What’s Wrong With This Picture, America?

I celebrated my 65^th birthday a few weeks ago.  For several weeks before that day, I spent literally hours considering the meaning of the event.  My contemplation was occasioned by receiving my Medicare card in late March (Medicare starts the first day of the month you turn sixty-five).  I was very happy to get that card, along with the notice that the Medicare system would be deducting $127 each month from my Social Security check.  I started drawing my Social Security at the age of 62, the earliest age at which one may take their monthly benefit.  This was because I had, three months earlier, been forced to claim unemployment as a result of losing my last job, as a Title Officer with the National Commercial Division of a major title insurance company, assisting companies in doing real estate transactions around the nation, a job for which I was eminently well suited, and which I performed flawlessly.  Sadly, although I am one of the foremost experts in my chosen field of endeavor in the entire country, I was unable to find any kind of permanent employment after being laid off, and decided that I would stop drawing unemployment compensation after three months.  Although my monthly benefit would have been greater had I waited to turn 65, now, about two years following the near economic collapse, my decision looks very good, indeed, since that employment market is now even worse than when I made my decision, and promises to stay that way from some months and perhaps many years to come. 

As a part of my birthday contemplation, I thought of my family, of course.  My children are adults, each with children of their own.  I have two younger brothers who are at the peak of their professional careers, and many other loved family members in various stages of their lives.  Most, if not all, have expressed chagrin about what the country is becoming.  So, all things considered, I decided to write a regarding my birthday and send it to my family and friends.

Needless to say, I am an early Baby Boomer, having been born in 1946.  I grew up in Baltimore and its environs.  My family had only one car until I was about 12; we got our first television in 1951, a small tube, black and white set which was one of three in our neighborhood; my mother didn’t work, but focused on running the home, taking care of our family, and being a great mother.  We had one phone, a black one with a dial (push buttons wouldn’t even become available for a couple of decades).  Gasoline was about 14 cents a gallon, a loaf of bread cost about 20 cents.  We went out for dinner about once a year, as a family (no hardship, since Mom was a great cook).  When clothes became worn or frayed, they were repaired and handed down to the next in line.  Mom made our Halloween costumes, and they were great (to be fair, though, they should have been, since she was a professional artist).  We were happy.  We were solidly middle class.  We had everything we needed.  The streets were so safe in our neighborhood; we didn’t even need to lock our doors.  We not only knew all of our neighbors, but we were a real neighborhood, where people cared about each other and all adults saw that a part of their responsibility was to see to the safety of all neighborhood children and each other.

That was sixty years ago.  The world has changed.  America has changed.  We Americans expect to have nice cars (with lots of gizmos, GPS, etc.), cell phones (with lots of clever apps, of course), HD TVs, internet access, 500 cable channels, and endless other trappings of our spoiled American lives.  Are we wrong?  The answer is no, but.  But, like spoiled children, most of us tend to believe that we, as Americans, being such exceptional people, deserve such things; we believe it’s our birthright.  One of the problems with creating such social expectations is that once people think that way, the American Dream (the fulfilling of all of those expectations) becomes a right, not a blessing, not something we must work to have, but something we deserve, simply for being born American.  Further, we create the certainty that some, or even many, will become highly dissatisfied with their lives when that Dream doesn’t magically materialize.  How has our America become such a land of unrealized, and maybe even unrealizable, dreams?  Oh, I do understand that there are still many who are can and may experience those dreams, but those numbers are rapidly dwindling, and the numbers of those who are not likely to do so are rapidly increasing.

Who are those people who are losing their dreams?  In the last three years, more than five million of us have lost a major part of their dream called a home, as foreclosures moved them into the street, shelters, relatives’ homes, cheap apartments, etc.  Many of those (dream) homes were lost because these people lost their jobs, or had some catastrophic medical issue and no health insurance, or for some other of life’s vicissitudes intervened to destroy their financial security, or were simply sold an absurd adjustable loan by a loan officer or bank just looking for a quick buck.  Not since the Great Depression have so many been brutally and cruelly humbled by a national financial crisis.  As I write, the BLS tells us that there are 9% of us unemployed.  If we look at an adult employable labor force of about 180 million, this means that more than 16 million are officially not earning anything but a meager unemployment check, at best.  That number is not real.  The real number of people who are essentially unemployed is about double that, if we include the long term unemployed and underemployed.  As of this past February, there were about 45 million Americans using food stamps, and children comprise about 2/3rds of that number.  In addition, many families also utilize food banks and other government and non-government programs in order just to eat.  Many of those who have borrowed mightily to sponsor their college educations can’t find jobs (the latest numbers indicate that about 85% of new 2011 graduates will be forced to move back home).  About 1.6 million new workers enter the labor force each year.  In the last 6 months, the economy has generated about 230,000 new jobs per month.  At that rate, it will take about 28 years to achieve what our government tells us is “full” employment (about 4.5% unemployment, statistically, is considered “full”).

Meanwhile, we have a Congress that is agonizing over our national debt.  Sadly, this agony is totally misplaced.  We “own” the world’s “reserve currency”, which means that we are completely unlike the nations of Greece and Spain.  Our national debt doesn’t hurt us, unless we try to deal with it.  The debate is a pure political red herring; a distraction intended to focus us in an area of no importance.  As the nation with the world’s reserve currency, we can print as much money as we need to without causing inflation.  The Federal Reserve (FED) has printed about seven trillion over the past three years.  Most of it went into alleviating the effects of the deteriorating loan portfolios residing the major banks who caused the debacle of 2008 by creating massive numbers of completely irresponsibly sold mortgages.  They not only failed to properly underwrite these, but then securitized them by creating bond issues which were converted to tradable securities and hedged with billions in credit default swaps.  All of this failed, and after TARP was put into effect and about $350 billion spent to overcome the initial market problem, the FED bought more than four trillion dollars worth of rotting credit paper from the banks.  Even before that, since the Iran and Afghan wars were not budgeted by President Bush, the FED printed money to pay for these.  Not only are we not like Spain or Greece, but we are not like a household.  We don’t need to balance our budget.  We can’t go broke.  We can’t default.  It is not possible.  We can create as much money as we need to fuel a recovery.  So long as the money the FED prints is used to buy things of real value, there will be no inflation.  So, if we need stimulus, the FED could fund a bank for energy research and development, a bank for infrastructure upgrade, a bank specifically for education, fund the rehiring of teachers, fund all kinds of useful research.  Because each one of these things creates taxable value and additional taxation, the money would flow all through the economy.  People could continue to own and buy homes, send children to college, retire on time, etc.  So, don’t listen to the blather about the deficit and debt.  It is intended to create an atmosphere that allows all kinds of money to flow up the “food chain” to the top, as has been happening for years, while the rich get richer and you and I get closer to poverty and despair.

