Government – Page 651 – Public Intelligence Blog

The four business gangs that run the US

Ross Gittins

Sydney Herald, December 31, 2012

IF YOU'VE ever suspected politics is increasingly being run in the interests of big business, I have news: Jeffrey Sachs, a highly respected economist from Columbia University, agrees with you – at least in respect of the United States.

In his book, The Price of Civilisation, he says the US economy is caught in a feedback loop. ”Corporate wealth translates into political power through campaign financing, corporate lobbying and the revolving door of jobs between government and industry; and political power translates into further wealth through tax cuts, deregulation and sweetheart contracts between government and industry. Wealth begets power, and power begets wealth,” he says.

Sachs says four key sectors of US business exemplify this feedback loop and the takeover of political power in America by the ”corporatocracy”.

First is the well-known military-industrial complex. ”As [President] Eisenhower famously warned in his farewell address in January 1961, the linkage of the military and private industry created a political power so pervasive that America has been condemned to militarisation, useless wars and fiscal waste on a scale of many tens of trillions of dollars since then,” he says.

Second is the Wall Street-Washington complex, which has steered the financial system towards control by a few politically powerful Wall Street firms, notably Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and a handful of other financial firms.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: The Four Business Gangs That Run (Loot) the US + 4 Books”

2013/01/082013/01/08

Mini-Me: Kerry-Hagel as Obama Attempt to Change Direction Away from War and Toward Domestic Reconstruction

02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DoD, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

Huh?

A view of what's really behind Hagel nomination fight

From CNN's “Early Start”

January 8, 2013

EXTRACT:

CNN: Peter wrote what I think is (one of the) most … interesting and compelling articles about the Hagel nomination, explaining it perhaps better than anyone I've seen, including the president.

The first paragraph of the piece, you write, it may prove the most consequential foreign policy appointment of his presidency because the struggle over Hagel is a struggle over whether Obama can change the terms of the foreign policy debate. Explain that for me.

Peter Beinart: I think so far, the debate about military action in Iran has been conducted by and large in Washington, as if Iraq and Afghanistan didn't happen.

As if we haven't learned anything from the disaster (of) these two wars over the last 10 years. I think the real struggle between Hagel and his foes is he wants to bring some of the lessons in to the Iran debate that we learned about (Iraq) and Afghanistan.

He talks very compellingly about the fact wars once launched can't be fully controlled. He is very cognizant of the enormous financial cost that these wars have imposed on the United States, and I think the heart of the hostility is the fear that his recognition about what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq will make taking us to war in Iran harder.

Hagel vows to fight ‘distortions'

[Note: An Open Source Agency (OSA) controlled by Kerry-Hagel would go a very long way toward fighting the information pathologies that abound in Washington.]

CNN: You suggest there are no consequences for the Iraq War in terms of those who supported or imposed it.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Kerry-Hagel as Obama Attempt to Change Direction Away from War and Toward Domestic Reconstruction”

2013/01/082013/05/18

Marcus Aurelius: Fact-Checking CIA Fact-Checking 0 Dark 30 [with Robert Steele Fact-Checking Both] 1.2

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 09 Terrorism, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency

Fact-Checking the CIA's Fact-Check on ‘Zero Dark Thirty

By J.K. Trotter | The Atlantic Wire – Fri, Dec 28, 2012

“The CIA is a lot different than Hollywood portrays it to be,” reads an official explainer issued today by the Central Intelligence Agency — a thinly veiled attempt to continue debunking Zero Dark Thirty, the controversial Oscar favorite that its director admittedly hates. Referring to James Bond, the fictional MI6 agent, depictions of “shootouts and high speed chases,” and scenes of “CIA officers chasing terrorists through the American heartland,” the memo goes on to try and dispel an array of “myths” pertaining to the agency's operations, from its impact on foreign policy to its ability to spy on Americans. The effort follows a December 21 letter addressed to CIA employees from the agency's acting director, Michael Morrell, concerning the “artistic license” of Zero Dark Thirty. Today's release touches on the same themes: whether the CIA of our popular imagination corresponds to the CIA of reality, and how movies like Zero Dark Thirty (which isn't name-checked directly) blur the distinction between fact and fantasy. Should you believe the CIA's interpretation of Hollywood? We break down each agency claim with actual details from the movies — and Homeland, obviously.

Below the line: each of the five “myths” and Robert Steele's “best truth” answer, Steve Coll's negative review of film.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Fact-Checking CIA Fact-Checking 0 Dark 30 [with Robert Steele Fact-Checking Both] 1.2”

2013/01/082013/01/08

Mini-Me: John Brennan, Drones, Killing Children + Drone Meta-RECAP

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military

Huh?

John Brennan vs. a Sixteen-Year-Old

Medea Benjamin

Huffington Post, 01/08/2013

In October 2011, 16-year-old Tariq Aziz attended a gathering in Islamabad where he was taught how to use a video camera so he could document the drones that were constantly circling over his Pakistani village, terrorizing and killing his family and neighbors. Two days later, when Aziz was driving with his 12-year-old cousin to a village near his home in Waziristan to pick up his aunt, his car was struck by a Hellfire missile. With the push of a button by a pilot at a US base thousands of miles away, both boys were instantly vaporized — only a few chunks of flesh remained.

Afterwards, the US government refused to acknowledge the boys' deaths or explain why they were targeted. Why should they? This is a covert program where no one is held accountable for their actions.

