Third World America

Drowning in Debt and Choking on Lies

by JanetTavakoli

If a drunk driver crashed his speeding rental car into your house and killed your spouse, you would be outraged if law enforcers took bribes and refused to give the driver a blood test. If the judge then gave the killer a small fine and ordered you to pay the fine and pay for all the damages, you'd be outraged. If the government then handed the drunk-driver keys to a bigger faster rental car, handed the drunk driver an even bigger bottle of whiskey, and then gave you the rental bill; you'd storm Washington, blizzard elected officials with protests and organize friends and associates to vote these malefactors, the elected officials that betrayed your trust, out of office.

Yet, we've remained largely silent in the face of the same sort of behavior by Wall Street and Washington. Bonus-seeking bankers crashed into Main Street's economy and ran control frauds within banks that would have failed without taxpayer bailouts. Bureaucrats and elected officials bailed them out without demanding consequences. Bankers are revving their engines again in credit derivatives, currency derivatives, and commodities trades. "Financial reform" addresses none of the latter problems.

Arianna Huffington's Third World America: How Our Politicians are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream explains that the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the bank bailout package also known as TARP, allotted only $72 billion to infrastructure projects. Another feature of the bill was to have banks agree to lend money to medium and small sized businesses to stimulate the economy. That didn't happen and official unemployment numbers remain above 9%, while unofficial figures for underemployed Americans soar above 20%.

The number one stimulus for any economy is not consumer spending, although that is a powerful secondary effect. The number one stimulus is capital spending, investment in the production of real goods and consumables. As Third World America explains: "There were three flaws with the old economy that has crashed. It favored consumption over production, debt over small savings, and environmental damage over environmental renewal."

Our ongoing bank bailouts included the mispricing of around $4 trillion of toxic assets that the banks cannot afford to honestly price, since bank capital would be wiped out sparking another global financial meltdown. We continue to provide cheap taxpayer funding through the Fed. New accounting rules allow banks to cover-up the low price of impaired assets, and government debt guarantees provide ongoing subsidies to banks that have a value of trillions of dollars.

Ground Zero for America's Debt Crisis

Beyond the banks, we have fiscal mismanagement and corruption that plagues middle class taxpayers. I happen to live in Illinois, the best example of this in the nation. Cook County encompasses Chicago and some of its surrounding suburbs. This week, the Cook County Treasurer discovered "stunning" debt. This debt isn't new, but apparently our officials are now properly terrified. Our total debt for the municipality, education, county, sanitary, park, fire, township, library and special services is now $108 billion. That means the debt per person in Chicago exceeds $23,700 (corrected assuming 2.67 average per household) or more than $63,500 per household, and that is just local debt.

The other problem is that the Illinois economy isn't growing. Many of those households have no income coming in other than government subsidies, and some have no income at all. Unofficial unemployment numbers top 20%. State of Illinois taxes increased from 3% to 5%, an increase of around 67%. Taxes on real estate, utilities, sales, and more are expected to skyrocket. Businesses like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange are being courted by low income tax states (at least the income taxes are currently low) like Florida.

We're not doing better on a national level. Americans owe almost $166,600 (corrected assuming 2.69 average per household) per household or around $45,000 per person (Greek citizens owe $44,000 per person). That's on top of our local debt.

David Walker, the former U.S. comptroller general, says it's even worse than that. When he takes into account future obligations for Medicare, Social Security, Federal debt, Military retirement, Civil servant retirement, and more, we owe $546,663 per household. That doesn't even include your local debt -- it may not be as bad as if you lived in Illinois, but it's substantial nonetheless -- and personal debt including mortgages and consumer debt that average more than $120,000 per household.

We're told we are a great country and we can "grow our way out of it." Exactly how does that occur, when jobs are going overseas, taxes for the wealthiest in our country are uncollectible after exploiting tax breaks, and programs for investment in infrastructure and production are virtually nonexistent?

America's biggest problem by far is that capital spending in new production facilities that create jobs and real products never occurred, not even after trillions of dollars were thrown at banks in the global financial system.

The Radical Manifesto of Laissez-faire capitalism

The Death of Politics

by Karl Hess

This is not a time of radical, revolutionary politics. Not yet. Unrest, riot, dissent, and chaos notwithstanding, today's politics is reactionary. Both Left and Right are reactionary and authoritarian. That is to say, both are political. They seek only to revise current methods of acquiring and wielding political power. Radical and revolutionary movements seek not to revise but to revoke. The target of revocation should be obvious. The target is politics itself.

