is cooperating while the central government grabs more and more power from state and local governments.  This is frightening, as the Founding Fathers quite clearly planned on the Court being a check on personal power seeking.  We may be closer to a police state than most of us think (PG13).

Randy Barnett wrote Restoring the Lost Constitution: the Presumption of Liberty.  He describes in detail how the supreme court has ripped off the Constitution.  He begins with the Ninth Amendment:

THE ENUMERATION IN THE CONSTITUTION OF CERTAIN RIGHTS SHALL NOT BE CONSTRUED TO DENY OR DISPARAGE OTHERS RETAINED BY THE PEOPLE.

This amendment is aimed at preserving what the original document intended for the citizens: government shall not infer rights to itself that go beyond those specifically mentioned in the Constitution.  Barnett:

“I discovered that the Ninth Amendment was inextricably linked to the other clauses the Supreme Court had redacted (removed) from the test: the Necessary and Proper Clause, the Commerce Clause, the Privileges or Immunities Clause, and the Tenth Amendment.  They all had to go if congress and state legislatures were going to be given the discretion to pass laws in the ‘public interest’ unconstrained by any limits on their powers ——-.”

“—– I developed a newfound respect for the Constitution, if not for the judges who had disregarded what they had sworn to preserve, protect, and defend.”  In a decaying society oaths mean little.  Note how sneaky the following:

“This is fraud on the public.  Imply but do not say aloud that the Constitution is illegitimate so we need not follow what it actually says.  Remake it — or ‘interpret’ it — as one wills and then, because it is The Constitution we are expounding, the loyal but unsophisticated citizenry will follow.

“—– I will explain the founders’ view that ‘first come rights, and then comes the Constitution.’  The rights that precede the formation of government they called ‘natural rights.'”

The notion of natural rights originated during The Enlightenment, thru the writing of such as John Locke and David Hume.  They exist in every human due to his/her human condition: he can do anything provided that he accepts responsibility for his actions and they harm no one else.

Locke and Hume argued that these rights precede and are superior to any action by government.  The kicker comes when we try to identify and list them, and then make them prevail in the face of government officials’ natural tendency to seek power over citizens.

Barnett: “If, however, ‘to regulate’ grants congress (or states) the power to impose any restriction it pleases on gainful activity that is rightful, then this power authorizes the violation of the rights retained by the people (Tenth Amendment) and is illegitimate.

Conclusion: “For some political agendas to advance, the heart of the Constitution must be excised and so it has been, clause by inconvenient clause, until the Constitution has been distorted and lost.”  We think the citizens’ agendas should be the ones advanced.

Warning: we take the following with a pinch of salt, as it is conjecture based on our insight into human nature.  But we believe that nothing is unthinkable, so here goes.

The senate judiciary committee must approve each president’s nomination of a candidate before he/she is elevated to the high Court.  Hearings are open to the public, even though some of us prefer not to watch mud slinging on the box.

However, we don’t see or hear about what may go on behind the scenes.  Here a candidate may be notified in strong terms that if he will not commit him/herself to aid or at least refrain from impeding the continuing grab of ever greater personal power by congress and the president there is no chance of his getting on the Court.

Almost every judge fiercely covets a seat on the high Court.  This means that once seated in one of those big chairs he/she is likely to cooperate in making laws that politicians know are unpopular with us.

Now, the Constitution implies that the Court was created to check existing laws for conformity with the intent of that document.  Making law is not its job.  Sneaky?  We’re starting to get the drift.

The two major political parties like to put on a show of combat (as we shall see), but the reality is that they cooperate in stealing public money and in seeking personal power.  Put this plus the above speculation together and our conclusion, although lacking hard evidence, makes sense.

Quite possibly the system eats justices right along with politicians and bureaucrats.  Before World War II they seldom made law.

A politicized court will exert political will and not independent judgment.  Because the dividing line between these is fuzzy, truth can be hidden.

All this leads to another conclusion: there is no way that any real change can be initiated within this closed system.  This must come from outside, and thus the reason why we are writing these pocket gofers.

Jefferson: “If ever this country is brought under a single government (parties cooperating to rip the public), it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface.  This will not be borne, and you will have to choose between reformation and revolution.

“If I know the spirit of this country, the one or the other is inevitable.  Before the canker is become inveterate, before its venom has reached so much of the body politic as to get beyond control, remedy should be applied.”

Friends of liberty, this man understood human nature.  He called it.

Without realizing, we asked for it.  And now we got it: Jefferson’s “single government” means a single-party government with a group of elites calling the shots.

No wonder that thinking folks among us feel ripped.  We call our single party the “repdem” party.

Jefferson recommended that every 20 years government should be scrapped, and a new one installed.  History shows that we have in essence done this about every 30 years or so, up through 1932.  We even tried another house cleaning during the 1960s, right on schedule, with the counterculture.

But a depression-and-war-caused Big Government used its huge money-power to fight off meaningful change.  Also the instigators were young people without a detailed plan of alternative government to offer.  The effort failed.  (The Port Huron Statement is worth a read.)

Thus the dust, dirt, and barnacles have been piling up for 80+ years.  This means we are in even deeper doo-doo than we should be.  We hope that the venom has not yet got beyond control.

The meaning of the popular term “We are the government!” is also being distorted.  It can be interpreted to mean that anything a government does to an individual is done by his/her consent: isn’t he a part of the government?

Under this convenient reasoning, politicians have run up a national debt that at this writing totals more than $23 trillion and counting.  We cannot imagine how much money this is.

Then we hear career politicians calmly explain it away: “We owe it to ourselves.”  But who are the “we,” and who are the “ourselves?”

Implied consent of the governed.  Sneaky, friends of liberty.  With this reasoning how can we bitch about high taxes and a $23 tril debt if we consented to them?

Today the “we” are the older folks and their parents who permitted our government to run up this colossal debt.  Few of us realized what was happening because our politicians kept it hidden.  (And the news media cooperated, the wimps.)

Then in 1992 along came a nonpolitician named Ross Perot and blew the lid off.  Embarrassing.

The kicker will come when our descendants realize that they are the “ourselves” who will do the actual owing, since we will be either dead or too old to work and pay taxes.  This means that the term “We owe it to ourselves” is not only meaningless; it is also deceptive.

So now we see that political thievery is not just stealing from us.  In their relentless quest for votes, our career politicians are stealing from our children and grandchildren (PG3).

Millions of old folks have been flimflammed.  They don’t realize that thru deceptive government they are stealing from their descendants.

This is not the end of it.  The government began by raising our taxes until we squealed.  Then they borrowed like crazy and hung a huge national debt on us and our children.

Even this was not enough, so at various levels of government they clamped on an additional potential debt of up to $40 trillion.  But this moon-sized lump was placed off-budget, so we wouldn’t notice.

Like we said, this pocket gofer is about sneakiness.

Almost every central government agency has in its part of the budget an item called “other services.”  In 1993 the total of these accounts in the 1,500-page budget was $246 billion!

Now, the budget is still by law public property, but is it really?  Can a curious taxpayer determine where and to whom this money went and for what purpose?  This was 16 percent of the entire budget for that year.

In his much-hyped zeal for “reinventing government,” insider Vice-president Al Gore somehow overlooked these budget items in his report.  We have to hand it to him for chutzpah: we lack the ability to lightly skip over $246 billion of taxpayer money.

The government can even steal money from us without lifting a finger.  For example, the adjustments in the amount allowed for exemptions on IRS Form 1040 have up until recently lagged way behind inflation.  This increases our taxable income.

Furthermore, up until 1983 inflation caused what was called “bracket creep.”  This meant that even if we didn’t earn more in actual purchasing power the government took more from us in taxes each year that a pay increase moved us into a higher tax bracket.

We missed something in 1983.  We didn’t notice the government rushing to refund all those bucks that they had previously stolen from us thru bracket creep.  Or failing to adjust the amount of the exemption.

In 1993 the congress cranked out a humongous bill.  Around $44 billion in spending cuts was listed, even though these were previously provided for in a 1990 bill.  Some $25 billion in increased taxes showed up in the spending cuts column.

It looks like they double-counted spending cuts.  It also looks like they are double-dealing us.

Call it creative accounting, or cooked books.  We lean toward the latter. A legislative aide: “It’s a pure travesty.”

The congressional leadership has close to 300 people doing work for political parties.  We pay their salaries.

This is interesting, in that more of us citizens call ourselves independent than members of either party.  Also, political parties are not mentioned in the Constitution.

We might say this action is unconstitutional, but didn’t these cats swear to defend that document when they entered into national public service?  Maybe we missed the new meaning of taking an oath of office.  (Clinton did not.)

In his book Monopoly Politics Miller indicated that many career politicians have citizens’ money to burn after elections.  “At the end of the 1996 election cycle, ——, on average House challengers reported $1,792 cash on hand.

“For incumbents, average ——- $175,872, and for incumbents who won with more than 60 percent ——- $230,377.  Some 156 —— war chests exceeding $100,000; 97 —- over $200,000; and 30 —– $500,000 or more.”  No refunds here either.

We might wonder what these characters do with all that extra loot.  But we don’t.  Miller added another important observation.

“Members of the same party collude by agreeing not to support any challenger in a primary, and members who do not have hotly contested races work for other incumbents — raising money for them and making personal appearances —— expecting the same help in return if ever needed for re-election or for higher office.”

Seriously, friends of liberty, what chance has an honest man or woman who wants to serve in public office?  Miller took yet another shot.

“Members of Congress intimidate major contributors to support them, not their opponents, ——–.  —– incumbents often remind major contributors that even if they lose, they will be around long enough to help them or hurt them.”

To borrow one from the Mafia, this is extortion.  No need to explain what would happen if ordinary blokes like us were to enter this business.

INFLUENCE AND CORRUPTION

Russian proverb: “When money speaks, the truth keeps silent.” 

Many company executives know that with spirited competition it is hard to sell things and still make a buck.  The natural temptation is to get together and agree with the competition on prices; that is, divide the market and hold a price with which each can make good money.

The kicker here comes with the realization that this option is a legal no-no.  If caught at it managers can be fried in oil.  So they think in terms of going to government for help in staying profitable without deep thought and great effort.

They know members of congress are always on the mooch, so they hire lobbyists to bring lots of money when they come calling.  So goes the influence business in Washington, made legal by the congress even if unconstitutional..

Such a deal.  And at $45 billion a year it is no small business.  The money mostly comes from company shareholders, unions, and other special interest groups.  In other words, it’s us.

Did members seek “consent of the governed” (from the Declaration of Independence)?  Well, no.  Spending on pork is now up to an estimated $47 billion in 2005, also without consent.  Simple math brings this up to $82 billion of rotten, stinking corruption.

Citizens Against Government Waste published its 2006 Pig Book.  It recorded 9,963 projects totaling $29 billion of taxpayer money.  Someone may be feeling a little heat.

What especially sticks in our craw is how long this has been going on.  Miller again: “During the second half of the 19^th century, the railroads expanded dramatically but were unable to realize monopoly power because each time they established minimum rates the cartel fell apart.  In despair, they turned to the federal government, which obliged by establishing the ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission) in 1887.

So for decades customer companies paid far more for rail transport that they would have otherwise, and so of course consumers paid more for transported products.  But only a fleeting thought about human nature and we see the snowball starting to grow.

“When the interstate trucking industry began to undercut the railroads’ cartels in the early 1930s, rather than declare victory and close down the ICC, congress brought truckers (and barge carriers) under the regulatory umbrella —–.”  When other companies (or unions or other groups) see a soft ride for one group, they naturally seek a place at the table.  See PG8.

Thus we find ourselves asking, who was next?  “In the late 1930s, air carriers petitioned —– protection against ‘unfair competition,’ and the result was the CAB (Civil Aeronautics Board) ——-.  In effect, over a 40-year period the government did what members of the transportation industry could not do —– establish, maintain, and police a cartel.”

Flatly stated, all the above actions are unconstitutional.  They are examples of early influence buying: special privileges for self-selected groups of people (companies).

Were there other groups after these, seeking a place?  Well, yes sir/m’am, there surely were, and are.  The only good news is that citizens squawked so loud that a substantial part of the transportation industry was de-regulated, and now it’s cheaper for folks and freight to travel almost anywhere in the USA.

But it’s far from over.  The government continues to write new regulations (PG8) at the stupendous rate of around 75,000 pages a year.

Congressmen must walk a tight wire: please the special interests from whom come most of the loot for their re-elections, and convince the voters that they are pleasing them also.  As they please more special interests, however, they cannot avoid sneakily trampling on the freedoms of still others and those of the individual.

In 2004 GW Bush created “Team 100,” consisting of 249 $100,000-plus contributors.  Recently we heard a rumor about a “Team Million,” but we can’t prove this one.

Marian Wright Edelman is president of the Children’s Defense Fund: “The Bush administration’s words say ‘Leave no child behind.’  The —— deeds say ‘Leave no millionaire behind.’”  (Our emphasis.)

Phillips: “In 1999, as he went from million-dollar fund-raiser to million-dollar fund-raiser, his cavalcade regularly stopped for photo ops in Black and Hispanic schools and community centers.”