Well, it actually started with Bill Clinton’s administration, when the Congress passed Gramm-Leach-Bliley, giving the banks the right to become much more than banks.  This was a breach of the firewall between banking and other activities, such as investment banking which had been prudently put in place in the mid-1930’s by the passage of the Glass-Steagall Act restricting banking powers, after the then out-of-control banks had destroyed the economy in the late 1920’s.  Destroying this firewall especially worked to the benefit of the largest Federal banks, who, as members of the Federal Reserve System, gained the right to buy and sell stocks, issue bonds, become investment bankers, insurance companies, or anything else they wanted to do.  These massive banks can borrow endlessly from the Federal Reserve, at essentially the world’s lowest interest rates, play with their books, play in the markets, and generally control almost all financial matters under one roof, and, should they make some serious mistakes, we will bail them out, contrary to what we have been recently told following the latest round of financial reform.

Then the Bush administration came into office, and, about a year and nine months later, we lost the World Trade Center, Osama Bin Laden took center stage, and the Bush administration somehow convinced us that not only was Saddam Hussein acting to assist Bin Laden (not proven or even likely), but also had Weapons of Mass Destruction (proven to be false) which could threaten the very being of this country.  We started the War on Terror, sending troops to Afghanistan to root out Bin Laden, and started the second Gulf War to quash the Hussein regime’s WPM threat.  None of the associated costs (mega billions) of these military actions went “on the books” as we pursued this absurd strategy – as we know now, no WPM’s were ever found.  Then the Bush Administration pushed for a tax reduction, and passed an unfunded prescription drug plan to supplement the Medicare program.  They also sponsored a major expansion of our housing policy which resulted in massive growth of private housing financed under the auspices of the largest banks (selling securitized mortgage debt, a lot of which is now rotting on their books or the books of the FED, FNMA and Freddie) and substantially expanded the roles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Oddly enough, though the resulting major increases in housing construction fueled substantial new employment in those sectors, the actual growth of overall employment during the Bush Presidency was incredibly anemic.  That’s because, along with other factors, many jobs held in manufacturing and other employment areas were being outsourced offshore, as American companies found it more profitable to ship their jobs elsewhere in the world where workers were paid a mere fraction of what American workers cost them.

What happened?  Ever since Eisenhower warned us of the dangers of the power of the Military-Industrial Complex, as he left office in late 1959, we have been seeing his prophecy bear fruit.  In 1963, we decided, under then President Kennedy, to take over the defense of South Vietnam, previously under the control of France, against a perceived Communist threat from North Vietnam.  Looking back, it is clear to see that this was the first of many military forays which would be “encouraged” by the MIC.  I would defy anyone to come up with an example of the clear necessity of the use of our military in the years subsequent to Eisenhower’s departure and Kennedy’s assassination.  We even know that the Soviet Union’s vaunted military strength during the Cold War years was greatly exaggerated by the CIA and others to strengthen arguments for the vast increase in our nuclear and conventional weaponry and general military strength.  Even now, when we are supposed to be experiencing a “peace dividend” resulting from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 1991 collapse of Soviet Russia, that hasn’t materialized.  We are still spending hundreds of billions of dollars on Cold War style weapons programs, like Reagan’s Star Wars Space Missile Defense Program, which, in more than 25 years and after the expenditure of tens of billions, hasn’t produced any effective defensive deterrence which can be deployed in orbit.  Sadly, George Shultz recently disclosed that, during the Nuclear Disarmament Conference with the USSR which took place in October of 1986, in Reykjavik, Iceland, Russia actually agreed to full, verified nuclear disarmament, if Reagan would agree to scrap SDI.  Reagan refused – end of story. 

We’ve now spent 10 years in Afghanistan, and, lo and behold, where has Bin Laden been residing for the past five years?  Not in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan, where we spend billions in military and civilian aid to prop up a country with nuclear weapons and half of whose leadership can’t decide whether they like us or not, while their arch enemy India is actually a far more valuable friend, if Pakistan is one at all.  Since end of the Second Iraq War, how have things gone, that is after our “victory” which cost us many thousands of lives, nearly a trillion dollars, and left an unstable democracy in a tribal state which continues to be plagued by massive sectarian violence?  I’d say that Iraq might redefine the whole concept of “Pyrrhic Victory”, that is, if it weren’t for Vietnam.  And, finally, before moving on, allow me to mention a couple of other “national security” details.  How many of you are aware that the US has more than 800 military installations in foreign countries?  Just think how you might feel if another country wanted to locate one of their bases on our soil.  You just might not be very thrilled with the idea.  In fact, many of those who live close to US bases located in America are not entirely sanguine regarding the location of those bases, unless they profit from the fact of their proximity.  Or, think about the fact that we spend more than twice the amount of money as the rest of the world combined on our military.  Is there any surprise at the fact that we are counted on by our allies to be the world’s police.  Then consider that one fighter jet costs more than tens of millions dollars (the new F-22 costs $70 million per plane by the latest calculations) and think about what that those millions or even billions could do in infrastructure, education, basic research, border security, employment, etc.

Also consider the fact that this country is not ranked in the top ten among the world’s nations in life expectancy (49^th last year according to our own CIA) and have a higher infant mortality rate than 45 other nations, all in spite of the fact that we have many of the best doctors, most successful pharmaceutical companies, largest and best hospitals, etc.  We are not ranked in the top ten educationally.  Our high school graduation rates are pathetic and dropping (nearly 35% don’t graduate!!).  We have a far higher percentage of our population housed in our prison system than any other country in the world (now more than 2 million inmates), and far more illegal alien residents than anywhere else.  Our crime rates are higher than almost anywhere else.  Illegal drug use is higher than anywhere else.  Yes, my fellow citizens, we are a truly exceptional country!!!