Radicals and revolutionaries have had their sights trained on politics for some time. As governments fail around the world, as more millions become aware that government never has and never can humanely and effectively manage men's affairs, government's own inadequacy will emerge, at last, as the basis for a truly radical and revolutionary movement. In the meantime, the radical-revolutionary position is a lonely one. It is feared and hated, by both Right and Left — although both Right and Left must borrow from it to survive. The radical-revolutionary position is libertarianism, and its socioeconomic form is laissez-faire capitalism.

Libertarianism is the view that each man is the absolute owner of his life, to use and dispose of as he sees fit: that all man's social actions should be voluntary: and that respect for every other man's similar and equal ownership of life and, by extension, the property and fruits of that life is the ethical basis of a humane and open society. In this view, the only — repeat, only — function of law or government is to provide the sort of self-defense against violence that an individual, if he were powerful enough, would provide for himself.

If it were not for the fact that libertarianism freely concedes the right of men voluntarily to form communities or governments on the same ethical basis, libertarianism could be called anarchy.

Laissez-faire capitalism, or anarchocapitalism, is simply the economic form of the libertarian ethic. Laissez-faire capitalism encompasses the notion that men should exchange goods and services, without regulation, solely on the basis of value for value. It recognizes charity and communal enterprises as voluntary versions of this same ethic. Such a system would be straight barter, except for the widely felt need for a division of labor in which men, voluntarily, accept value tokens such as cash and credit. Economically, this system is anarchy, and proudly so.

Libertarianism is rejected by the modern Left — which preaches individualism but practices collectivism. Capitalism is rejected by the modern Right — which preaches enterprise but practices protectionism. The libertarian faith in the mind of men is rejected by religionists who have faith only in the sins of man. The libertarian insistence that men be free to spin cables of steel, as well as dreams of smoke, is rejected by hippies who adore nature but spurn creation. The libertarian insistence that each man is a sovereign land of liberty, with his primary allegiance to himself, is rejected by patriots who sing of freedom but also shout of banners and boundaries. There is no operating movement in the world today that is based upon a libertarian philosophy. If there were, it would be in the anomalous position of using political power to abolish political power.

Perhaps a regular political movement, overcoming this anomaly will actually develop. Believe it or not, there were strong possibilities of such a development in the 1964 campaign of Barry Goldwater. Underneath the scary headlines, Goldwater hammered away at such purely political structures as the draft, general taxation, censorship, nationalism, legislated conformity, political establishment of social norms, and war as an instrument of international policy.

It is true that, in a common political paradox, Goldwater (a major general in the Air Force Reserve) has spoken of reducing state power while at the same time advocating the increase of state power to fight the Cold War. He is not a pacifist. He believes that war remains an acceptable state action. He does not see the Cold War as involving US imperialism. He sees it as a result only of Soviet imperialism. Time after time, however, he has said that economic pressure, diplomatic negotiation, and the persuasions of propaganda (or "cultural warfare") are absolutely preferable to violence. He has also said that antagonistic ideologies can "never be beaten by bullets, but only by better ideas."

A defense of Goldwater cannot be carried too far, however. His domestic libertarian tendencies simply do not carry over into his view of foreign policy. Libertarianism, unalloyed, is absolutely isolationist, in that it is absolutely opposed to the institutions of national government that are the only agencies on earth now able to wage war or intervene in foreign affairs.

In other campaign issues, however, the libertarian coloration in the Goldwater complexion was more distinct. The fact that he roundly rapped the fiscal irresponsibility of Social Security before an elderly audience, and the fact that he criticized the TVA in Tennessee were not examples of political naïveté. They simply showed Goldwater's high disdain for politics itself, summed up in his campaign statement that people should be told "what they need to hear and not what they want to hear."

There was also some suggestion of libertarianism in the campaign of Eugene McCarthy, in his splendid attacks on presidential power. However, these were canceled out by his vague but nevertheless perceptible defense of government power in general. There was virtually no suggestion of libertarianism in the statements of any other politicians during last year's campaign.

I was a speechwriter for Barry Goldwater in the 1964 campaign. During the campaign, I recall very clearly, there was a moment, at a conference to determine the campaign's "farm strategy," when a respected and very conservative senator arose to say, "Barry, you've got to make it clear that you believe that the American farmer has a right to a decent living."

Senator Goldwater replied, with the tact for which he is renowned, "But he doesn't have a right to it. Neither do I. We just have a right to try for it." And that was the end of that.

