Category: Budgets & Funding

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Journal: Simpson-Bowles Deficit Reduction All Lies?

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Chuck Spinney Recommends....

Casting Light on “The Moment of Truth”

Where’s the evidence to back up the fear mongering? A challenge to the Fiscal Commission’s report.

James K. Galbraith

James K. Galbraith is General Editor of “Galbraith: The Affluent Society and Other Writings, 1952-1967,” just published by Library of America. He teaches at The University of Texas at Austin.

The report of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, issued on December 1, 2010 by Chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, is entitled “The Moment of Truth.” The words appear in block caps on the second page, weighty and portentous. They reappear in the first paragraph of the preamble:

EXTRACT:  These sentences set the tone. The first is a bald-faced lie, as a Westerner like Senator Simpson knows perfectly well. To the contrary, we have often fallen under the sway of robber barons, water barons, oil barons, bison-killers, clear-cutters and strip-miners, hell-bent on maximum pillage in the shortest time. Only occasionally have a few heroes like Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot and Harold Ickes Sr. emerged to battle for the most precious physical elements of our heritage — and then only with limited success.

EXTRACT:  Noticeably missing from the Commission’s plan are measures that would fall on the “leaders” themselves. The very richest pay cash for their houses. The commission would reduce, not increase, marginal income tax rates. There is no suggestion of a financial transactions tax.

EXTRACT: “…we spent the past eight months studying the same cold, hard facts. Together, we have reached these unavoidable conclusions. The problem is real. The solution will be painful. There is no easy way out. And Washington must lead.”

The reference to “studying” is suggestive. Are there any studies? White papers? Background analyses? Normally, one might expect a commission to produce some. In this case, it did not. The Commission’s web site makes no mention of any such thing.

Read entire article.

Phi Beta Iota: The most important point in our view is that there are no studies to back up the hyperbole and the recommendations, at the same time that it is clear the deficit reductions are Of, By, and For Wall Street, not We the People.  The White House and Congress continue to offer the public theater of the most absurd kind, lacking in all substance and assuredly not in the public interest.

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Journal: Navy Sinks, Congress Throws Money

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Military, Officers Call
Chuck Spinney Recommends....

This is priceless.  Pun intended.  Meanwhile the Deficit Commission is putting its final touches on a plan to control government spending.  Chuck

CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS – DEFENSE
Dec. 2, 2010 – 8:46 p.m.

Navy Plan for Littoral Ships Is Winning Support, Despite Lack of Price Tag

By John M. Donnelly, CQ Staff

Lawmakers are suddenly voicing new support for a Navy plan to acquire cutting-edge warships, despite continuing apprehension about not being given enough information or time to consider it.

Continue reading “Journal: Navy Sinks, Congress Throws Money”

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Journal: Smoke, Mirrors, and Hades Burning on the Hill

Budgets & Funding, Government, Law Enforcement, Military
Chuck Spinney Sounds Off....

This is a great example of the kind of gaming that keeps defense budgets high.  Kudos to Winslow Wheeler for smoking it out.

On Dec 3, 2010, at 7:56 AM, Winslow Wheeler wrote:

In a midnight switch, the Deficit Commission changed the dividing line between discretionary spending elements.  Was 050 (DOD,DOE, Misc.) versus the rest; now it's 050 plus VA, plus State, plus Homeland security versus the rest.  The split remains 50-50 (I'm pretty sure); the total discretionary savings went up a bit, but now DOD is a lesser part of the “security” share of cuts, plus it gets to raid its new (trembling) partners in its deficit reduction cage.  This was the idea not of the Republican defense apologists on the Commission but of the Democrat budget process “reformers” who were aping a long term goal to declare State a national security entity.

I bet the idea originated among the Pentagon milcrats, who fed to pliable democratic apparatchiks working for Gates, who in turn fed it to so-called democratic budget “reformers” on hill, on the commission, and/or in pro-dem thinktanks.  Be interesting to see if/how Pentagon's wholly owned subsidiaries at the Post and NYT play this.

It is almost as if Frank Carlucci was back in the Pentagon and it is 1981 … remember how Carlucci snookered David Stockman (Reagan's OMB director) in early 1981 into approving even higher defense budgets than Reagan campaigned for (I wrote about Carlucci's “nature” trick on pages 14-17 of Defense Power Games – also attached).

Chuck

Phi Beta Iota: Given integrity of intent and process on the Hill, neither of which exists today, this would actually be a good change, with the proviso that Commerce be added and Newt Gingrich be made Vice President for Global Engagement, as we propose in our Virtual Cabinet at The Huffington Post.  The misrepresentation of the defense budget has long been fraudulent (completely apart from the missing $2.3 trillion that DoD still cannot account for and never will), with externalized personnel and health costs not “visible” to most.  Getting a grip on the US budget process is not rocket science.  It requires just two elements: integrity in those at the top, and the enlistment of the public through the promised but not yet delivered transparency of process.

