Just Follow the Benjamins!

For a President Romney – A Foreign Policy Preview – Just Follow the Benjamins!

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God. 

–     Henry A. Kissinger 

By J.M. Hamilton   (10-21-12)

President Obama appeared at the second debate and conquered.  And just as J.M.H. awarded the first debate to Mr. Romney, equally clear is that the President won the second debate.  Debate three, which is on foreign policy, should easily place President Obama ahead of Mr. Romney, two debates out of three.  After all, no President, since the fall of the Berlin wall, has done more to protect the American people, and look out for U.S.  long term national security interests.

The list of President Obama’s foreign policy achievements are well known to all.  And here, it is best to view the Presidents accolades through the prism of a Bush (W) Presidency.  Why?  Because a Romney Presidency’s foreign policy is very likely to be a Bush redux, one characterized by chasing the Benjamins and myopia.  So here we go:

President Bush started two major wars on the heals of 9-11, and unlike his father, both were poorly executed, suffered from mission drift, and metastasized into nation building exercises.

President Obama started no wars, and has, or is in the process of, winding down two wars without loss of U.S. face, so nation building can begin in earnest, here in the United States.

President Bush’s primary “objectives” in starting two wars was to capture Al Qaeda leadership, preemptively stop the spread of weapons of mass destructions, and foster democracy.   He did not achieve the first two goals, and only time will tell if democracy will take hold in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

President Obama is not only responsible for decimating much of Al Qaeda leadership, but via special forces, knocked off OBL, the nation’s arch nemesis.  Without starting a major ground war, democracy is flowering and spreading throughout the middle-east.  To President Obama’s credit, he did not stand in the way of these popular pro-democracy movements, when the temptation to practice real politik and support existing dictatorships must have been great (see below).

Messrs. Bush and Cheney, under the premise that President Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter, were fiscally irresponsible, and paid for their wars with a credit card.

President Obama, from the party of budgetary conservatism (see Mr. Clinton’s budget surpluses), did the fiscally responsible thing, by ending two wars.  President Obama has not declared a “peace dividend,” and DOD spending continues at a responsible pace.

The spear tip of President Bush’s and the Republican Party’s foreign policy appears rooted in the 20th Century, with costly standing armies, ground campaigns, and expensive weapons systems, too often fraught with failure and cost overruns.

President Obama has shown us how the martial efforts of the 21st Century are likely to center around less costly and life saving: cyber offensives, stealth technology, robotics and drones, and specials forces.

Of equal importance to the aforementioned, President Bush “cowboy-ed” foreign policy, often thumbing his nose at the world and the U.N.  In essence, doing the very thing that Mr. Kissinger warned against, by playing God.

President Obama, no hostage to world opinion, often works with and through U.S. allies to conduct foreign policy (see the take down Col. Gaddafi, yet another GOP goal – achieved by this President).  As opposed to launching a military strike, Iran’s economy is now in shambles as a result of global sanctions – initiated by the Obama administration – and Iran is now coming to the negotiation table over their nuclear program.

The fact that Mr. Romney’s principle complaint against the administration centers around Benghazi shows how much trouble the GOP is in on an issue they used to own, foreign policy.  Ambassador Steven’s death is a tragedy, but hardly an unexpected event in any American outpost in the middle-east. And in fact, thanks to house Republican efforts to cut back on security spending for our global outposts, we might expect more of the same in the future.  That said President Obama, and Secretary of State Clinton, did what any true leader would do, they accepted responsibility.  I may have missed it, but I don’t recall Mr. Bush taking responsibility for his set backs in the middle-east.  Meanwhile, Mr. Romney’s recent global adventures were fraught with tongue entanglements – of his own making.  Whether it was insulting the British, or offending both tribes in Israeli society, a President Romney might just cause global inflammation, or calamity, by an inadvertent utterance.

So if past is prologue, and with the GOP candidate surrounded by neo-cons with itchy trigger fingers, what might we expect from Mr. Romney?  Well lets follow the Benjamins, shall we:

1)  Mr. Sheldon Adelson, this campaign season, has showered the GOP with a hundred million dollars and counting.  Mr. Adelson’s pet project is the State of Israel, a worthy U.S. ally and a great country.  However, there are some instances, no matter how rare, where U.S. foreign policy will not, and should not, coincide with Israel’s interests and objectives.  And yet, candidate Romney has basically intimated, if not stated, that his administration would surrender U.S. sovereignty, by subcontracting out middle-east foreign policy to the State of Israel.  If that’s Mr. Romney’s thinking, how much resistance is he going to give, when merited, to a phone call from Mr. Adelson?  A Romney presidency almost guarantees another war in the middle-east, or certainly increases the probability.