Greece Should Return to a Gold Standard

Fallacies and Misconceptions about the Greek Crisis

by DETLEV SCHLICHTER 

One frequently gets the impression from reading the mainstream media that Greece has a monetary policy problem and not a fiscal problem. This is incorrect. Yet many commentators seem to argue along the following lines: This crisis is due to the straitjacket of the single currency with its one-size-fits-all monetary policy, or at least aggravated by the constraints of this system. Greece would have more “policy options” in dealing with its troubles if it had control of its own national currency.

Then there is, connected to this, an underlying – and not very flattering – notion that the Greeks are somewhat unfit to live and work in a ‘hard money system’, which presumably the euro is. The Greeks, this seems to be the allegation, like borrowing and spending too much. I am paraphrasing here but this is certainly the underlying tone of the narrative. The Germans and Dutch and French can live without the constant aid of conveniently cheap national money – but the Greeks can’t.

This is nonsense, and dangerous nonsense at that. Let’s first look at what Greece’s alleged “options” would look like if the country suddenly had the drachma back. The idea in the mainstream media seems to be that they could have lower rates and an even easier monetary policy than they have today under the ECB, and that such a policy would be suitable to the country as a whole. We have to remember that the ECB is already running an ultra-expansionary monetary policy, that the ECB is already the single biggest owner of Greek government debt, and that the ECB is very generously funding all euro banks (including the Greek banks) under lending programs that allow a lot of toxic waste to be used as collateral. But, I guess, a newly independent drachma-central bank could print even more money, hand that money to the Greek banks and the Greek government to allow them to stagger on, and then have a go at – what’s that pernicious phrase, again? – “inflating the debt away”. Well, good luck – we will debunk this shortly.

But there is another, slightly more sophisticated sounding argument out there. According to this ingenious interpretation, the Greek government is insolvent not because it habitually spends more than it takes in but because the Greek economy is not growing fast enough. If only the Greeks were more competitive and could sell more stuff abroad, then their government could happily continue spending! So again, the problem is with the inappropriately “hard money” of the Eurozone when what is needed is “soft money” — a super-easy monetary framework, in which the currency can be debased and international competitiveness and government solvency be restored with cheap money and low rates.

Luckily, I have never needed the help of any of those debt advisory services for consumers who face personal bankruptcy, so I am not speaking from experience here. Yet, I very much doubt that the first advice these services give to individuals at risk of getting crushed under mountains of credit card debt, is that they should get better jobs so their income rises. Yet, this seems to be the standard advice from mainstream economists for governments. Governments are expected to manipulate the economy via their paper money monopolies in order to generate the economic growth they need in order to sustain their lavish spending. Economic reality has to be made to perform to the demands of state largesse.

Also, I wonder, if soft money is such a great idea, why should we confine it to Greece? Should we then not all ask our central banks to run an even easier policy to “stimulate” growth? Well, most central banks are already trying this without much success. Could it be that there is something fundamentally wrong with fighting a crisis that is the result of too much debt and cheap credit with yet more debt and even cheaper credit?

I am not quite sure what is scarier, the present crisis or the fact that such economic nonsense is widely considered accepted wisdom.

A soft drachma would be of no benefit

But back to Greece. First of all, it should be clear, that a reintroduction of national paper money in Greece and the subsequent debasement of this money would not prevent bankruptcy. It would accelerate it, as the original debt was contracted in euros, and any attempt to repay it in debased “new drachmas” would constitute a default. (Of course, the Eurocracy may try and label it “restructuring” or “re-profiling”, but the rest of us have to live in the real world.) And even if repayment in new and debased drachmas was finally agreed, it would still constitute a massive loss to euro-area lenders such as the reckless German and French banks that foolishly lent to Greek politicians with blissful abandon and that are really the designated beneficiaries of the bailouts. They might as well write-off the Greek euro debt now.

Reality is not optional. The Greek government is bust, which means it cannot and will not repay its debt in anything of material value. Introducing a soft drachma doesn’t change anything.

However, many commentators suggest that even after default and substantial write-downs at the banks and pension funds, Greece should still leave the euro. Why? First of all, there is no need for an exit. The euro is a form of paper money, and paper money is not debt. The euro, just like the dollar, pound and yen, is an irredeemable piece of paper. The governments that issue it promise to exchange these notes for – nothing! The creditworthiness of these states is immaterial. The Eurozone is a currency union, not a credit union or fiscal union. I explained this here.

But I suppose the argument for post-default exit is essentially the one I cited above, namely that a soft national currency is more in character with the Greek’s alleged tendency to financial extravagance. Even if we accepted the distasteful national stereotype behind this, this argument would still be nonsense.