This means that congressmen and many members of the executive branch of government are for sale.  They use the money to buy votes from an alienated electorate (us).  At the same time they deceive us concerning where their allegiance lies.

Trump won the 2016 election not on the beauty of his personality.  No indeed.  Russia helped but little.  It was lobbyist bucks, and the biggest donor was the NRA (National Rifle Association).  That outfit has been keeping gun control legislation off the books for decades. 

Career politicians shower their constituents with promises, but the bucks assure that nothing will get done.  The result?  Just turn on the TV news and leave it on for a few minutes.  Innocent people are dying.

 Weinstein (News & Observer 5/2013):  “About the time Tom Diaz’s The Last Gun was entering bookstores, the senate was conducting a highly publicized vote on whether to restrict gun purchases within America..

“—— previous book about America’s uniquely deadly firearms culture: Making a Killing: The business of Guns in America,’ published in 1999.  He is an expert, and also an advocate, having been employed by the Violence Policy Center —-.

“Diaz’s passionate yet reasoned advocacy can be captured, —— in this paragraph: ‘The blizzard of gun violence documented in this book is not a `gun safety` problem.  Nor is it a problem of legal versus illegal guns.  It is a gun problem.  It is the direct and inevitable consequence of the gun industry’s cynical marketing, the proliferation of lethal firepower, and the waves of relaxed state laws — concealed carry, shoot first, shoot anywhere, shoot cops, just shoot, shoot, shoot — that the gun industry’s handmaiden, the NRA, has inflicted on the country to promote new markets for the industry.” 

“—– first three chapters ——– gigantic gap between the US and all other nations — a gap repeatedly quantified with statistics.  ——————.  The gap, —– is both breathtakingly large and shameful for a society that purports to value human life.  Yet, Diaz realized, state and federal lawmakers apparently are unwilling to explore how other nations curb gun violence.”  Did we just hear a call for bottom-up government?

By now it is obvious that we are fans of Thomas Jefferson’s thinking and writings.  Because they sharply focus on democracy, corrupt central government officials fear them.

When officials gag on a message it is much easier to shoot the messenger.  Therefore the government recently panned ol’ Tom, claiming without solid evidence that he kept a slave mistress in France when he was US ambassador.

This rumor may be true.  The man had lost his beloved wife shortly before being posted overseas.  We think a widowed and lonely man sleeping with an unmarried woman is preferable to being in bed with campaign contributors.

 Government officials treat us like mushrooms: kept in the dark and fed bull dung (disinformation) in great quantities.  They welcome our feeling of alienation, since that makes the task of deceiving us easier.

“Professor” Reeves again (October 1996): “This is the politics of 1996: Don’t wake up the voters!  That means don’t give them any names or anything else to vote against.  Low voter turnout is the professionals’ friend.”

He called it “stealth politics.”  The man apparently operates on our wavelength.

“President Clinton proved to be a master of this new politics, skilled in the defensive arts of delaying, denying, disowning, and downplaying.”

Okay. But professor, this is only part of it.  Please don’t forget the dark art of willful, planned deception.

It is interesting that Reeves, who surely must be aware of this presence, saw fit to omit mention of it.  Did he suspect that editors, who must answer to the short-term bottom line orientation of the managers in charge, would spike the piece if he included this one?  We have no problem with this, as we have no editor and no bottom line.

“The stealth laws are designed to buy off one constituency without arousing others.

“Examples: Approve trade restrictions on countries dealing with Cuba, an insane sop to Florida Cuban-Americans —– but don’t enforce the law until after the election.  Approve new restrictions on aliens in California —– but don’t enforce them until after —–.”

Reeves wasn’t yet finished: “Two political scientists, Shanto Iyengar of UCLA and Stephen Ansolabehere of MIT, argue —– in a new book Going Negative, that one purpose of trash-talking political commercials is to disgust independent and uncommitted voters.

“What are those voters going to do, stay home?  But that’s exactly the point: weeding out unfriendly or unpredictable voters to make the system more controllable for the most deplorable of our politicians.  They are the winners in stealth politics, the knowing creators of an electoral system based on the mutual contempt of candidates and voters.”

Friends, this is not participative democracy.  If we had this, we would generate the ideas and opinions ourselves with no “help” from anyone else with an ax to grind.

And our public officials would either listen to us or get canned.  Because we’re paying we think we should do the grinding.

Any high concentration of wealth and personal power will bend morals.  Britain’s Lord Acton: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  Our post-WWII affluent society has contributed to this situation.

Washington inhales shiploads of money every day.  This makes it relatively easy to block any real change.  What insider has any desire to derail the gravy train?

Charles Lewis is head of the Center for Public Integrity and author of The Buying of the President.  “Simply stated, the wealthiest interests bankroll and, in effect, help to preselect the specific major candidates months and months before a single vote is cast anywhere …

“We the people have become a mere afterthought of those we put in office, a prop in our own play.”  People’s votes don’t count; dollars do.

Cell phones are spreading rapidly through the culture.  They have even made it onto the floor of the House of Representatives.

We can readily imagine a scenario where a crucial floor vote is coming up regarding an issue important to certain special interests.  Cell phones get punched during the debate; big money is pledged on one side, and then bigger money on the other.  Finally the congressman casts his/her vote.

No prizes for guessing which way he votes.  We wonder if he runs a sealed bid procedure, or he calls the first lobbyist back to inform him that the opposition has one-upped him, and does he want to sweeten the pot?

NAH!  This doesn’t really happen.  Or, does it?

Whenever a politician or bureaucrat gets caught, he/she has a canned and practiced response: injured innocence.  “I am only doing my job.  Besides, everyone does it.”

Does this make it right?  We are not doing it, and we count as part of everyone do we not?  We are paying our public servants to serve our needs, but they ignore us and worship the money god.

They are betraying the trust that we placed in them when we elected them.  We are starting to wonder if there is any truth to the old saw: “He who pays the piper calls the tune.”

There were 4,900 national trade associations in 1956; in 1989 the number was about 23,000.  Health care lobbying groups jumped from 117 in 1979 to 741 in 1991.

But this is small beer.  In 1960 there were 365 paid lobbyists registered with the senate; now there are about 40,000 (some are more active at any certain time than are others).

Their activities do not create wealth, which a free private sector can do so well.  They are transferring existing wealth from one pocket to another, thus creating no new wealth and hence no economic growth and increases in our living standards.

The first pocket most often belongs to the typical worker in America, who earns around $50,000 a year.  The second pocket belongs to a Washington insider, who takes in (we didn’t say “earns”) something like $300,000 a year and often much more.

Transfer-seeking can be legal if legislators and courts agree to it.  What if we $50,000 citizens don’t agree?  Well, uh, seems like they conveniently forgot to ask us.

There is a law on the books that prohibits buying votes: US code, Title 18, Chapter 29, Sections 595-607.  Some folks would probably not be pleased if we mention this, but they are people whom we don’t aim to please.

The total annual cost of administering central government regulations was up to around $20 billion in 1991.  But this is only administration, the tip of the iceberg.

What about compliance in the field?  In 1992 a study added costs of environmental regulation, product liability, safe work areas, airport landing fees, farm programs, mandates to state and local governments, and finally, costs of compliance ($100 billion).  These regulations distort the smooth functioning of many markets. 

The grand total estimated cost of central government regulation came to $392 billion.  This was about the size of the central government budget deficit at that time.

As mentioned, the private sector chips in about $45 billion a year to buy influence.  This money might otherwise be invested in plant, machinery, worker training, software, etc. aimed at increasing productivity.  This means the rhetoric says sweeping change in Washington, while the reality is keep the money machine going so don’t change anything.

Special interest politics practically means one vote, one association.  So much for the old idea of one citizen, one vote.  Even this does not hold fast, as the association with more money to buy congressmen swings more weight than the next one.

Someone once said, “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.”  Statistics are often bent to reinforce any position whatever, any political objective.

We’re doing this as we write, but there are two key differences.  One is we admit it.

The other is we have nothing to hide and no ax to grind, so we think and write free of the need for deception.  (The theory of accumulation of money has yet to infect our household.)

The elites patiently explain time and again that we ordinary blokes simply can’t understand today’s complex issues well enough to debate them and to arrive at decisions in our interests.  But they have complexified them on purpose.

So, gullible souls that we are, we turn these “complex” issues over to the elites.  From this point it is simple to act in their interest while trumpeting the benefits to us.  They know we are not watching them.

Half of ex-congressmen become lobbyists, partly because it pays bundles and partly so they don’t have to go home.  We can dig that: it must be damned uncomfortable living among citizens from whom you have ripped so many millions, especially with so many guns around.

For the very worst abuse, weapons may take the biscuit.  The Economist (7/2002): “The problem with arms exports is that they often go to unreliable governments in unstable parts of the world, with the deals smoothed by bribes.

“—– department of commerce reckons that half of all bribes paid in international businesses relate to arms deals, even tho arms make up less than 1% of all trade.  —————-.  The details of arms deals are usually kept secret, on the grounds of —— security concerns.  This is why the department of commerce must reckon.

We have tried without success to get an answer to this question: How many innocent lives abroad snuffed out per job preserved in “defense?”

POSTURING AND HYPE

Officials from the time governments began thunder on and on about terrible threats from afar.  There was Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, and those horrible Russians.  Don’t forget Genghis Kahn and Attila the Hun.

HYPE: The need for a huge ogre lurking offshore is so acute that in its absence the government goes abroad to create one.  The most effective way is to bring along an army to shoot up someplace like Iraq, but international trafficking in weapons works almost as well.

REALITY: There has been so much hype over so many years, that practically all of us have been thoroly brainwashed.  Dare we suggest that these ogres are decoys, cleverly disguised attempts to divert our attention from the true enemy within?

NAH!  We wouldn’t dare to suggest that.

We may be starting to see through this one in spite of the hype.  Survey results suggest that we citizens value a good education system more highly than we do a strong military.

The elites don’t like to hear this, for two reasons.  One is there is a whole lot more money in the war business; the military-industrial complex is a proven money-spinner.

The other is more subtle: if they can keep us from getting very smart it will be easier to keep the Grand Deception going.  Dumb peasants are more easily bamboozled, as we show in PG10.

Politicians love people, especially come election time.  But their interest in people is different from ours.  PJ O’Rourke coined an accurate analogy when he wrote, “Fleas are interested in dogs.”

HYPE: Washington has raised windbaggery to a high art, and for a purpose.  Today’s political environment has been purposely made so hideously complex that speechifiers don’t give speeches anymore.  Practically all of them realize that if they said anything of substance they would reveal their ignorance or be caught out at a later time.

REALITY: The trick is to sound like profound eloquence while saying nothing at whatever length circumstances will allow.  Our abiding faith referred to above causes us to assume that “our” congressman is an expert on everything; gotta preserve this illusion.  Today’s televised debates are a case in point.

HYPE: Personal power is very powerful in Washington.  Whenever any pundit or government official gets in front of a microphone (preferably a bunch of them and cameras), there is an opportunity to project personal power.

The notions of the “big player,” the “wheeler-dealer,” the “insider,” etc. all refer to people who have managed to manipulate others into believing they are important.  Each of them probably lacks a single idea worth its salt.

REALITY: This is unimportant.  What is important are the perceptions of others who have not managed as well to manipulate still others into believing that they are all-powerful.

When ideas and debate become irrelevant it is perceptions, however empty, that rule.  See PG13 for arguments concerning power and ideas.

We are reminded here of Suskind’s powerful book about Paul O’Neill: The Price of Loyalty.  O’Neill was President GW Bush’s treasury secretary for two years before he was fired for insisting on speaking truth.

From a USA Today feature story: “To some in the nation’s capital, the new treasury secretary’s candor is delightfully refreshing.  To others, including some White House officials, it is unnerving, even politically and economically dangerous.”  Top officials fear truth.

O’Neill quoted by Suskind: “I just find it astounding that people find it unusual that I tell the truth, ——–.”  He had worked high in the Nixon and Ford administrations.  This remark shows how things have changed in the intervening 30-some years.

He and FED chairman Alan Greenspan were kindred spirits.  “—— loyalty to a core principle: to know all that can be known and then to do what is in the best long-term interest of the American economy (our emphasis).

“The Bushes, of course, have relied on a different oath: loyalty to a person, whether ‘41’ or ’43,’ and to the family.”  (Numbers refer to the 41^st and 43^rd presidents.)

Friends of liberty, this huge issue comes down to principle versus personality.  In 1800 presidential candidates John Adams and Thomas Jefferson met (quotations paraphrased).

Adams said, “I see that you will beat me in this.  You may be sure that I will be a loyal subject.”

Jefferson: “Mr. President, our differences are not between us.  Rather the differences are in principle.  You stand for one way of governing, and I stand for another.”

Since then there have been changes.  Joe Klein wrote Politics Lost: How American Democracy was Trivialized by People Who Think You’re Stupid.  Ouch!  That smarts.

“Presidential politics was all about character … or rather, the appearance of character.  Did he (or she) seem strong?  Trustworthy?  Care about people like me?

