It is now 2012, and we are living in
the first few years of a new era of American history. Assuming that this country still exists, or
even if it doesn't in its present form, sometime in the future historians will
be writing about this era as a specific era different in many respects from
this country's past history. They will say that the nascent Era of Greed
had its antecedents in the period following WWII, at a time when America was
clearly becoming the greatest global power.
Looking back at the beginnings, they
will say that the forces of today were beginning to take shape in Washington,
New York and Chicago. In Washington, we
were finally digesting the New Deal, and coming to terms with changes
engendered by the post war economy.
The military industrial complex was
getting its bearings, and had sponsored the first of many smaller "wars" in
Korea. The power in the Pentagon was
afraid of being relegated to a back seat, now that WWII had been won. They were still powerful, certainly powerful
enough to have a second great general, beyond George Washington, elected
President in 1952. Later, nearing the
end of his second term of office, Eisenhower actually took the time to express
his version of founding father patriotism by warning us about the power of the
Military-Industrial Complex (at term which he actually coined in his farewell
address in early 1961, see his warning here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEbfVIuUtNE&feature=related ). Who would be in a
better position to know about this than Ike?
He had lived within its grasp for an entire career, and, as President he
was the Commander in Chief with probably the greatest understanding of military
political power of any President in our history.
Around the same time, the University of
Chicago Economics Department was starting a run of prominence in American
economic circles. Now under the
domination of Milton Friedman, who joined its academic staff in 1946, and
during the 1950's led the formulation, with Friedrich Hayek, an Austrian
economist, developed a monetarist philosophy of economics which has served as
the basis for the Neoconservative movement in economics and has formed the
underpinnings of our economy in many ways from Reagan through George W. Bush's
presidency and is alive and well in the present Congress. Friedman was Barry Goldwater's chief economic
advisor, and in 1981 he was appointed as a member of Reagan's Economic Policy
Board. He was the primary author of the
"trickle-down" economic policies foisted upon us by President Reagan, and
extended to the present by many key politicians, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan among
them.
As an historical side note, the work of
John Maynard Keynes, famed British economist whose theories form the basis for
virtually all useful macroeconomic theory aside from Friedman's meme, was
attacked in 1962 with the publication of a pamphlet called "Keynes at Harvard"
which attempted to directly connect Keynesian economists with socialism and
ultimately with social wastage and communism.
Largely discredited, the pamphlet was circulated by many universities,
as well as the John Birch Society. It
makes for some interesting reading, and has been the topic of heated debate and
debunking. You can find a modern,
updated version here: http://www.keynesatharvard.org/book/index.html . There is a relatively recent movement in
economic theory known as Modern Monetary Theory which has appeared only in the
recent past. It could be the cornerstone
of a foundation for real progress, and applies specifically to countries like
the U.S. which have their own currency.
I would commend you to reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartalism and going to the
website: http://neweconomicperspectives.org . It is a variant of Keynesianism which
actually preceded it in theoretical development.
New
York, from the earliest times in the
country's history of commercial enterprise and entrepreneurship, has been the
largest geographic bastion of banking and investment in the world. No other city even comes close. New York is where much of the "innovation" in
financial markets has found its beginnings, and been taken to where it is
today. In the 1950's, the city was
getting its post WWII bearings. The New
York Federal Reserve Bank, from its beginnings with passage of the Federal
Reserve Act in 1913, has dominated as no other FED branch has. Even today, its Board of Governors is like
the who's who of banking and finance in America.
Of course, this story could not be told
without mentioning Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve and
forerunner to Ben Bernanke, its present chairman, arch Friedman follower, an
Ayn Rand toady, and financial power monger.
Alan was made Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors by Gerald
Ford in 1974, and in 1987, became the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors,
considered by many to be the most powerful position in finance and economics in
the United States, following Paul Volcker in that position. I would recommend that anyone who is
interested in Greenspan to read the Wikipedia article on him and his career
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Greenspan ). It is most
informative.
With the appointment of Mr. Greenspan,
the stage had finally been set for a full blown neoconservative agenda;
although the full brunt of its theory has only recently taken complete shape. Interestingly, the libertarian side of the
neoconservative philosophy took was formed at the end of the last century with
the passage of financial deregulation passed in Gramm-Leach-Bliley, which
established the ground work for the crash of 2007-08.
There has been much discussion lately
in the media regarding the disparity between the wealthiest of Americans and
the poor which has consistently grown over the past twenty years. I won't belabor the facts and figures, but
suffice it to say that the separation between the very wealthiest and the those
not so economically fortunate occurs within the first 1 to 2%, with the top
.01% having truly incredible wealth.
This is a direct result of the political economic theories of
neo-conservatism. The country is now
controlled by a plutocratic regime of government which is a nexus of the rich
and powerful individuals, and the government controlled by their power and
influence (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy ). With the recent ruling of the Supreme Court referred to
as Citizens United, this stranglehold has been nearly perfected, although it
was not truly necessary to assure the continuation of this relationship, but
simply to make it even less assailable.
Prior to Citizens United, corporate interests had never been viewed as
having full standing under the First Amendment (freedom of speech) with
individuals.