2)  Campaign contributions, and lobbying, from the Defense Industry runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars, per opensecrets.org.  Much of this money is directed to the GOP, which goes a long way towards explaining why Candidate Romney is calling on spending an extra two trillion on defense over the next ten years.  The GOP’s new found fiscal conservatism applies to social spending and entitlements (those programs favoring the 47%), but when it comes to defense, the sky is the limit, even when the DOD doesn’t find the extra two trillion necessary.  The problem is, with all that money allocated to “defense,” it makes it that much easier to go imperial or on the “offensive,” particularly with a White House full of neocons.  With the U.S. spending more on defense than the entire G-20 combined, and with the GOP being self-described fiscal hawks, one would think a Romney administration would want to root out DOD waste and fraud – and  go “private equity” on the  military establishment – before running up higher national debt to support same… but apparently not.  With a Romney administration count on more profligate “borrow and spend” Republican policies, in regards foreign policy and DOD spending, at the expense of this nation and the middle class.

3)  Being incredibly naive, I believed for many years that our foreign policy and DOD were all about spreading peace, love, understanding and democracy.  After all it was the U.S.A.F.’s Strategic Air Command that had the motto, “Peace if our profession;” but as I have learned more recently, the role of the DOD is really to protect markets and the multi-national interests of the Fortune 500 around the globe.  Which helps to explain why a political party, the GOP, that is allegedly pro-democracy, is all fired up about the recent drift in the middle-east toward democratic regimes.  You see it is much easier, in many instance, for corporations to deal with a dictatorship, and the irregularities of one man show, then it is to deal with hundreds of duly elected legislators and politicians.  Besides there is no assurance that just because a country goes democratic that they are going embrace a capitalist economy… they just might go socialist, renegotiate contracts concerning national resources with foreign companies, and they might even nationalize entire industries.  Never a pretty prospect, which helps to explain why the U.S. has supported dictatorships for so long, at the expense of foreign countries and their citizens; and why the GOP is on Obama’s back over the spread of Democracy in the middle-east, billions of dollars in corporate revenue may be at stake.

The GOP appears to believe that democracy in the U.S. is good, while democracy in foreign resource rich lands is potentially bad.  Look for a President Romney to be less supportive of some of these pro-democracy movements for the aforementioned reasons, and many others.  That is to say, a President Romney is not unlikely to be pro-dictatorship, which is extremely short sighted for the U.S. and U.S. corporate interests.

Given the state of our present economy as a result of the GOP’s thirty year reign, foreign policy doesn’t get the attention it deserves, but our economy and foreign policy are deeply interconnected.  The fact that the nation has an all volunteer military, no national draft, and no sense of shared sacrifice, as wars – at least as run by the GOP – are now paid for with debt, means that foreign policy often gets short shrift from the electorate.  But this is an area that very much deserves every American’s attention, as the foreign policy of the candidate we elect impacts our standing in the world, our national debt and economy, and the women and men who lay their lives down for us all.

Clearly, President Obama has shown he is the better candidate for our nation’s foreign policy, and its impact on our national economy.  President Obama is more closely aligned to President Reagan’s foreign policy, who did not engage America in war – during his two terms in office.  Today’s GOP is both bellicose, plagued by myopia, and geared towards battle, all too often at the expense or our economy and national security.

God Bless our fighting men and women and our Commander in Chief!

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2013

Bob Dole no longer recognizes the Republican Party that he helped lead for years.

May 28, 2013/NYTIMES

The Wisdom of Bob Dole

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Bob Dole no longer recognizes the Republican Party that he helped lead for years. Speaking over the weekend on “Fox News Sunday,” he said his party should hang a “closed for repairs” sign on its doors until it comes up with a few positive ideas, because neither he nor Ronald Reagan would now feel comfortable in its membership.

“It seems to be almost unreal that we can’t get together on a budget or legislation,” said Mr. Dole, the former Senate majority leader and presidential candidate. “I mean, we weren’t perfect by a long shot, but at least we got our work done.”

The current Congress can’t even do that, thanks to a furiously oppositional Republican Party, and that’s what has left mainstream conservatives like Mr. Dole and Senator John McCain shaking their heads in disgust.

The difference between the current crop of Tea Party lawmakers and Mr. Dole’s generation is not simply one of ideology. While the Tea Partiers are undoubtedly more extreme, Mr. Dole spent years pushing big tax cuts, railing at regulations and blocking international treaties. His party actively courted the religious right in the 1980s and relied on racial innuendo to win elections. But when the time came to actually govern, Republicans used to set aside their grandstanding, recognize that a two-party system requires compromise and make deals to keep the government working on the people’s behalf.

The current generation refuses to do that. Its members want to dismantle government, using whatever crowbar happens to be handy, and they don’t particularly care what traditions of mutual respect get smashed at the same time. “I’m not all that interested in the way things have always been done around here,” Senator Marco Rubio of Florida told The Times last week.