Now, let’s visit a little world history, but before we do, I want to make a thesis statement:  America is the largest and most successful imperial power in the history of the world.  Sadly, though, the follow up is that no great empire has successfully withstood the test of time.  We are also not going to be successful or exceptional in that regard.  Let’s look a bit at some examples in the historical records.  The first major empire outside of China was Babylon.  That city-state behemoth lasted around 1800 years (America, from Columbus to the present is barely 500 and our elite nation status perhaps 150 years at best).  It was the major city in ancient Persia, and the rule was not consistent, but the power emanating from it was.  It is hard to find even traces of it today, though most of the major structures were built with stone.  Or there was ancient Greece, which gave us Alexander the Great, Socrates and Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, and countless other historic notables and is now mostly famous for its architectural ruins.  It and Egypt were the chief competitors with Rome during the last millennium BC and the first five centuries AD.  Where are they now?  We know them now for many things, but the great empires that they were vanished centuries ago after being dominant “world” cultures and powers.  How about the Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan and his scions?  This is now 1000 years behind us.  What about the Roman Empire?  Rome controlled about 90% of the civilized world at one time, running from Scotland south and east all the way to Arabia.  It had a total lock on commerce, and the only country that could challenge Rome’s authority or dominance was the Egypt of the Pharaohs, which, by the way, is also gone, but for the Pyramids.  After the fall of Rome, the greatest centralized power for the next 700 years was the Roman Catholic Church, which essentially sponsored all European monarchs from the early middle ages until their power started to erode during the Reformation.  During that time and later times, three European powers had massive empires, France, England and Spain.  Notice that, though these countries continue to exist, their empires are gone.  Each of these three lost their empires for different reasons, but, the point is that none could maintain them.  I think that very few Americans under the age of thirty today are even aware that, until this century, Great Britain counted India, Australia and South Africa, as well as a multitude of smaller territories, as parts of its empire, and now only Canada, very marginally, remains. 

But, wait, why do I claim that America is “imperial?”  Simple, it is obvious that we are, as a nation, control freaks.  When I hear the words “national security interest” I shiver.  When those words are used, they are intended to make us afraid that, somehow, our national security is under threat.  But, think about it.  In the past 100 years we have been attacked, with any success at all, on only four occasions:  during WWII, at Pearl Harbor, and in the Philippines; and once in Alaska over half a century ago, very briefly.  And, if you are willing to count it as an attack (I see it as simple terrorism, and unrelated to any other specific nation), the World Trade Center in 2001.  Three of these were “sneak” attacks.  In each case we had intelligence that could have prevented them and didn’t act on that intelligence in time to stop the threats.  We have bases in more than 40 countries.  We have an empire.  Whatever we don’t control militarily, we try to control economically.  We have an empire.

Why does this matter?  It matters because we are not the humble, “Christian” nation that many, if not most, proclaim us to be.  Americans have been led to believe in our nation’s inchoate superiority.  Simply being The United States of America does not make us superior to anyone, a priori.  A truly superior nation must prove its superiority.  We are not superior, but, at this moment we are dominant, and have serious competition even in that.  Global dominance should mean that we have the greatest responsibility, not just to our own citizens, but to the world in general.  We love to claim the moral “high ground” amongst nations, but only when it suits us.  The sad fact is that we are, in our dominance, some of the world’s poorest actors and greatest abusers among all nations.  I would challenge anyone to present a valid argument, on purely rational bases that the USA is a truly superior nation, especially on a moral basis.  As Clint Eastwood once famously uttered, “go ahead, make my day” by making a case for our superiority, other than militarily. Next you’ll say that I don’t love this country.  Quite to the contrary, I passionately love this country, always have and always will.  But, I am greatly saddened to see what pariahs that this nation has become, as a world force, life force, and home to all those who love it.

What I next want to do is to paint a picture of how we came to be attacked on September 11, 2001.  My guess would be that about 98% of our citizens still believe that the attack was heinous and unprovoked.  If, in fact, that attack was purely the successful plot of a terror network with its base in the mountains of Afghanistan, and directed by a Muslim jihadist with a long beard and a radical following who carefully and systematically, and successfully, plotted and carried out an attack on the Twin Towers in Manhattan, killing about 3000 of our citizens, then there must be major flaws with our security, and we know now from recent information, that the NSA and others simply didn’t do their job.  However, since that date, many of the details of this attack have come under serious scrutiny, and, regardless of many extensive investigations, in the ten years after the attack, much is yet to be successfully and adequately answered.  There remain serious doubts about the validity of the results of the official investigation.  Oddly enough, this episode is quite similar to the Kennedy assassination which occurred nearly 38 years earlier, and the government’s version of the reality is still in question today.  I am not saying either investigation has been proven wrong.  Regarding the World Trade Center, however, we do know that our intelligence apparatus did not do its job at the time, and, in fact, failed those three thousand people by not properly following important information which had been gathered prior to the date of the tragic attack that was later acknowledged could have prevented it.

Why, if Bin Laden did this treachery, was he motivated to lead such an action?  There are many seeds of jihad which have been firmly planted by America and many of its allies over the centuries.  I will only consider the modern era, beginning with the founding of Israel in 1948, and our subsequent and steadfast support of the Jewish population, consistently and steadfastly and to the detriment of the Arab populations of that region, and specifically within what was, prior to Israel being recognized by the UN in 1949 as a nation, Palestine, a predominantly Arab nation.  Ever since it was founded, Israel has had to work hard to maintain the integrity of itself and its boundaries.  The US has always taken Israeli’s side and perhaps that is the greatest reason why no final accord has yet been reached regarding the disposition of the Palestinian populace despite decades of effort by most American presidents and their administrations.  Of course, we have never been even-handed in our treatment of this situation.

