Corrupt politicians or corrupt billionaires?
Four decades ago we experienced a huge run up in the price of precious metals, and in particular, the price of silver. Silver futures reached into an unheard of and totally unwarranted $80 price range from a normal $4 price. Based upon normal market factors, like supply and demand, the value of the dollar, and world stability this run up made no sense. What turned out to be behind the extraordinary run up was a pair of oil billionaires, the Hunt brothers. They determined that the float in silver futures was small enough for them to gain a monopoly. They gave it the old “college try”, and nearly succeeded. But the US government stepped in at the last minute to save the day. The treasury released enough stockpiled silver bullion to pop the Hunt’s balloon. Since the Hunts were borrowing money to finance their diabolical plot they nearly caused a major bank failure in the process.
Next we saw a real estate boom financed by greedy bankers and real estate speculators. This has also required a government bail out. Could these scenarios possibly be precursors to today’s commodities manipulations? According to the Saudis they are producing enough oil to satisfy current world demand. Russia has moved into second place among the world’s oil producers and is providing for the large increase in demand in Southeast Asia, by way of a pipeline project similar to the Alaskan pipeline. The decline in the dollar is miniscule, when related to the increase in oil prices. All is quiet on the world stage with the exception of our unwanted intrusion into the Middle East. So absent any fundamental factors which could be responsible for the current price of oil, we are left with market manipulation by commodities billionaires. (The names may change but the irresponsible nature of the greedy remains the same). It appears that without our government stepping in and dumping huge reserves of oil on the market from its strategic stockpiles, manipulators will enrich themselves yet again at the expense of people who can least afford it.
As to corrupt politicians, consider this. Do you suppose this unprecedented run-up in oil prices could have occurred if we didn’t have an “oil ticket” benefiting directly from and facilitating the manipulators? First they stirred up the world’s major oil suppliers like Venezuela and the Middle East. Secondly, they have done nothing from a legislative point of view such as eliminating tax breaks to profiteers and spreading that wealth around, or dumping oil on the markets to depress prices.
For me the answer seems obvious. Big government, together with big business, is acting without a conscience to conspire to hold the world hostage to their will and egos. Corrupt politicians, together with corrupt billionaires, are the root of all evil. And the world’s poor and starving can’t afford to put rice in their bowls or purchase a loaf of bread for their table. For shame, for shame.
Bob Parmelee www.parmsplace.com
Monday, June 2, 2008
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Can We Be Bribed?
After enjoying the lowest approval rating in the nation's history, can both the Congress and the president buy their way back into the public’s favor? The proposed one-time tax refund of 600 dollars per person or 1200 dollars per household is designed to accomplish exactly that. Are we really that gullible? Can we really be expected to forgive all the lying, favoritism, and corruption perpetrated by this administration? After leading us into war and driving the nation into a recession, they propose to give the taxpayers some of their money back. Let us not forget that in order to give money back to us, they have to take it from us in the first place. And let us not forget, if it weren’t for this administration wasting trillions of dollars on an illegal, immoral, and unpopular war in the first place, we wouldn’t be on the brink of a financial meltdown.
$160 billion. It sounds like a lot of money. However, if we look at the Bush/Cheney welfare to Halliburton program it is a drop in the bucket. According to a recent Bill Moyers exposé, 200 billion dollars of the 400 billion dollars billed by Halliburton to the American taxpayer has disappeared. By disappeared I don’t mean failed to show up in Halliburton’s account. I mean disappeared as in the services billed to and paid for by the government were never performed. Buildings billed and paid for were never built. Outrageous double or triple billing for products and services were never reimbursed, or credits issued. In a recent investigation by a Senate panel concerning financial irregularities Condoleezza Rice attributed these disappearing funds to "accounting" errors. It is incredible to imagine waging a war on a cost-plus basis. Earmarks to other favored capital gangsters are rising to outrageous levels. Theft, by any other name, is still theft. Isn’t it?
Most economists agree that this proposed "stimulus package” won’t stimulate anything. Because businessmen realize the bubble is of short duration, they won't be adding payroll or capacity to plants. It is fair to say a portion will go to paying down personal debt, which won’t stimulate anything either. All this measure really does is drive up the nation's debt. According to Bloomberg analysts, this president has the nation on cruise control straight over a cliff. If anyone in the private sector proposed such a reckless policy, they would be on their way to an institution and fitted for a strait jacket.