This corrosive mentality has been standard procedure in the House since 2011, but now it has seeped over to the Senate. Mr. Rubio is one of several senators who have blocked a basic function of government: a conference committee to work out budget differences between the House and Senate so that Congress can start passing appropriations bills. They say they are afraid the committee will agree to raise the debt ceiling without extorting the spending cuts they seek. One of them, Ted Cruz of Texas, admitted that he didn’t even trust House Republicans to practice blackmail properly. They have been backed by Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, who wants extremist credentials for his re-election. 

 

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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/opinion/bob-dole-misses-his-republican-party.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130529&_r=0&pagewanted=print

You could fill an entire other library with what’s not in W.’s.

May 25, 2013  NYTIMES

Can 44 Subtract 43 From the Equation?

By MAUREEN DOWD

DALLAS — DO we dare to hope that the Bush administration is finally at an end?

After four years of bending the Constitution, the constitutional law professor now in the White House is trying to unloose the Gordian knot of W.’s martial and moral overreaches after 9/11.

Safely re-elected, President Obama at long last spoke bluntly about the Faustian deals struck by his predecessor, some of them cravenly continued by his own administration.

In a speech at the National Defense University, Obama talked about how we “compromised our basic values,” and he concluded with a slap at W.: “Our victory against terrorism won’t be measured in a surrender ceremony at a battleship or a statue being pulled to the ground.”

On the eve of the president’s speech, I was at the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum here, watching the film of Saddam’s statue being pulled to the ground.

It’s remarkable that Obama is trying to escape the shadow of the Bush presidency just as W. is trying to escape the shadow of the Bush presidency. Browsing the library, you wonder if these two presidents are complete opposites after all, as you see how history was shaped by an arrogant, press-averse, father-fixated, history-obsessed, strangely introverted chief executive.

Robert Draper, the author of “Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush,” perused the library with me and observed: “So 43 grew up entitled but could display a commoner’s touch, while 44 grew up hardscrabble yet developed this imperial mien. The former is defined by incuriosity, the latter by self-absorption. One is a late-blooming artist, the other a precocious writer. They can each make you kind of miss the other.”

Obama’s compelling speech on Thursday was his way of saying he didn’t want the seductive but morally dicey drone program he inherited from W. to define his own presidency. The way it had been going, one of the killer robots, hanging from the ceiling, might have made a fitting centerpiece for an Obama library.

W.’s library highlights his role in launching the Global War on Terror, an Orwellian phrase designed to conflate the sins of Osama, who was responsible for 9/11, and the sins of Saddam, who was not. That was the fatal mistake and hallmark of the Bush era. W., Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld declared war on a tactic, stoked fear as a smokescreen and treated pre-emptive attacks as just.

Better late than never, Obama brought his lapidary logic and legal cautions to bear. “Neither I nor any president can promise the total defeat of terror,” he said. “We will never erase the evil that lies in the hearts of some human beings nor stamp out every danger to our open society.”

Conservatives can honk, as Senator Saxby Chambliss did, that Obama’s speech “will be viewed by terrorists as a victory.” But this president has killed more top Qaeda operatives than Bush did. While W.’s bullhorn vow after 9/11 to catch the “people who knocked these buildings down” plays every few minutes at his library, I couldn’t find any photos of Osama or acknowledgment of Bush’s failure to catch him. Obama’s library will have a wing for that feat.

You could fill an entire other library with what’s not in W.’s. Cheney and Rummy have been largely disappeared, and it is Condi Rice who narrates the 9/11 video. You won’t see the iconic “Mission Accomplished” photo, or that painful video in which W. keeps reading “The Pet Goat” to children after learning that America is under attack, or the notorious “flyover” photo of a desultory Bush jetting from Crawford to the White House and looking through the window of Air Force One at Katrina’s devastation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/opinion/sunday/dowd-can-44-subtract-43-from-the-equation.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0

As it stands presently, however, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM is a fraud...

Above all, I must not play God

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise. - Sigmund Freud

By J.M. Hamilton 5-29-13

We'd like to think we've come a long distance from the Dark Ages but in the field of diagnosing illnesses of the mind - we've barely taken a step forward.  In the practice of modern medicine, doctors and scientist make breakthrough after breakthrough utilizing real scientific evidence, biology, facts and studies that can be replicated by their peers; but in one field, the division of psychiatry - there is little in the way of hard scientific evidence or biology, backing their diagnosis or their recommended cures.  In the field of psychiatry and the behavioral sciences, it's as if we never left the dark ages, and are still dependent upon quacks and witch doctors.

This was recently on full display for all to see when the head of Psychiatry in this country, Dr. Thomas Insel, criticized the DSM - the bible for the pseudo-science of psychiatry - as lacking in scientific evidence.   Instead mental diagnosis is based upon symptoms, and consensus - conjecture - and opinion among mental healthcare professionals.  It took great courage for Dr. Insel to tell the truth about his own profession, and hopefully his candor will open the door to more scientific enlightenment, biological links to illnesses of the mind and brain, and greater knowledge on how the mind and brain actually operates.