The main architect of this drone policy that has killed hundreds, if not thousands, of innocents, including 176 children in Pakistan alone, is President Obama's counterterrorism chief and his pick for the next director of the CIA: John Brennan.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: John Brennan, Drones, Killing Children + Drone Meta-RECAP”

2013/01/082013/01/08

Winslow Wheeler: Will Chuck Hagel Stand Up to Drone Lobby?

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Peace Intelligence

Everyone has an opinion and the speculation is almost entirely based on what former Senator Hagel has said, rather than his actions–or lack of them–which speak a lot louder. Take an acutely political career that seems to have valued words above everything and match it with Pentagon myths about defense systems, and you get a somewhat different picture of what to expect from Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. It is not at all encouraging. This commentary about the all embracing mythology of drones and Chuck Hagel was published at Foreign Policy last evening.

Foreign Policy

THE SPENDAGON

Will Chuck Hagel Stand Up to the Drone Lobby?

Or will he be yet another victim of Pentagon operators?

WINSLOW WHEELER | JANUARY 7, 2013

U.S. Central Command has released some interesting numbers on the performance of modern air systems in Afghanistan; the data do not auger well for our defenses in the next decade, nor for the suitability of the man who appears likely to be the next secretary of defense, former Senator Chuck Hagel — his admirable iconoclasm toward some national security dogmas notwithstanding.

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: Will Chuck Hagel Stand Up to Drone Lobby?”

2013/01/072013/01/07

Chuck Spinney: The Real Challenges Facing the Next Secretary of Defense, Robert Steele Comments

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Military

No Guts, No Glory

The Real Challenges Facing the Next Secretary of Defense

FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY,
This essay appeared in Counterpunch (12 Dec 2012) and Time's Battleland (3 Jan 2013)

EXTRACT:

The problem is not just a strategic one of extracting our forces with dignity; nor is it a political one of fingering who is to blame, although there is plenty of blame to go around. It stems from deep institutional roots that reveal a need for reform in our military bureaucracies and particularly our leadership selection policies.

That is because the next Secretary of Defense must deal with the consequences of a strategic oversight that was made by and approved at the highest professional levels of the American military establishment — a plan which it then imposed on its weak and insecure political leaders. This suggests a question: Will the new defense secretary succumb to business as usual by sweeping the dysfunctional institutional causes of the Afghan debacle under the rug or have the courage and wisdom to use this sorry affair as a reason to clean out the Pentagon’s Augean Stables?

. . . . . . . . .

A far more significant challenge will be posed by the need to sort out the programmatic chaos in the Pentagon’s hugely bloated defense budget, which, while not unrelated to the Afghan debacle, is caused primarily by out-of-control institutional prerogatives and bureaucratic game playing. Notwithstanding its bloat, the current defense budget plan cannot modernize the military’s weapons inventories on a timely basis; nor can it insure our shrinking, aging equipment will be maintained in a state of combat readiness, while providing sufficient funds for training troops. Most importantly, the Pentagon’s accounting systems are a shambles. The Pentagon’s budget and program planning books can not even pass the most basic constitutional requirements for accountability, much less provide the management information needed to fix the aforementioned modernization, force structure, and readiness problems.

As I explained here and here, these dysfunctional problems are connected and have deep behavioral roots. Fixing these problems will require harmonizing and reining in the disparate factions making up the dysfunctional political-economy of the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex — a heretofore intractable problem President Eisenhower first warned America about in his farewell address in January 1961 (note: the reference to Congress was included in the first draft of his speech but subsequently dropped).

What I find depressing is that not one of these pressing issues has been the subject of speculations about the choice of a new defense secretary. Au contraire, the press has been obsessed with the lobbying concerns of the discredited neocons on the right who helped to create Afghan and Iraqi messes, proponents of continuing American empire in the middle (who are now promoting our intervention in Syria and the budget busting pivot to the Pacific), and gender balancers on the left.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: The Real Challenges Facing the Next Secretary of Defense, Robert Steele Comments”

2013/01/072013/01/07

Matt Taibbi: Lies of the Bailout — US Government Ponzi Scheme

Commerce, Corruption, Government

Secret and Lies of the Bailout

The federal rescue of Wall Street didn’t fix the economy – it created a permanent bailout state based on a Ponzi-like confidence scheme. And the worst may be yet to come

Matt Taibbi

Rolling Stone, 17 January 2013

It has been four long winters since the federal government, in the hulking, shaven-skulled, Alien Nation-esque form of then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, committed $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue Wall Street from its own chicanery and greed. To listen to the bankers and their allies in Washington tell it, you'd think the bailout was the best thing to hit the American economy since the invention of the assembly line. Not only did it prevent another Great Depression, we've been told, but the money has all been paid back, and the government even made a profit. No harm, no foul – right?

Wrong.

It was all a lie – one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people. We were told that the taxpayer was stepping in – only temporarily, mind you – to prop up the economy and save the world from financial catastrophe. What we actually ended up doing was the exact opposite: committing American taxpayers to permanent, blind support of an ungovernable, unregulatable, hyperconcentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash, and forces Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to increase risk rather than reduce it. The result is one of those deals where one wrong decision early on blossoms into a lush nightmare of unintended consequences. We thought we were just letting a friend crash at the house for a few days; we ended up with a family of hillbillies who moved in forever, sleeping nine to a bed and building a meth lab on the front lawn.

CONCLUSION:

Continue reading “Matt Taibbi: Lies of the Bailout — US Government Ponzi Scheme”