The Selling And Buying Of America, Part 4: The Last Two Washington Gangs - Big Oil and The Health Care Industry

Today’s post is the fourth in a series of four posts that discusses how the American political class is constantly in the business of selling and buying America, to the detriment of taxpayers, citizens, and our freedom. Our first post discussed the many ways that politicians continually enrich themselves, their friends and family, and their never ending reelection campaign funds.

The second post covered how American businesses and wealthy citizens are being shaken down to contribute to the Obama inauguration events, a happening that will likely cost the American taxpayer over $150 million to finance. Yesterday, we reviewed the first two “gangs” of people that are in cahoots with Washington to reap benefits and perks at the expense of the American taxpayer. These two gangs are the military-industrial complex and the Wall Street/Washington complex.

Today, we will review the other two “gangs” that are in cahoots with Washington politicians. The concept of Washington “gangs” comes from a new book written by Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University. The book is titled “The Price of Civilisation.”

Mr. Sachs 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.''

In about fifty words Mr. Sachs has summarized how the buying and selling of America works. We no longer live in a democracy, we live below a tier of elitists that trade taxpayer wealth and freedoms for their own reward, greed, and enrichment. That is why no major issue ever gets resolved in this country. There are powers and “gangs” that do not want them solved, it would upset the cozy arrangements that these elitists have established among themselves.

I use the word “gangs” because that is what Mr. Sachs calls them, as outlined in an article by Ross Gittins of The Sydney Morning Herald. The final of the four gangs are described below:

- The third gang, according to Sachs, is the Big Oil/military-industrial/Washington complex, which has put the US on the historical path of heavy importation of oil and oil dependence and a deepening military quagmire in the Middle East, which costs America both wealth and the blood of its armed forces: ''Since the days of John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Trust a century ago, Big Oil has loomed large in American politics and foreign policy. Big Oil teamed up with the automobile industry to steer America away from mass transit and towards gas-guzzling vehicles driving on a nationally financed highway system.''

Recall when the massive Gulf Of Mexico oil spill occurred, everyone was going after the scalps of BP, the major oil company that operated the well that exploded. Most people forget that while Obama talked tough relative to BP, he was the largest political benefactor of BP’s campaign donation to the political class. Also recall, that it is my recollection, that no executive of BP went to trial or jail for this ecological disaster. Were they protected by the gang alliance?

Big Oil has been on the side of the Pentagon and the military/industrial complex in making sure that America has a large Navy and associated large defense budget to protect the shipping of oil from the Persian Gulf. Two gangs working together to drain taxpayer wealth for corporate interests.

- The fourth gang is the healthcare industry. This industry is by far, the largest industry in the country, accounting for about 17% of US gross domestic product, according to Sachs: ''The key to understanding this sector is to note that the government partners with industry to reimburse costs with little systematic oversight and control. Pharmaceutical firms set sky-high prices protected by patent rights; Medicare [for the aged] and Medicaid [for the poor] and private insurers reimburse doctors and hospitals on a cost-plus basis; and the American Medical Association restricts the supply of new doctors through the control of placements at medical schools. The result of this pseudo-market system is sky-high costs, large profits for the private healthcare sector, and no political will to reform.'

Pretty damning accusations but probably not far from the truth, if far at all. Starting later this week we will be doing a long series of the disaster that is Obama Care and we will see that Washington/health care industry incest is just as prevalent and just as bad as the Wall Street/Washington incest we discussed graphically yesterday with people moving back and forth between high ranking government positions and high paying jobs in the health care industry.

Sachs concludes that the following reality checks verify his hypothesis that there are four gangs in existence in Washington that manipulate elections via financial donations to manipulate legislation for their own good and the good of their respective gangs:

• Corporate profits in 2010 were at an all-time high.
• Chief executive salaries in 2010 rebounded strongly from the Great Recession.
• Overall Wall Street compensation in 2010 was at an all-time high.
• While several Wall Street firms paid civil penalties for financial abuses, no senior banker faced any criminal charges.
• There were no adverse regulatory measures that would lead to a loss of profits in the finance, health care, military. and energy industries.

I cannot verify these five conclusions are all true but based on other research and writings, I would not bet against them. To them I would add the fact that:

• Major companies and political contributors like General Electric annually make billions of dollars in profits but pay very little in taxes (in fact, General Electric makes billions of dollars in annual profits and usually works the tax code so that it gets a tax refund from the Federal government and the American taxpayer).
• Alternative energy companies like Solyndra and their owners and investors were major, major contributors to mostly Democratic politicians over the past few years, the vast majority of companies never produced anything of value for society but were voracious users of and wasters of taxpayer wealth.
• Alternative car companies like Fisker (not even an American company!) and Tesla and their owners and investors were major, major contributors to mostly Democratic politicians over the past few years, neither company of which has come up with a viable auto for the mass market or other rewards for the taxpayer funding.
• Recent news articles have pointed out how Apple and Google are becoming masters of legally evading taxes by passing their revenue and profits through offshore accounts.