The next greatest reason is because of our consistent abusive policies regarding the entire region.  We were heavily involved in support of the Shah in Iran, a dictatorial autocrat whose abusiveness towards his population was very similar to that of Syrian President Assad and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya.  The Iranian Shah brutally oppressed his population, and that is why the Ayatollah Khomeini was successful in his revolution which resulted in the Shah’s departure, and why so many Iranians at that time engaged in anti-American protests.  Next, when Russia invaded Afghanistan, we armed and supported the Taliban in its success over the Russian invasion, but, immediately thereafter simply abandoned the nation.  It became clear that our friendship in providing support was only one of convenience, and we did nothing to assist them in recovering from the destructive results of the Russian invasion, however, of course, as with Iraq, we armed the very Taliban that we are fighting now.  Next, when Iran and Iraq became engaged in their war, in 1980, and because of the antipathetic relationship caused by the ascent of the Ayatollah, we decided to provide major military assistance to Saddam Hussein to enable him to beat back the Iranis.  Is the picture beginning to become a bit clearer?  So, we now begin to see the fact that America is only an ally of convenience, and, if its partner doesn’t obey what it wants, it either abandons, or attacks that former ally/friend.  Even now, we are engaged in nation building in Afghanistan, assisting a corrupt, bogusly elected leader and spending over a million dollars a day to do it, while our troops die, Afghanistan continues to be the world’s largest heroin producer, is vastly corrupt and tribal, and is home to proven natural resources worth trillions of dollars.  Even now, after declaring victory in Iraq, and after their formation of a democratic government, we choose to leave behind 50,000 troops, build major bases there, and major sectarian/tribal violence continues to plague that country.  What are our plans for the rest of the Arab world?  They are wondering where our imperialism will lead us next.  So am I.

Now, back to America, and its multiple oligarchies.   What is an oligarchy?  It is a group of wealthy companies and/or individuals who assert control over markets by exerting political influence.  America is rife with oligarchs.

First let us consider the energy oligarchy.  The price of oil is going up and will continue to go up, as the world’s reserves go down.  That’s simple economics, simple supply and demand.  When a necessary commodity is in short supply, there’s more money competing for less of it, and a price rise is inevitable.  But then, it is made far worse by the fact that our petroleum companies are given massive tax subsidies, get special treatment when they screw up (BP?), and are making greater profits than ever.  The same goes for most other areas of energy, and few, if any of these massively profitable enterprises are engaged in providing new solutions to our energy costs and production.  They are rich, fat, lazy, and abusive.  Get the picture?  This is what oligarchy is about.

How about food?   Except for very stringent restrictions on food imports, generally speaking (except, of course as to American companies producing food elsewhere and bringing it here), food is largely controlled by our agricultural conglomerates.  If you want to understand this, start reading packaging at the grocery stores.  You will note the amazing dominance of companies like Proctor and Gamble, Kraft, Nabisco, Coke and Pepsi, Hunts, Dole, and so many other giant corporations.  These megaliths dominate agricultural products, distribution, manufacture and packaging, and virtually every other area.  They all receive substantial hidden tax benefits and subsidies from their friends in Congress.  These companies are the reason why we are producing corn ethanol as a gasoline additive (actually mandated in many states), which is unbelievably inefficient, and results in the higher prices of all products utilizing corn and its various byproducts, a truly long list, in case you hadn’t noticed.  Large agricultural conglomerates are completely dominant oligarchs, on your grocery store shelves, and on Capitol Hill.

The media in this country is controlled by very few people.  If you closely examine who owns TV and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, movie production companies, etc., it is a very small group, many with interlocking boards of directors.  These companies control the “free” speech in this country because they control the advertising dollars which keep their holdings profitable.  In order to control the advertising dollars, they must not provide news coverage which threatens the interests which pay for them to exist, their advertisers.  This is why, if you have a large cable service, it is nearly impossible to get the complete, unvarnished truth about anything.  Sure, there’s public television, with wonderful shows like Nova, Frontline, and lots of other great specials.  How many of us even tune in.  How many are willing to watch C-Span to find out what is being said.  Most of us watch the four major news outlets (NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX, as well as CNN and MSNBC).  Check out who owns them.  Without going into great detail, suffice it to say that CNN also controls the Weather Channel, and General Electric owns NBC, which owns CNBC, MSNBC, and others, including the Golf Channel.  If you really want to get nauseous, just check the chart at this link:  http://www.freepress.net/ownership/chart/main

Now we move to what is probably the second most powerful oligarchy in America.  That is the health care industry.  It is comprised of truly massive and powerful companies including huge multinational pharmaceutical manufacturers, which largely control the FDA and which manufacture, distribute and sell drugs, both prescription and over-the-counter.  There are about 19 very large drug manufacturers, worldwide, and of those, 11 are companies based in the US.  In 2006 alone, these companies averaged more than $5.5 billion in profits.  Once again, for further reading I recommend:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry.  Then we have the care providers, whether clinics, hospitals, doctor groups or others.  Of these, aside from illegalities, the real prime oligarchs are the health networks which control, among them, many major hospitals and massive clinics.  For further reading  I recommend, once again, the Wikipedia article at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_systems, it is entirely fascinating to see how we compare to other countries, and how other nations go about providing care for their populations.  In signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in the spring of last year, our political leadership expressed wholehearted, unflinching support for the health care oligarchy.  It included no public option, no real cost control mechanism, no real rein on health insurance premiums (while establishing a mandate for all people to have coverage), or any other means for controlling the spiraling costs of health care.  As of 2006, we spend 16.2% of GDP on health care, and that percentage continues to grow.  What I find amazing is the number of politicians who say that that should be abolished in favor of a different methodology.  Of all the alternatives discussed during the bill’s journey through Congress, the single most rational, and popular one, according to polls, was the suggestion of Medicare for all (essentially the same as the Canadian single payer).  I’m not holding my breath, as the industry coffers are opening to support candidates during the next election cycle.

The last of the major oligarchies is the financial industry, led by the nation’s largest banking conglomerates.  We know that the financial markets are under the control of a fairly small elite of banking behemoths, many of which are located in this country, but whose influence stretches into nearly every country around the globe.  Literally hundreds of books and articles have been written about these massively abusive, controlling enterprises.  The financial collapse of late 2007 can be completely blamed on them.  The Great Depression, occurring about 80 years before, happened primarily because of the fact that the banks at that time had acceded to similar powers that they now have, since the abrogation of Glass-Steagall in favor of Gramm-Leach-Bliley in 1999.  Ask Ben Bernanke, he’s an economist, and an recognized expert on the Great Depression.  I would refer you to:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banking_in_the_United_States which tells the entire, relatively unvarnished, truth about our banking industry, its power and control.  But, surely the easiest thing is just to realize that even after the passage of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in July of last year, the banks are presently making larger profits and handing out more massive bonuses than before the crash.  All of them are larger now than they were, more leveraged, and this is all happening during the lingering of the recession.  This is nearly impossible to believe, and yet it is true.  These massive organizations exert nearly complete control over our governance as it pertains to anything financial.  It is truly and deeply nauseating.  And we are, at present, completely helpless to curtail or even effectively modify it. 