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Reference: Policy Agendas Project Database

Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Government, Methods & Process, Policies, Policy

“Online Database Tracks Congressional, Presidential and Public Priorities”

November 22, 2010 23:10

From a University of Texas at Austin Announcement:

As a new Congress prepares to take office, a powerful online tool from University of Texas at Austin political scientists can help answer questions about lawmakers' shifting focus over time, differences between Republican and Democratic priorities and whether wave elections correlate with policy changes in Washington.

The Policy Agendas Project database allows journalists, scholars and interest groups to easily track and compare the issues that presidents and members of Congress have taken up since 1947 and to assess how those actions reflected the mood of the country.

The interface lets users sift through dozens of issues and sub-issues — health care, the environment, taxes — to look at the topics leaders dealt with in congressional hearings, new laws, executive orders and State of the Union addresses, as well as public opinion about problems facing the nation.

[Clip]

The data generated by the project are free and publicly available. They come with software that allows them to be used in classrooms. Jones and his colleagues released earlier versions of the Policy Agendas Project while he was a professor at the University of Washington.

Tip of the Hat to Gary Price at LinkedIn.

Phi Beta Iota: This has some promise, especially if they design it to be scalable across countries and down to the state and local level.  However, since nothing is policy until it is in the budget, the real truth tellers will be if they can link this to actual budgetary authorizations, allocations, and obligations; factor in “true costs” of any given policy element; and open it up to fact-based citizen dialog and deliberation.

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Reference: Crash Course on Reality

07 Other Atrocities, Blog Wisdom, Briefings (Core), Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), IO Mapping, IO Sense-Making, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Movies, Officers Call, Policies, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Strategy, True Cost
Chris Martenson Home

Chris Martenson not only paid attention to all of the early warning signals, but acted upon them, leaving a Fortune 50 job, selling his Connecticut home, getting out of the stock market, and buying gold and silver.  Now he has produced the single best, down-to-earth, detailed free video (38 minutes), inexpensive video (208 minutes), forthcoming book, and a 50 hour week-end course for concerned citizens.  This is essential education for all–it also demonstrates the fraud, waste, and abuse inherent in the continued support by the two-party tyranny of Wall Street.  Wall Street STILL OWES twice the capital it actually has–the bail-out was a flim-flam to perpetuate the short-term bonuses and positions of the criminals who have looted America and the rest of the world.

Short Free Video

Amazon Page
  • Crash Course by Chris Martenson – 38 minute condensed version
  • DVD Release Date: March 5, 2009
  • Run Time: 203 minutes
Amazon Page
  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (March 22, 2011)

Phi Beta Iota: In a perfect demonstration of the Hacker Principle that for every piece of information you share, you get back 100 pieces of which 10 are priceless (10:1 noise to signal and 10:1 return on investment), the below was brought to our attention by Dr. James C. Spohrer, Director, IBM University Programs World-Wide (IBM UP), IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA 95120 USA.  We like IBM, we like it even more after seeing that this kind of thinking is well-understood by IBM.  Bottom line: a number of others have sounded the alarm, Chris Martenson does it better than everyone else, in the most concise non-partisan manner possible.  He is the Paul Revere of the Republic, the Commonwealth.

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Reference: Legitimate Grievances by Robert Steele

Analysis, Articles & Chapters, Augmented Reality, Blog Wisdom, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Corporations, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Open Government, Policies, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Strategy, Threats

As we all observe with stunning detachment the symbiotic continuance of Bush-Obama Democratic-Republican support to the Wall Street looting of America led by Goldman Sachs, whose executives continue to “own” the Department of the Treasury and the Bank of New York (Federal Reserve), I believe it helpful to itemize some legitimate grievances that could inspire State by State nullification of federal mandates and regulations, and perhaps a few secessions, with Cascadia, Vermont, Hawaii, and Alaska being well positioned to abandon a compact that no longer serves the United STATES of America, nor We the People.

I am indebted to Kirkpatrick Sale, author of Human Scale and founder of the Middlebury Institute, for teaching me about the urgency and relevance of the secessionist movements, and the detailed reflections that they have published, reflections that I point to here for the common good.

LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCES (Domestic)

The Chattanooga Declaration of 2007 (7 Points)

Core Point:  Liberty can only survive if political power is returned from the banks and corporations that have corrupted the federal government, to local communities and States.  The American Empire is no longer a nation or a republic, but has become a tyrant aggressive abroad and despotic at home.

