CNN reports: “The Revolution: A Manifesto, released earlier this month, is currently No. 1 on the Web site’s list of top sellers, besting even Oprah’s latest Book Club selection.”
I picked up a copy for myself and have been quite impressed. By the response so far, I think this is going to be big.
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I only had four dollars in my wallet but that would be enough to buy some food. But when I went to check-out at the store, I found two of my dollars were missing!
Where could they have gone?
I found out later on the radio: Bush gives $770m to aid Tanzania.
That’s more than $2 for every man, woman and child in America.
OK, so the money wasn’t actually robbed from my wallet, but philosophically, what is the difference? When people hear reports of government spending, I don’t think they make the connection that all of that money is coming from their wallets.
President Bush is strutting his stuff across Africa, protected by his Praetorian Guard, and raining down cash upon the meek leaders who kneel before him. Who let this spendthrift get his hands on this nation’s credit card?
If I want to give money to Tanzania, I can do so myself.
The government has no money of its own. It has to tax citizens, borrow from others, or simply print the money.
If the government was limited to raising funds via taxation, the people would immediately revolt against such reckless spenders. Instead, Congress simply raises the debt window, and the citizenry continue to believe that their nation is “wealthy”.
How long do you think the Iraq war would last if people had any clue how much it was costing them, this hypothetical situation is an eye-opener:
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When Gmail first came out, it was exciting to use an “Ajax” style online email client that was so fast and responsive. By comparison, Hotmail ran like a dog, having to download the full page with every request.
But over the past year, Gmail has become agonizingly slow for me. The reason: the JavaScript processing would lock up my entire web browser for 5-10 seconds at a time! When loading Gmail, my web browser eats up 100% of the available CPU. I desperately wanted a better way to access my email.
To my delight, I tried the little “HTML” link at the bottom of the Gmail screen, and was surprised by the lightning-fast page updates. The HTML-only version of Gmail uses no JavaScript and runs fantastically fast by comparison!
You can bookmark this link to access your Gmail in HTML-only mode:
https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html&zy=f
Note, however, you’ll miss some JavaScript features, such as the pop-up address list when composing email messages. So you might want to switch back to “molasses-mode” when you need those features. Otherwise, juice it up! Enjoy the speed of HTML-only.
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This post is adapted from an email I wrote defending Ron Paul’s non-interventionist foreign policy.
Like most people, I desire a stable world, and don’t believe that Ron Paul in any way proposes the withdrawal of honest diplomacy.
At issue here is intervention. Reviewing our history of foreign intervention, can it be said that the U.S. has been a benevolent force, much less a “stabilizing” force? I think the exact opposite appraisal is more likely, even excluding from consideration the latest crimes against Iraq and Afghanistan. Noam Chomsky is perhaps one of the most informed authors on this topic and many of his writings touch on this.
But even if it were possible that our foreign military adventures could be considered a blessing to the world, the fact remains that they will come to an end because they are unsustainable. Chalmers Johnson, former cold-warrior and consultant to the CIA, has been making this point for a number of years. His latest essay (after the brief intro) reflects on our financial situation.
I would highlight the following excerpts (certain lines were made bold by me):
It is virtually impossible to overstate the profligacy of what our government spends on the military. The Department of Defense’s planned expenditures for fiscal year 2008 are larger than all other nations’ military budgets combined. The supplementary budget to pay for the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not part of the official defense budget, is itself larger than the combined military budgets of Russia and China. Defense-related spending for fiscal 2008 will exceed $1 trillion for the first time in history. The United States has become the largest single salesman of arms and munitions to other nations on Earth. Leaving out of account President Bush’s two on-going wars, defense spending has doubled since the mid-1990s. The defense budget for fiscal 2008 is the largest since World War II.