There are other, smaller oligarchies in America, but the ones described above are the major players.  If the governance of a country is under control of the wealthy elite, it is termed a “plutocracy” or “plutarchy” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy).  America is a plutocracy.  The greatest evidence of this, aside from the content of our 15,000 page tax code (about 2% of which applies to those making less than $100,000 a year), is the massive subsidies and other benefits conferred upon industry after industry, shamelessly by our legislators, both state and national.  The wealthy elite in this country don’t pick favorites.  If you look at where the election funding sources for any candidate, it is easy to see that all who are viable candidates receive money from the same sources.  There is a reason why the Citizens United case was decided by the Supremes in the way it was.  Even the Supreme Court, the grand arbiter of American justice and prime interpreter of the US Constitution, is a part of the plutocracy.  Sadly, just today, I read that a judge in Virginia has ruled that corporations may make direct, unlimited political contributions to any candidate, once again claiming that if their contributions are disallowed, it will violate their First Amendment rights to free speech.

My greatest desire in writing this article is to encourage my fellow citizens to look in the mirror and decide what they want the future of this country to be, for themselves, their families, friends, and neighbors.  There are seven billion people on this planet, and only about five percent are Americans.  Do we want to police the world, be there whenever there is a catastrophe, think that we need massive military spending, and many billions in foreign aid?  Or do we want to make a greater effort to restoring this country to a land where we live right, care about each other and what happens within our borders to a far greater extent?  All I ask is that my fellow Americans pay attention and realize that if we all act together, we can make a difference.  Stop listening to hollow campaign promises and political hyperbole.  Read extensively.  Find answers and think about solutions.  If we don’t do what is needed to restore this country to a land of real promise, we are fully to blame if it continues on its present path, as sad and sorry one, which will, in the near future, lead to far greater pain and sadness for us and the ones we love.

 

What to do about American Politics

             There’s an old saying that we all have heard:  “Don’t fix it, if it ain’t broken.”  Well, it’s time to fix American politics, because, with Congress at its lowest approval rating since used car salesmen, actually far worse at about 10%, it is obviously broken, severely.  And, who in the heck are the 10% of those polled who think they’re doing what we ask them to do?  Did anyone want a Congress that can’t find a way to govern effectively?  The fact is that America has descended into a plutocracy (see Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy).  The plutocratic form of government is the controlling form, now a worldwide epidemic in purported democracies, and is truly exemplified in American politics.  The surest sign of this is the Citizens United Supreme Court case wherein the majority of our appointed justices, supposedly exhibiting their vast judicial wisdom, ruled that corporations have the same free speech rights that we all have, as individuals.  Welcome to the age of the Superpac, where the largest corporations and richest individuals can apply their massive coffers of wealth to have their choices supported with endless ads and influence.

What does all of this mean to the average citizen?  It means that those who inhabit the corridors of power in our nation’s capital and in statehouses and legislatures throughout America are no longer beholden to us, the electorate, but to their management team, those who pay to have them elected by manipulation of the vote.  Independents stand no chance; the two major parties are equally corrupted.  Why?  Because what they say they stand for is not what they actually stand for, but rather a line to grab us and persuade us of the lie that they actually care about what happens to us.  I could give endless examples of the results of this situation, but I will simply note a couple of examples:

First, there is the ACA, the health care reform act, now law.  It does do a few things that are worthwhile, but, at the bottom line, it is an expensive solution which still mostly rewards the corporate interests in health care conglomerates, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies more than any citizen.  And, furthermore it doesn’t help about 50 million of the electorate who live without insurance, unless we consider Medicaid adequate health care assistance.  During the massive debates and committee hearings, polls were taken.  A majority of Americans preferred the Medicare for All option (i.e. single payer), and that was also preferred by a majority of doctors and other health professionals, although the AMA didn’t support it (pure politics there).  The proponents of this alternative were barred from even testifying in the congressional hearings, and, in some cases, actually arrested for protesting their exclusion.

The second example is the US Tax Code.  Where do I begin?  First, the actual governing regulation is nearly 16,000 pages of the CFR (Code of Federal Regulations), and then there are about 50,000 pages of administrative determinations and court set precedents which interpret the meaning of the 16,000 page code.  About 90% of the code represents a corruption of the federal income tax.  What do I mean by corruption?  What I mean is that the 90% is filled with benefits for tiny minorities of the electorate.  It is filled with corporate tax breaks, special exemptions for wealthy individuals and tax subsidies which unfairly tilt the playing field in favor of those who have bought the privilege of access to power.  The Republicans are fond of saying that our corporate tax rate is too high, and discourages business.  I say that’s a load of hogwash.  Check out the average effective rate of tax paid by the largest American corporations.  This effective rate is less than half of that stated in the code as the base rate.  Meanwhile, nearly every truly small business in America gets no breaks, except breaks which resemble the individual mortgage interest deduction which every American homeowner gets.  And, although this deduction is nice, the result of it is that most of us own homes which are more than we need, simply because the deduction makes it possible to afford more.  What happened to home values as a result of the bubble burst of 2007-08 and ongoing was exacerbated by this fact.  Without further belaboring the facts regarding the corrupted American Tax Code, I will simply say that in my opinion the ideal reform would be to completely trash it and start over from scratch.  But, as it stands, tax reform, for many reasons (Grover Norquist being only one of them), is not happening, and the chances of it happening are somewhere between slim and none.  Don’t hold your breath.

I believe that nearly every citizen knows that the system is seriously broken.  I have heard many proposals regarding the fixes that could be done, none probably without a Constitutional Amendment (as we cannot rely on the foxes to repair the henhouse).  A law can be changed.  A Constitutional Amendment can’t.

Here I will simply list some ideas of ways in which we could repair our electoral processes and governing processes to make them so that the result would be better governance.

1.      Campaign finance.  Make all campaign finance public finance.  Politicians can raise no money, and must use only public funds.  All candidates would be assured of equal media exposure at the expense of media. 

2.      Electoral College.  Eliminate this anachronism.  The president should be elected by a pure popular vote.  The majority rules.  I have heard the excuses not to eliminate this, but, to me, none of them hold water.  We don’t want or need political elites deciding who we should have a president, or the Supreme Court telling us. 

3.      Term limits.  Every elected official in any job, from President to Dog Catcher may only serve two terms in office, and the longest term may be no more than four years, or only one term of six years. 