These are not secrets. These facts are in the public domain, trading taxpayer wealth via investments in alternative energy and car companies for political financial support, using the tax code to avoid paying taxes like General Electric does, using the tax code to avoid taxes by going offshore, etc. Why hasn’t anyone in Washington done anything about these well known atrocities?

Well, now you know, because these atrocities and affronts benefit the four gangs, as identified by Sachs, and these gangs are in partnership with the Washington political class. Our politicians have become slaves to their own personal greed and career ambitions, they do not care to bite the gang hands that feed them, that stroke them, that finance them.

That is why the following steps from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” are vitally important to breaking the chains that link the four gangs to the Washington political class:

• Step 1 would reduce Federal government spending by 10% a year for five years in order to get to a balanced budget. A balanced budget has less slush funding available to take care of “gang” related needs and favors.
• Step 6 would allow only private citizens to contribute to election campaigns. PACs, unions, businesses, and lobbyists would no longer be allowed to finance election campaigns, especially useful when trying to keep their incumbent political friends in office.
• Step 8 would strengthen and reform the Federal Elections Commission so that it actually enforces strict campaign finance laws and rules rather than continuing with the "fox guarding the hen house" model we have today.
• Step 39 would impose term limits on all Federal politicians, making them “one and done.” This would help break the feedback loop that exists today where gangs feed the tills of incumbent politicians in order to gather favors from these incumbent politicians after they get reelected.

Now you know why no major issue ever gets resolved, it is not a priority of the Washington gangs and the Washington politicians. They have other, personal agendas that take precedent over the resolving our lost war on drugs, our failing public schools, our leaky borders, our lack of a national energy strategy, sky rocketing national debt, and escalating health care costs.

Years ago a hit movie drama named the “Gangs Of New York” was released to critical acclaim. Maybe Mr. Sachs should follow that lead and look for a movie deal for his concept, “The Gangs Of Washington.” I would suggest that this is really not a drama, more like a comedy and joke, the perfect vehicle for the Keystone Kops, the Three Stooges, etc. where the politicians in Washington play themselves in the film.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and
others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

President Obama's Administration in 2010 Vs. Orwell's Government in "1984"

I cannot help feeling that the Obama administration, and the entire American political class,  has some frightening similarities to the dysfunctional and totalitarian government that George Orwell foresaw in his classic novel, "1984." The loss of freedom, the frightening rise in power by the ruling political class, the declining quality of life for ordinary citizens, the manipulation and spin doctoring of reality,  etc. are very similar to the storyline in "1984."

Consider some George Orwell quotes, most of which come from the novel, and recent news accounts and events:

Orwell Quote: "The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human."
Obama Administration: During the lead up to and after the passage of Obama's health care reform legislation, the President allowed members of his party to dehumanize those that had honest problems and issues with the legislation. Consider the slander:

• Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called those citizens opposed to Obama Care "un-American."
• Florida Congressman Alan Grayson called those citizens opposed to Obama Care "knuckle dragging Neanderthals."
• New York Congressman Charles Rangel likened those that opposed Obama Care to the real racists that opposed the early civil rights movement.
• Texas Congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee also likened those opposed to Obama Care to the racists of the 1950s and 1960s.
• Alan Grayson stated that all Tea Party members were wearing white sheets 25 years ago, an obvious referral to the racist Ku Klux Klan movement.

Rather than celebrating diversity of opinion and debating the issues, the President allowed his henchman and women to bad mouth and slander those Americans for having a different opinion. Rather than acting Presidential and bringing people together by ending the name calling, the President became nothing more than the propagandist that Orwell talks about.

Orwell Quote: "War is a way of shattering to pieces or pouring into the stratosphere or sinking in the depths of the seas, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent."
Obama Administration: Although this problem existed long before the President came into office, he has done nothing to counter what Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. The United States, by far, is the biggest investor into military resources, by any measure you chose, in the entire world. We have troops stationed all over the world, defending interests and property that no longer need to be defended. Why do we have tens of thousands of troops in Europe? The Iron Curtain is down, communism has been defeated but still, we waste taxpayer money stationing troops there. Why do we have almost 30,000 troops in South Korea? They have one of the strongest economies in the world, let South Korea defend itself. Why do we have tens of thousands of troops in Japan? They are unlikely to attack Pearl Harbor again and these troops would be useless against any aggressive move by the massive Chinese army. Why do we not reorient these resources from defense to tax reductions and helping ordinary American citizens? According to Orwell, that would make the masses more comfortable and intelligent, two aspects that the political class would see as a threat to their own power.