The money is not there any more

The Missing Entitlement Money 

Retired seniors need not fear entitlement reform.

By T. Sowell

One of my earliest memories of revulsion against war came from seeing a photograph from the First World War when I was a teenager. It was nothing gory. Just a picture of a military officer, in an impressive uniform, talking to a puzzled and forlorn-looking old peasant woman with a cloth wrapped around her head.

He said simply: “Don’t you understand, madam? The village is not there any more.”

To many such people of that era, the village was the only world they knew. And to say that it had been destroyed in the carnage of war was to say that there was no way for them to go back home, that their whole world was gone.

Recently that image came back, in a wholly different context, while seeing pictures of American seniors carrying signs that read “Hands off my Social Security” and “Hands off my Medicare.”

They want their Social Security and their Medicare to stay the way they are — and their anger is directed against those who want to change the financial arrangements that pay for these benefits.

Their anger should be directed instead against those politicians who were irresponsible enough to set up these costly programs without putting aside enough money to pay for the promises that were made — promises that now cannot be kept, regardless of which political party controls the government.

Someone needs to say to those who want Social Security and Medicare to continue on unchanged: “Don’t you understand? The money is not there any more.”

Many retired people remember the money that was taken out of their paychecks for years and feel that they are now entitled to receive Social Security benefits as a right. But the way Social Security was set up was so financially shaky that anyone who set up a similar retirement scheme in the private sector could be sent to federal prison for fraud.

But you can’t send a whole Congress to prison, however much they may deserve it.

This is not some newly discovered problem. Innumerable economists and others pointed out decades ago that Social Security was unsustainable in the long run, including yours truly on Meet the Pressin 1981.

But the long run doesn’t count for most politicians, since elections are held in the short run. Politicians’ election prospects are enhanced the more goodies they can promise and the less they collect in taxes to pay for them.

That is why welfare states in Europe as well as here are facing bitter public protests as the chickens come home to roost.

It has been said innumerable times that nobody already on Social Security will lose their benefits. But it needs to be spelled out emphatically, so that political demagogues will not be able to scare retired seniors that they are going to have the rug pulled out from under them.

Retired seniors have the least to fear from a reform of Social Security, since neither political party is about to take away what these retirees already have and are relying on.

Despite irresponsible political ads showing an old lady in a wheelchair being dumped over a cliff, the people who are really in danger of being dumped over a cliff are those of the younger generation, who are paying into Social Security but are unlikely to get back anything like what they are paying in.

The money that young workers are paying into Social Security today is not being put aside to pay for their retirement. It is being spent today to pay the pensions of the retired generation — and it can’t even cover that in the years ahead.

What needs to be done is to allow younger workers a choice of staying out of a system that is simply running out of money. Nor can the system be saved by simply jacking up taxes on “the rich.”

Generations of experience have shown that high tax rates that “the rich” can easily avoid — through tax shelters at home or by investing their money abroad — do not bring in as much revenue as lower tax rates that keep the money here and the jobs here.

Since the law does not allow private pension plans to be set up in the financially irresponsible way Social Security is, that is where young people’s money should be put, if they ever want to see that money again when they reach retirement age.

A license to print money.

Self publishing writer becomes million seller

An entrepreneur has turned the writing world upside down by becoming the first author to sell more than a million electronic books without a publishing deal.In the last year John has had four of the top 10 books on Amazon/Kindle at the same time, including number one and two 

By Emma Barnett, and Richard Alleyne

John Locke, 60, who publishes and promotes his own work, enjoys sales figures close to such literary luminaries as Stieg Larsson, James Patterson and Michael Connelly.

But unlike these heavyweights of the writing world, he has achieved it without the help of an agent or publicist – and with virtually no marketing budget.

Instead the DIY novelist has relied on word of mouth and a growing army of fans of his crime and western novellas that he has built up online thanks to a website and twitter account.

His remarkable achievement is being hailed as a milestone of the internet age and the beginning of a revolution in the way that books are sold.

Locke, from Louisville, Kentucky, USA, whose only other artistic endeavour was as a singer with a rock band in his youth, admits that the writing it not even his day job.

He has already made a fortune from the business world and private investments.

But like with his other money making schemes he puts the secret of his success down to spotting a gap in the market with the arrival of the ebook, the Kindle, and online publishing.

He saw that many successful authors were charging almost $10 (£6) for a book and decided that he would undercut them – selling his own efforts for 99 cents (60 pence).