“The utter simplicity of it was astonishing: it wasn’t about the economy, stupid.  It was the appearance of caring about the economy, stupid.”  Clinton springs to mind.

HYPE: Pundits are smart folks who operate among the insiders.  They have competent staffs that dig up much inside skinny, which then appears in the form of newspaper columns, TV news analyses, and public speeches and appearances.

The aggregate result of all this turbo-charged hype is reduction of Washington to an outsized Peyton Place.  In the huge mishmash that is Washington these sharpies would have us believe they are the only ones who know what is really going on.

REALITY: They don’t, of course.  Or, if they do they are not saying.  They have become so powerful that no one dares to speak against their infinite “wisdom.”

We think that whenever wisdom becomes conventional wisdom it is time for someone to question it.  Pundits are accountable to no one, so they are a clear and present danger (PG13).

Never mind the “committee on the clear and present danger,” formed recently to scratch around for a credible external threat.  We can see where the real threat lies.

For the high and mighty in today’s Washington there is no law.  Nixon was not the first to break the law, and we can be assured he was not the last.

Lawyers are trained in the use and misuse of words, so they are experts in slippery talk.  Lawyer Bill (Clinton) seemed to have set a new standard.  Did he study Lenin’s philosophy?

And there was Attorney General Janet Reno continuously finding reasons to avoid naming an independent counsel to investigate the financing of the 1996 Clinton-Gore election campaign.  This meant open season during the 2000 campaign.

And we do mean open season.  Kevin Phillips’ book American Dynasty: “—— later revealed that Enron had been a major contributor to funding the republican support team in the Florida recount.”

Apparently Bush stole the election.  How much hypocrisy is needed so the administration can condemn the same thievery in places like Zimbabwe?

Some say we might be better off with film stars in Washington.  However, we already know that they deal in fantasy, where we are just beginning to see that pundits and politicians operate on much the same basis.  Today’s presidents all seek celebrity status.

HYPE: President Clinton loved to “soak the rich.”

REALITY: This is a crock.  The higher marginal income tax rates go the more tax accountants and lawyers a rich person hires to help him/her avoid paying at those rates.

These cats have a lot to work with: the tax code is an 66,000-page smoke screen.  APBs have been launched, but to date we have found no one in the IRS who understands it.

HYPE: We all hate pollution, so “our” government passes law after law and regulation after regulation costing us barrels of bucks.

REALITY: All this hype is pretty good at hiding the fact that the central government is the nation’s worst polluter by far.

HYPE: If we are entertained by posturing we will be an appreciative audience each year when it is time for another crime bill.  Politicians really love this one for its macho potential.

They get on the stump and harangue, “Lock ’em up! Throw away the key!” with fists pummeling the air and the lectern.  We admit it is quite a show.

REALITY: There is very little money in violent crime laws, and neither victims nor their assailants vote much.  So we get this highly entertaining biennial dose of tub-thumping hot air while crime continues to grow and the nation slowly and sneakily drifts toward a police state.  The hype is to create the idea that politicians are responding to our concerns, creating a sense of forward motion.

There has been a recent drop in the violent crime rate.  But this is due primarily to smaller numbers of poor teenagers around, as these are the ones most likely to do violence.  Soon the rate will rise again.

Why those smaller numbers?  In 1973 the supreme court ruled in Roe v Wade that the taxpayer could help pay for teenager abortions.  About 20 years later those criminals who were not born contributed to that improvement.

Stand by for the next show.  We understand that it is going to be a rip-snorter.  (We regret the need to report a rumor that the price of admission for the taxpayer will rise by an amount to be determined.)

HYPE: Damage control in Washington was not quite ready for the results of the 1994 election.  But, not to worry; they handled it.

A survey showed 62 percent of respondents predicted the republicans would succeed with their “Contract with America.”  This result reveals that many of us retain that abiding faith in government, and also that those pulling strings in the Grand Deception are clever characters.

There is too much at stake to do anything constructive about fragmented families, slowly rising wages, declining morality, and lobbyist power.  A teacher interviewed afterward pleaded for politicians to “really, truly, listen” to what citizens are telling them.

REALITY: Too many years later we are still seeing the posturing and faked listening, both of which have been honed to perfection by career politicians.

The status quo pays far more than does truly listening.  The trick is to make citizens feel that their opinions count, so we will support “our” servant in congress.  The reality is that we are getting faked listening combined with willful intent to deceive.  Trump’s fake news fits in nicely.

“We public servants promise to work like people possessed in your interest, just as you wanted when you elected us.”  Gullible citizens will believe this baloney, but for an indeterminate but limited time.

Thinking citizens will see thru the scam far more quickly.  Government officials know this and have known it for at least two generations.  Therefore they have sought to minimize the numbers of thinking citizens thru discouraging excellence in education.

Let’s contrast this intent with the listening that we get from public-spirited officials functioning in a democracy.  That is, with government by the people and for the people the skill of truly listening is critically important.

How else will our representative tap into the thinking of his/her constituents in order to learn how they want him to govern?  See PG20.

HYPE: The recent Clinton-inspired “values debate” had surface credibility, as debate is a cornerstone of democracy.  Because values are a part of each one of us, real debate must be among us and not them.  A top-down approach to values is therefore irrelevant by definition.

We are lost for words as we try to explain how a place as sneaky and corrupt as Washington can get away with preaching values to us citizens.  And with Bill Clinton setting an example in this department??  This may set a new record for chutzpah.

REALITY: So the whole caper was staged, simply because we have demonstrated a deep concern for the moral decline of our beloved country.  As usual, Washington wanted us to believe it is responding in a constructive way.

HYPE: The news media do investigative reporting to sniff out and expose skullduggery by politicians and other shysters in Washington.

REALITY: They do very little, and some of what they do is aimed in the other direction.  That is, the elites know there are folks out there among us peons who are trying to organize a movement against Washington so some investigations are intended to locate these subversive groups.

The press does occasionally question or even attack the character and motives of a politician.  We suspect this is first cleared with him/her.  The idea is to convince us that the press is doing its job.

Former White House speechwriter Peggy Noonan: “Make all your scandals complex and you can beat the rap every time.”  It worked with Whitewater, which was not so easy to understand as was Watergate.

Between 1986 and 1997 a Pew poll found only 31 news stories that more than half of us followed closely.  Most were crashes, tragedies, and other explosions.

The Center for Media and Public Affairs reported that the three news networks carried 868 show business personalities between 1990 and 1993.  This was almost as many as the 1,025 on education and the environment combined.  Maybe we are asking to get fooled?

The news media love to report on negative events.  Perhaps this reinforces our negative feelings about ourselves. These feelings impel us to look to government to solve our problems.

Technology created a new product called “breaking news.”  Viewers thus got hot news from the other side of the world as it happened.  What could be finer?

Well, the kicker here lies in a complete lack of analysis, fragmented presentation, and little or no attempt to independently verify a story.  This leaves the viewer confused.

Few things please a career politician more than a confused electorate.  This means they can tell us almost anything and the majority will believe it.  There is no time for the discussion and reflection that we need in order to bring out the truth.

HYPE: Washington encouraged the “rights revolution” which was sweeping the country.  Rights are built into the Constitution, right?  Can’t be anything wrong with encouraging rights.

REALITY: If by pushing group rights the elites can keep us divided against ourselves it will be practically impossible to mount an effective movement for real change.  It is a very handy and effective diversion of our attention away from the shenanigans that are going on.  And the lawyers love it, for reasons that we don’t feel we need to elaborate upon.

HYPE: Government can create meaningful and permanent jobs in the economy.

REALITY: This is a myth that goes back to the Great Depression.  Only the private sector can create wealth and jobs.  Big Government cannot create wealth; the parasite can only spend it.  However, anyone out of a job will probably swallow the hype during campaigns and vote accordingly.

HYPE: “Entitlements” include Social Security and Medicare; these are generally paid for by taxes.  We have received the hype on this one: “We’ll never touch those middle class entitlements.”

REALITY: There are somewhere around 15 other entitlements.  There is some evidence that much of this money goes to special interests, which “buy” it in the usual way, by stuffing officials’ election campaign war chests.

The reality is that entitlements must be touched and touched deeply (gouged), lest Big Government run our beloved country into the poor house.  (But that’s later, guys.  We need the votes now!)

HYPE: In 1992 Clinton and Gore campaigned as futurists: global competition, hi-tech, hi-wage jobs.  We guess that this posturing helped to get them elected.

REALITY: They are career politicians, and they have a lot of friends in high places in Washington who prefer to keep the gravy train a-rolling.  Therefore no changes, thank you.  Hell, it’s hard enough to steer the ponderous ship of state now, much less with citizens rocking the boat.

If only they would just keep quiet and keep sending money …..  Any sleepless nights in Washington are occupied with dreaming up new ways to bring this one off.  Whenever the natives get restless it can get scary.

HYPE: We can’t seem to get rid of the idea that in a democracy elections are about citizen choice.  In the 1988 presidential campaign we voters were offered choices.  We had to decide who disliked flag burning more fiercely, and who would kick Willie Horton’s butt harder.

Or was it who looked tougher while poking his helmeted head out of the top of a tank?  When candidates stake out positions on such complex issues intelligent voting becomes a real challenge.

REALITY: Don’t stake out any positions where votes might be lost.  Just polish that TV image and work hard to torpedo the other guy in a staged debate (where no meaningful issue is discussed unless both candidates think there are votes for them in it).  And keep generating creative new ways to sling it at your opponent and make it stick.

HYPE: In May 2001 a senator switched parties, which handed the majority in the Senate to the democrats.  The Economist reported that democratic leader Tom Daschle was “giddy” with excitement, offered switcher Jim Jeffords a powerful job as chair of a committee.  “This is calamitous for the Bush agenda.”

REALITY: This is an immense crock.  There is not a grain of truth in the last statement, simply because long ago the two major parties agreed to combine their efforts in order to better fleece the public.

As Thomas Paine wrote in 1792 (not a misprint), “While they appear to quarrel, they agree to plunder.”  In November 2010 there were mid-term elections.  A new movement called the Tea Party threatened to kick the quarrelers’ plunder-butts.

SECRECY

The saga of world history is littered with records of the most terrible crimes committed by governments against their people.  Many of them were done under cover of national security.  It is a grisly record.

Probably our worst offender is the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency).  Elder President Bush was once director, so he knew the potential and used it generously while in office.  This became apparent in 1989, his first year in office, when 5,500,000 documents were classified “secret.”  That’s 5 million.

Kevin Phillips, author of Arrogant Capitol: “After four generations of immersion in the culture of secrecy (——-) deceit and disinformation have become Bush political hallmarks.”  Why did not the democrats clue us in on this culture?  Both halves of the Repdem party share the same bed.

The CIA regularly violates the Constitution by taking money budgeted to other agencies, thus disguising how much of our money the outfit really spends.  Remember that $246 billion of “other services” stashed away in a thousand pigeonholes?  In effect this gives an unscrupulous president a blank check to do whatever he/she wants.

The agency also routinely jacks around the contents of its reports to please the administration.  And all this under cover of secrecy and in the magic name of “national security.”  Sneaky.  Note Trump using this gimmick to transform to a dictator.

The Economist (7/2004) got hold of one instance. “The report contains comments by the CIA’s ombudsman, a figure appointed to investigate allegations of political interference in the agency.

“——- possible links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, ——- complained of coming under intense pressure from officials.  —— Pentagon team offered a hawkish alternative to the CIA’s analysis, firmly linking al-Qaeda to Iraq.

“When (Head of CIA) Tenet rejected the team’s presentation, they took it, ——- directly to the White House.”  This became part of young Bush’s justification for going to war.

Greg Palast, an investigating British commentator, showed that Dubya and his Dad had ties to the bin Laden family thru Carlyle and Arbusto, two oil companies.  He aired this info on BBC’s TV program Newsnight in March 2003, just before Bush attacked Iraq.  (We saw nothing about his in the American news media.)

Phillips: “—- joint report —– origins of the 9/11 attack and how it might have been prevented.  Before the document was released, the Bush administration demanded major deletions, especially in the 28-page section dealing with the role played by the Saudis and other foreign governments.”  We recall that bin Laden was a Saudi.

During the Vietnam War enemy body counts were vastly exaggerated in response to the screeching of protesters.  Eventually the total exceeded the entire population of North Vietnam, but this remained a deep dark secret.

Elder Bush lost the 1992 election.  After this loss and before he left office he pardoned all the big shots who pulled off the illegal Iran-Contra caper under cover of secrecy, just before they were to stand trial.  (That one was leaked to the media.)

As he did this he said it was the “honorable thing” to do.  Is this Washingtonspeak for honesty?

Phillips: “——– postpardon Gallup sampling in December 1992 found half of those who had followed the news coverage believed that Bush’s real motive in granting the pardons had been ‘to protect himself from legal difficulties or embarrassment —–.’”

Friends of liberty, this was not only sneaky.  It was clever.  In his grave, Richard Nixon must be green with envy.