As it stands presently, however, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM is a fraud, utilized in courtrooms, prisons, schools, as an excuse to put people away, or dose them with often harmful psychotropic drugs.  In effect often giving millions of American adults, and sadly children, a chemical lobotomy.... Subjugating the mind, body, and perhaps the soul, with chemical handcuffs in an attempt to help the patient achieve some perceived “societal norm.”

We all know that prescriptions for Adderall and Ritalin (aka kiddie coke) have soared to epidemic proportions in this nation because young children - often boys- allegedly "act out," in increasingly feminized and over-crowded classrooms, where physical education is cut out of the curriculum.  I believe this is now a nine billion dollar industry. 

It's become the new fall back dejure for student, parent and teacher failings:  Namely, if little Johnny or Sally are struggling in school or with life in general, don't worry. It's not their fault, nor is it your fault dear parents, but we have some wonderful meds for your children to take the edge off.  Big Pharma, of course, makes billions off these diagnosis’ and the resulting prescription; and the DSM and psychiatry are complicit in turning this nation into a bunch of pharmaceutical speed and benzo junkies.

Again, this is done because these adults and children do not fall within the parameters of what the psychiatric community perceives to be the societal norm.  That there is literally no scientific evidence backing these eminentos suppositions of what constitutes the "norm, “and that the so-called societal norm is ever evolving and changing never seems to dawn on many coven members.  To admit that they were frauds, no better than witch doctors and shamans, could be damaging to their professional standing, their careers -and their livelihood.... Not to mention the legitimacy of billions of dollars in prescribed psychoactive medications annually.  By way of example, the DSM used to call homosexual behavior a sociopathic mental disorder, and now it is absent from more recent DSM editions, which just goes to prove that the DSM is based upon arbitrary and capricious whims of what constitutes the "societal norm," and little in the way of hard scientific fact.  In the latest DSM addition, if you grieve for a loved one for more than two weeks, you’re damaged goods with a mental health issue; and presumably in dire need of therapy and medication. 

How convenient.

What will be the result of the new DSM 5.0?  More of the same.  More drugs. More junkies. More aggrandizement of shaman/mental health professionals, and the Big Pharma cartel growing richer off your misery and addiction, and spiraling healthcare costs.   More people labeled with disorders and pathologized, the majority of whom are just suffering through life's travails.

The WSJ's Kristen Gerencher noted as much in a recent piece, when she quoted a former chair of a DSM task force, Dr. Allen Frances:  “Drug companies take marketing advantage of the loose DSM definitions by promoting the misleading idea that everyday life problems are actually undiagnosed psychiatric illness caused by a chemical imbalance and requiring a solution in pill form.  This results in misallocation of resources, with excessive diagnosis and treatment for essentially healthy persons (who may be harmed by it) and relative neglect of those with clear psychiatric illness (whose access to care has been sharply reduced by slashed state mental health budgets.)”

Moreover, “We’re treating childhood like a disease,” said Frances, author of “Saving Normal” and professor emeritus and former chair of psychiatry at Duke University.

By way of analogy, say Aunt Rita is showing signs of illness, shortness of breath, and red blotches on her body... A medical doctor would look for causes of the illness, shallow breathing, and the subdural hematoma, and treat the illness not the symptoms; but modern psychiatry would treat the bruise, and shallow breathing with meds, perhaps oxygen, and therapy without understanding the underlying cause or the symptoms..... Meanwhile Aunt Rita very well might die from internal bleeding, because her metaphorical mental healthcare professional never bothered to discover the source of her medical problems.  Of course diseases and disorders of the mind are rarely fatal in the short run, which probably explains why there has been a complete lack of a sense of urgency to expose this field to real science.  That and surely, the complexity of the brain and human mind present a huge challenge. 

To be totally candid with my readers, my interactions with mental health professionals, although limited, have been less than superlative.  I've watched one psychologist lie on a witness stand and completely botch his investigation into the abuse of a child.  I've watched this same doctor threaten said child for requesting to live with the non-abusive parent.  In the middle of a contentious child custody hearing, the good doctor authorized one parent to conduct an investigation on the other parent’s property.  While the child was suicidal, the psychologist left the child in the custody of the offending parent.  Separately, I've heard – first hand – a mental health professional subscribe to the belief that the entire nation should be in therapy (perhaps it is so?)  I've heard yet another state that they went into this field so as to study their own personal demons, and properly medicate, a not uncommon practice I was assured.  

We often forget that in totalitarian states, such as the former Soviet Union and Red China, that psychology and psychiatry are often used to control political dissidents, since anyone who would dare disagree with the state should obviously be committed. Spend a week or two in solitary confinement and the totalitarian prophecy becomes self-fulfilling.  Indeed, after a tour within solitary confinement, one would begin to manifest mental illness and pathologies. 