"I’ve been in commission sales all my life, and when I learned Kindle and the other e-book platforms offered a royalty of 35 per cent on books priced at 99 cents, I couldn’t believe it," he said.

"To most people, 35 cents doesn’t sound like much. To me, it seemed like a license to print money.

"With the most famous authors in the world charging $9.95 for e-books, I saw an opportunity to compete, and so I put them in the position of having to prove their books were 10 times better than mine.

"Figuring that was a battle I could win, I decided right then and there to become the bestselling author in the world, a buck at a time."

His books – which centre around characters such as Donovan Creed, a former CIA assassin "with a weakness for easy women" and Emmett Love, a former gunslinger – are unlikely to trouble the Booker Prize judges.

But nevertheless they are immensely popular among the new e-Book fraternity, selling a copy every seven seconds and making him only the eighth author in history to sell a million copies on Amazon's Kindle – a milestone he passed this week.

He was the first to do it using their Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).

In the last year he has had four of the top 10 books on Amazon/Kindle at the same time, including number one and two.

He has had seven books in the top 34 and 8 books in the Top 50 at the same time.

His success has even sent one of his books Saving Rachel into the New York Times bestseller list and has Hollywood interested in turning them into films.

“It’s so exciting that self-publishing has allowed John Locke to achieve a milestone like this,” said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content.

“We’re happy to see Kindle Direct Publishing succeeding for both authors and customers and are proud to welcome him to the Kindle Million Club.”

Another self-published e-book sensation, Amanda Hocking, signed a six-figure deal earlier this year with a publisher.

But Locke claims he wants to remain independent.

"It just wouldn't be fun for me'" Locke said. "I like the idea of being able to walk away from writing if it stops being fun."

Locke, whose nine novels include "Vegas Moon,” "Wish List,” "A Girl Like You and "Don't Poke the Bear!" does now have a literary agent, Jane Dystel, but said she is only working on movie, television and audio rights.

However, he has already made plans to further cash in on his success.

He has written a self help book for others to copy his achievement called "How I sold 1 Million e-books in 5 Months".

Happiness Implosion

Seven cult films chronicle the collapse of ’60s idealism.

By Kevin Michael Grace

The ’60s Myth is one of the great cults of our time. We all know the story. If you don’t, watch PBS tonight or any other night. It goes like this. Across America, a revolution led by the young, creative, idealistic, and fearless vanquished a stultifying and corrupt Establishment, thereby inaugurating a glorious New Age of truth, freedom, and authenticity.

From the perspective of the losers, those who didn’t consider the society depicted in “Leave It To Beaver” risible, the myth is just another example of what Herbert Butterfield called the Whig interpretation of history. But what is curious about the ’60s is that, from the perspective of the winners, it was an opportunity squandered.

Tom Wolfe, the great social historian of that epoch, has dined out for years on his response to doom-mongers Allen Ginsberg and Günter Grass at Princeton in 1967. He recounted the tale in a 2008 interview with The Observer:

‘They, and the audience,’ he says, still slightly affronted by the memory, ‘were all making not only anti-war statements but malign statements about the American government—as some people are now, freedom of speech and all of this…’ Wolfe heard himself shouting: ‘Ah! Come on! This is a happiness explosion! People are flush with money! They go dancing in these discotheques all over the country!’ And the thing is, he says now: ‘I was right and they were wrong.’

Wolfe is right only if one accepts his chronology. Now, defining the length of the ’60s as a cultural age has become something of a cottage industry. Wolfe plumps for 1964 to 1968. This is too narrow and too self-serving. A more accurate length would be from the assassination of Kennedy in 1963 to either the resignation of Nixon in 1974 or the fall of Saigon in 1975. In any event, Christopher Booker is surely right when he writes in The Neophiliacs, “As the Sixties came to an end, not even the most dispassionate survey of the decade could disguise the almost universal suspicion that something had gone with this great unleashing of expectation. In all sorts of ways, the golden age had lost its gilt: above all in America.”

As Danny says in “Withnail & I,” set at the end of 1969, “They’re selling hippie wigs in Woolworths, man. The greatest decade in the history of mankind is over, and as Presuming Ed here has so consistently pointed out, we have failed to paint it black.” Or as Peter Fonda’s Captain America concludes in “Easy Rider,” “We blew it.”

“Easy Rider” is one of seven movies collected in a set from the Criterion Collection called “America Lost and Found: The BBS Story.” Aside from its value as art, this set will serve historians as a primary source demonstrating how the Happiness Explosion dissolved into bitterness, regret, rage, and paranoia.