The savings-and-loan bank crisis broke shortly before the 1988 presidential election.  Bad deregulation under Reagan had given managers taxpayer-financed protection against losses while they invested depositors’ money, so they went literally hawg-wild.  Many of them lost, and lost big.

Both candidates knew about the scandal, and both agreed not to mention it.  The winner could hang the mess on Teflon Ron and all would come out of the fiasco smelling like roses.

However, the news media were sniffing around, and the odor entering their nostrils was not roses.  But, they intentionally passed up this golden opportunity to inform voters what was really going on.

The media agreed to keep the scandal quiet until after the election.  So much for investigative reporting and the news media’s traditional role of exposing underhanded actions by government officials.

The kicker is that had the news media found the courage to air the mess before the election the damage would have been around $10 billion.  Quite possibly the government could have forced the errant managers to make good their losses.

No one had the guts to risk torpedoing some careers by doing this, so they kept it under wraps.  After the election the liability had skyrocketed to a possible $500 billion (down to around $100 billion when the dust finally settled).

Then it was sold to the taxpayer as a “patriotic obligation.”  Is this Washingtonspeak for patriotism?

Washington understandably hates leaks.  Elder Bush certainly did, and we recall that Henry Kissinger would completely lose it on these occasions.

There was the Alice Rivlin budget memo of fall 1994.  It identified the true choices facing the president, and none of them were very nice.  It was supposed to be a private memo, but someone leaked it to the press.

Hot shots in both political parties immediately shot this messenger, which strongly suggests that they are in the Grand Deception together.  Ms. Rivlin, we don’t know if you leaked this one on purpose.  We hope you did, in which case we would salute you for a rare display of courage among a huge and tawdry collection of wimps.

In the young Bush White House no one outside knew how judgments were formed and decisions made.  The Economist 11/2003: “The information bit of the Bush White House is a black box.”

Phillips: “Recall Cheney’s secret energy task force, the secret detentions of suspected terrorists and a decision by Bush — terribly harmful to professional historians — keep the documents of his father (our emphasis) and other presidents secret.”

“Moreover, in the six months after September 11^th, no less than 300 executive orders were issued at federal, state, and local level restricting access to public information.”  Friends, we paid for this government-fabricated mess, but no peaking!

Then came the ultimate solution: the department of homeland security.  Top officials gave this development a resounding cheer.

Others refrained.  The Economist 1/2007: “Knitting together 16 spy agencies is no fun for anyone.  ——–.  —— Mr. Negroponte’s departure ——- loud voice of ‘no confidence’ in the position: —-. 

“The danger now is that an ill-defined job will become an irrelevant one — and that the spy agencies will all go their separate bureaucratic ways, just as they used to do.”  This is what they know how to do, so that is what they will do.  The secretary will be herding cats.

Al-Qaeda and the myriad other groups who hate America therefore know more about vulnerabilities than does any spy agency know about blocking them.  Any can and will strike at any time, anywhere, and with its own unique brand of terror.

An occasional attempted failure, such as the Christmas Day 2009 Chicago flight, will not stop them.  The department will occasionally broadcast a blocked attempt, but we peasants will never know if it was real or faked so we will go on living in fear and exposing ourselves in front of full body scanners.

We have learned that the pentagon is developing a new and different kind of rough stuff.  Nothing new here, we might say; that is the business of the armed forces.  Nevertheless we have reason to be concerned.

The new weapons don’t kill people.  We saw in PG18 that US government officials do not hesitate to send billions of dollars’ worth of killing machines abroad even if when used they kill innocent civilians (and they do).

As far as we can make out, these deaths bother top officials not at all: “collateral damage” (Cheney).  Until the public forced the pentagon to publish an estimate of Iraqi civilian casualties there either was no attempt or the number was kept secret.

But these new weapons only make victims wish they were dead. Therefore such weapons will probably not be sent abroad.

If they will not be shipped abroad, on whom will they be used?  Who is the target, the reason for developing these things?

Doug Pasternak in US News 7/97: “—– acoustic or sonic weapons, —– can vibrate the insides of humans to stun them, nauseate them, —–. —– put human targets to sleep —–.  —– sonic cannon that throws a shock wave with enough force to knock down a man.

“—– device that will make internal organs resonate: The effects can run from discomfort to damage or death. —— would make intruders increasingly uncomfortable the closer they get.

“—– electromagnetic gun that would ‘induce epileptic-like seizures.’”  Pasternak said he had to really dig to get the information for this article.

We have no proof, of course.  We have only our suspicions, our “healthy skepticism” of the motives of central government officials.

Our suspicions?  The elite class knows we are damn frustrated and unhappy.

Therefore they are planning ahead, to be ready for us if we natives get too restless: demonstrations, riots, rebellion, etc (as of 4/2010 protests are happening).  If push comes to shove, they will have these weapons to use on us.

For lack of evidence we speculate here.  One thing we know is that they are spending our money on this project.  We ought to put this one in our pipe and puff on it for a while.

We did this.  We are seriously concerned because if there is a confrontation it would be violent even if not lethal, which we desperately want to avoid when displacing the current regime in Washington with a democracy.

More puffing.  We conclude that the pentagon’s weapons as described would be useless if we keep our cool when they are displayed before us.  When push comes to shove they will do this because, as we showed in PG13, they will stop at nothing to preserve their power over us peasants.

The most effective and probably the only nonviolent way to displace the current misgovernment is to simply stop sending money to Washington.  The looters in government are obviously in it for the money.  Shut off the spigot and watch them abandon ship in droves.

Now, this would mean organizing us citizens at the grassroots.  But friends, this is precisely why we are writing the pocket gofers!

We top this section off with a different twist on secrecy.  Freedom House published How Free? several years ago.

“America insists on criminalizing victimless crimes, such as prostitution.  Last week Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the so-called DC Madam, committed suicide; the government had thrown the book at her, including racketeering and mail fraud, because it really wished to penalize ———— between consenting adults.

“In her suicide note to her mother she wrote that she could not ‘live the next 6-8 years behind bars for what you and I have both come to regard as this modern-day lynching.'”

No proof, but during our years of research we have uncovered information that leads us in this instance to conclude the woman was murdered and the crime covered up.  She may have been forced to write the note.

Her registry surely included the names of perhaps hundreds of the top male officials in Washington.  People are destroyed nearly every day in that corrupt town, including some killings.  (Vince Foster and Chandra Levy spring to mind [again, no proof].)

Top up the top with two encouraging new developments.  The International Budget Partnership has developed an Open Budget Survey Index, based on 94 countries.  Seventy-four failed to meet basic standards of budget transparency.

The World Bank now has a Corruption Hunter Network to help those who want to expose this pandemic disease.  Transparency International has ranked countries around the world.  America is ranked just below the average. We dare to hope that WWIII will be nonviolent.

LAWS, REGULATIONS, AND TRUTH 

We have shown that Washington bends the law to suit its purposes.  It also writes laws and breaks them for the same reason.  We quote from Ayn Rand’s powerful novel called Atlas Shrugged about an imaginary and extremely abusive Big Government.  Here is the view from inside (paragraphs split for ease of reading):

“’Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?’ said Dr. Ferris.  ‘We want them broken.  You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against —— then you’ll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures.

“’We’re after power and we mean it.  You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you’d better get wise to it.  There’s no way to rule innocent men.  The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals.

“’Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them.  One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.’” 

In PG18 we discussed the external threat and that within.  Here we are discussing the latter.   

Helluva book!  Reminds us that every year the congress turns out another roughly 7,500 pages of new laws, and the president’s operation spins out around 75,000 new pages of administrative law (regulations).  Then the Supreme Court takes its turn at making law.  Rand’s book was fiction when it was written back in 1956 …..

Did she get some of her inspiration from Rose Wilder Lane?  She wrote in 1942 almost exactly what Rand wrote at the end of her book:

“Do you imagine that the planes can not be grounded, the factories close, the radio be silent, and the telephone dead and the cars rust and the trains stop?  Do you suppose that darkness and cold and hunger and disease, that have never before been so defeated and that now are defeated only on this small part of the earth, can never again break in upon all human beings?  Do not be so short-sighted.”  (In Rand’s novel this actually happened.)

From the government’s perspective, more and more laws tie in closely with its hidden agenda.  As we mentioned, this agenda has tons of laws keeping citizens hunkered down and dependent on BIG BROTHER in Washington.

George Will took his usual strong shot at this issue in his piece titled “The Plague of Too Many Crimes” (News & Observer 12/ 2014).

Will is very good.  But he passed on a GOLDEN opportunity to flog Ayn Rand’s book, because it  all but perfectly fulfills her 1956 prophecy.  We have argued that today’s so-called economic recovery is a sham, because of the total impact of too many laws, too many regulations and too many bureaucrats. NO economy, not even capitalism, can shake itself loose from a moon-sized sea anchor.  Rand predicted a hawg-tied society, and now we have it.  Time for a brain rebellion.  To Will:

“Overcriminalization has become a national plague.  And when more and more behaviors are criminalized, there are more and more occasions for police, who embody the state’s monopoly on legitimate violence, and who fully participate in humanity’s flaws, to make mistakes.”  Covid-19 springs to mind.

Friends, this one is straight out Rand’s book.  “Dr. Ferris says (paraphrased) ‘We want them broken.  We want citizens cowering in fear of the wrath of government.'”

Recall Jefferson’s warning: “When citizens fear government there is tyranny. –.”

“In his 2008 book Overcriminalization: The Limits of the Criminal Law, Husak says that more than half of the 3,000 federal crimes — itself a dismaying number – – are found not in the Federal Criminal Code but in numerous other statutes.  And by one estimate, at least 300,000 federal regulations can be enforced by agencies wielding criminal punishments.”  Emma Lazarus on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free!”

The Economist 7/2010 titled an article “Rough Justice.”  “America needs fewer and clearer laws, so that citizens do not need a law degree to stay out of jail.  Acts that can be regulated should not be criminalized.  Prosecutors’ wings should be clipped: ——-. Mandatory minimum sentencing laws should be repealed.”

The same issue (7/24) includes “Too Many Laws, Too Many Prisoners.”  “Many laws, especially federal ones, are so vaguely written that people cannot easily tell whether they have broken them.  There are over 4,000 federal crimes, and many times that number of regulations that carry criminal penalties.”

And then along comes the police state.  In this Rand and Lane (above) were not the only ones.  In 1944 Friedrich Hayek wrote another devastating book, entitled The Road to Serfdom.  Friends of liberty, this is enough to rattle the brain of any concerned citizen.

Let’s see: 1942, 1944, 1956, 2010.  Just how LONG have our grandparents, parents, and we been SHORT-SIGHTED?

Maybe not all that longer.  As of 6/2010 Hayek’s book sat atop Amazon’s charts!  Fox TV host Glenn Beck flogged it because he believes the book has an urgent message for us.

We keep flogging the same point but make no apology.  When are we going to wake up and smell the coffee?

Shortly after the 1996 election The Economist (2/97) quoted Bill Clinton: “Let us commit ourselves tonight, before the eyes of America, to finally enacting campaign finance reform.”  Were we supposed to accept this grand gesture as truth?

“For a start, Mr. Clinton was elected on a tidal wave of money.  Second, most politicians in America —– were elected likewise.  Third, promises to introduce —— reform are as common in American politics as bugs in May, and every bit as likely to die in a day.”

Bill must have taken us for a bunch of country bumpkins whose memory has slipped a cog.  If he did not expect us to believe this baloney, why did he serve it up?

Clinton was close to the most dishonest of any president.  When the House of Representatives debated whether to impeach him one senator said the issue was not sex; rather, it was lying under oath.

If a president can get away with this the whole justice system totters on the brink, simply because it depends heavily on truth in lawyer and witness testimonies.  Clinton got away, and the system suffered a deep wound.

We are convinced that congress never intended to convict the man.  The whole impeachment caper was political, even tho it officially buried an already-dead Rule of Law.  From start to finish the entire charade was scripted.  And Trump ditto?

Having got clean away with lying under oath, Clinton maintained an utter and complete disrespect for truth.  Friends of liberty, no one can run any organization effectively with this attitude, much less a great nation.

We might observe that the Supreme Court in 1976 essentially obliterated any limits on campaign spending.  In handing down this decision it cited the First Amendment to the Constitution: free speech.

This decision was not too swift, in that while it gives money full play for those candidates in the chips it severely restricts the free speech of challengers who are not.  Some of these folks have good ideas for constructive change, but they will never see the light of day.

We think of all those millions of us citizens watching the tube every fourth January 20 as a new or re-elected president with great pomp and ceremony places his left hand on a Bible held by the chief justice of the Supreme Court.  He raises his right hand and solemnly swears to protect and defend the Constitution, the supreme law of the land.

He doesn’t mean a word of it.  There is no better testimonial to the fact that our system has corrupted the office of the presidency of our nation and also its incumbent.  And we citizens watch, and believe.  Suckers.

A light at the end of the tunnel?  New chief justice John Roberts believes the Court should stop making laws that presumably solve society’s problems and go back to interpreting existing laws.  This is what the founding fathers intended.