Orwell Quote: "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."
Obama Administration: Shortly after coming into power, the Obama administration decided to change the language when describing Islamic terrorism. His administration went on a journey to purge Bush era terms like "war on terrorism,"  "radical Islam," "jihadist," and Islamic terrorism" from all government publications, speeches, testimonies, etc. For example, rather than talk about "Islamic terrorism," the administration wants everyone to talk about "violent extremism."

Thus, it appears that Obama is trying to do the same word games that the government did in "1984." By controling language, you can control the situation. The problem with such an approach is while it may give those in power more control over the debate of a specific issue, it obscures the true reality of the situation. If you do not understand the reality of an issue, the chances of successfully solving that issue are minimized. How can you argue against war if it has the same meaning as peace? How can you solve the problem of Islamic terrorism if you deny that it exists? Obama's attempt to control the language will put us further away from understanding the root cause of the Islamic fanaticism and how to defend against it.

The further problem with this language gambit is that it has not worked. According to an October, 14, 2010 Yahoo News article, several studies are now showing that changing the language is not solving any problems. A study by the Brookings Institution in Washington found that between May, 2009 and May, 2010, the number of Middle Eastern Arabs expressing optimism in Obama's approach toward their region dropped from 51% to 16% with those becoming discouraged with the President rising from 15% to 63%. A Pew Reserach Center study shows that in August, 2010, fewer Americans held a favorable view of Islam, 30%, than during the Bush administration (41%). The Pew study also found that more Americans (35%) say Islam encourages violence more than other religions, up from 25% in 2002.

Thus, not only is this process of muddying the waters of language a bad way to solve problems, these two studies show that Obama's purging of our government's vocabulary is not working, either domestically or abroad from an attitude perspective.

Orwell Quote: "And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed - if all records told the same tale - then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past'"
Obama Administration: three examples here where the administration has tried to control and suppress information and perpetuate the lie in order to advance its own agenda. If you can suppress contrary views, you can control the past, the present and the future that the political class wants.

The first example was from early in the Obama administration. EPA engineer, Alan Carlin, researched and then wrote a 98 page report that challenged some of the assumptions and predicted outcomes regarding global warming that were at odds with what the Obama administration wanted to hear. Mr. Carlin has an undergraduate degree in physics from Cal Tech and a PhD in economics from MIT so that he is not an uneducated scientist. However, he was told to suppress his findings and not communicate them to anyone outside of the agency. Rather than discuss his findings publicly and have a scientific debate over his conclusions, the political class, in this case the Obama administration, decided to suppress the analysis and possibly perpetuate the potential lie of global warming. In all of the news reports I saw in this matter, no one was questioning Mr. Carlin's methodology, analysis, etc., it was purely a political suppression of information, something that Orwell would have been proud of. By suppressing information like this, the political class can control the debate and any kind of control is not good in a democratic society since it usually does not help arrive at the right solution for a problem. Is the administration tyring to pass the lie into history and make global warming the truth, contrary to a scientific conclusion that it was not the truth?

The EPA report suppression is not the only instance where the Obama administration tried to suppress information. A soldier at Fort Hood who videotaped the killing spree by Major Nidal Hasan was told by his commanding officer to delete the video. The soldier testified that a non-commissioned officer, acting on orders from an officer, was told to delete the video the same day of the shooting. Now why would anyone want to delete a videotaping of a live crime, wouldn't it be a great piece of evidence at the trial of the shooter? Is the Obama administration trying to control the situation by controlling the information? No reason for that video to have been destroyed unless someone, somewhere high up the chain of command did not want to lose control of the situation, even if justice was not served in the process.

Finally, consider an Associated Press report that appeared on October 6, 2010. According to the article and a finding by the commission appointed by the President to investigate the Gulf oil spill disaster, the Obama White House deliberately blocked efforts by government scientists to tell the public just how bad the oil spill could become. The article also reported that other missteps and incompetence were also suppressed by the Administration.

According to the article, the commission's documents "show that the White House was directly involved in controlling the message as it struggled to convey that it, not BP, was in charge of responding..." There is that pesky word again, controlling. Control the information and you can control the lie, control the lie and history will turn that lie into the truth. If the Obama administration focused more on the oil spill and the root cause of the Fort Hood shooting and the reality that global warming might be a piece of fiction, and less on controlling the lie, the country might be better off, even if the political class was worse off.