Interestingly, the major issue for
America is the suppression of opposition by the oligarchies which control the
American private economy (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy ). The major
oligarchies in America are finance (banking, investment banking, insurance,
etc.), energy (producers of petroleum products, natural gas, etc.), health care
(hospitals, medical practitioners, pharmaceutical companies, health insurers,
etc.), media (owners of publications, television, radio, mass media, news and
entertainment, etc.), agribusiness (Monsanto, Cargill, Archer, Daniels, Midland,
etc.), corporate retail (Amazon, Wal-Mart, JC Penney, Kroger, etc.),
information/technology (Microsoft, Google, etc.), communications (Verizon,
Comcast, AT&T, etc.), transportation (GM, Boeing, Delta, etc.), and the
Military Industrial Complex (Lockheed Martin, Halliburton, McDonnell Douglas,
et al). There are others, but most are
fairly minor. The single feature of an
oligarch is market control by whatever means necessary. Their power is made far easier to control for
two reasons, control of the media (a member of the club), and control of
legislation and elections through lobbies and political contributions.
There are many ways in which I could
highlight the power of the plutocracy.
The easiest way to look at it is by examining the Federal Budget for
this year (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_federal_budget ). One immediately is
struck by the fact that the Military Industrial Complex, in testimony to its
unchallenged power, controls more than one half of every dollar spend by the
government in the "discretionary" budget.
This year it will consume more than $700 billion to execute its
purposes. It is even more striking is
the fact that the amount spent is more than 45% of all military spending by all
the world's governments combined. The
primary informed critics of the MIC are Chalmers Johnson, and Andrew Blacevich,
both of whom have written extensively on the topic and whom I heartily commend
the reader who wishes to be more fully informed.
Let's get back to the oligarchs. The cornerstone of the oligarchy is its
control over major media. Only six
corporate interests control over 90% of the media. Media is defined as book publishing, newspapers,
movies, television, radio, magazines, and internet sites. The only one of these not under substantial
control of the media is the internet, however the oligarchy has a major say in
the regulations propounded by the FCC which has control of rules relating to
the internet. To check the real story of
the media, I suggest you look at http://stateofthemedia.org/ a site dedicated to telling the story behind ownership of
news outlets, and http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6 , which clearly shows the level of control of this part of
American (and, incidentally, foreign in many cases) oligarchy. With this kind of grip on public information,
it is nearly impossible for ordinary people to get real information. Oh, the media does report on everything, but
focuses on sensational and lurid topics more than digging behind the scenes to
get the real truth to the public. They
virtually never tell the whole story of anything newsworthy, but rather craft their
reporting to assure that little harm is done to the other oligarchs.
So, the American public, and even the
global audiences, are mostly treated to unthreatening pabulum relating to the
facts and truth behind our greatest threats and fears.
Frontline recently aired a show on the
American security apparatus entitled Top Secret America, you can watch it online
here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/topsecretamerica/ which was based upon a book of the same name written by
Dana Priest and William Arkin (Dana is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter with
the Washington Post). This expose' tells
the story of the Bush doctrine developed immediately after 9/11, in conjunction
with the CIA, and which has evolved into an effort led by the US government
through 15 agencies, and which last year cost over $11 billion dollars, much of
which was paid to contractors. The
participants include the FBI, CIA, NSA, DNI, HAS, among others, mostly
clustered around the nation's capital.
Parts of the program have resulted in abridgment of our Constitutional
rights, and led to legally mandated invasion of privacy and accumulation of secret
data on the majority of American citizens.
There is a massive database housed in Colorado which contains virtually
all obtainable information on every person living in this country. NSA has the power to listen to every phone
conversation occurring in the entire world every minute of every day. The "stop and frisk" law is a part of this
evolving world of national security. The
progress on the program to date is extremely frightening to citizens who are
aware of it, and it is likely to become much more all encompassing in the
future. The Obama White House is fully
dedicated to the program, and anyone to be elected in the coming elections will
sign on as well, regardless of office or relative power. We get regular information on this situation
which results in further psychological repression of those who might be opposed
to any part of this government program, and it works in close cooperation with
the MIC oligarchs, as many of the same contractors who work on the program are
veterans and current contractors for the Pentagon. It might as well be a part of the MIC because
much of what the security apparatus does it does in conjunction with or in
cooperation with the Pentagon.
The American plutocracy is also
extremely concerned with climate change, but not in the way one might
imagine. They are opposed to the entire
movement that espouses a scientific rationale to support the fact of changing
world climate being accounted for by human activities. Of course the oligarchs most concerned with
the movement are involved in making huge profits in energy production. On October 23, Frontline aired a program
called "Climate of Doubt" which describes the major attempts to discredit the
movement and the huge majority of climatologically dedicated scientists around
the globe. It is available here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/climate-of-doubt/ , and is extremely informative and discouraging. I would urge everyone to watch this program
and to review the Wikipedia article on global warming which includes the views
of skeptics and doubters. It can be
found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming . This is simply another
indication of aggressive disinformation foisted upon us by the plutocracy in an
effort to control public opinion.
The issue for all of us in the 99%, the
average citizen, is how to get good information on which to base our actions,
whether personal, to protect ourselves, or political, to attempt to change the
system back to a democratic system where every voice counts, and truthful and
factual information is made available to all of us within easy reach. The most important initiative that the public
can take is to get involved in advocating for a change in the election process
which would create fair elections and appropriate government to protect us from
the immense harm that is being caused all of us by the predominance of the
Plutocracy. This action must start with
changing the election process itself. There
have been many suggestions, but the most rational of those involve the creation
of a Constitutional Amendment to change the process in several ways, and to
eliminate the effects of money on the process, which is the critical factor in
continuation of the plutocracy. At
present every election, federal, state and local, almost down to Dog Catcher,
is controlled by the support of candidacies by moneyed interests.
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