We used to be able to tell the bandits from the good guys because the bandits had the decency to wear masks. Now the bandits are leading our nation and stealing us blind with the tacit approval of congress. Since the modern-day Bonnie and Clyde's are above the law they plunder and pillage at will. Unfortunately the scope of the nation's greedy plunderers extends around the globe. Because the country gets no benefit from the exploitation of our treasury, the value of the dollar is in steep decline around planet. Because our dollar is still the Globe's primary currency we are taking the rest of the world down with us. And consider the irony of needing Chinese AND Arab money to bail us out!
Now the administration is proposing the largest federal budget of all time, at a time when we can least afford it. A large portion of this budget will go to increasing this war effort and increasing military spending. While the world should be at peace, this pugnacious administration is creating an ever larger war machine and using it to invade sovereign nations without proven provocation. At the same time they propose cutting popular programs like Medicare and Social Security and other social programs like health care and education cost relief for the nations’ poorest children. The third Reich mentality couldn't possibly have arisen again, could it?
More articles of this nature can be seen at Black Belt Politics by going to
http://www.parmsplace.com
$160 billion. It sounds like a lot of money. However, if we look at the Bush/Cheney welfare to Halliburton program it is a drop in the bucket. According to a recent Bill Moyers exposé, 200 billion dollars of the 400 billion dollars billed by Halliburton to the American taxpayer has disappeared. By disappeared I don’t mean failed to show up in Halliburton’s account. I mean disappeared as in the services billed to and paid for by the government were never performed. Buildings billed and paid for were never built. Outrageous double or triple billing for products and services were never reimbursed, or credits issued. In a recent investigation by a Senate panel concerning financial irregularities Condoleezza Rice attributed these disappearing funds to "accounting" errors. It is incredible to imagine waging a war on a cost-plus basis. Earmarks to other favored capital gangsters are rising to outrageous levels. Theft, by any other name, is still theft. Isn’t it?
Most economists agree that this proposed "stimulus package” won’t stimulate anything. Because businessmen realize the bubble is of short duration, they won't be adding payroll or capacity to plants. It is fair to say a portion will go to paying down personal debt, which won’t stimulate anything either. All this measure really does is drive up the nation's debt. According to Bloomberg analysts, this president has the nation on cruise control straight over a cliff. If anyone in the private sector proposed such a reckless policy, they would be on their way to an institution and fitted for a strait jacket.
We used to be able to tell the bandits from the good guys because the bandits had the decency to wear masks. Now the bandits are leading our nation and stealing us blind with the tacit approval of congress. Since the modern-day Bonnie and Clyde's are above the law they plunder and pillage at will. Unfortunately the scope of the nation's greedy plunderers extends around the globe. Because the country gets no benefit from the exploitation of our treasury, the value of the dollar is in steep decline around planet. Because our dollar is still the Globe's primary currency we are taking the rest of the world down with us. And consider the irony of needing Chinese AND Arab money to bail us out!
Now the administration is proposing the largest federal budget of all time, at a time when we can least afford it. A large portion of this budget will go to increasing this war effort and increasing military spending. While the world should be at peace, this pugnacious administration is creating an ever larger war machine and using it to invade sovereign nations without proven provocation. At the same time they propose cutting popular programs like Medicare and Social Security and other social programs like health care and education cost relief for the nations’ poorest children. The third Reich mentality couldn't possibly have arisen again, could it?
More articles of this nature can be seen at Black Belt Politics by going to
http://www.parmsplace.com
Friday, May 23, 2008
How should we spell relief?
I, for one, spell relief as the end of the Bush/Cheney "oil ticket" reign of terror. If the rumors, founded on "leaks" in the White House to Andrew Cockburn of "Counterpunch", are correct, the gruesome twosome have signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against Iran, among others, unprecedented in scope. Bush's secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area stretching from Lebanon to Afghanistan and includes strategic assassinations of targeted officials. The source for these assertions comes from a former official on the National Security Council.
According to CBS sources, the State Department is at work drafting an ultimatum to Iran demanding they cease all current activities in Iraq. The fact that allegations of Iran's involvement in Iraq have never been proven seems of no concern to a man whose policies are based more on faith than fact. A curious side benefit to the most ridiculous foreign policy in this nation's history is a near bankruptcy of Citigroup, the world's largest financial services company. This company avoided immediate ruin by selling an 11% interest to, are you ready for this, the Arabs. The fact that a direct result of the war in the Middle East has driven oil prices to the point where major industries, airlines and trucking to mention just two, are on the verge of collapse, hasn't dawned on the war hawks yet. As higher oil prices put ever larger chunks of American capital in Arab hands, the Arab countries turn around and buy ever larger chunks of America.
Could we possibly be doing anything stupider or more damaging to our country than continuing, let alone increasing, our involvement in the middle east?