Orwell Quote: "The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history."
Obama Administration: Consider an October 20, 2010 article from the Heritage Foundation that covered a speech that the President recently gave in Rockville, Maryland. In that speech he quoted from the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that each of us are endowed with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."  Sounds harmless enough, right? Celebrating our heritage. But look closely, he did not "exactly" quote the Declaration of Independence. The accurate quote reads as follows: We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

According to the article, the President omitted the exact same phrase from two other recent speeches, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's 33rd Annual Awards Gala and at a New York City fundraiser. Once is an oversight, three times inside of a month is a trend. Sounds very Orwellian to me, "to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history." Denying the words "By Their Creator" may run contrary to the President's beliefs but it is our history. It all gets back to the examples above, the political class is constantly trying to control history, the lie, the information flow, and the decision process, all of which are detrimental to freedom.

Orwell Quote: "There was no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."
Obama Administration: Very simple analogy here, " the Patriot Act." Passed during the Bush Administrating and rubber stamped renewed under the Obama administration we are rapidly approaching this Orwellian world of surveillance. The scary thing is that Orwell probably did not imagine how many ways this quote could come true today. From getting access to our library records, tapping our phones, tracking our movements via our cell phone signal, monitoring our emails, observing our social network activity, watching us via thousands and thousands of public video cameras to easy to get warrants and wire taps, the pervasive intrusion into our lives by the political class is the Orwellian nightmare we face today, a reality not conducive to freedom at all.

Orwell Quote: "Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
Obama Administration: the best example of Obama Orwellian thinking under this quote is the failed economic stimulus plan that Obama and the Democrats passed. The original purpose of the stimulus plan was to create jobs. When the stimulus money started to get spent but very few jobs were created, the Obama administration changed gears and stated the economic stimulus package was to both create AND save jobs. However, when not many jobs were created AND saved, the administration came up with the term like jobs "affected" or "touched" by the economic stimulus package. Thus, if the first definition does not work, try a second definition and a third definition, etc., anything to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. In this case, the pure wind is the utter failure of the stimulus package to create solid jobs.

Orwell Quote: "Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them."
Obama Administration: The best example here is the whole problem of illegal immigration and the immigration law passed this summer by Arizona, a law that was patterned after the existing Federal law regarding illegal immigration. The Obama administration has gone to court in an attempt to overturn a law that a state wants to use to return illegal immigrants to their respective countries, hopefully improving the living conditions of the state's citizens. At the same time, the Obama administration has been returning record numbers of illegal immigrants to their respective countries and has beefed up security along the Mexico/U.S. border. Sounds like Doublethink to me: from the Obama administrationn perspective, we will vilify the Arizona law for doing the same thing we are doing at the Federal level, i.e. returning illegal immigrants to their countries. Doing the same think but holding one effort as bad but the other effort as good.

Orwell Quote: "Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves."
Obama Administration: This quote response is not just via the Obama administration but by the whole American political class. Right now, the politicians in this country control a large part of our retirement financials via Social Security, they control our retirement health care via Medicare, they control our personal wealth and income via dozens and dozens of government taxes and fees, they control the education of our kids via public schooling, they control a larger portion of our pre-retirement medical care via Obama Care, they control who we eventually get to vote for (via gerrymandering of Congressional districts, controlling of campaign financing sources, using taxpayer money to fund earmarks which are just campaign finance tools, etc.), they control and criminalize what substances we put into our bodies, they belittle us for daring to have a difference of opinion, and they control who gets certain rights based on sexual orientation. They use these forms of control to drain us of our individuality in order to make us more controllable and reliant on their needs and desires. Orwell nailed this one right on the nose when describing life under our political class in American today.

Very scary stuff. As Orwell predicted, the United States and other democracies around the world are at risk of failing not because of some outside agency or foe but by the devious and dishonest manipulations of truth and the ever increasing control by our own political class. That is why every election now becomes so critical if we are to turn back our march towards "1984" and again become a free country, of the people by the people and for the people.

We no longer can allow the political class to control the debate, control the language and control our lives. That is why many of the steps in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" need to become a reality as soon as possible:

• Reduce government's size by 10% a year for the next five years.
• Review and amend the Patriot Act to make it more freedom and liberty friendly.
• Stop gerrymandering Congressional districts to level the playing field between incumbents and new political candidates.
• Implement term limits to eliminate politics as a career opportunity.
• Bring home almost all of our foreign deployed troops and begin downsizing the military-industrial complex.
• Start reducing the deficit and the debt grip politicians will hold over us for decades to come.
• Repeal Obama Care and fix the health care crisis the right way, not the controlling political class way.

So much work to do and so little time to do it before Orwell proves himself right. We are living George Orwell's "1984" and it is disguised as Obama's 2010 agenda. Stop the madness, stop the doublespeak, stop the lies.



Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.cato.org/

http://www.robertringer.com/

http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/

http://www.flipcongress2010.com/

http://www.reason.com/