BBS was a filmmaking collective active from 1968 to 1972. Its members were writer-director Bob Rafelson and producers Bert Schneider and Steve Blauner. It was spawned, strangely enough, by The Monkees. Inspired by Richard Lester’s Beatles films, Rafelson and Schneider conceived the idea of a weekly television series featuring the zany antics of two actors, Davy Jones and Mickey Dolenz, and two musicians, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork.

The Monkees were not an organic pop group, and for this they were mocked mercilessly by musical purists. They were chosen, after open auditions, for two qualities: likeability and malleability. The second quality was essential as they were owned by Columbia Pictures and RCA Records, who weren’t having any nonsense about artistic temperament. The Monkees were puppets, but their strings were pulled by the best tunesmiths around—including Neil Diamond, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart—and the best studio musicians, LA’s legendary Wrecking Crew.

As it turned out, as a musical group The Monkees were rather good. Cognoscenti have come to realize that their greatest hits can withstand comparison to any of the top ’60s combos, even the Beatles and Rolling Stones. Their popular appeal was immediate and sensational. They made their owners a lot of money, and still do.

Delusions

A War the Neocons Lost

by P. Buchanan

In deciding to pull all of the 30,000 troops from the surge out of Afghanistan, six weeks before Election Day 2012, but only 10,000 by year’s end, President Obama has satisfied neither the generals nor the doves.

He has, however, well served his political interests.

A larger drawdown would have risked the gains made in Kandahar and Helmand and invited a revolt of the generals, some of whom might resign and denounce Obama for denying them the forces to prevail.

Sen. John McCain, citing some generals, is already saying that, with fewer troops and more missions per unit, U.S. casualties will rise.

A smaller drawdown would have enraged the left, whose support is indispensable to Obama’s winning a second term.

So, our president did what comes naturally: cut the baby in half.

Strategically, removal of 30,000 troops in 15 months means that Obama has given up all hope of victory over the Taliban. Gen. MacArthur’s dictum — “In war, there is no substitute for victory” — is inoperative in yet another American war.

Obama’s strategic goal now is the avoidance of defeat, until the election of 2012 is behind him. And by retaining 70,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan during the fighting season and political season of 2012, he has an insurance policy against a Taliban Tet-style offensive or major U.S. military reversal as voters begin to fill out absentee ballots.

In the post-speech analysis, there was much chatter about a “political solution” — a peace conference including Pakistan, India, Russia, China and Iran that would bring the moderate Taliban and Karzai government together to iron out their differences.

This is self-delusion, born of hope not rational analysis.

Have we not been here before? With Mao’s Communists and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists being pushed toward a coalition by Gen. George Marshall in the late 1940s. With the Viet Cong and North and South Vietnamese making peace in Southeast Asia in 1973.

Like the old communists, the Taliban are all-or-nothing people.

They have a vision, an agenda grounded in religious faith about how a society should be structured, about how men and women should live. They fought their way to absolute power in the 1990s. And they have shown themselves more willing to die for their beliefs and leaders than the Afghan National Army,

This is not to denigrate the brave Afghan soldiers who have bled and died. But the Taliban have not needed U.S. training, U.S. arms, U.S. air and fire support or U.S. paychecks to go into battle. All the suicide bombers who give up their lives are — Taliban.

They recruit themselves. And for 10 years the Taliban have battled U.S. soldiers and Marines, backed up by NATO troops, to what Gen. Stanley McChrystal called “a draw.”

And if Afghanistan has become a stalemated war between the Americans and Taliban after a decade in which 1,600 Americans have given their lives and 12,000 have been wounded, how well will the Karzai regime and ANA make out when the Americans, the best soldiers in the world, depart, and they face the Taliban alone?

“This war does not lend itself to a military solution” is the cliche of the hour. And, surely, if the United States cannot achieve victory over the Taliban with 100,000 troops, we are unlikely to achieve it with 70,000, or however many may remain after 2014.

But has anyone heard the Taliban concede, “This war does not lend itself to a military solution”? Even should the Taliban come to the table and agree to compete democratically, does anyone think it will be faithful to a commitment given to the infidel Americans, once the infidel Americans depart? Why should they?

Over the next 15 months, the United States will be pulling out all or almost all of its 50,000 troops from Iraq, plus the 30,000 from the Afghan theater.

Our NATO allies will execute similar drawdowns.