According to CBS sources, the State Department is at work drafting an ultimatum to Iran demanding they cease all current activities in Iraq. The fact that allegations of Iran's involvement in Iraq have never been proven seems of no concern to a man whose policies are based more on faith than fact. A curious side benefit to the most ridiculous foreign policy in this nation's history is a near bankruptcy of Citigroup, the world's largest financial services company. This company avoided immediate ruin by selling an 11% interest to, are you ready for this, the Arabs. The fact that a direct result of the war in the Middle East has driven oil prices to the point where major industries, airlines and trucking to mention just two, are on the verge of collapse, hasn't dawned on the war hawks yet. As higher oil prices put ever larger chunks of American capital in Arab hands, the Arab countries turn around and buy ever larger chunks of America.
Could we possibly be doing anything stupider or more damaging to our country than continuing, let alone increasing, our involvement in the middle east?
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Who is telling the truth?
marshall mcluhanWho is telling the truth?
Except for the liars, everyone is.
Unfortunately, we all view history through the lens of our own upbringing. An ever-changing kaleidoscope of world events refracts the “truth” into a thousand prisms. We each eventually pick a point of view of the world which is most pleasing, or least terrifying, to ourselves. That view is focused and shaped by what we see and read daily.
Saul Bellow once said about the media, “nobody will be heard, who doesn’t speak in short bursts of truth”. Bill Moyers recently reflected that news people need to speak in “bumper sticker” snippets to hold our attention. Media mavens have seven seconds to grab us and make an impression before we are “gone” and on to something else mentally.
It would be simple arithmetic to hold the media responsible for our loss of depth perception. But that would be wrong. We are conditioned to accept specially crafted sound bytes. Marshall McLuhan, back in the 70’s, wrote a blockbuster book exposing the medium as the message. People have always had a tendency to view what they read as “truth, so help me God”. Today people view what they see as the “truth”. But as the written word is just a sound byte, the video is just an action byte, and only as real as we perceive it to be.
Here is a case in point. The Bush administration focused our attention on terrorism after 9/11 and in true Barnum and Bailey sleight of hand switched our focus to Iraq. Although one had nothing to do with the other, we followed the sound bytes and believed the video clips, and “agreed” Iraq needed to be punished. Most recently, a concerted military effort has been made to link the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq to Iran. Over 20,000 weapons were assembled from various armed engagements, and military experts were tasked to find a link back to the source -- Iran. Of course, no tangible link exists. But many will follow this “sleight-of-hand” maneuver and accept the inevitability of a war with Iran.
We would do well to remember a former writer named Len de Caux, who said in “Armies Of The Poor”: “Sometimes I’d hear a Communist speaker say something so bitter and extreme I’d feel embarrassed. Then I’d look around at the unemployed audience -- shabby clothes, expressions worried and sour. Faces would start to glow, heads to nod, and hands to clap.” So here we are again, and to the thousands who protested before the war began and the hundreds of thousands since, the Bush administration says, more or less, “So?” Well, my face is glowing, my head is nodding, and I’m clapping my hands! And I am no communist.
Governments of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy are never sustainable; such empires always fall from within. The wealthy have been leading this charge over the cliff with their golden parachutes and laser guided bombs. Hopefully we will learn that arrogance and greed have no place in a democracy. And we will reorganize ourselves accordingly.
Except for the liars, everyone is.
Unfortunately, we all view history through the lens of our own upbringing. An ever-changing kaleidoscope of world events refracts the “truth” into a thousand prisms. We each eventually pick a point of view of the world which is most pleasing, or least terrifying, to ourselves. That view is focused and shaped by what we see and read daily.
Saul Bellow once said about the media, “nobody will be heard, who doesn’t speak in short bursts of truth”. Bill Moyers recently reflected that news people need to speak in “bumper sticker” snippets to hold our attention. Media mavens have seven seconds to grab us and make an impression before we are “gone” and on to something else mentally.
It would be simple arithmetic to hold the media responsible for our loss of depth perception. But that would be wrong. We are conditioned to accept specially crafted sound bytes. Marshall McLuhan, back in the 70’s, wrote a blockbuster book exposing the medium as the message. People have always had a tendency to view what they read as “truth, so help me God”. Today people view what they see as the “truth”. But as the written word is just a sound byte, the video is just an action byte, and only as real as we perceive it to be.
Here is a case in point. The Bush administration focused our attention on terrorism after 9/11 and in true Barnum and Bailey sleight of hand switched our focus to Iraq. Although one had nothing to do with the other, we followed the sound bytes and believed the video clips, and “agreed” Iraq needed to be punished. Most recently, a concerted military effort has been made to link the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq to Iran. Over 20,000 weapons were assembled from various armed engagements, and military experts were tasked to find a link back to the source -- Iran. Of course, no tangible link exists. But many will follow this “sleight-of-hand” maneuver and accept the inevitability of a war with Iran.