4.      Election Districts.  The boundaries of election districts in all states should be determined by an independent board acting to preserve value of the popular vote, not the influence of any political party, such that each district is a simple geographic area determined without regard to the political sentiments of its populace. 

5.      Lobbying.  No one who has ever worked in a governmental position higher than the equivalent of G5 may ever serve in a lobbying capacity, for life. 

6.      Law making.  The rules governing law making, such as filibusters must be eliminated in favor of simple, effective rules that promise clean debates and prompt action or inaction.  This would include a rule prohibiting the inclusion in any bill (proposed law) of any amendment which contains matters not specific to the main theme of the bill (this is the primary reason as to how our tax law has gotten so corrupted). 

7.      Regulation.  Once a bill is enacted by the Congress/legislature, and signed by the President/Governor, the regulatory agency tasked with implementation must draft its corresponding regulation(s) within six months of the law’s enactment.  (The Dodd-Frank law passed to affect financial reform is now about two years old, and regulations are still less than half complete). 

8.      Mandamus.  Any citizen has the right to file a writ of mandamus to force a government official to act or explain which they aren’t taking action.  We now know that many on Wall Street were guilty of fraud and other criminal actions, and yet our Attorney General, Eric Holder, has steadfastly refused to bring charges.  In the 1980’s we had the Savings and Loan scandal, and there were more than a thousand successful Federal prosecutions of the participants in related criminal activities, most involving prison time.  Not one Wall Streeter has been prosecuted to date, remembering that Bernie Madoff was not a part of the criminological bubble building on fraudulently conceived and marketed derivatives.  Even the SEC has pursued only a tiny fraction of the obvious endemic transgressions.

There are still other things that could be done to change the way our governmental elected leadership does its job, but these are the ones that I tend to see as essential in eliminating about 90% of the corruption which is commonplace today.  We can never eliminate all of it, but much could be done and should be done to make vast and much needed improvements.

Until you and I decide to stand up against the tyranny which presently exists, it won’t matter who we vote for, or who serves.  They simply become a part of this massively destructive system that is wasting this country’s greatness and turning it south rapidly.  Think about it, how many of you have voted for someone who you considered to be the lesser of two evils?  Do you remember voting otherwise?

 

The Federal Budget Versus the U. S. Constitution

The major issue with all government spending, on a case-by-case basis is, what is the "return on investment” which seems, perhaps to be the point of this article.  The real question in the case of weather related research, as with all research, do we benefit more economically than we pay (traditional cost:benefit ratio)?  I believe that what James Kwak has offered at The Baseline Scenario (see http://baselinescenario.com/2011/12/16/money/)  is a valid argument that such is true in the case of hurricane related research (assuming ad arguendo, that the methodology is effective AND efficient in terms of expenditures, or is there a more effective and efficient alternative?).  There are lots of areas of governmental expenditure which cannot be argued as being efficient and effective alternatives to other competing possibilities.  I have just finished reading a very scary and amazing book:  Top Secret America, by Dana Priest and William Arkin.  Unlike the obvious argument we may have about the advisability of spending amounts to theoretically save lives and preserve assets potentially risk from hurricanes, which are a statistical fact of life and which have distinct defined costs in both areas, the national security, counter-terrorism budget is completely and utterly out of kilter regarding efficiency and effectiveness pursuant to any possible argument. 

Let's consider the amount of budgeted expenditures for the sixteen agencies tasked with protecting us from terrorism (some with other purposes, but not many), which are somewhere in excess of $300 billion (because of certain factors they have become more than a little difficult to quantify, since they extend into all areas, federal, state and local).  Consider that one could argue that not included in that number is an amount of military spending essentially dedicated buy not identifiable as serving that specific purpose.  Consider that, in our history, we have lost less than 5,000 lives (not counting troop losses in Afghanistan, but only civilian lives on American soil, including embassies worldwide).  Compare this expenditure to protect us against losing about 400 to 500 lives a year from terrorism, with the expenditures and losses related to, say, enforcement of laws against illegal drugs.  I would suggest that we spend about 10% or less of that $300 billion annually to protect ourselves from the effects of illegal drug commerce and usage, and that the loss in terms of lives and economic losses in that area would be an order of magnitude greater than that from terrorism (tens, if not hundreds of times more).  The contrast of competing priorities is truly striking and is reaching the point of absurdity.  Why can't we have only three agencies related to terrorism beyond the military?  I say that the FBI, CIA and Homeland Security should be plenty (and one could argue that in this case, Homeland Security is superfluous beyond the FBI, which should have total authority to control "internal" terrorism and terroristic threats.  As an example, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s trip to America (the underwear bomber) was missed due to a purely administrative SNAFU between multiple agencies (a simple, well-documented failure of communication).  The major problem with our post 9/11 national security policy is that it has fostered its own "complex" which overlaps with and corresponds with the Military-Industrial Complex, such that now that we have created it, its lobbies have become so powerful that we not can hardly discuss limiting it without the oligarchs associated with this drastic overspending successfully countering any such actions through lobbying, disinformation, and other clandestine means.  As an example, we now have nearly a million citizens with Top Secret clearances, and a two year backlog to obtain them (and, by the way, just processing one such clearance costs tens of thousands of dollars).  We have an agency which will soon be able to monitor the daily lives of almost every American in multiple ways.

I completely agree with any efforts to restrict government expenditures to justifiable tasks at justifiable levels, and that what we need is some oversight on the overseers who are now bought at auction by special interests in every election at every level.  In this atmosphere, democracy simply can't happen, and what we spend for our government will continue to be less and less efficient and effective.  Of course, the corruption of the budgetary processes within our governments at all levels has completely overwhelmed the ability of anything resembling rational government to succeed.

The real tragedy at the moment is that both ends are crippled, that is, we cannot effectively pass measures to make what we already have more effective and efficient, so that we literally can’t control spending in any meaningful way, and, we also can’t reform the massive imbalances created in a corrupted tax code and actually raise the revenues necessary to pay for even what is necessary.  The obvious answer is to reduce (or, ideally, eliminate) the effects of money in our politics.  What that will take is electoral and lobbying reformation, and, since that is asking the fox to change the rules for his chicken house, that can’t happen, unless we find a way around the Supreme Court’s rulings in Buckley v.Valeo (corporations are people), and Citizens United (money is speech).  The only way to do that is to pass a constitutional amendment to change those decisions (The Supreme Court can’t rule that a constitutional amendment is unconstitutional, thank God!!).  Last Friday, December 16^th, David McGrew of the Occupy movement posted the following article on the internet:  http://www.truth-out.org/occupy-constitution-get-money-out-politics/1324070807, which enumerates thirteen proposed 28^th Amendments to the U. S. Constitution which would make these changes, some of them proposed by quite eminent people, including congresspeople and senators.  Whoever you are, wherever you are, please become active, and join one of these movements, some of which are beginning to merge and consolidate their efforts.

