Since the drug war has become so unpopular with the electorate, instead of politicians actually changing the drug laws, the Department of Defense seeks to reduce and conceal the real costs by transferring the “dirty work” to private contractors to do what “U.S. military forces are not allowed or not encouraged to do.
The BBC (in Spanish) is reporting that the U.S. Department of Defense is delegating the war on drugs to private mercenary companies. Of those companies, the increasingly infamous organization previously known as Blackwater is said to have received several multimillion-dollar government contracts for “providing advice, training and conducting operations in drug producing countries and those with links to so-called “narco-terrorism” including Latin America.” The “no bid” contracts, issued under the Counter-Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office's $15 billion dollar budget, are described as “non-specific” and are said to be “juicy” for the private contractors. The Pentagon says “the details of each cost in very general contracts do not go through bidding processes.”
An unnamed analyst says “the responsibility of the public and national security changing from a state's duty to be a private business…has become the trend of the future.”
Although parts of the drug war have been privatized for years, the BBC reports this “transfer” of responsibilities is an attempt to placate those looking for Pentagon budget cuts in an election year.
The only serious opposition to this arrogant Ruling Party is coming not from feckless Republicans but from what might be called the Country Party — and its vision is revolutionary. Our special Summer Issue cover story.
When Codevilla’s article appeared I stated that it was the most important essay I had ever read. I still believe this because it is a superb synthesis of class analysis with keen insights on contemporary power elite relationships regarding today’s rulers and the ruled.
This class division of present-day America into two factions, Court and Country, has absolutely nothing to do with any Marxian view or analysis. It is a reaffirmation of the seminal insights of Bernard Bailyn’s Pulitzer Prize winning volume, The Ideological Origins of the AmericanRevolution, and Murray N. Rothbard’s Conceived in Liberty.
These books demonstrate that the Founders’ world-view saw the crucial struggle of the Revolution as a battle of liberty versus power. Codevilla posits today’s battle in the same dramatic terms.
Every political movement needs a manifesto. The Tea Party surely needs one. So do other grassroots political resistance organizations. They don’t have it yet, but they now have its preliminary foundation, Angelo Codevilla’s essay, “America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution.”
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I regard this essay as the finest statement on the two-fold division in American political life written in my lifetime — more than this, in the last hundred years. He has laid it out clearly, accurately, and eloquently.
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Codevilla correctly identifies the source of legitimacy for the ruling class: Darwinism. Darwinism removed God from the vocabulary of self-accredited academia. Once liberated from the doctrine of original sin, the Progressives regarded as illegitimate the Constitutional limits placed on the Federal government.
This web site honors Dr. Martin Luther King by pointing to specific links beginning with the first in isolation: he was assassinated by his own government. Truth & Reconciliation are the order of the day, but the reconciliation cannot begin until the truth is known to the full public.
Our local government agencies may be whining about the budget and how they don't have enough money resulting in higher taxes, cutting services or both. They cite a budget shortfall and need us to dig them out now! Next time this happens ask them to look at the cash account on the statement of net assets from the comprehensive annual financial report. Say what is a CAFR?
Every governmental agency produces this document by law yet the Federal version is a labyrinth compared to the State level on down. It's simply a statement to the wealth of the government, the sum total of everything we've entrusted them with. Would you say they're doing a lousy job? When we don't have the money from a paycheck we dip into savings and the government has done a great job of saving a giant pile of your money! In the past few years a few politicians have begun to question these savings demanding at least a discussion of them. Here is a story from Oregon detailing one such discussion on how to use the funds.
Recently the most famous case has been CA with their deficits yet lets check the 2010 CAFR, pg 46 they have $25 BILLION sitting in the cash account alone which is invested in federal treasuries and other short term investments. This is the total of decades of over collecting taxes, taking too much from us and yet some of the same people who know this come begging us to pay more taxes! They had over $11 BILLION in receivables; I wonder what the past due ratios are!?
The government isn't a for profit company is it? Wasn't this social contract a giant trust agreement anyway? There is money sitting in the coffers of these government accounts that are controlled by who? That's the real question as you dig deeper and deeper you start to look at pension funds and where that money gets invested and you sum total all the various lower levels on up and the big picture doesn't really surprise you. Time is short so I won't digress into that so lets focus on what we can do.