…and later:
Such expenditures are not only morally obscene, they are fiscally unsustainable. Many neoconservatives and poorly informed patriotic Americans believe that, even though our defense budget is huge, we can afford it because we are the richest country on Earth. Unfortunately, that statement is no longer true. The world’s richest political entity, according to the CIA’s “World Factbook,” is the European Union. The EU’s 2006 GDP … was estimated to be slightly larger than that of the U.S. …
A more telling comparison that reveals just how much worse we’re doing can be found among the “current accounts” of various nations. The current account measures the net trade surplus or deficit of a country plus cross-border payments of interest, royalties, dividends, capital gains, foreign aid, and other income. For example, in order for Japan to manufacture anything, it must import all required raw materials. Even after this incredible expense is met, it still has an $88 billion per year trade surplus with the United States and enjoys the world’s second highest current account balance. (China is number one.) The United States, by contrast, is number 163 – dead last on the list, worse than countries like Australia and the United Kingdom that also have large trade deficits. Its 2006 current account deficit was $811.5 billion; second worst was Spain at $106.4 billion. This is what is unsustainable.
And he closes with:
Our short tenure as the world’s “lone superpower” has come to an end. As Harvard economics professor Benjamin Friedman has written:
“Again and again it has always been the world’s leading lending country that has been the premier country in terms of political influence, diplomatic influence, and cultural influence. It’s no accident that we took over the role from the British at the same time that we took over… the job of being the world’s leading lending country. Today we are no longer the world’s leading lending country. In fact we are now the world’s biggest debtor country, and we are continuing to wield influence on the basis of military prowess alone.”
Some of the damage done can never be rectified. There are, however, some steps that this country urgently needs to take. These include reversing Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the wealthy, beginning to liquidate our global empire of over 800 military bases, cutting from the defense budget all projects that bear no relationship to the national security of the United States, and ceasing to use the defense budget as a Keynesian jobs program. If we do these things we have a chance of squeaking by. If we don’t, we face probable national insolvency and a long depression.
I point to Ron Paul as the only politician I have found who is personally well-read on our foreign policy, and can offer a plan to address these issues.
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Ron Paul was “aggressively” interviewed on Meet the Press. Tim Russert desperately tried to dig up dirt on Ron Paul. He went all the way back to the Civil War, questioning Ron Paul’s assertion that the Civil War wasn’t about “freeing slaves”. Hint, in French, the civil war is accurately referred to as the “War of Secession”.
Ron Paul and David Shuster go head to head on Morning Joe
It was somewhat entertaining to see everyone so emotionally involved in maintaining the widely accepted notion of Lincoln as a saintly figure. If you believe Lincoln valiantly fought the Civil War to pursue freedom for slaves and equality among men, then it can be discordant to read a quote like the following:
“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
-Abraham Lincoln, September 18, 1858
[Source: www.nps.gov]
Lesson to interviewers: don’t attack Ron Paul when he has a more informed opinion than your own. Get curious instead of angry.
More recent articles on Lincoln:
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Sharp market-analysis from the UK. Get up to speed in 9 minutes flat:
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A video containing several news clips warning of the “house of cards” that is the U.S. economy:
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How in the world were these bundled up “subprime” mortgages passed off as being low-risk? That is one thing I couldn’t understand about this whole disaster.
This article, What the ‘Subprime’ Mess Is Really About, offered a possible explanation:
In truth, lenders have been systematically concealing the market value of this paper through a fairly simple and universal manipulation of the foreclosure process: when a property is foreclosed and “publicly” auctioned, the lender itself bids in the amount it claims to be owed at the auction, thus insuring that there is never a loss on the loan itself, since the loan is always “paid in full” at the auction.
When it is the successful bidder – as it almost always is – the lender then winds up owning the property. When the property is finally sold by the lender, there is normally a loss; but technically, that is not a loss on the loan itself. That does not damage the value of the original “paper.”
In this way mortgage paper and its many derivatives can be and have been marketed as very “safe” investments, providing a “good return” with “no risk of loss.” But of course there is no such thing. There is a risk of loss; it has just been hidden.
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Exciting video about December 16th:
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Lew Rockwell is a longtime friend of Ron Paul, and publisher of the very popular weblog LewRockwell.com.
If you’d like to get a little background on where Ron Paul is coming from, you’ll appreciate this interview with Lew Rockwell.
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