This will leave Iraq up for grabs. But the Islamic world will see the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan for what it is: a retreat, forced upon a war-weary America by Islamic holy warriors who are the sons of the mujahedeen who drove out the Red Army in the 1980s and helped to bring down the Soviet Empire.

Make no mistake. Obama is headed for the exit ramp, and the Karzai government and Afghan army will not succeed where that same government and army, backed by 150,000 U.S. and NATO troops, could not succeed.

McCain and the neocons will blame what is coming, a terrible day in Kabul and across Afghanistan, on those who refused to soldier on, no matter the cost in blood and treasure.

But the people who should be indicted by history are not those who, after half a trillion dollars and a decade of bleeding, decided to cut America’s losses, but those who stampeded this country into two of the longest and least necessary wars in the history of the republic.

Great Society's bitter fruits

America's New Racists
By Walter E. Williams

The late South African economist William Hutt, in his 1964 book, "The Economics of the Colour Bar," said that one of the supreme tragedies of the human condition is that those who have been the victims of injustices and oppression "can often be observed to be inflicting not dissimilar injustices upon other races."

Born in 1936, I've lived through some of our openly racist history, which has included racist insults, beatings and lynchings. Tuskegee Institute records show that between the years 1880 and 1951, 3,437 blacks and 1,293 whites were lynched. I recall my cousin and me being chased out of Fishtown and Grays Ferry, two predominantly Irish Philadelphia neighborhoods, in the 1940s, not stopping until we reached a predominantly black North or South Philly neighborhood.

Today all that has changed. Most racist assaults are committed by blacks. What's worse is there are blacks, still alive, who lived through the times of lynching, Jim Crow laws and open racism who remain silent in the face of it.

Last year, four black Skidmore College students yelled racial slurs while they beat up a white man because he was dining with a black man. Skidmore College's first response was to offer counseling to one of the black students charged with the crime. In 2009, a black Columbia University professor assaulted a white woman during a heated argument about race relations. According to interviews and court records obtained and reported by Denver's ABC affiliate (12/4/2009), black gangs roamed downtown Denver verbally venting their hatred for white victims before assaulting and robbing them during a four-month crime wave. Earlier this year, two black girls beat a white girl at a McDonald's, and the victim suffered a seizure. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel ordered an emergency shutdown of the beaches in Chicago because mobs of blacks were terrorizing families. According to the NBC affiliate there (6/8/2011), a gang of black teens stormed a city bus, attacked white victims and ran off with their belongings.

Racist black attacks are not only against whites but also against Asians. In San Francisco, five blacks beat an 83-year-old Chinese man to death. They threw a 57-year-old woman off a train platform. Two black Oakland teenagers assaulted a 59-year-old Chinese man; the punching knocked him to the ground, killing him.

At Philly's South Philadelphia High School, Asian students report that black students routinely pelt them with food and beat, punch and kick them in school hallways and bathrooms as they hurl racial epithets such as "Hey, Chinese!" and "Yo, Dragon Ball!" The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund charged the School District of Philadelphia with "deliberate indifference" toward black victimization of Asian students.

In many of these brutal attacks, the news media make no mention of the race of the perpetrators. If it were white racist gangs randomly attacking blacks, the mainstream media would have no hesitation reporting the race of the perps. Editors for the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune admitted to deliberately censoring information about black crime for political reasons. Chicago Tribune Editor Gerould Kern recently said that the paper's reason for censorship was to "guard against subjecting an entire group of people to suspicion."

These racist attacks can, at least in part, be attributed to the black elite, who have a vested interest in racial paranoia. And that includes a president who has spent years aligned with people who have promoted racial grievance and polarization and appointed an attorney general who's accused us of being "a nation of cowards" on matters of race and has refused to prosecute black thugs who gathered at a Philadelphia voting site in blatant violation of federal voter intimidation laws.

Tragically, black youngsters -- who are seething with resentments, refusing to accept educational and other opportunities unknown to blacks yesteryear -- will turn out to be the larger victims in the long run.

Black silence in the face of black racism has to be one of the biggest betrayals of the civil rights struggle that included black and white Americans.

Never has a civilization so lavishly financed its own demise.

Sheriff: Head of largest heroin operation in Polk County history was on food stamps, here illegally

Leader received $900 per month from the gov't

by Ryan Raiche

WINTER HAVEN, Fla. - Detectives in Polk County recently busted the largest heroin trafficking operation in the county's history, according to Sheriff Grady Judd.

In a press conference Tuesday afternoon, Judd said his team of detectives arrested 33 people during the 14-month long investigation. Five were taken into custody early Tuesday morning, including Pablo Bergen, the leader of the operation, according to police.