We would do well to remember a former writer named Len de Caux, who said in “Armies Of The Poor”: “Sometimes I’d hear a Communist speaker say something so bitter and extreme I’d feel embarrassed. Then I’d look around at the unemployed audience -- shabby clothes, expressions worried and sour. Faces would start to glow, heads to nod, and hands to clap.” So here we are again, and to the thousands who protested before the war began and the hundreds of thousands since, the Bush administration says, more or less, “So?” Well, my face is glowing, my head is nodding, and I’m clapping my hands! And I am no communist.
Governments of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy are never sustainable; such empires always fall from within. The wealthy have been leading this charge over the cliff with their golden parachutes and laser guided bombs. Hopefully we will learn that arrogance and greed have no place in a democracy. And we will reorganize ourselves accordingly.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
The Hornet's Nest
Imagine walking through the forest one day and discovering an apparently unguarded or abandoned bee’s nest hanging within easy reach. Thinking a snack of rich honey can be had for little or no effort, you approach the nest. Suddenly your plan is interrupted by an angry buzzing. You look around you and discover a hornet buzzing about your feet. Following your first instinct you attempt to stomp on the hornet, and after several misses you successfully squash the pesky bugger. However, without you noticing, your stomping has shaken the ground and you now have several angry hornets buzzing about your feet. You immediately launch into an Indian war dance, hooting and stomping around, until you feel the sharp pain of a sting. This angers you further so you increase your efforts to exact revenge upon the culprit and his cohorts by flailing madly in all directions. You attempt to obliterate the source of these angry hornets by closing the hole from which they came. However, by now you are not fighting just one or several angry hornets, but the entire nest has erupted around you and you are getting stung repeatedly. Too late you realize that although you easily stomped the first soldier who attempted to defend his nest, and the several that followed, they are striking back. Further, you realize they are coming from more than one hole in the ground, and they appear to be everywhere.
The moral of the story is simple. Although our daydreamer was infinitely superior in size and weaponry, and although he was able to inflict serious damage to the pesky tribe, er nest, his victory was never accomplished, and in the meantime, he incurred some serious damage. The longer he stays the more damage he suffers until he leaves with his tail between his legs.
Mission accomplished.
The moral of the story is simple. Although our daydreamer was infinitely superior in size and weaponry, and although he was able to inflict serious damage to the pesky tribe, er nest, his victory was never accomplished, and in the meantime, he incurred some serious damage. The longer he stays the more damage he suffers until he leaves with his tail between his legs.
Mission accomplished.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Collateral Damage
Jesus Christ or Genghis Kahn....Who's footsteps are we really following?
Collateral damage.
Sounds reasonable, acceptable, and even unavoidable to the military minded among us. But what is it exactly? It is the cost in nonmilitary casualties to innocently involved people during military confrontations. It is the cost in lives of unsuspecting women and children blown to bits in shopping malls or on subway trains and in markets when extremists seek to make a political statement. It is the cost in families dislocated to relief centers because their homes have been commandeered by military personnel in war zones, or to those whose homes have disappeared altogether from bomb strikes. It is the economic cost to countries whose infrastructure has been destroyed; manufacturing centers, roads and bridges, power facilities and grids, and commerce centers all disabled or destroyed by combatants during military campaigns. This destruction is a result of goals which are completely irrelevant to the people whose lives are being destroyed by the “ruling” elite who supposedly speak for the people they govern.
Does this still sound reasonable? Millions of people dislocated, hundreds of thousands of people dead, trillions of dollars of money wasted on the megalomaniac dreams and ambitions of a few deranged individuals? And I do mean a few. Less than a hundred powerful sheiks (similar to Mafia families) in Iraq are being propped up by a few hundreds of legislators in this country, in support of a few thousand businessmen. These “elite” are costing the rest of the world hundreds of thousands of lives, trillions of current and future dollars, and generations of grief.
And for what? I personally have nothing against a single Iraqi or Muslim. In fact, I don’t even know one. I feel certain that the poor civilian, who has lost a family member to this war (every family in Iraq has lost, on average, at least one) has nothing against me. Where is the sanity?
Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to turn a biblical eye to the damage caused to us during the 9/11 disaster? Instead of recovering from the disaster, haven’t we, in fact, more than doubled it -- just in lives lost? If we add the cost of the physically maimed and mentally diminished, and the cost in taxpayer dollars of a devastated economy, haven’t we caused ourselves infinitely more damage than the “enemy” could have ever managed? With no end to the damage in sight! Where is the sanity in a policy like this?