Economically, Where Do We Go From Here?

Every day I awaken and watch Morning Joe.  It is an entertaining morning show, a mixture of politics and many other topics.  But it is mainly politics and economics.  It is, by necessity, not slanted left or right.  Joe is Joe Scarborough, former Congressman from northern Florida, and Mika Brzezinski, daughter of President Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of State, Zbigniew Brzezinski is his co-host.  Mika is moderate left, and a supporter of our current President, and Joe is fairly right, and takes a conservative, albeit holistic, view of our nation’s appropriate governance.  At any rate, I highly recommend this show for its substantial breadth of commentary and subject matter.  There are other reasons to watch it, and it is nearly always entertaining.  I am also a fan of Huffington Post, believing that it is the closest thing to a truly middle of the road major media publication, as it is extremely inclusive of commentary from nearly every angle.  I also consistently read one of the most cogent of all economic blogs, The Baseline Scenario, published by Simon Johnson, ex Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund and MIT professor, and his blogmate, James Kwak (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kwak).  These sources are great sources of stimulating and thoughtful commentary, and I highly recommend them to any who might be inclined to tune in.

I decided to write the following based not only on many recent readings, among them Michael Lewis’s Boomerang, and Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine.  I also decided that it was time to let my readership in on my well-considered view of the dire state of our national and international economic situation.  As a lead in to my conclusion, I simply want to point to the following:

1.      American politics is substantially controlled by the American oligarchy, that is the citizens and corporations (or companies) which control the majority of our national privately held assets (i.e. money and possessions). 

See:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy

2.      The massive disparity between the haves and have-nots in America, about which many articles have been written, and which is the primary motivating force behind the Occupy Wall Street and “Occupy” movements in general.  In America it is truly the 99% at the bottom vs. the 1% at the top of the economic food chain. 

3.      The total corruption incorporated in the United States Tax Code, fostered and perpetuated by the purchase of our government by the US Oligarchy which exists in our present defacto system of government, most appropriately characterized as a plutocracy.

See:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy

4.      The desperate straits in which a vast majority of our 50 states find their budgets and fiscal well-being.  Under present circumstances the states are wont to increase taxation, since the massive unemployment and failure of real estate markets has substantially drained the tax base of even potential resources which could serve to support the continuation of basic state governmental services.  They are cutting services continuously on all fronts in an effort, a losing effort, to keep up with their budgetary constraints, remembering that states cannot do deficit spending, by law. 

5.      The failure of the Super Committee to create any kind of legislative resolution to the federal debt problem.  Presently our national debt stands at about $15 trillion dollars or about 100% of GDP.  This is not sustainable in the long run, but, owing to our economy’s essential weakness (I believe that, although we are not now technically in recession, that is running a negative GDP, we are still in actual recession because there is no real estate market, and there are more than 58,000,000 Americans either unemployed or massively under-employed according to BLS calculations.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Labor_Statistics).  It is important to note that America did not emerge from the Great Depression until after WWII, which served as a massive stimulus to the economy, and that, after WWII, America had a debt to GDP ratio of more than 150%.  The way we handled that debt level was to tax at very substantial progressive rates (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States), with the top rates at or above 90% for more than two decades.  The greater tax collections allowed us to develop massive infrastructure, including the Interstate Highway System, to make massive loans to Europe under the Marshall Plan which allowed for a more rapid recovery and greater growth in exports, and to provide housing and education to veterans of the War from the Veteran’s Administration.  It also led to the development of a very large and stable middle class.  

It is important to understand that nearly every serious independent economist, as well as Ben Bernanke, has stressed the need to do everything possible to encourage and cause growth in our economy, and not to worry about debt reduction in the near term, but to devise a plan to reduce that debt in the long term.  The failure of the Super Committee is completely acceptable, except that it did no arise from a recognition of the relative urgency of its work, but rather from massive political polarity, which is truly deadly and destructive.  The failure of the Super Committee simply points to the massive dysfunctionality of our Congress.  The inability of our Congress to find a solution to creating a level of greater revenues through tax reformation is a key issue.  There needs to be a combination of reformation of our 15,000 page Tax Code, and an adjustment of the present rate structure to recognize the need to redistribute our national income.  I know that income redistribution is a sore subject, seen often as associated with Communism and Socialism, but, when the system is rigged to benefit a very small portion of our society, then it simply must be changed. 

6.      Lastly, unless we can reform our political system such that those voted to public office consider their primary obligation in governance to be the general public weal, nothing will change.  There are lots of movements and suggestions to this end in many quarters these days, and I see many as favorable potentially.  I am certain of only one thing, and that is that whatever is done must be done by Constitutional Amendment.  The Supreme Court rulings in both Vallejo and Citizens United, which recognized money as speech and corporations having rights equal to individuals, are utterly contrary to sanity in government.  Hence the need for a Constitutional Amendment.

Considering all of the above factors (and others unmentioned here), as well as the fact that Europe is suffering from many of the very same problems in governance, and general economic malaise and weakness, the European economic union is about to collapse.  It has no meaningful path forward to maintain its unity.  Once German bonds began not to sell last week, the writing was on the wall (see this article:  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/the-euro-area-is-coming-to-an-end-peter-boone-and-simon-johnson.html, which is only the latest written by Simon Johnson of The Baseline Scenario and his friend and fellow economist Peter Boone, both of whom are recognised experts in international and, specifically, European, economic issues).  We live in a truly globally connected world, and its most major international connections are banks.  Owing mainly to massive political power, the banks are in horrible shape.  They are not appropriately regulated, especially with respect to the related issues of capitalization and leverage.  They are all heavily invested in international bond holdings.  They are all massive participants in the substantially under-collateralized world of derivatives (much of the nearly $600 trillion dollars of which are in credit default swaps, or hedges against the upcoming collapse).  This bank problem, of course, is where the real peril is, and the single greatest reason why the various European Union members have not been able to come to a consensus regarding fixing their economic crises, that is owing to the fact that all of their resources are essentially directed at saving the massively corrupted mega-banks, which are all closely affiliated with the big six in the US.

