Fifth Annual Neoliberal Darwin Awards

Fifth Annual Neoliberal Darwin Awards 

 

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. 

 

-       James Madison, Fourth POTUS

 

By Gregg Wall (11-25-2023)

 

Greedy boomer pigs.  

 

It’s something I’ve never quite forgiven my parents for.  If I had been born a year or two later, I could have been Gen X, instead the dreaded B-word.  Mom more than made up for it, however, by being Canadian.  Dual citizenship is something I find myself increasingly thanking the Goddess above for. 

 

It wasn’t bad enough that boomers - & the silent generation - gave us Reagan, the Clintons, forty years of trickle-down, supply-side fraud, and $37 trillion in national debt… but it turns out, the entire economy has been rigged in their favor: Bank of America reports boomer balance sheets have ballooned a massive $129 trillion.  This transfer of wealth came by looting the federal, and in some instances, state governments: the aforementioned $37 trillion in federal debt, the explosive growth in money supply, leverage, compounding tax cuts for the uber rich and the merely rich, a regressive tax structure, monetary policy & interest rate suppression policies that juiced real estate & asset classes of the wealthy, endless Wall St bailouts, and the FED put.  The boomer trash couldn’t lose.  A U.S. economy, at least in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, that still functioned for Americans… where M&A, private equity, and Wall St. had not yet destroyed competition, markets, pensions, company after company, and price discovery.

 

It's all gone now.  A functioning economy, that is actual competition, markets, a living wage, and price discovery… vanished, disappeared by greed, M&A, the formation of a monopoly economy, the elimination of rules & regs, and globalization.  U.S. labor reduced to a mere commodity… the middle class also disappeared.  No wonder Millennials & Gen Z are upset.  Price gouging, shareholder value, ongoing dollar depreciation, and offshored labor have crushed North American labor’s earnings.  And federal government debt is catastrophic.  (Which doesn’t mean our highly corrupt congress won’t bailout Wall St again and again, or finance another for-profit war, but it does mean: opportunity & job killing austerity for the American people, as far as the eye can see.  Unless the younger generations demand that the national debt be written down, as they should.)  The latest deficit is two trillion dollars and the national debt is $37 trillion, including Trump’s 2020 Wall St. bailout.  Our great, libertarian, capitalist utopia is addicted to government spending, government welfare, privatization schemes, zombies & debt, and endless war.  Federal government spending is 25% of U.S. GDP, and a sizeable chunk of that is defense and security state spending. 

 

And nobody wants to address the elephant in the room: failed Reaganomics, Clintonista neoliberalism, oligarchy, trickle-down, and supply-side fraud.

 

With wage & wealth concentration - firmly entrenched into the hands of few oligarchs - growing more burdensome, with consolidation, technology, and the monopoly economy requiring fewer well-paid workers … government spending & debt to keep the American economy upright can only be expected to grow & undoubtedly will grow.  Which brings us to the American defense industry, this year’s Neoliberal Darwin Award winner.  

 

It's no accident that America finds itself constantly at war, that defense & security state spending grows ever higher.  It’s also no accident that GDP growth tracks with deficit spending (with deficit spending as a percentage of GDP coming in higher than actual GDP growth). The fallout from wage & wealth inequality, globalization, and a monopoly economy is a permanent under-class, catastrophic credit card debt, and a regressed & stagnating private sector economy… this means that in order for America to have growth or maintain GDP, federal government spending must pick up private sector slack.  

 

And, in Washington, what better way to grow the economy and create jobs than our repugnant arms industry.  Defense spending is a never-ending source of campaign contributions, kickbacks, stock appreciation, and stock buybacks for our day traders in congress.  As the defense industry grows and as the military is increasingly privatized… and as the private sector consolidates and shrinks the number of well paying jobs… the moral hazard and temptation to embrace conflict & war as the one-size-fits-all solution to all American & Western economic & foreign policy needs will only increase and grow.  And our morally bankrupt congress has shown zero appetite to rein it in.