And to think my fellow Americans are considering voting for more of the same, for shame. And to think this is being done in the name of one of the foremost pacifists to ever place his saintly foot upon this planet…none other than Jesus Christ himself. It seems to me we do Genghis Kahn honor in the name of our savior.
Collateral damage.
Sounds reasonable, acceptable, and even unavoidable to the military minded among us. But what is it exactly? It is the cost in nonmilitary casualties to innocently involved people during military confrontations. It is the cost in lives of unsuspecting women and children blown to bits in shopping malls or on subway trains and in markets when extremists seek to make a political statement. It is the cost in families dislocated to relief centers because their homes have been commandeered by military personnel in war zones, or to those whose homes have disappeared altogether from bomb strikes. It is the economic cost to countries whose infrastructure has been destroyed; manufacturing centers, roads and bridges, power facilities and grids, and commerce centers all disabled or destroyed by combatants during military campaigns. This destruction is a result of goals which are completely irrelevant to the people whose lives are being destroyed by the “ruling” elite who supposedly speak for the people they govern.
Does this still sound reasonable? Millions of people dislocated, hundreds of thousands of people dead, trillions of dollars of money wasted on the megalomaniac dreams and ambitions of a few deranged individuals? And I do mean a few. Less than a hundred powerful sheiks (similar to Mafia families) in Iraq are being propped up by a few hundreds of legislators in this country, in support of a few thousand businessmen. These “elite” are costing the rest of the world hundreds of thousands of lives, trillions of current and future dollars, and generations of grief.
And for what? I personally have nothing against a single Iraqi or Muslim. In fact, I don’t even know one. I feel certain that the poor civilian, who has lost a family member to this war (every family in Iraq has lost, on average, at least one) has nothing against me. Where is the sanity?
Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to turn a biblical eye to the damage caused to us during the 9/11 disaster? Instead of recovering from the disaster, haven’t we, in fact, more than doubled it -- just in lives lost? If we add the cost of the physically maimed and mentally diminished, and the cost in taxpayer dollars of a devastated economy, haven’t we caused ourselves infinitely more damage than the “enemy” could have ever managed? With no end to the damage in sight! Where is the sanity in a policy like this?
And to think my fellow Americans are considering voting for more of the same, for shame. And to think this is being done in the name of one of the foremost pacifists to ever place his saintly foot upon this planet…none other than Jesus Christ himself. It seems to me we do Genghis Kahn honor in the name of our savior.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Clinton for Governor?
Since the New York governor's mansion has self imploded with Eliot Spitzer's and David Patterson's admissions of sexual excess, discussion has turned toward the possibility Hillary Clinton might consider moving from the U.S. Senate to the New York governor's mansion.
Recent polls clearly place Barack Obama a front runner in the national campaign. Perhaps it's time for Hillary to consider an exit strategy. Barack Obama has weathered the Reverend Wright earthquake and seems to be on firmer ground than ever. His ties to organized crime in Chicago have evaporated. His wife has slipped into the background after her gaffs about "finally feeling good about the country "she lives in and has benefited greatly from.
The worst that has been said about Hillary Clinton is she had ties to a company which got caught sideways in some very fragrant real estate deals. Nothing was ever proven regarding her involvement in the Whitewater scandal. On occasion, she is charged with orchestrating a few "cover-ups" regarding Bill's philandering. No one I know can blame a woman for protecting her home and family, even if it requires using Capitol police to run the "pass" interference.
So are the trial balloons about her moving into a position to become the new New York governor just hot air? Or is this just an attempt to thwart her national campaign hopes by the evil red herring genius? Or maybe this is some serious possibility we have to consider.
Recent polls clearly place Barack Obama a front runner in the national campaign. Perhaps it's time for Hillary to consider an exit strategy. Barack Obama has weathered the Reverend Wright earthquake and seems to be on firmer ground than ever. His ties to organized crime in Chicago have evaporated. His wife has slipped into the background after her gaffs about "finally feeling good about the country "she lives in and has benefited greatly from.
The worst that has been said about Hillary Clinton is she had ties to a company which got caught sideways in some very fragrant real estate deals. Nothing was ever proven regarding her involvement in the Whitewater scandal. On occasion, she is charged with orchestrating a few "cover-ups" regarding Bill's philandering. No one I know can blame a woman for protecting her home and family, even if it requires using Capitol police to run the "pass" interference.
So are the trial balloons about her moving into a position to become the new New York governor just hot air? Or is this just an attempt to thwart her national campaign hopes by the evil red herring genius? Or maybe this is some serious possibility we have to consider.
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