The light dawns, and suddenly we can see why Washingtonspeak takes care to include as many words for “secrecy” as Inuits (Eskimos) have for snow.

In the end truth and open honesty must guide politics and government; there is no other way for we citizens to be free to pursue our life dreams.  Any nation professing to be a democracy and that has a president who is not true to his/her spouse is hardly likely to be true to his public.

The Economist (9/2016) Comments on the “Art of the Lie.” “Politicians have always lied.  Does it matter if they leave the truth behind entirely?

“——– Trump is estranged from fact.”  As was Bill Clinton.  “He inhabits a fantastical realm where Barack Obama’s birth certificate was faked, the president founded Islamic State, the Clintons are killers.

“Mr. Trump is the leading exponent of ‘post-truth’ politics — a reliance on assertions that ‘feel true’ but have no basis in fact.”  Again, we point to Bill Clinton as creating this political environment.

“If, like this newspaper, you believe that politics should be based on evidence, this is worrying.  Strong democracies can draw on inbuilt defenses against post-truth.  Authoritarian countries are more vulnerable.”

“Dictators and democrats seeking to deflect blame for their own incompetence have always manipulated the truth; sore losers have always accused the other of lying.”  To repeat, the only time a politician speaks truth is when he calls another politician a liar.  Vladimir Lenin: “First confuse the vocabulary.”

“But post-truth politics is more than just an invention of whinging elites who have been outflanked.  The term picks out the heart of what is new: that truth is not falsified, or contested, but of secondary importance.”

We citizens have not all taken this lying down.  A few of us have the gall to get up on our hind legs and raise a stink.  Lately these actions have been concentrated on environmental and nuclear power issues.

Predictably, the hype comes out from Washington: we’re gonna do something about these dastardly companies or whoever is responsible.  We will quickly put a law or some regulations on the books.

But it is not quite that easy.  Taking the issue away from the grassroots where some effective bottom-up debate and action could come forth and bringing it to Washington concentrates all those community forces in one location.

This makes it easy for dirty money (also concentrated in Washington to follow the issues) to do its work, and out comes a law with no teeth.  Even with teeth, a regulation that might (tho not likely) suit community needs in Perth Amboy, New Jersey will not work worth a damn in Casper, Wyoming.  PG8 elaborates.

Around October 1990 Elder President Bush announced that if he could have a “Read my lips!” tax increase the budget deficit for 1991 would be down to $63 billion.  He got it, thanks to support from “our” loyal public servants.  Six months later the government figured the deficit would be $318 billion, and in the end it was $384 billion.

Forward to 1998.  Poll results showed that 4 in 5 citizens didn’t believe there would be a fiscal surplus in the central government budget.  A columnist claimed that the public is wrong; government is in the black.

Senator Daniel Moynihan (US News 1/1998) said the emerging surpluses aren’t quite real since they count mounting surpluses in social security’s trust fund to offset the continued deficit in the rest of the government’s accounts.  And this observation omits the fact that the government uses cash accounting, which hides from the public all “off-budget” obligations.  (A law requires corporations to use accrual accounting.)

When the origin, intent, drafting, discussion, voting, and execution of a country’s laws are corrupted by dirty money, where is Rule of Law?  Today we are saddled with Rule of Man, just like Sudan and a hundred other poor countries.  Our Constitution specifies Rule of Law, which means no one, repeat, no one, is above the law.

With the left hand on the Bible, the right hand raised ……..

COOPERATIVE MEDIA

It is said that the press is the fourth branch of government in Washington, and the lobbyists are the fifth.  We are thinking of setting up a sixth branch and raking in the loot.

We know our Constitution requires a free press.  This induces us to believe that we have it, that journalists are doing the job that is expected in any country with a free press: bugging the living hell out of government, holding officials’ feet to the fire.  See PG5: The saga of the news media.

In his first news conference as president (1953), Eisenhower complimented the press.  During his career as a top army officer, “I have found nothing but a desire to dig at the truth … and be openhanded and forthright about it.”

That was then.  Today we have lost a vitally important asset: a free press.

With a free press doing its job there would be no Grand Deception.  But why are we lacking?

Bill O’Reilly: “—– one huge problem with the media.  What is said, right or wrong, can never really be taken back.  ———-.  Lies take on a life of their own.

“The media —– are deeply involved in your personal life for much of your waking hours.  The media keep you company, and they can entertain, inform, and inspire you.  That’s good.

“They can also shape your opinions, behavior, tastes, and desires.  That’s not so good.

“And they can be used by powerful people to seduce and persuade you and often lie to you.  That’s dishonest, sometimes downright evil, and always there in your face.”

They can’t hold this power unless we remain unaware that our thinking is being manipulated.  This is why the results of the pundits’ biased analyses are hyped as truth.

Sneaky.  We uncomfortably recall that the most popular newspaper in the Soviet Union was Pravda.  This means “truth” in Russian, but every citizen knew they were being fed a steady diet of hawgwash.  Looks like we could learn something here.

A parting shot from O’Reilly: “—- this huge increase in competing media outlets has already caused standards to collapse.  It will only get worse.”

The man is right, and not just because he agrees with us.  We citizens have been wearing blinders for far too long.  What is amazing is that the warning signs began with the founding of this nation (Franklin, Jefferson, Madison).

Here is yet another sign, taken from an obit on Daniel Boorstin (The Economist 3/2004): “His most influential book, ‘The Image,’ published in 1962, was the first to describe the phenomena of non-news, spin, the cult of the image, and the worship of celebrity.”

Boorstin wrote: “The American citizen lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has more dignity than its original.  We hardly dare face our bewilderment, because our ambiguous experience is so pleasantly iridescent, and the solace of belief in contrived reality is so thoroughly real.

“We have become eager accessories to the great hoaxes of the age.  These are the hoaxes we play on ourselves.”  What a swat in the keester, and 58 years ago!!

We don’t see through this deception because we are preoccupied with keeping the wolf from the door, and also there is no longer a handy forum for discussing political issues.  Jefferson said truth would prevail over error if provided with a weapon that he called free and open debate among citizens.

Up until after WWII the handy forum for debate was the beer hall.  Workers would belly up to the bar (there were few chairs and tables then) for a belt after work before going home.  As now, talk included sports and women, but politics and government frequently prevailed.

Today the forum is the coffee house, and this tradition stretches back to at least the 17^th century.  Jonathan Swift: “——- not yet convinced that any access to men in power gives a man more truth of light than the politicks of a coffee house.”

Wireless “hot spots” in coffee houses enable citizens in discussions to access the Internet thru WiFi.  Now, Big Government would surely perceive discussions about it as subversive, and agents have probably tapped into many hot spots.

However, if concerned citizens used pocket gofers as resources spying would be more difficult.  And government does spy on us; believe it!  We learned that young President Bush authorized phone tapping of some 500 American citizens without a Constitution-required court order.

In the old days people got more depth on a smaller variety of issues, because the objective was to inform and not to deceive.  They learned about them thru the news media and thru discussion with others.  They thus acquired carefully thought-out positions on issues, and pressed these upon their elected representatives.

Today, by contrast, our news consists of sound bites from all over creation.  The intent is to entertain us, not inform us, so we will keep tuned to that station or subscribing to that newspaper or news magazine.  Politicians harvest votes while the media harvest eyeballs.

On talk radio or Facebook some bloke can say anything about anybody and no one bothers to ask, “Any evidence to back your assertion?”  Especially for public figures, laws against slander practically don’t exist.  This is one reason why we get wimps and scoundrels in public office: they have no shame.

TV news readers (called anchors in America) use what we call a “hummingbird” approach to reporting national news.  At the beginning we get what the reader will tell us; next he/she tells us in rapid-fire bursts, but so frequently interrupted by string after string of commercial messages that a viewer is denied the opportunity to reflect on any one issue.  Therefore we lack an informed citizenry tor productive discussions, leaving only impressions. 

Someone needs to think about what we are getting for “news” these days.  When citizens know more about Clinton’s sex life than they do about their neighbors’ thinking on important political issues, something is out of synch.

In Washington reporters claim that they separate politics from important issues.  But in Washington the only important issue is politics and money.  Everything has been politicized.

Therefore the name of the game is access: it is more important to have the president’s ear than it is to report truth.  Deception and fantasy are where it’s at, largely because Mr. Clinton dealt with little else and his successor seemed disinclined to remedy his legacy (which began long before Bill).

If any news medium dared to reveal some truth, there goes that vital access, and with it goes its readership or viewership.  Also, the line between truth and b-s has been intentionally fuzzed so that we can’t tell the difference.

This means truth may actually come to us, but we won’t recognize and reward it.  This is how Big Government forces the media to cooperate in the Grand Deception.

Principle takes a back seat to the bottom line when media top managers are businesspeople and not journalists.  So they bend with the political wind.

Three recent instances illustrate the scant regard for truth in today’s news media.  A news magazine paid big money for diaries of Adolf Hitler, as usual without checking whether they were for real.  They were quickly proved a fake.

The magazine ran long pieces from them anyway, claiming that “Genuine or not, it almost doesn’t matter in the end.”  This could be the first public admission by a news medium that fake news is just about as good as the real variety.

The second instance involved a therapist who helped a patient to convince herself that her parents had abused her as a child.  The patient sued her parents.  The therapist: “I don’t care if it’s true ….. What actually happened is irrelevant to me.”

This character may have started a business that has great potential.  He/she has only to search for adult children estranged from their parents and who want a legal shot at them.

Select a partner who is a lawyer (many would leap at the chance), and crank up the money machine.  If we were not strapped so securely to our morality we would quickly buy a piece of this outfit.

Then there was the racial slur presumably uttered by a Texaco executive.  Aha!  Big company and deep pockets here, so reporters and lawyers were all over this one.

There was no truth to the allegations.  In fact, one of them occurred during a diversity training session and was misinterpreted.  No matter; settling up cost the company 176 million potatoes.

We recall how at the end of 1992 Time magazine made Bill Clinton Man of the Year only seven months after running an article titled “Why Voters Don’t Trust Clinton.”  (Something happened in between.)

Igor Shnurenko published a column entitled “War Crimes — or Faked News?”  He was obviously upset about recent reporting to the West about his native land.

“According to the mainstream media, the only things now coming from Russia are new atrocities the Russians are practicing just for the sport of it.  —— last week, when major world TV networks provided us with a vivid picture of mutilated bodies being dumped into a pit.

“Commentaries said the pit contained the bodies of Chechen civilians detained for interrogation by Russian troops.  —– signs of torture.”

A German news correspondent said he had seen these crimes committed.  The British BBC broadcast the film, and it raised a huge ruckus.  The European Union clamped new trade sanctions on Russia.

Later the correspondent admitted the film was bought from a Russian journalist.  He had witnessed nothing of what he reported.  But, look what did not happen after this admission saw the light of day.

“What came in the West’s mainstream media the morning after?  Apologies?  No.  Calls for more objective coverage of Russia?

“Missed again.  Mud sticks, and the faked media event shown on major networks has had a real effect.”

Rich (3/2005 column) described President Bush’s 60-stop “presidential road show’ where he conversed with “ordinary citizens” while flogging his plan to reform Social Security.  Local and national newsmen and women tagged along.

“As in the president’s ‘town meeting’ campaign appearances last year, the audiences are stacked with prescreened fans; any dissenters who somehow get in are quickly hustled away by security guards.”  Apparently when Bush said “social security” he meant secured from any type of citizen dissent.

“—– they are rehearsed the night before, with a White House official playing Bush.  One participant told the (Washington) Post, ‘We ran through it five times before the president got there.’”

This is often how we get educated concerning the rest of the world.  Lies like this also reinforce the external threat theory (PG18), which tends to keep us hunkered down and clamoring for Uncle to save us from terrible ogres lurking offshore.

In the old days guys out of high school went into the beer halls to sample the thinking of real people.  Over the past 60 years reporters of the old school gradually became government press agents.

During the past 40 years little happened in Egypt’s tyrannical government.  Al-Ahram was the nation’s leading news paper and a lap-dog press agent during that time period.

But about 2011 something big did happen; there was a grassroots rebellion.  Al-Ahram took only 20 days to switch to the rebels’ side.  In writing these pocket gofers and other thoughts, we hope to convince the pussycat news media to change over to the citizens’ side and start reporting on government skullduggery.

Today college-trained professional “journalists” see such action as beneath their dignity.  When TV news anchors become celebrities something is not right.

James Madison: “It is better to leave a few of (the press’s) noxious branches to their luxuriant growth than, by pruning them away, to injure the vigor of those yielding the proper fruits. —–.  And can the wisdom of this policy be doubted by any who reflect that to the press alone, checkered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression?”

Wisdom it is.  But today’s gardener with pruning shears would search long, hard, and in vain for those branches bearing proper fruits.

Henninger (Wall St. Journal  6/2007): “Instead, ——- believe the media has become mostly melodrama: Things, people, issues, stories, are all black and white.  Life’s usual grays are almost entirely absent.

“It is a triumph or a disaster.  A problem is a crisis.  A setback is a policy in tatters.”