Of course, the ultimate upshot of the massive corruptions of the international financial world is that the next crash, when, not if, it comes, will take down all of the world’s economies, large and small, since they all are so closely tied.  The coming crash will be an order of magnitude larger than the one which occurred almost exactly three years ago, since it will result also in an untold magnitude of political and cultural upheaval.  You see, it is quite different when we are talking financial losses for the 99%, and when we are talking about the destruction of all wealth, including most of that held by the 1%, and the upcoming crash will take all of us, even the wealthiest.  In the new world which emerges, if we can maintain social sanity,  things will get massively better, but it will take a fair amount of time and patience for this to happen.

Be prepared, it’s only a matter of time.

Iranian Nukes and Terrorism

Last Friday I had the pleasure of watching an amazing debate on Morning Joe.  I watch all of that show nearly every day.  It is massively educational, and fascinating to listen to the discussions led by Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough.  Mika is essentially progressive/liberal and Joe is essentially progressive/conservative.  Notably, Joe was a member of the House of Representatives (Republican from Florida who served from 1995 to 2001) and Mika’s father Zbigniew, was Secretary of State under Jimmy Carter.  These are bright, interesting  people, and, although I kind of get tired of many of a regular cast of characters on their show, they have a wonderfully wide selection of guests.

Last Friday, they had on Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, a council comprised of many of the most powerful and politically connected in America.  Also amongst their guests was Mohammed Larijani, the Secretary General of the Iranian High Council on Human Rights.  Most of us might think of Larijani’s position as essentially oxymoronic, however I actually believe that not only is he serious, but also that, sadly, since Iran has been substantially criticized in this country, is viewed by our leadership as part and parcel of a nation of leaders who are pariahs in human culture.  Before I go any further I want to make clear that I am not Iranian, that I do not wish them to be a nuclear power, and that I find their theocratic leadership to be somewhat of a sad political farce.  That having been said, I will now go on to defend both Larijani and Iran’s right to exist amongst nations and be respected as any other nation.  If we start from that point, we can engage is serious conversation and sort out facts from lies.

The conversation on Morning Joe last Friday, November 18, centered on Iran’s nuclear program.  Larijani claimed that Iran was not attempting to fabricate nuclear weapons, and that their entire program was about electricity production.  This month, the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a report indicating a reasonable probability that Iran is working on developing nuclear weaponry.  There is no absolute proof, only information on their atomic project which points toward the probability.  It is not an established fact, and, I would argue, based upon our Saddam WMD error, that we should not jump the gun on this one.  We should certainly press for answers, so we could actually know, rather than make an intelligent guess.  So, my view, at this moment is that we would be loathe engaging in any serious saber rattling, but rather should be restrained.  In this vein, I believe that two of our major allies, who have much closer ties to Iran, could prove amazingly useful in making a more certain determination, that is both Russian and China.  Each has a very close relationship as a trading partner.  Each has different views on sanctions sponsored by us against Iran through the UN.  Their views, incidentally, are more than a little supportable, but that’s another discussion.

Also, during the conversation, much to the consternation of the other conversation’s participants made the statement that the United States is a sponsor of terrorism.  I truly think that this is not just an amazing statement, but is thoroughly and completely supportable, and this is where we American’s like to ignore history in favor of myth.  At this point, I would point the reader to Iranian history, with specific reference to the late Shah, and our role, through CIA intervention, in restoring him to power in 1953.  The Shah was a brutal dynast.  He was our friend.  We sponsored his power, and he vastly abused the Iranian populace.  Needless to say, in 1979, in a revolution essentially sponsored by Iran’s Shi’a clerisy, the Shah was deposed and exiled (to the United States), and the Ayatollah Khomeini took over the leadership of the theocratic Islamic government.  This historical summary hopefully explains, at least in part, not only the Iranian leadership’s antipathy toward the US, but also just how an Iranian could see the US as a sponsor of terror (they see the Shah as visiting terror on the populace).  I would argue that not just in this matter, but glaringly in our putting Saddam Hussein (even worse than the Shah as a brutal dictator) in office, but also by our arming of the Mujahedeen during the ouster of the USSR from Afghanistan, and subsequent abandonment under the infamous Charley Wilson’s War also did the terrorism sponsorship trick.  After all, by backing the Mujahedeen (and Taliban) and then abandoning them, we had a direct hand in the rationale for the existence of Al Qaida, which would never have existed had it not been for this episode.

There is much more history to know, but it is important to understand how Mohammad Larijani could make such statements.  To the casual, ignorant, observer, this seems absurd.  To the educated it makes perfect sense.

Back to the nukes.  I am not concerned about Iran gaining nuclear weapons, any more than I am concerned with the existence of these demonic destructive human constructs.  I am in favor of complete disarmament, however that is purely impossible.  Once they became part of reality and were a part of the world’s weaponry, getting them to go away entirely is a pipe dream.  We had a chance for a brief moment during the Khrushchev-Reagan disarmament conference in Reykjavik, Iceland in October of 1986, the Soviets offered full disarmament.  In order to get this, President Reagan had to agree to scrap his Star Wars antimissile defense program.  Reagan would not agree, end of story (from the memoirs of George Shultz).  The most essential reason for my attitude is that there is a substantial proliferation of these weapons, with nine nations presently openly possessing atomic weaponry (US, Russia, China, England, France, India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan).  It would seem obvious, even to the casual observer that there are two nations whom we should be most concerned with, namely Pakistan, a nominal ally, and North Korea, a sworn enemy.  I find it inconceivable that we should be more concerned with Iranian nukes than those two countries.  It is important to remember that, although Iran probably possesses the strongest military in the Middle East next to Israel, it makes no sense for that nation to be interested in producing its own nukes, since, if it ever considered using one, the other nine countries would make that country into a very large smoking hole.  But, even if they do, I certainly don’t consider them to be any greater threat to us and our allies than North Korea.  The country which really scares me is Pakistan, where there are direct ties between elements of the Taliban and the Pakistani military and intelligence.  Now, that is scary, for everyone.

Lastly, to watch and hear this wonderful “debate” on Morning Joe, go to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unby99wa9gA