Look yours up! Google “Comprehensive annual financial statement” (not “CAFR”) and the name of the government entity being researched (lottery, school district, water district, city, county, or state etc). Find the statement of net assets, look at the first line, this is cash! It might be held in short term government debts but its liquid like cash. Lets start forcing this question to be answered whenever we interact with them! Let's ask the hard questions!
There is a lengthy 3 hour documentary on the extent of this scam by Walter Burien who runs a website CAFR1.com detailing the extent of this duplicity. Time is short and the time to act is now so get a handle on the basic idea and just go with it. Look up as many as you can but Walter has most of them listed on his site to save some time. For a great analogy check out this article. Tell everyone who will listen but it is hard to accept, they programmed us well. Time to take the red pill folks.
21st Century Network Governance – Beyond Participatory Budgeting
Participatory budgeting is a very important step in the right direction, but in the larger context of both obstacles presented by corrupt governance and what is possible enabled by the Internet, it can be taken–quickly–to a higher level.
Participatory budgeting is also somewhat ineffective in that the false assumption of the public and private sectors are accepted. True Cost Economics is the only possible foundation for a sustainable public sector and a sustainable private sector, and most participatory budgeting projects have no idea what the difference is between the false budget and the true budget. To discuss budget disposition without seeing, for example, that fracking creates earthquakes and that tar sands consume vast quantities of potable water, is an exercise in futility.
This session will present a very rapid 30 minute overview of the pioneering work done by Earth Intelligence Network, a 501c3 with 24 co-founders including Medard Gabel (co-creator with Buckminster Fuller of the analog World Game, designer of the current digital EarthGame). Three integral foundations for effective collective intelligence will be introduced:
Robert Steele
a. Strategic Analytic Model highlighting the ten high-level threats to humanity ignored by most governments and the twelve core policy areas from Agriculture to Water that are not harmonized by most governments
b. Six Bubbles consisting of an Autonomous Internet connecting an Earth Intelligence (Decision-Support) Network, EarthGame, EarthPolicy, and EarthBudget, all glued together with transpartisan memetics and transitional facilitation. Illustration
c. M4IS2, the new craft of intelligence, no longer secret, expensive or federal–Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information Sharing and Sense Making unites the eight tribes of intelligence (academia, civil society, commerce, government, law enforcement, media, military, non-government / non-profit) to harmonize decisions, policies, budgets, and behavior across all boundaries, by using shared information to achieve shared objectives.
Following the 30 minute illustrated presentation, two discussants will expand on the possibilities, one from a government perspective and the other from a civil society perspective.
The final 30 minutes will be devoted to interactive questions and answers.
It is our hope that the entire session can be video-taped and streamed online for permanent public access.
Robert David STEELE Vivas
Robert David STEELE Vivas, CEO of Earth Intelligence Network (501c3), has spent 30 years in the intelligence (decision-support) field, and the last twenty helping ninety governments get a grip on open sources of information to create Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). His second book, THE NEW CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE: Personal, Public, & Political (2002, also free online) remains the primer for public intelligence in the public interest. He is also the originator of the concept of the Smart Nation, first published in Government Information Quarterly in 1995, and then in THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest(EIN, 2006). He is a former spy, an honorary hacker associated with Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE), the Silicon Valley Hackers Conference (as started by Stewart Brand), and Hactic / Chaos Computer Club in Europe. He is also the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, reading in 98 categories, with all of his reviewed accessible online by category at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog. In October he presented his Electoral Reform proposal to Occupy NYC, the six minute video someone else posted went viral. He is one of three candidates for the Reform Party presidential nomination, and has created a web site, We the People Reform Coalition, that represents the next level in participatory governance, integrating Electoral Reform, a Coalition Cabinet and Balanced Budget that are crowd-sourced and presented in advance of election day, and a commitment to True Cost Economics. In June 2012 Random House / Evolver Editions is releasing his newest book, THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth, & Trust.
JUNE 18 – 20: 9TH ANNUAL GAMES FOR CHANGE FESTIVAL
We will return to the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts for this year’s Festival on June 18-20. Our call for talks, panels and presentations goes live this month, and you can begin registering for the Festival in mid February.
This year's Festival will include Opening Night Festivities, a Game Arcade, Keynotes, the Games for Change Awards and Ceremony, Games for Learning Institute @ Games for Change Festival, Youth Game Design Workshops, Game Demo Spotlight, and more.