This is media hype, and the message suffers nearly as much as it does when politically biased.  Media managers compete furiously for custom, so they instruct reporters and analysts to stretch truth in favor of the bottom line.

In late October 2010 we see that nothing has changed.  An interview of comics John Stewart and Stephen Colbert was reported in the News & Observer.

“—– lambasted the cable TV news mentality that amplifies outrageous statements, stokes fear and seeks out confrontation, singling out the left-wing media for equating tea partyers with racists and the right-wing media for ‘the inability to distinguish terrorists from Muslims.'”

In a 10/30/2010 piece The Economist amplified.  “The Taliban ——.  —— ‘mind-boggling lies’ intended to make it ‘appear as tho Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate were ready for negotiations and that they have made progress in that regard.'”

This is most probably the pentagon covering its arse.  We remain thankful that The Economist frequently reports truth that is not available in the mainstream American media.

“Opinion and fact should be clearly divisible.  The truth is a large part of the media today, not merely elides (fuses) the two, but does so now as a matter of course.”  If we peasants can’t tell the difference we can’t know when we are being bamboozled.

There are some encouraging signs.  In 2008 the media were starting to think that if they continue to go along with Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld’s lies about Iraq the public will run their rears up the yardarm.

They are also beginning to expose the administration’s ventures outside the law.  The media’s bread and butter come down to credibility.  Lose this, lose customers, lose money, and out of business.

GRIDLOCK/STATUS QUO

Big, Big Government in Washington, and yet we find ourselves concluding that almost nothing that we want gets done.  Insiders patiently explain that the democratic process is inefficient, as opinions must be sought from as wide a variety of citizens and groups as is practical.

The statement above is true.  Democracy cannot be efficient if everyone is to participate in it and contribute thinking and arguments.

But that is not the real reason for gridlock; it’s just the hype.  The reality is that planned gridlock is a part of the Grand Deception.

Larry Sabato, author of A More Perfect Constitution: “—– Congress has proven to be a dependable graveyard for constitutional reform.  More than 300 amendments have been proposed in Congress over the last 40 years, with a grand total of six sent to the states —— and none since 1978.”

The game in Washington is money and personal power, not democracy.  See PG13.

The Economist (3/1999) provided a telling insight into the non-workings of the US senate: “—— rules permit any senator to offer an amendment on any bill at almost any time; they permit any senator to block any bill by filibuster; they permit any senator to demand that any bill be put on hold.

“These blocks can generally be overcome only with the support of a ‘supermajority,’ meaning either 60 or 67 out of the 100 senators, depending on the issue.

“The time has come to amend the senate’s rules, so as to curb the power of minority foot-draggers.  The trouble is that any such proposal would die at the hands of the obstructionism it hoped to cure.”

Not just The Economist. David Broder (4/1999 column): “Understandably overlooked in the tumult and tragedy was the unmistakable signal that congress and the White House have given up on doing anything serious this year on preserving Medicare and Social Security for the next generations.  Instead, Democrats and Republicans are preparing to use these programs as weapons in the —– election —–.”

But this event was scheduled for November 2000!  Like we said, the name of the game is planned gridlock.  And what has been accomplished since then?

Well, there is a prescription drug benefit for seniors.  But no clue about how to pay for the program.

Democracy means continuous consultation with the people and listening to their inputs so that good government can continuously grow better.  But this means continuous change.

Most of us recall graduation speakers in high school and college: “The only thing which will be constant in the future is change!” usually said with appropriate grand gestures for emphasis.

We were not being misled.  This was and is true, except in Washington and in most state governments.

In 1988 Paul Kennedy published a book called The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.  In it he demonstrated how America was following the pattern set by the rise and fall of Rome and many other empires since then.

The book made quite a splash.  A major cause of each empire’s decline lay in overemphasizing the wrong side of the trade-off between economic and military health.

Pundits in Washington gagged on it.  Here was proof that the US was no longer the all-powerful and forever invincible world Rambo.

The man was recently heard to remark: “Anybody advocating American perestroika (sweeping change of government) is going to have a hell of a fight on his hands.” Kennedy is an outsider who has researched Washington, so he knows whereof he speaks.  Once personal power is acquired the urge to hang onto it is overpowering.  See PG13.

During the 22 years after Kennedy’s book the decline in the US has accelerated.  The Economist (8/2010): “To many Americans, the misadventure in Iraq ———.  ———.  An America that is bleeding economically at home, with unemployment stuck at nearly 10% and debts as tall as the eye can see, is losing confidence in its ability, and perhaps in its need, to shape events in far-flung regions such as Central Asia and the Middle East.”

We welcome words connecting to the reality concerning the USA: precise emulation of Kennedy’s argument.  The correct thing for government to do after 9/11 was simply to find the surviving culprits and punish them.  The UN and, later, the ICC would have helped.

And going to war against Iraq on a whim.  This too could have been stopped in its tracks as the congress stiffed the Texas gun slinger.  The end result today is truly a sad commentary on the government of our once-great nation.

We hope to have more than a few brains and hearts united in a common cause.  We are thoroly tired of panic imposed on us peasants from the top down.  A new America is possible and we are going to do it.  See PG4.

Politicians want empty elections. This makes it easier to maintain the status quo.  By now about 70 years’ accumulation of barnacles on the ship of state has slowed it down to the point where it can no longer adjust to changes in what we need from government.

The Economist has been a great help to us in our work.  Therefore we are mystified whenever it publishes stuff that seems to agree with the elite class (8/2003).

“Today politics is as acrimonious as it has ever been.  ———-.  Many congressmen will barely speak to each other.”

This is a crock.  Recall Thomas Paine’s 1792 remark: “While they appear to quarrel, they agree to plunder.”

“——– driving Americans apart is the fact that the political parties are so evenly balanced.  A slight shift in any direction can tilt the equilibrium of power.”  We have a shift in mind: bottom-up government and power to citizens.

Parties were gearing up for the 2004 election, so they wanted to be seen as fighting each other.  The Economist knows or at least strongly suspects that the two major parties are actually just one, which we call the “repdem” party.  There is no equilibrium.

Later the writer came around.  “But this is politics as freak-show rather than deliberative democracy.

“The growing nastiness ——— undermining popular faith in government.  How can intelligent people watch the ‘We’re right, you’re wrong’ blather on the talk-shows without losing interest in public debate?”

Klein: “The 2004 campaign made some news by kicking out people who tried to attend the president’s fake public question-and-answer sessions without prior approval of local party officials.”

This is precisely what the high and mighty want.  Empty elections mean open season for more deception and corruption.  A glance at today (2010) shows no change.

The 2006 election gave the senate to the democrats by a wafer-thin margin.  But as we saw above, in order to get anything done a 60-67 percent majority is required.  Therefore in spite of all the hype about a transfer of power nothing will change.

Sheppard in a 12/2006 column: “I would say the 109^th (congress) went out of town not with a bang but a whimper, but that would be an insult to whimperers everywhere.”

Candidates running for president begin campaigning 18-20 months in advance.  They tell us this gives ample opportunity for citizens to meet them, instead of depending on the tube.

What they don’t tell us is the hidden agenda.  This is to cause the typical voter to be so sick of the campaign when Election Day finally arrives, that he/she will stay home.

This wheeze also provides ample opportunity for candidates not affiliated with either of the two major parties to run short of money and drop out.  Any one of them might have some ideas that would bring constructive change should the candidate win.  But this would rock the boat.

This smacks of a trade-off: make politics rational and folks lose interest; appeal to their emotions and the results are empty perceptions and empty elections.  Maybe we can’t win this one?

Maybe the solution is at hand, as we refer to a 9/2005 column written by former President Carter and former secretary of state James A. Baker.  They served as chairs of the Commission on Federal Election Reform.

Some of the 87 recommendations include “——- increase voter participation, enhance ballot security and provide for paper auditing of electronic voting machines.  We also offer plans to reduce election fraud, and to make the administration of elections impartial and more effective.”

We don’t know what happened to this piece.  How did the news media handle it?

Phillips commented on voter participation and fraud: “—– substitution of checkbook balloting by party contributors for a decisive primary-day pulling of vote levers —-.”

When the act of voting has been hollowed out by dishonest career politicians, increased participation is meaningless.  This of course applies as well to security and paper audits.

In 2006 hundreds of electronic voting machines had no paper audits.  Therefore there was no way of learning about any fraud.

Klein: “Thirty-five years later, I still find myself hoping for Kennedy-like moments of spontaneity and courage from the politicians I trail after — moments when they deviate from their script and betray a real emotion.  Moments when they tell their supporters an inconvenient truth, —–.”

When the pocket gofers gain wide distribution a reasonable effort can make a citizen aware of the grim reality regarding participation.  After this it remains only to act on it by pocketing gofers and generating the discussions and debates that Jefferson said are so vital to a democracy.

If we ourselves establish and operate our own government we would be enthusiastic about it.  People support what they help to create.  See PG20.

Predictably, Washington has dug in for the long haul.  State laws give the two major parties automatically preferred positions on ballots.  They enjoy a laundry list of campaign subsidies, assistance to party-affiliated institutions, and cheap postal rates.

Then there is tremendous support from special interest groups who are profiting from the status quo.  Quite an arrangement, actually.

We didn’t think Senator McCain would make a good president.  Nevertheless we saluted him for a surprising bit of truth when a citizen asked him about health care reform.

“The problem is the democrats are in the pocket of the trial lawyers and we republicans are in the pocket of the insurance companies.  And so there is gridlock, and there will continue to be, until we get the special-interest influence out of politics.”

Will (News & Observer 1/2010) brings the issue current.  “Really, things cannot continue like this.  ——– nation’s looming crisis of public finance (yes, another one).  The crisis, which is obvious and inevitable, combines unfulfillable entitlement promises and unsustainable budget deficits.”

BIG GOVERNMENT has finally painted itself into a corner.  Friends of freedom, here we go again.

INFORMATION AS A SMOKE SCREEN

Forced to respond to pressures in 1966, congress passed the Freedom of Information Act.  But congress exempted itself.

In a democracy with Rule of Law, how can members do this?  Answer: if not held accountable they can do almost anything.

Then it exempted the courts and parts of White House operations.  Later the CIA got the same break, and there evolved several reasons why any agency could deny requests for taxpayer-paid and therefore theoretically public information.  Finally, the law provided for no punishment in cases of violation.

Besides suppression of information, the art of disinformation has been developed through extensive practice.  This consists of blizzards of published words aimed at concealing what has really happened or is going to happen.  Whenever the government decides to do something that they know we will not like, they crank up the propaganda machinery another notch.

                                               DISINFORMATION

Of course, the American government has no corner on this market.  Russia, China, Japan (where press clubs and ministers regularly slurp sake together) and practically every poor country puts out disinformation.

Today we enjoy the best information flows in the world, and yet we feel ill-informed on nearly every heavy issue.  The White House press corps numbers around 5,000 bodies.

Poor president Obama: every trip to the toilet could be a media event.  And yet we still don’t know what is really going on in the executive branch of “our” government.  Therefore we can’t hold it accountable (see PG7). 

During Gulf War I a phone survey was done in Denver, CO.  Results showed that the more TV a respondent watched the less he/she understood about the causes and consequences of that fiasco.

Seems we deserve accurate reporting of a war, at least.  The reality is, not even here.  Generals in charge orchestrated news coverage to make them and their soldiers look good.

New technology in news coverage has journalists “embedded” with soldiers in the field.  So, are we better informed about war?  Hardly.  The saying that “Truth is the first casualty of war” is ancient and still alive.

Paul Krugman teed off on the budget (May 2001 column).  “—– two missing pages happened to contain language crucial to the compromise that had persuaded moderates to agree to the budget.  —— the fundamental cause of the mishap was that the republican leadership was trying to pull a fast one — to rush through a huge tax cut before anyone had a chance to look at the details.

“Now —– missing pages has delayed things.  ——–.  You see, there seem to be a few other pages missing from the budget plan.  For starters we seem to be missing the page that factors in the likely cost of a missile defense system.

“We also seem to be missing the page that explains how the conventional defense buildup being planned by the secretary of defense —— is consistent with a budget that makes no room for increases in defense spending beyond those already proposed by the Clinton administration.

“Then there’s the page about prescription drug coverage under Medicare ——–.  ——– $115 billion ——- is laughably inadequate, ——.”  There is more, but we are getting the drift.

Krugman offered a final observation: “Oh, and there’s one more page missing: —— explains why —— they should put their names to a budget that is patently, shamelessly dishonest.”

                                       HONESTY

Forward to early 2002.  The Economist loves to expose goings on in Washington behind the smoke screen, so we’ll ask Krugman to hand the baton to that (British) newspaper. “——(proposed) budget is not for the faint-hearted.  It is big.  His (GW Bush’s) $2.13 trillion spending plans for 2003 include a 14% increase in the defense budget, the biggest rise since Ronald Reagan, ——.

“Not only has he extended tax cuts, but he has tried to hide the cost of doing so with accounting techniques that would make Enron proud.”  There was a huge stink raised by the government over Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, and other misbehaving company executives.