At what distance are our nations schools, courtrooms and prisons from this totalitarian nightmare, when we allow mental healthcare professionals considerable say and sway over the medication and lives of children and adults, based purely on conjecture, perceived notions of societal norms, and pseudo-science?

The Hippocratic oath mandates that doctors do no harm.  However, when mental health care is based upon popular beliefs as to what constitutes societal norms, speculation, and anything but science.... Then our mental health professionals are potentially straying into another admonishment made by that same oath: That of playing God with the lives of their patients.

Most telling was a quote from an eminent psychiatrist in a recent NY Times piece:  Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, the chairman of the psychiatry department at Columbia and president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association, which publishes the D.S.M., said “The last thing we want to do is be defensive or apologetic about the state of our field. But at the same time, we’re not satisfied with it either. There’s nothing we’d like better than to have more scientific progress.”

Sounds like the good Doctor has taken half a step forward by acknowledging his profession’s problem. To which I respond:  Doctor, heal thyself!

To see just how insidious a mental health care professional can behave in a courtroom -please read Mrs. Marshfield available today on Amazon.com.

Check out the NIMH findings here.

 Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2013

Mr. Demagogue?

Mr. Demagogue?

“The State Department is infested with communists. I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.”

-Senator Joseph McCarthy – Wheeling, Virginia speech (2-9-50)

“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness …   Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency.”
 

 - U.S. Army’s chief legal representative, Joseph Nye Welch – Army\McCarthy Hearings  (June 9, 1954)

By J.M. Hamilton (3-17-12)

They seem to arrive during troubled times, be they economic or political.  A leader arrives on the scene, and offers up a seemingly simplistic reason for a nation’s problems, and often a simpler solution.  They may be charismatic and, ultimately, enjoy a cult of personality following.

Demagogues play upon the public’s fear, and often their ignorance.  The elementary, and often times extreme, positions they take offer solutions for a bewildered and frightened public, all too eager to put a bad situation behind it and looking for an earthly messiah.  Above all, what a demagogue offers is a short cut to thinking.  The fear and misery that propels these individuals into a nation’s spot light can be so great that otherwise sane, rational and intelligent academic, business, political and spiritual leaders offer no rebuttal, for fear of being ostracized, castigated or worse.

It reminds me of Mr. Burke’s famous quote:  ”All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

The spell is weaved, the die is cast, and the next thing one knows a nation has an even bigger problem on its hands; the fallacious and specious solution that was offered often delays the inevitable (the more arduous path to resolution), or serves only to aggravate and prolong the crisis.  Examples of U.S. demagogues in the 20th Century would include Huey P. Long of Louisiana.  Visualize Governor Long calling the shots in the Louisiana legislature, from the dais with a bottle of whiskey in his hand.

Or Wisconsin’s Senator Joe McCarthy – who actually did more harm than good to the anti-communist movement.  Across the pond and beyond, Adolph Hitler – another demagogue – offered up a final solution and in the process, nearly killed off a race of men, destroyed a nation, and obliterated a generation’s collective soul.  Mr. Stalin was indiscriminate in the genocide he perpetrated within the USSR, but according to Andre Solzhenitsyn, Stalin’s body count made Hitler look like a piker (that is not to diminish Hitler’s crimes against humanity in any way).   Further east think of Pol Pot and the killing fields in Cambodia.  These men often possessed by messianic and revolutionary vision, lead their nations to destruction.

Fortunately, this country’s demagogues – at least in the last century – have been less harsh in terms of generating body count, but potentially were just as dangerous.  Here and now in the 21st Century, we appear to have a demagogue presently in our midst; and like Senator Joe McCarthy before him, Mr. Norquist – who holds no elected office, and with no binding legal authority whatsoever – has a list.

The list, however, doesn’t name communist but rather, a list of Republican congressmen, who have pledged to Mr. Norquist not to raise taxes.

To which JMH responds:  When did the Republican Party become Mr. Norquist’s sock puppet, or this weeks buzz word – “muppet?”  Ninety-five percent of all Republican congressman and, I believe all Republican Presidential candidates, have suspending rational thought, and have signed Mr. Norquist’s pledge, maintaining that they will not increase taxes.  (I remember another highly respected Republican President, who your humble blogger voted for twice, who lost his re-election bid in ’92 over a similar commitment, in which he stated “read my lips;” his own political party turned on him when he rationally bailed upon his pledge not to raise taxes.)

Now nobody, including Democrats, likes paying taxes but as stated by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes:  ”Taxes are what we pay to live in a civilized society.”  Besides, the only thing worse than taxes is government debt and deficit spending – and the U.S. has mountains of debt brought upon it by successive Republican administrations.

Just how fiscally conservative is the Republican Party, and Mr. Norquist then, when they offer no concrete or realistic recommendations to reduce government spending, but are all for tax cuts for the wealthy, when we are running trillion dollar deficits per annum?