 

This likely means Americans can expect to be treated to the spectacle of more genocides, more war, more U.S. troops placed into harm’s way, as well as more proxy wars.  To defray out-of-control defense spending and the monopolization & corruption of the defense industry, the U.S. pushes its allies to buy armaments that sometimes, to put it nicely, don’t even function.

 

And the quid pro quo for the American people?  More debt, more austerity, more culture war politics, more divide & conquer politics to distract from gross fiscal & monetary mismanagement in Washington.  The post-boomer generations enslaved & indentured to catastrophic national debt.  Exorbitant privilege slipping from our grasp?  And an ever-growing police & surveillance state to maintain law & order as the American people come to discover they’ve been lied to & ripped off (by vicious boomer & the silent generations).  We can also expect the corporate MSM to do its part: by blasting the latest War & Washington narrative from our television sets, instead of doing a deep dive into gross, abject political fraud in Washington. 

Alas, it's complex they tell us.  But not really.  At the center of all this, who does the U.S. economy serve: a handful of oligarchs (in which case, everything is perfect), or the American people (in which case, the economy is a disaster)?

 

And there you have it America… an economic, fiscal, foreign policy update… and this year’s Neoliberal Darwin Award winner:  

 

The Military Industrial Complex. 

 

All for want of honesty & integrity in our leadership.

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2023

All the Devils are here…

All the Devils are here… 

 

Let me be clear: Israel makes its own decisions. 

 

They are fighting an enemy embedded in the civilian population, which places innocent Palestinian people at risk.

 

-       President Biden, X formerly known as Twitter

 

By Gregg Wall (11-11-2023) 

 

POTUS Biden’s -- along with his sidekick, Bibi Netanyahu’s -- war crimes are growing by the second, with greater than 4,000 children murdered, and thousands and thousands of Palestinians slaughtered.  When they aren’t being bombed to death or randomly shot, disease and famine stock the residents of Gaza… food, water, medicine, and nearly all humanitarian assistance have been cutoff… essentially, turning Gaza into a proving grounds for America’s killing machine & Deep State.  

 

Gaza has been turned into a massive caged or canned hunt for the slaughter of innocents… one of the most sickening displays of cowardice I’ve witnessed in my sixty years on the planet, brought to the world by a Democratic President.  And the only excuse for this slaughter… Bibi, who up until October 7 thought Hamas was the greatest partner & sponsored Hamas… states that Hamas is using innocent civilians as human shields and Hamas must go (which somehow rationalizes murdering women and children by the thousands). 

 

Odd.  America has military bases throughout city centers & civilian populations, Israel has military bases and operations throughout cities & civilian centers… and since there is mandatory military service, Israeli soldiers are embedded throughout the civilian population.  So, if a foreign army invaded the U.S. or Israel… would that justify targeting & murdering American & Israeli civilians?  Absolutely not and a disproportionate assault or response would be a war crime.  Major media outlets and the US government puts the number of Hamas members at 20 to 25,000… within a Gaza population of 2.3 million people.  This means less than 1% of the population is Hamas, and the United States government and their proxy, Israel, are murdering thousands of children to get at 1% of the population?  Some thousands and thousands of bombs dropped later, Israel – in one month – has dropped more bombs on Gaza, than the United States dropped in Afghanistan in a single year.  And yet, Israel is said to have only scratched Hamas.  Let's be clear, this is not about rounding up Hamas, this is about genocide and a land grab. 

 

And yet, U.S. military contractors score record profits, defense stocks soar, and our corrupt congress day trades in defense and energy stocks… and Biden says there’s nothing he can do.  Despite America sending $3.8 billion, annually, to its colonial outpost, Israel… despite our new military base just outside Gaza… despite covering Israel’s keister diplomatically and Biden pushing for another $15 billion in genocide assistance.  So sorry murdered Palestinian children, there’s nothing Biden can do to rein in his homicidal pal, Bibi. 

 

This of course, brings up three possible scenarios: 

 

One, either Biden is gaslighting & lying, again, and fully supports the expansion of the U.S. empire and its proxy in the Middle East, at the expense of thousands of Palestinian dead and yet another, Nakba.