The purpose for this action was to distract our attention from the same skullduggery going on in government.  At least those executives were not playing fast and loose with money that belongs to all of us.

Suskind in his book The Price of Loyalty referred to Vice-president Cheney.  “——- in the dark about his actual beliefs.  But they’d sometimes pick up his method: quietly select an issue, counsel various participants, manufacture the exchange of seemingly impromptu letters or reports — the bureaucratic version of a media event — and then guide unfolding events toward the intended outcome.

“This was the puppeteer’s craft, all done with strings and suggestions.  In the end, there are no fingerprints.  No accountability (our emphasis).”  This is stealth politics.  It has no place in a democracy.

SPEAKING WITH FORKED TONGUE

“People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election (Otto von Bismarck).”

We found this gem in Downie and Kaiser’s book The News About the News: “It’s harder to find things out when the officials have no compunction about lying — directly, bluntly, and repeatedly.

“The Reagan team, which had mastered the art of deception, ultimately got out of town with many of its secrets intact.”  We recall one instance where one official talking seriously to another told a bare-faced lie.  Both knew it was a lie, and each knew the other knew it.

                                                          LYING

Politicians encourage opinion polls, so citizens will be led to believe that our representatives are listening to our gripes and will act upon them.  But these are only wish lists, not used for governing.

Oliver Herford defined a liar as “—- one who tells an unpleasant truth.”  The entire pocket gofer project strives toward truth.  Friends, if what Herford says is true and readers agree, then Publius II has wasted many years of his life.

Candidates on the campaign trail fire up our emotions while avoiding discussion of any gripes.  Solutions mean pain for some folks, and loss of votes.

Any new ideas are immediately blocked by the monied interests.  Someone said it (paraphrased): “Only that society which tolerates dissent can and will perpetuate itself.”  We recall that in a democracy dissent is needed in order to generate discussion and debate leading toward better government (PG20).

Candidate Clinton denounced all forms of influence peddling.  President Clinton presided over a great surge of this type of corruption.

A recent central government budget contained 32 pages of special exclusions, exemptions, deductions, credits, deferrals of tax rates, and loopholes for the rich.  This means hundreds of billions a year of tax revenues lost, which must be made up by us peasants.

Read this as rot, friends of liberty.  This is slimy corruption created by a tawdry bunch of slime bags.

Justice is equal treatment for all under the law.  It is not forcibly transferring wealth from the relatively poor to the rich.

This principle is enshrined in the Constitution.  The truth is that the whole 32 pages exist in clear violation of that document.

Those 32 pages were purchased, with great gobs of hard cash.  Bruce Auster reported on just one instance (US News 3/1997 column): “At the luxurious Manhattan home of telecoms mogul Shelby Bryan, more than 100 high rollers paid up to $25,000 apiece last week to eat pheasant, sip champagne, and listen to President Clinton argue vehemently for campaign reform.  Clinton called for an end to precisely the type of unlimited —– contributions he was attracting that night.”

Well, we are pretty jaded by now, but nevertheless we gagged on this bit of forked tongue.  Truly there are no limits in the central government to lies and deceit.

Phillips: “The magazine The American Prospect ——–article entitled ‘All the President’s Lies,’ —-.  Comparing him to Johnson, Nixon and Clinton, regarded by many as the principal fibbers of the last half century, the authors concluded that George W. Bush is in a class by himself ——.’”

During his 2000 campaign, George W. Bush gushed with praise for free international trade.  Once in office, he increased tariffs on imported steel by 30 percent, increased subsidies to farmers by more than 80 percent, and tripled overall trade adjustment assistance from $400 million to $1.2 billion annually.

We guess that there is no need to mention whose money President Bush and his mandarins are handing over to their fat cat friends.  And we need not mention that some of this loot will recycle into backing requests for more.

The reality is that both parties know exactly what the voters want: the end of Big Government and making it get off our backs.  The reality is also that with the current parasites entrenched in power we aren’t about to get what we want.

This is because personal power seeking has become all-pervasive, just as does addiction to a narcotic.  It captures men’s and women’s souls (PG13).

The government sets up internal watchdogs, presumably to expose deception.  If these gestures are sincere, how could the following have happened (Margasak in a June 2001 column)?

“The pentagon agency charged with exposing fraud destroyed documents and replaced them with fakes to avoid embarrassment when its own operations were audited, an internal inquiry found.”  Ah, would you run that one past us again?

“The unsuspecting IRS reviewers found ‘no problems’ with the pentagon’s audit work after poring over the phony documents, ——-.  ———–.  ——- 983 hours spent creating the fake documents cost taxpayers $63,000.”

The rot inflects some of us peasants.  James Frey fabricated some events in his best-selling book A Million Little Pieces.  The digging it took to expose these lies was done by a web site called “The Smoking Gun,” not the mainstream media.

This expose’ raised a helluva stink, but nearly half the comments cussed out the reporters who did the digging!!  Recalling Lippmann’s comment (above), we have a lot of work to do.

Hulse (News & Observer 2/2010): “While senator Saxby Chambliss, R-GA, said he was all for slowing federal spending, he has no appetite for the substantial cuts in farm programs —-.

“Representative Todd Akin, R-MO, ——- simultaneously lamenting the deficit spending outlined in the new budget and protesting cuts in pentagon projects important to his state.

“And senator Jeff Sessions, —— vowed to resist reductions in space program spending that would flow back home.”  Here is at least one congressman who believes the sky is not the limit when it comes to government spending.

Common sense abandoned a dying government years ago.  We wonder how these clowns can go on ignoring the grim fact that they are writing their own obituaries.

The Scotch mathematician and doctor John Arbuthnot ca. 1714: “All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.”  When a wake is scheduled for this country’s rep-dem party we would like to attend.

We heard about a politician who told the truth.  But it was only when he called another politician a liar.

Jefferson: “—— and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him.  This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, —–.”

CONCLUSION

Bar patron to piano player: “Hey Buddy, do you know our central government is ripping off the entire nation?

Piano player: “No, but if you will hum a few bars I can fake it.”

Publius II’s thinking spun out of control one day.  He developed a thought on the history of contrived fantasy.

Many centuries ago people indulged in fantasy primarily thru musing, or dreaming.  Later there evolved art, stage plays, court jesters, and puppetry.  Still later with technology came photographs, motion pictures, videos, DVDs,  iPhones and other social media.

All operated to satisfy a human craving for imagination of what was not but might be.  However, following the Industrial Revolution, inception of capitalism, and its competition among producers, fantasy grew more and more fantastic in order to maintain its appeal.  Eventually it passed the point of feasibility and went on to provide escape from a humdrum or fearful existence.

In order to partake of fantasy contrived by someone else it was necessary to make an effort: that is, to leave the home and travel to a performance on the stage or screen.  Today the screen has moved into the home and on the go, and competition has stiffened still more.

The result is fantasy contrived by people whose imaginations have lost any connection with reality.  Anything to keep people glued to the tube, computer screen or iPhone.

Politicians have leaped aboard this very effective vehicle for communicating fantasy in the form of charisma and personal power.  This is not only good for getting re-elected; it is also a colossal ego trip to pontificate behind a forest of microphones while the cameras roll.

The impact on the quality of government is not difficult to imagine.  TV has programmed us to demand fantasy in huge doses, and producers are only too glad to provide it.

Famous novelist James Michener: “An age is Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.”

The kicker, of course, lies in the necessity that we must live our daily lives in the real world.  But we are not being prepared for this, either in school or at home.  Therefore morality in our society can only decline, and it is declining.

David Brinkley in a 1992 interview: “This country is really turned off on politics and politicians ….  And I know why.  Because (the American people) have been lied to so much, and deceived so much.  Cheated.  Abused.  Taken advantage of by pols.  It would be surprising if they weren’t turned off.  They deserve to be turned off.  I’m turned off.”  This from a man who spent a career as a newsman.  Interesting.

Bonner: “Principles?  Morals?  There is no room for constitutional constraints when you are building an empire.  The heart overpowers the brain.

“Public chatter overpowers private thoughts.  Public slogans drown out private acts of decency and courage.  Empty words and big theories replace actual thinking.  The public itself is charmed and bamboozled, then robbed, killed or both.”

Jackson Pemberton (speech recorded in The Foundations of American Constitutional Government) also wants to help us.  He spoke powerfully here (1976), as we break up a long paragraph for ease of reading.  He began with a reference to King George III.

“In our day the tyrant came to us in open defiance of our rights, with hostility and violence, with sword and cannon.  Through tears, prayer, and blood we threw him off and drove him out.

“Now he is among you again, but not in open war upon your houses and lands, but in subtle disguise, bearing gifts of free money, free food, free houses, and free security; trading them to you in the name of equality, rights, and liberty; offering the goods he took from you by heavy taxes and a deliberate inflation.

“With flattering words he coddles your vanity, legalizes your selfishness, and leads you through a political mirage into his fool’s paradise where he has appointed himself the Grand Regulator.  Yet, your greatest danger lies in none of these things, but in your failure to recognize the pattern he follows, for it is ancient.  What he cannot accomplish by force and violence he will attempt by lure and deceit.”

FRIENDS OF LIBERTY, MARK THIS MAN’S WORDS.  HE SEES THROUGH THE SMOKE AND MIRRORS; HE KNOWS.

Our forefathers and mothers were British citizens.  Due to a felt loyalty to the crown (abiding faith), they let the situation deteriorate until the only alternative remaining lay in bloodshed.

Today we still have a nonviolent opportunity; note the 1989 bloodless revolutions in Eastern Europe, where nations extricated themselves from an even more oppressive regime.  But, for how much longer??

POLICE STATE: The poor/rich pentagon is still stuck in the age of violence.  We may all go backward to this stage if we don’t stop Washington from installing a police state.

A thought occurred to us.  There is a definite long-term trend in law away from civil law and toward a greater emphasis on criminal law.  The former involves disputes among citizens or organizations, whereas the latter covers a dispute between a citizen or organization and the government.

Pushing criminal law not only increases demand for lawyers.  It also means creating more and more crimes against the government.  We have seen how many new laws the government cranks out each year; this is incredible.

The whole idea is to put more and more “criminals” in the slammer, including those guilty of nonviolent “crimes” such as druggery.  The convenient reason, as politicians are so prone to mention, is protecting the freedom of little old ladies, widows, and orphans to walk the streets at night.  This pocket gofer has described the hidden agenda that drives all that lawmaking.

Columnist Molly Ivins provided some numbers (12/19): “Thruout the first three quarters of this century, the nation’s incarceration rate remained relatively stable, at about 110 prison inmates for every 100,000 people.

“The rate is now 445 per 100,000: Among adult men, it is 1,100 per 100,000.  During the past two decades, roughly a thousand new prisons and jails have been built in the US.  Nevertheless, America’s prisons are more overcrowded now than when —— spree began.”

In 3/1999 The Economist claimed the rate was 668.  This is 5-10 times the rates in Western Europe, 6 times that of Canada, and 20 times that in Japan.

“Since 1991, the rate of violent crime has fallen by about 20 percent, while the number of people in prison or jail has risen by 50 percent.”  Most of the new crowd are druggies, yet resources devoted to drug treatment have been drastically cut back.

This means the elites don’t want to help these poor souls.  Whatever the strategy, it is working.

Some 400,000 drug users are now in prison.  This number exceeds that for people imprisoned for all crimes in England, France, Germany, and Japan combined.

The rate of imprisonment among the population has quadrupled during the past 30 years.  There are now 700 convicts for every 100,000 people.  This is five times the rate in Britain.

That country is experimenting with getting offenders together with their victims.  Panels of victims and local citizens then decide how the offender should be punished.

Note the absence of interference by government.  Early results are good.  The technique seems to work better than prison at getting offenders to go straight in the future.

Washington apparently figures that local judges and parole boards are being too soft on druggies.  This policy not only doesn’t work, the elites don’t care as they continue to slash the money going to rehab.  Proof?  Witness:

“America’s fiercest imprisoner, Texas, which locks up more than 1,000 people for every 100,000 citizens, has far worse crime statistics than NY state, ——-.  And when it comes to drugs and violent crime, the two plagues hard sentencing was supposed to cure, it has failed dramatically.  Drug-taking is as widespread as ever, and America’s murder rare is still nearly four times higher than the European Union’s.”

We quote Rose Wilder Lane, who wrote in 1942: “Stupid men believe that passing a law making an activity illegal will stop that activity.”  In PG20 we will speculate what life would be like if citizens themselves made law.

In January 2010 we noticed that Canadian citizens were debating the idea of abolishing the senate.  If citizens made law there would be no need for a corrupt congress and democracy would have been purified (See PGs 12 and 21.).

As for rehab, the elites know that young, venturesome citizens are those who chafe most under an oppressive government.  Without rehab the activists among these people will not be able to organize resistance to the regime, as they will be in and out of prison all their lives.

The Economist remarked, “But it seems odd that a country built on giving people a second chance —– should have turned against this principle so savagely when it comes to convicts.”

Once this oppression attains a critical mass, off come the gloves.  At that point the elites will know they have us, so no need for any further deception.