The answer is:  Not very!  Analysis from major news organizations reveals that Mr. Romney’s budget plans for the nation, if elected, would lead to an even greater accumulation of debt than the present administration.  And lets not forget Republican Vice President Cheney’s infamous quip that President Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.  One only has to look to the PIIGS in Europe to see where this fiscal insanity will eventually lead; and but by the grace of the printing press and possession of the world’s fiat currency, the U.S. doesn’t find itself among the PIIGS already.

Of course rarely mentioned, if ever, by Mr. Norquist, or his minions – the Republican Party, is that the wealthy, the rich, and any major corporation worth it’s salt, often don’t pay taxes, or pay taxes at exceptionally low rates versus the middle class.  Now, if your middle class, say within the ninety-nine percentile, you likely cannot afford lobbyist, or pay to hire former U.S. Treasury personnel to run your tax department, or spend exceptional amounts of money electing politicians – who will vote for and protect your favorite tax loophole(s) or dodge.   But for the elite, it’s just another day in a tax paradise.

Mr. Norquist is correct in that marginal tax rates are too high in this country, for the individual and the corporation; but where many part company with Mr. Norquist is in the belief that closing catalogue upon catalogue of tax loopholes, exploited by the powerful economic and political interests, is tantamount to a tax increase, and must be fought at every turn.

The middle class and future generations are being robbed by U.S. tax policy, as it presently stands.

The middle class, what remains of it, cannot escape paying taxes, and pay a higher rate to subsidize those entities, individuals and organizations, which often pay at half the tax rate we do, that is if they pay any taxes at all.

Here’s what Mr. David Brooks of the NY Times had to say on the matter.  Mr. Brooks isn’t exactly known for his liberal views.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recently calculated how much each affluent country spends on social programs. When you include both direct spending and tax expenditures, the U.S. has one of the biggest welfare states in the world. We rank behind Sweden and ahead of Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland and Canada. Social spending in the U.S. is far above the organization’s average.

You might say that a tax break isn’t the same as a spending program. You would be wrong.
David Bradford, a Princeton economist, has the best illustration of how the system works. Suppose the Pentagon wanted to buy a new fighter plane. But instead of writing a $10 billion check to the manufacturer, the government just issued a $10 billion “weapons supply tax credit.” The plane would still get made. The company would get its money through the tax credit. And politicians would get to brag that they had cut taxes and reduced the size of government!

And we are not talking about the usual list of suspects here when it comes to IRS avoidance, but rather, when we talk about those who make a sport of ducking payment into government’s revenue stream (be it America’s or Europe’s), we are talking about a pantheon of venerable corporate entities and institutions, some of the finest America has to offer.

How do they do it?

We know that private equity likes to front load profits by soaking balance sheets in debt, and via the tax deductibility of interest payments on same.  It’s what makes private equity work.  Moreover, private equity dividends paid for with debt are not taxed until the debt is retired.  And a takeover target that is saddled with debt is likely to have diminished earnings, if any, to pay taxes on.  In fact, it might carry forward financial loss (brought on by excessive debt) to offset future earnings for purposes of cutting taxes.  Separately, payment of carried interest to the pirates of private equity is at the capital gains tax rate, presently set at 15%.  So in many instances, not only is private equity doing harm to the U.S. labor force by stripping away CAPEX and human capital (which actually does pay taxes), in order to service an artificially high debt load; but private equity loads take over targets up with debt so as to pay themselves and in turn, coincidentally, lower the effective tax rate paid on debt encumbered earnings.  In short, Americans get robbed both ways, when private equity runs a company, through the loss of jobs and the debt-ladened company’s diminished tax receipts.

On a side note, private equity likes to say they only rehabilitate sick and dying businesses, but they also like to take up healthy organizations, or fully recovered entities, and load them up with debt, repeatedly.   Take HCA for example or private equity’s greatest failure to date, TXU.  And to think of all those union and state employee retirement plans, which dump retirement money into private equity, which operates directly at cross-purposes with these same employees economic and political interests…?  One wonders if these unions and state employees, and their leadership, will ever wise up?

But wait it gets better, because the crème de la crème of Silicon Valley also has a deep disdain for paying taxes, take Apple and Google as yet another example.  Both companies exploit a tax scheme called a “double irish” or “dutch sandwich,” whereby overseas earnings are sent to Ireland, then the Netherlands, and onto Bermuda.  As reported by Bloomberg in 2010, the result is from 2007 to the date the article was written, Google paid less than a three percent tax rate, per annum, on offshore earnings.  Tax arbitrage defined!  Google’s actual payroll and revenue generated from Ireland, the Netherlands, and Bermuda maybe negligible or non-existent, but international revenues and earnings are repatriated around the horn.  All perfectly legal, and we wonder why the U.S., and assorted Western democracies – like Ireland, is running catastrophic and unsustainable fiscal deficits, and their respective citizens suffer fiscal austerity.  Last I read, Facebook, America’s favorite on line toy, was about to join the ranks of Apple and Google, by deploying the double irish tax dodge.