 

Two, maybe Biden is right… there’s really nothing he can do.  For a second, let’s take our lying POTUS at his word.  Which would suggest that the United States is so morbidly corrupt and dangerous, the Congress so easy to buy off (thanks to SCOTUS) … that a foreign power, Israel, and its genocidal maniac, Bibi, owns the U.S. government and its foreign policy.  If that’s true, the world is all the more dangerous and lethal, given the power, military might, and exorbitant privilege the United States possesses. 

 

U.S. power that can be rented out, purchased…  perhaps, placed on a layaway plan for Hanukkah… by any rogue nation, desperate politician, or megalomaniac.  Hell, who knows, perhaps a defense industry CEO wants to hit a quarterly target?  He or she can buy a nice little war to juice the quarterlies.  

 

Third, and equally troubling, perhaps Bibi and AIPAC have their hooks so deep into America’s catastrophically corrupt two-party system, he outright threatened to remove Biden from office.  Threatening a GOP administration to replace Biden's, since everyone knows the GOP is Bibi’s bitch. 

 

Pick any of the above, and the most powerful man on the planet, and his inexplicable inability to rein in Israel, says: America is not back.  America is a genocidal superpower, that will say and do anything to dodge responsibility for its ever-growing list of atrocities and campaign of mass murder (or, is dangerously & monstrously compromised, perhaps both). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And I guess, in that regard, we sort of owe Biden a debt, a pat on the back, a thank you.  Because if Biden has done anything he’s ripped the band-aid right off American exceptionalism and exposed the septic, steaming abscess in the underbelly of the Great American Nightmare. 

 

America will no longer have debates about which party is the most evil, Dem or GOP… because, as Shakespeare said: “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” 

 

The next idea to fall: Exorbitant privilege.  America has zero business holding & possessing exorbitant privilege.  Once again, America’s failed, repugnant leadership clearly demonstrates its inability to manage the world’s fiat currency, which it exploits not for humanity and peace… but rather, exploits to finance colonialism, genocide, murder, profits & gain.

 

America’s leadership, clearly, has zero business with the world’s most powerful military, which it uses to murder hundreds of thousands, mostly brown skinned people around the globe, to steal natural resources, back dictatorships, confiscate land, control markets, privatize nations, and eradicate and exploit indigenous peoples for profits & gain. 

 

America really has so little to offer the world, but banksters, debt, mass murder, instability, smiling merchants of death, and fossil fuels (presently burning down and flooding the planet).  And as for America?  Sorry, America… no BBB, no Medicare for All, no minimum wage, no voter protections or student debt forgiveness, but America can genocide like no other nation.

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2023

Genocide & the Fall of Western Credibility

Genocide & the Fall of Western Credibility 

 

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

 

-     Netanyahu.   Another Concept Implodes: Israel Can’t Be Managed by a Criminal Defendant, Haaretz

 

By Gregg Wall (10-28-2023)

 

The news flow is relentless but amidst all the war coverage, the American MSM continues to push colonialism, the duopoly’s agenda, faux-patriotism, endless war, and unequivocable support for Israel.  To sell this, the corporate media offers false dichotomies & simple binary narratives: good versus evil, Dem versus MAGA GOP, Israeli versus Palestinian.  

 

You won’t find any, or precious little, nuance at the nation’s pathetic papers of record.

 

Like how it came to be that the preeminent superpower in the Middle East was caught off guard by Hamas. 

 

Or how ultra-corrupt, right-winger Bibi Netanyahu’s approval rating was in the doghouse, and how wars have been known to boost the approval ratings of leaders in the cellar with the public. 

 

Almost entirely ignored by U.S. media is how the current Israeli Prime Minister has been propping up Hamas for years.  As long as, Hamas thwarted a two-state solution, Hamas was perfectly acceptable to Bibi.  Now, Hamas is an evil and implacable foe, that must be eliminated. 

 

And then, there’s the inconvenient fact, as reported in the BBC, that Israeli leadership was warned of the pending attack by Egypt.  Information that Israeli leadership mysteriously chose to ignore, costing hundreds of Israeli citizens their lives. 