Politicians are smart.  Otherwise they could not fool us so regularly.  They build prisons that stimulate economic activity in depressed rural areas.  Then, clever blokes, they tell us they are keeping criminals off city streets while at the same time helping to put money in the pockets of rural folks.

For some reason they forget to mention that it’s our money going to pay those people.  They also forget to mention that for long-term economic development private money must be invested.  This is because private money invested creates new wealth, instead of simply redistributing existing wealth.

Forgetful fools, they forgot still another thing.  If the bulk of those souls rotting in prisons were out in the world working and paying taxes they would be contributing to economic development instead of being a drag on it.

Today our society seems to be heading toward a police state.  However, if we think well of the principles and ideas in these pocket gofers we will develop a nonviolent way of avoiding this grim destiny.

Friedrich Hayek was a great believer in individual freedoms.  He died in 1992, having lived to see socialism discredited and his views enjoying wide support.  We quote him briefly here:

“The will of man is not shattered but softened, bent and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting.  Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrial animals, of which government is the shepherd ——.”

Note the inference: gradual, sneaky dominance by Big Government over the individual taxpaying citizen.

What is even more alarming is that police departments, operating at the grassroots, cannot see and appreciate the dangers in this hidden agenda.  Most of them still believe in getting tough with lawbreakers, and the current and temporary downward trend in crime statistics causes them to believe that this tactic gets desired results.

The Economist (10/1999): “Over the past two decades the number of Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams has grown steadily.  ——–.  According to surveys —— 90% of police departments in cities with populations of more than 50,000 have SWAT teams, as do 70% of those —— fewer than 50,000.  The growth —– has been especially rapid in the past ten years, ——.”

Peter Kraska, a professor of criminology at Eastern Kentucky University said there has been “a fundamental shift in American policing, away from the traditional civilian ethos to a militaristic mentality.”

Over the past ten years there has been a blizzard of politicians’ rhetoric devoted to convincing us that the get-tough tactic is the best road to follow.  This has been and is a very convenient cover story

“Between 1995 and 1997, the department of defense gave police departments 1.2m pieces of military hardware, including 73 grenade launchers and 112 armored personnel carriers.  Police forces throughout the country have been given M-16 assault rifles.”

They are deploying among us weapons purchased with our money.  They are only for the bad minority, or at least this is what the elite class tells us.

But we suspect that the vicious cycle is turning out more and more bad ones.  The conspiracy will be complete when nearly all of us become lawbreakers due to far too many laws.

“In a recent report for the Cato Institute, ——- Diane Weber points out that the growth of paramilitary police units and collaboration with the department of defense has blown a huge hole in a barrier between the armed forces and domestic law enforcement which, contrary to the practice in many other countries, has always been cherished in America.”

Winston Churchill spoke to this trend from his vast experience in war and politics: “Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”

Friends of liberty, should we be thinking about this and its implications?  Back in about 1788 Alexander Hamilton thought about it.  His lengthy quote appears in PG18.

Politicians presumably engaged in a “struggle to preserve our democracy” sound the clarion call throughout the land.  The reality is these profound pronouncements are intended to divert our attention from the fact that Washington has hijacked our democracy.

SNEAKY, huh?  Most of us don’t fully realize this; stay tuned.

 The facade is slipping.  A bit of butt is showing beneath the shroud of secrecy, thru the smoke and mirrors.  There is forming in us citizens a mood to kick it.

“We’re your bosses.  Clean out your desks and pack up.  YOU’RE FIRED!”  We must drain the swamp soon, before we are up to our arses in alligators.

We believe that truth is powerful.  It can bury the insincere, the thieves, and the immorals.

However, we believe that truth lies as much in the perceptions of people as it does in the objective realm.  Therefore truth is not enough; the people in sufficient numbers must know it, appreciate it, and act together on it.

A tiny minority of us are acting, as The Economist reported (2/2010).  The Tea Party movement is not yet a political party.  It sprang from the grassroots.

“Now it is by some accounts the most potent force in American politics.  —————–.  ——- highly decentralized and composed of many people who have not participated in politics before.”

These facts are significant because Washington is a badly centralized act that discourages public participation while the rhetoric emphasizes the opposite.

The Tea Party Nation is one of several groups in the movement.  These groups don’t want to coalesce into a third party because career politicians in Washington have installed a mountain of rules to squelch any attempt by a third party to even enter — much less win – an election.

“They want to ‘take back’ an America which they say has been going wrong for generations as successive administrations have bloated the federal government and trampled on the Constitution and the rights of states and individuals.”  We think this is right on target.

Tea Party citizens have produced a “Contract From America” that they would like all candidates for the 11/2010 election to sign.  A very unusual 63 elected house members were freshmen.

Fifty-five of them signed.  They and others want to repeal the new health law, add a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution and write a new tax code.

Part of this contract demands that any law passed by congress include the precise clause in the Constitution that gives congress the necessary power to do this.  The Constitution specifies that this is the supreme court’s job, but today’s court cannot be trusted to do its job.  Recently we have heard nothing about this movement.  We pray for it.

Thinking about the Tea Party brings to mind a third party that has been entering candidates for years.  It is called the Libertarian Party.  Its record in elections is dismal, due in large part to the two major parties seeing that a cooperative news media continue to ignore it. 

We continue to keep the faith, voting for Libertarian candidates since 1980.  Today the candidate is Jo Jorgensen.  It is hard to get reliable information, as we explained above. A check into the party’s web site may help.

The Economist (9/25/2010) warned against clinging too closely to a document that is over 200 years old when arguing today’s far more complex issues.  The writer does have a point, but we think readers are misled.

Human nature did not change during the past 200+ years.  The Constitution’s insistence on limited government is even more important now than it was then, because our recent ancestors and we have not been keeping government under our thumbs as the Founders assumed we would.

The Founders argued ferociously.  But what they did was a part of the democratic process and would take place among citizens today if we had democracy.

Today’s grubby power struggles in the congress are just that: personal power seeking and holding, and destroying the next guy/gal.  Dirty money is at the root of all this grubbing; it did not exist in 1787.

There were gentlemen back then, arguing the issues.  Today we have thieves.  This piece says nothing about the 9th and 10th amendments, which nail home the truth that the Constitution BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE.  We do the arguing and give the orders; not politicians.

“—— using Facebook and Twitter to spread the word, raise money and get out the vote —-.”  We need to raise two red flags here.

The first is that getting out the vote in the fall will accomplish little, simply because Big Government has been rigging elections for years.  Citizens are only the audience while political party big wigs call the shots.  Therefore the election process must be cleaned up.

The second is lack of knowledge of democracy among us due to design by government (PG10).  We can’t vote intelligently until we understand this supremely important idea.  This gofer and PG16 provide a citizen with useful insights.

Arthur Schopenauer said (paraphrased): “All truth passes through three phases.  At first it is disbelieved.  Second, it is violently opposed.  Third, it is accepted as having been true all along.”

The pocket gofers and are devoted to the discovery of truth.  At the present it seems like citizens are stuck in the disbelief stage.  We have work to do.

As we pause to reflect on this, we realize that Mr. Schopenauer has provided an insight for our project.  That is, first we must have awareness of what Washington is doing to us.  Many of us will not believe it has got so rotten.  Furthermore it is guaranteed that Washington insiders will oppose this truth with everything they have (and they have a lot of our resources taken from us by force).

All this means we must act together to bring the project into the last phase: acceptance.  But we are not finished even with this.  Finally, we must put truth into constructive action so our children and grandchildren may have an opportunity for good lives.  Therefore in the last analysis the entire movement is for the young ones whom career politicians have mistreated for decades.

Friends of liberty, herein lies the full bulk of the challenge that awaits our combined and dedicated efforts.  We anticipate an immeasurable quantity of pocket gofers before the last looter flees Washington with a bunch of us barking at his heels.

If we citizens continue to allow big government and marketeers to determine our morals for us we will continue to get precisely what we are asking for.  Many of us don’t like to hear this, but truth demands that we confront it: it’s on us.

 We have in our gut great faith in the collective wisdom of us citizens.  We are

 convinced that this wisdom, given the opportunity for discussions and debate, can identify truth.

We are further convinced that this wisdom will be supported by millions of us, and that it can prevail against the conventional wisdom that was hatched by the elite minority.  Finally, we are convinced that this can be done without violence.

The Grand Deception is not democracy.  The towering challenge for us is to get the word out: the elites in Washington are bamboozling us!!

In her book Dependent on DC, Twight spoke to the young people in our nation: “Among those who have known nothing other than an America whose central government wields virtually unlimited discretionary power over the economy, what will impel them to recreate an America in which such unfettered federal power is deemed wrong, unconstitutional, a violation of individual property rights, an erosion of federalism, an encroachment on freedom?”

This is a tough question.  Publius II is hard at work recruiting concerned citizens who will discuss and debate this issue, resolve it, and act.

Pemberton: “More than any other institute of governments, the Constitution has guided the virtue of man, discouraged his baseness, and given full release to the productive capacity of his talents and energies.  When you have restored these three functions to your government, you will have set the stage for the fulfillment of the manifest destiny of the nation.”

Democracy is difficult to establish and extremely difficult to sustain.  That is why we see so little of it in the world today.  See PG20.

We got a representative democracy started only after a revolutionary war cleared away all the flotsam and jetsam of the old regime, after which even then it was difficult and involved much soul-searching.  Now we have lost it, thus illustrating the extreme difficulty.

We want to and we must, so we’ll have a go:

• Majority rule; minority rights;
• As close to full citizen participation in government as possible;
• Power resting in ideas and policies (PG13);
• Small government (PG15);
• Property rights and sanctity of contract;
• Universal suffrage: every adult citizen urged to vote;
• Equality of opportunity but not of result;
• Equality before the law (justice); Rule of Law;
• Individual rights and not group rights;
• Basic human rights and accompanying responsibilities;
• Freedom of choice as long as no injury to others;
• Honesty, integrity, trust (PG7);
• Freedom of speech, press, religion and peaceful assembly;
• No secrets except the bedroom and the voting booth (PG5);
• Bottom-up initiatives sincerely listened to and acted upon (PG 4);
• Free, open, fair, and frequent elections;
• Public-spirited citizens eager to serve briefly as elected officials (PG 3);
• Open budgeting processes and accrual accounting;
• Everyone in government held accountable to citizens by citizens;
• A government of the people, by the people and for the people (Lincoln).

The 10th amendment to the Constitution states that the central government should assume those tasks that are left over after local and state governments have assumed their citizen-determined responsibilities.  The notion of small government will keep these to a minimum.

Because the central government is the most remote from citizens, we trust it least.  Therefore maybe around 75 percent of the political action in a country with good government is local, about 20-plus percent is at state level, and the remainder is in the capital city.

Well, friends of liberty, so much for deception and fantasy.  How about a healthy dose of truth and reality?  Our backs are bent under the load of the former; we deserve a break in the interest of our health.

So we brewed up a mug.  We like the taste.

NOT AN AFTERTHOUGHT

“When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

“Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of Government.  The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.  To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

(———-)

“In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.  A Prince, whose character is masked by every act, which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

“Nor have We been wanting in our attentions to our British brethren.  We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature, to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.  We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here.  We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.

“They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.  We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

“WE THEREFORE, THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in general Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as the Free and Independent States, they have full power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all the other Acts and Things which INDEPENDENT STATES may of right do.  And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor.”

DAMN!! We are ready to swear that the ghost of King George III has migrated across the Atlantic Ocean and taken up residence in Washington.  We would like a word with the bureaucrat who issued him a green card.

—– PUBLIUS II

TITLES OF OTHER POCKET GOFERS WHICH WE CAN DIG INTO,

DISCUSS, CRITICIZE, AND ACT ON:

PG 1 – ON HEALTH AND FITNESS IN THE USA

PG 2 – ON VOLUNTEERISM

PG 3 – ON THE CAREER POLITICIAN IN A DEMOCRACY

PG 4 – ON THE BOTTOM-UP APPROACH TO GETTING THINGS DONE

PG 5 – ON THE COMING OPEN SOCIETY

PG 6 – ON MAKING A CONTRIBUTION

PG 7 – ON CORRUPTION AND ACCOUNTABILITY

PG 8 – ON GOVERNMENT REGULATION OF BUSINESS AND THE PHANTOM

PG 9 – IT’S ALL IN THE FAMILY

PG 10 – ON EDUCATION IN THE USA

PG 11 – ON THE US AS A WORLD CITIZEN

PG 12 – ON THE UN AND POTENTIAL CONFLICTS

PG 13 – ON PERSONAL POWER AND IDEAS

PG 14 – ON RESPECT FOR TAXPAYERS’ MONEY

PG 15 – ON BIG, SMALL, AND GOOD GOVERNMENT

PG 16 – ON DEMOCRACY AND OUR CENTRAL GOVERNMENT

PG 17 – ON LEADERSHIP IN A DEMOCRACY

PG 18 – ON WAR, WEAPONS, AND PEACE

PG 20 – ON LIFE IN A DEMOCRATIC COMMUNITY

PG 21 – PRELIMINARY DRAFT OF A CONSTITUTION