Meanwhile, Apple, America’s – indeed the world’s – largest market cap, or stock valuation, has more cash on hand than the U.S. Treasury – most of it safe and secure offshore.

And there is where it will lie until such time as the Republican Party breaks the spell of Mr. Norquist, and decides to stop mortgaging America’s future with debt and deficit spending.  Of course this blog has written extensively as to why the Republican Party favors deficit financing… all the better to allow the Wall Street Cartel to dictate fiscal and government policy.   And to think this is the party, or used to be, of rugged individualism and the “maverick” mentality.  Today’s Republican Party looks more like a flock of woolly mammals than proud and iconic mustangs I once knew it to be.  It’s only a matter of time before Republicans wake up and see Mr. Norquist for who he is.

Could you imagine if the middle class rose up and demanded to be paid by their employers, through stock manipulation and debt turned to dividends, at the capital gains rate?  We’d all be a little richer, since our tax rate – like Candidate Romney’s – would effectively be fifteen percent; but the government would come crashing down.  The elimination of government, ultimately, maybe the goal of certain elements within the Republican Party, like Mr. Norquist and the billionaire Koch Brothers!

Starve the beast of funds, and it will eventually parish, and along with it the social contract.  Alas, greed makes the world go around.

PS:

And speaking of unmitigated greed… the present administration knows that rising fuel prices at the pump are not due to any short fall in supply (America in fact has stockpiles of oil in Cushing Oklahoma and more natural gas coming on line than this country knows what to do with); but rather excessive speculation in oil – brought about by central banks flooding the world with paper currency – is driving fuel costs ever higher.  When zombie-banking institutions aren’t hoarding the tsunami of central bank currency, they are speculating with it.

And hence, Americans are being bent over the hoods of their cars at the pump, which is a direct threat to Mr. Obama’s second term.  To mitigate this greed and it’s threat to the nascent economic recovery, either the state or federal government should purchase, or support the purchase of the Sunoco refinery in Philadelphia, presently up for sale, and operate it at maximum capacity.  All the better to keep both Cartels worst tendencies in check, the American consumer protected, and help insure President Obama’s second term. Heh, if you’re going to operate a Cartel – the public and the Cartel should expect government intervention to protect the consumer and the economy from monopoly’s worst tendencies.

Unleashing a flood of oil from the Strategic Reserve would also send a message to the speculators that it is no longer open season on the American consumer.

 Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2013

Always cutting edge.... Often Prescient.... J.M. Hamilton!

05/22/2013 04:46 PM

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, shown here with his wife Nancy

Unlikely Heir

Obama Returns to Kissinger's Realpolitik

By Gregor Peter Schmitz

Henry Kissinger, the hawkish national security advisor to Nixon who popularized realpolitik, turns 90 this week. Few would have expected President Obama to pick up his mantle, but the erstwhile idealist resembles Kissinger more every day.

When Henry Kissinger was at the height of his power, the US media dubbed then President Richard Nixon's national security advisor "the true president." At the time, he was traveling around the world at such a breakneck pace that journalists speculated that there must be five Kissingers (four doubles and one real). Around that time, a reporter asked him a question: Why are Americans so fascinated by a young man from Fürth in the German region of Franconia, who fled the Nazis at the age of 15?
Kissinger replied: "I've always acted alone. Americans like that immensely. Americans like the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse."

At Harvard University, the German émigré wrote his senior thesis about Austrian statesman Count Clemens von Metternich. Some 388 pages long, it prompted the university to introduce a page limit. His theory was that while Metternich might have temporarily destroyed the beginnings of liberalism in 19th-century Europe with the help of his secret diplomacy, he also preserved the balance of powers.

Kissinger, who celebrates his 90th birthday on May 27, has more in common with Metternich than he would like to admit, after having made his mark in history with a number of cool diplomatic strokes. He balanced the fragile equilibrium of horror among the nuclear powers in the Cold War. And, to his credit, Kissinger's secret negotiations with the North Vietnamese communists secured the relatively orderly withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam.

Kissinger secured Mao's China as a strategic partner and practiced Bismarckian realpolitik in Latin America. In the Kissinger system, unrest was more dangerous than injustice, and a functioning balance of power was more important than human rights.

His policies, however, often collided with America's self-image. The country likes to think it can save the world, if not actually reinvent it. But it also wants to be loved, a wish Kissinger neither could nor wanted to fulfill.
 
Realism without Moral Scruples

During the election campaign, Democratic candidate Obama portrayed himself as an idealistic "citizen of the world." But he was hardly in office before he began pursuing the maxim that idealists give nice speeches, while realists shape policy.