 

Also omitted from American media’s problematic and simplistic news feed is the fact, that the U.S. congress was betting heavy on defense industry & energy stocks in the runup to the Hamas attack, a bellwether of a pending war if there ever was one.  (Those congressional greedsters… ain’t nothing getting in the way of front running an advantageous stock trade.)

 

And finally, reports coming out of Gaza that Israeli leadership is not only committing genocide w/ reckless abandon, fully supported by Western leadership & America… but Israeli leadership has been alleged to have killed fifty hostages kidnapped by Hamas. 

 

Gee whiz… given the West’s history of using false information to drive nations to war, and Bibi’s preternatural ability & desire to find ways to save his own political career… is it any wonder that the above information has been all but ignored and omitted from the American press coverage?  Left out of the narrative too is the fact that many Western leaders, center-left politicians (in reality, corporately owned & far-right) are in deep, deep trouble in the polls… and this war, again very opportune, swept inflation, troubled neoliberal economies, price gouging monopolies, housing crisis, health care crisis, and Big Oil burning up the planet right off the front pages.  Isn’t that wonderful?

 

It's almost as if, perhaps like the Ukraine, that this latest war was premeditated, choreographed, made to order?  Defense stocks are soaring, Big Oil & Gas are reporting record profits… the usual suspects, politicians & Wall St, are making a killing. 

 

What’s not in dispute and well known: Bibi & Israeli leadership, w/ support from the West, have been acting in bad faith for decades… only interested in a war of attrition & genocide… to achieve one end, a one-state solution with Israel’s fascist leadership in control of all of Palestine.  After all, America’s leadership looks to Israel, as its little colonial outpost in a highly troubled Middle East. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Biden is, of course, floundering, stuck in the past, behind the times, and spouting narratives that are least forty to fifty years behind the times.  Selling war, genocide, and murder as a jobs program for our failed libertarian, neoliberal economy.  A neoliberal economy that makes money for the private sector via cronyism, eliminating competition, government largesse & corporate welfare, grants of monopoly, price gouging, statism, and crushing labor, et al. 

 

So, if one is a desperate, sick misanthrope, I suppose one could see the appeal in a jobs program, predicated on America’s murderous empire of greed & profit.  Opportunistically omitted by Biden and McConnell… if the U.S. has all this money for genocide and murder, why don’t we have money to rebuild America, to create jobs & nation build right here at home?

 

Biden even trotted out ‘indispensable nation’… the idea that a bankrupt, war weary America and its empire must prevail to preserve endless for-profit wars, the unrelenting laundering of U.S. taxpayer dollars through military contractors and the stock market, prop up the eight hundred military bases around the globe, and protect & preserve the exorbitant privilege that pays for it all (aka, the almighty dollar and the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy).  This, while Americans face declining life expectancy, rising child poverty, no money for retirement, endemic price gouging, rising social inequality, the complete lack of social mobility, and an economic model that thrives on consolidation, predatory monopoly, rent seeking behavior, and crushing labor.

 

Besides, Europe needs America to preserve the peace.  The fact that Europe is united by the EU and NATO --  w/ so many of the nations neck deep in debt and ill-equipped to start a war -- was omitted from Biden’s speech.

 

It’s all very sketchy and deeply unsettling.  Americans are living through a time of great evil, a considerable amount of which emanates from our own government, the duopoly, our elected representatives, and the oligarchy.  Americans, therefore, have a duty to speak, to march and be heard.  Power concedes nothing w/out a demand. 

 

In times of great evil, we no longer have the luxury of remaining civil… in our discourse and protests.  We must call out great evil for what it is, frequently and often.  The wealthy and their henchmen, corrupt politicians addicted to power and the corporate MSM… count on & rely upon our civility, as cover and to hide their crimes of civilian genocide, mass murder of children, and endless profits from endless wars. 

Nothing less than immediate cessation of all hostilities & the immediate creation of the State of Palestine should be called for by all world leaders.

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2023