The Burlington Declaration of 2006 (5 points)

Core Point: Any political entity has the right to separate itself from a larger body of which it is a part and peaceably to establish its independence as a free and legitimate state in the eyes of  the world.  Governments are instituted among peoples, deriving their just powers power from the consent of the governed, and whenever any form of government becomes destructive of the legitimate goals of life, liberty, prosperity, and self-determination, it is the right of the people in democratic fashion to aleter or abolish it, and to institute new government in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

The Logic of Secession: Three Tines to a Trident (A Manifesto by Kirkpatrick Sale)

Core Point: In the face of a rigged game in which two parties have conspired to corrupt, manipulate, and generally monopolize power, third party politics will not work.  Only secession will allow for the emergence of a restored Republic once the federal government and its two-party tyranny are made irrelevant (and starved of revenue).

In Defense of Vermont's Secession from the Union (A Manifesto by Keith Brunner)

Core Point:  Vermont was its own country before it joined the Union, and nothing in the Constitution of the United STATES of America precludes secession from this voluntary compact [Lincoln violated the Constitution in multiple ways, most Americans simply have not learned the truth of the matter].  The American Empire is economically, politically, cultural, and especially environmentally unsustainable, and far from fixing itself, is just getting worse.  When a government of people who have no moral authority are in the possession of enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over, in the position to dominate the global economy for their own interests, and continually and foolishly pace the needs of the “economic system” above the needs of the natural world, the time for action cannot be put off any longer.

LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCES (Anti-Americanism)

In sound support of the above, I have itemized a list of the behaviors and conditions that have inspired anti-Americanism.  Each is, without exception, a betrayal of the public trust and grounds for abolishing the present political criminal enterprise that has hijacked the federal government and the public treasury on behalf of its banking and corporate masters.   Each of these high crimes and misdemeanors justifying impeachment is derived from one or more works on non-fiction.

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Journal: Can’t Get No Satisfaction from US Intelligence Community…

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Strategy
Richard Wright

Dowd says it pretty well. My guess is that because CIA connsiders ISI an “asset”, they insist that no one including themsleves target the ISI. This of course means that ISI can continue using CIA and the U.S. as pawns in thier undeclared cold war against India.
Op-Ed Columnist

The Great Game Imposter

By MAUREEN DOWD

The New York Times

Published: November 23, 2010

And we wonder why we haven’t found Osama bin Laden.

Though we’re pouring billions into intelligence in Afghanistan, we can’t even tell the difference between a no-name faker and a senior member of the Taliban. The tragedy of Afghanistan has descended into farce.

. . . . . . .

Just as with Saddam and W.M.D., or groping and the T.S.A., we get no satisfaction for the $80 billion a year we spend on intelligence. Or we get fake information like Curveball that leads us into spending trillions more on a trumped-up war. Last year, seven top C.I.A. officials were fooled by a Jordanian double-agent who got onto an American base in Khost and blew all of them up. Our agents in the “wilderness of mirrors” may not be up to le Carré, but can’t they learn to Google, or at least watch “The Ipcress File”?

Who knows? Maybe we’ve been dealing with bin Laden all along. Maybe he’s been coming and going under a different moniker. As far as our intelligence experts are concerned, a turban and beard are just a turban and beard.

Read entire article…highly recommended.

Phi Beta Iota: What is not properly emphasized above is that most of the budget is spent on technical collection and beltway bandit vapor ware, with no one held accountable for massive failures, be they by Lockheed, SAIC, CSC, or what-have you.  CIA is at best $10 billion, of which at least 75% is sheer waste, fraud, and abuse.  What it does in the way of “intelligence” we could do for $100 million a year, and we could do it faster, better, cheaper and for 1000 times more individual consumers.  Neither are intelligence officials held accountable for failure (96% of the time) by Congress or the White House because both the Intelligence Community and the Pentagon are nothing more than pork gone rancid.  Leon Panetta could have been the greatest director of CIA in history with his unique background as White House Chief of Staff, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Representative.  Similar Jim Clapper could have been the first real Director of National Intelligence.  The lack of vision, initiative, accountability, and productivity at the top of the US secret world is quite extraordinary.  This is how the White House and Congress want it to be.  This is “blessed dysfunctionality” profitable for those who feast at the taxpayer's expense, and most assuredly not in the public interest.  That's how it is.  That is how it will remain absent President Obama choosing to remake himself, or America demanding Electoral Reform, a Coalition Cabinet, and a Balanced Budget in 2010.  We are in the Dark Ages of modern American faux-governance.

See Also:

Journal: CIA Does It Again….

Reference: American Tragedy–Another Free Ride for Pentagon

Journal: Death by a Thousand Cuts? Or Deliberate Elite Murder of the USA?

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