In this fashion, the president turned himself into a lone judge who personally approves which Islamist is to be killed with a drone attack somewhere in the world. He launched a new era of conflict with massive investments in "cyber war." And Obama prosecutes betrayers of state secrets even more relentlessly than any of his predecessors.

The president has coldly recognized that war-weary Americans prefer progress at home instead of elsewhere in the world. This is one reason he has threatened Syrian dictator Bashar Assad while following up with little in the way of action. Not unlike Kissinger's approach in Chile, Obama looks the other way when America's allies, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, subjugate their people, or when China harasses dissidents. US author Jacob Heilbrunn calls this approach "neo-Kissingerism," and notes: "Obama may even start speaking about foreign affairs with a German accent."

Kissinger is a realist with a weakness: He is vain, and he was never indifferent to how other people felt about him. It must make him jealous to see that Obama is so popular in many parts of the world, despite his cold-blooded actions. But as he turns 90, Kissinger probably relishes the notion that the president resembles him more and more every day.


Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/realpolitik-of-henry-kissinger-making-a-comeback-under-obama-a-901195.html

 

http://www.jmhamiltonpublishing.com/2013/05/roll-tide_11.html

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Tan, ready and rested… indeed.

Tan, ready and rested… indeed.

Richard Nixon and the Southern Strategy

“If the Republican Party cannot win in this environment, it has to get out of politics and find another business,” declared George Will on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.”

By J.M. Hamilton  (11-6-12)

Yesterday marked the 44^th anniversary of former President Nixon’s defeat of Mr. Hubert Humphrey.  Mr. Nixon won that election’s popular vote by the slenderest of margins (the complete inverse of the thorough stomping Mr. McGovern endured four short years later at the hands of then President Nixon).  More important than the result itself, the 1968 election achieved a built in GOP electoral hedge, in modern presidential campaigning, that was to last to the present day.  That hedge came to be known as the Southern strategy and counted on a white southern electorate to vote Republican and against the Democratic Party.  The Southern strategy, with the Bible belt superimposed in the same geographic region, has been a boon to the GOP and the bane of the DNC ever since.  To such an extent that even conservative Democrats need not apply for office, in nearly all southern districts.

Up until ’68, white southern voters were deeply committed to the Democratic Party, as the Republicans were associated with Mr. Lincoln, carpetbaggers, and the awesome power of the Federal government, versus state’s rights.  For approximately a hundred years, post-civil war, white southern constituents voted largely as a block with the Democratic Party.  The Kennedys and President Johnson changed all that with the passage of 1960’s civil rights legislation.

Sensing an opportunity and a wedge issue, the Nixon campaign swung in to embrace disaffected southern whites.  This voting block helped to cement every Republican President’s ascent and hold on power ever since, starting with Mr. Nixon.

But this year, this block’s power and the Southern strategy seems to be on the wane.  Mr. Romney’s showing in the polls, despite a still struggling economy and high unemployment figures, appears to illustrate that the strategy is doomed – if not now then certainly longer term.  Two generations later, demographic shifts account for much of the strategy’s failure; but seemingly the RNC’s endless ability to alienate nearly every other political group/stratification in society, other than the white male, plays an equally large role.

As an older generation of Americans fades, the RNC and future Republican candidates are going to have to broaden their horizons, if this party is to remain viable for executive office.  Pundits assertions that the GOP is an insurgency party, and really doesn’t govern well, are not without merit (see Mr. Bush – W).

There are many characteristic by which we can measure the rise and fall of political parties… but in my opinion, one particular measure is key.  That measure, call it the hypocrisy factor, is the number of revolutions a presidential candidate must turn to distance himself from his base, once he’s received the nomination, in order to be accepted by the mainstream (that is, to become electable).

Compare both presidential candidates – this season – on the basis of the hypocrisy factor, and judge for yourself.  If you are honest with yourself, Mr. Obama – although far from perfect – had to do very little to become acceptable to the mainstream, since his party’s nomination; while Mr. Romney has all but turned himself inside out, repeatedly, on nearly every issue, since obtaining his party’s prize.

What this tells us is not that Mr. Romney is a bad man, but rather, the thoughts and beliefs of the Republican core are a much greater distance from today’s mainstream then the thoughts and values of the Democratic base.  Factor in the very shrinking of that GOP base as time takes its toll, add in demographic trends, and you have a party that is facing marginalization if not extinction.

That is to say, that while the GOP has swung hard right, the values – particularly the social mores of the nation – have moderated or become left of center, vis a vis the GOP base.

The bottom line:  Mr. Nixon’s Southern strategy, no matter what one feels about it, has been highly successful for over forty years.  If this election represents a turning point in the efficacy of Mr. Nixon’s Southern strategy, then J.M.H. would argue that the GOP may have to risk jettisoning some extremist groups within their own party in order to remain viable and ultimately, electable to the presidency.

My guess is the GOP will fare much better without these elements.

 Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2013