By Dr. Earl R. Smith II
Chief@ComeOnSense.com
www.ComeOnSense.com
These days it seems that the federal government is primarily in the business of distributing the taxpayers’ credit to the supporter of the political party in power. With the redistribution of wealth – always upwards, of course – as their principal objective, members of the administration systematically loot the federal treasury. Their friends do very well and the taxpayers are left with the bill. Their political adversaries dream of the days when they are in control and can do the same for their friends. This has been the case for a long time. What is new is the incredible passivity of the citizenry in the face of this ‘looting. In fact, they don’t really seem to mind it at all – probably because they realize that their future was mortgaged long ago – along with their children’s. Now the politicians are working their way through the future of their grandchildren. And grandchildren are such a long way into the future.
The inattention and indifference of the American people – along with their adolescent addiction to partisan politics – resulting in seeing even the most critical of elections as sporting events – has produced a perfect environment for the kind of piracy which now parades as politics. The current administration has set a high water mark in the process – in fact, they have succeeded far beyond their wildest dreams in pushing the limits. Billions of dollars have been wasted (from the taxpayers point of view, they received nothing for it – not the view of the supporters of the party in power though). Ethical standards have been completely abandoned – the entire idea of accountability has been disposed of – there are no criminals anymore – only successful pirates.
It’s not hard to find examples. Consider the cover that the congressional democrats are currently providing the republicans as they indicate that, even though laws may have been broken by senior administration figures, there will be no accountability – no price to pay at all – or the recent statement by the current Attorney General that “all violations of the law are not crimes”. No politician need fear the courts because the AG will protect them from being held accountable. The Attorney General has become the lawyer for the ruling class!
The Government Accounting Office regularly issues reports detailing waste on truly titanic levels – and nothing is done – no one is brought to account. Billions of dollars of debt is piled up – massive corruption and incompetence has covered the tracks – nothing is accounted for – simply written off. But there is one creditor that doesn’t have the ability to just write it all off – the American taxpayer.
The federal government – you remember, the one designed by Mr. Madison and established by the founders to make sure that the American government was forever of, by and for the people – to make sure that we were never again subject to the vagaries, avarice and outright corruption of a ruling political and business class – has been turned into a shield for that very ruling class. This shield has proven so effective that trillions of dollars have been successful looted from the federal treasury – and much of it to buy nothing of value. And here is the amazing part; all this has been done without any risk of legal exposure or threat of accountability. The genius of the pirate’s scheme is that an accommodation has been reached between the two principal political parties – essentially they have agreed “we will loot while in office and allow you to loot when you are in office”.
On some days this arrangement seems so stable – at least from inside the country – that it might be expected to go on forever. But there is a difficulty – there are catastrophic implications for a society which is constantly looted and pillaged. American citizens, business people and politicians are all passengers on a very large bus – a complex, self-organizing system called the US economy. But this bus is running a race with others – racing around the same track as all other economies in the world. All of them together are participating in an increasingly interrelated and globalized race – the world economy.
Inefficiencies – and let’s be clear piracy and corruption are very expensive inefficiencies – are costly to the economy being subjected to them – pirates are parasites which live off the host – and the hosts – the American people – are the true creators of wealth. In the global economy, the financially strong prey on the financially weak – and, let’s face it, the United States is financially weaker than it has ever been since the period of the Revolutionary War.
Increasingly citizens and the ruling political and business classes in the United States are less and less relevant to the future of the country. Increasingly the country is owned by its creditors – by people, corporations and governments which are not Americans and would not remotely consider becoming Americans. And, more and more, they have the votes which count. Both foreign and domestic policy are already formed under the threat that the lenders which have kept the ship of state afloat while the looting has increased to a truly rabid pace will, if those policies offend them, reduce their appetite for federal bonds. That’s what happens when you mortgage your country – just like what happens when you mortgage your house. If you have a mortgage, you don’t really own it until you pay off the lien. You don’t really own it – the bank does.
Americans like to think that theirs are the votes that counts – that they get to decide in each election the direction that the country is going to take. That is an increasingly sad delusion indeed. The votes that really count are the ones cast by the hundreds of major creditors which have gained control over this country’s future – and over the future of generations of Americans. The pirates have driven us so far into debt that instead of being the big dog on the block we are now the rag toy which the terrier is tearing to pieces. If the citizens don’t step in and take control – and very soon – the American Dream will become the hope that our landlords don’t raise the rent too fast and maybe they will see their way clear to fix the plumbing before it bursts and washes us all away.
Dr. Smith is a social and political theorist
who lives in Georgetown, Washington, DC
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