"You could tell it was his heroin because he always wrapped it in this paper and this is how we found it," said Judd, holding up Bergen's trademark paper coated in shiny green and gold.

He said his team found Bergen's heroin all over the county, but mainly in Lakeland. Police believe he received a pound of heroin every month from New York.

Bergan, along with the majority of those arrested in the operation, has a decorated criminal history. He's currently on house arrest after taking a plea deal in 2008 for another drug trafficking offense.

"It gets better," Judd said. "He's from the Dominican Republic and he's not a citizen of the United States."

Perhaps the biggest bombshell of all, Bergen and a handful of others in the operation were on food stamps, according to Judd.

In addition to raking in tens of thousands of dollars in drug money, Bergen got $900 every month from the government.

"You, the hard working taxpayer of this state, were paying him for this," he said.

Judd is pushing for harsher penalties for anyone involved in drug trafficking. He said he fully supports the proposed state law that would require drug testing for anyone on food stamps.

No word on whether the food stamps will be cut off now that Bergen is finally heading to prison. In Iowa's Polk County, 30% of the jail's inmates were receiving food stamps in 2009.

Ali Baba and other tales

A Coup de Greece?

by Taki Theodoracopulos

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves by Albert Goodwin

Here’s the scoop on poor old Hellas, that sad little EU country given a temporary reprieve from being hauled to the municipal dump: Greece will default sometime in 2012. If there are any doubters around, this prediction comes from the great oracle of economics Taki, the very same Taki who smelled a rat even before the Greek government was caught red-handed cooking the books under the advice of the poisonous giant squid, Goldman Sachs. The latter took its giant fee and went back home in order to continue screwing the innocent. The Greeks stayed on the beach and are now paying for past follies.

The trouble is that no one responsible for the disaster has been punished. An ex-minister of defense under the socialist government of ten years ago, one Akis Tsohatsopoulos, was said to have 180 million Euros in his private bank account. The bum had no family money except his ministerial salary. The newspapers screamed bloody murder to no avail. He threatened to reveal the truth about defense-contract kickbacks, so the “conservatives” clammed up. The result was a typical Hellenic fiasco. He kept the money and everyone went to the beach.

How can anyone take these Greek politicians seriously? Constantine Karamanlis, dead for years, called the military junta crooks, but Taki knew better when he sent food packages to the wives of the coup leaders while their husbands rotted in jail. Karamanlis oversaw the first period of corruption when he talked Greece into the EU back in the early 80s. Andreas Papandreou, father of the present Greek premier, was known as Ali Baba because he and his forty ministers turned lying and stealing into a Greek art form, a far more profitable endeavor than building useless edifices such as the Parthenon. Another Karamanlis, a nephew, fired a metaphorical coup de grâce into the economy when for five years he sat on his very fat ass and watched the public sector steal whatever was worth stealing.

Do you follow me? The only Greeks whose hands are clean are that tiny minority who keep government away from their businesses. Managing a business in Greece is a bit like running a diner on New York’s mean streets during Don Corleone’s time. Sooner or later some wise guy—the government—will come in and demand a cut. Business in Greece is dependent on political influence, and without it there is no business. I haven’t got the space, nor the patience, to list the cases I know of Greek Americans who brought money into good old Hellas in order to start a business and got screwed out of it by government officials. It is very simple. If one wants to conduct business in the birthplace of electrolysis, one has to bribe government officials, and government in Greece is thoroughly, totally, completely, 100 percent corrupt. I was forced to sell a real-estate/hotel complex now worth one hundred million Euros for less than one tenth its value because I refused to pay a bribe to the National Bank of Greece to lower the 35% interest I was paying. Dumb? Definitely. This was twenty years ago, but it gave me great pleasure to walk away and return only on my boat to check out the women on the beaches. Some of you old-time readers may remember that just about then some gangsters also blew up the boat I had inherited from my old dad. I refused to pay them part of the insurance money I collected. They began to blow up things that belonged to people who worked for me. When I finally cornered them, they acted as if they were the government. As the head hood put it to me: “Others have paid, why won’t you?” Years later the guy sent me a Christmas card and praised me for standing up to his gang. (He had been found bound and gagged but alive in a car trunk in the meantime.) I forgave him because if the government acts like a gangster, what is a poor hood supposed to do?

So Greece has once again been rescued by the EU, but for how long? Government debt is forecast to reach 170% of GDP. How in heaven’s name can anyone expect us to believe that Greece will pay off close to 20% of its GDP for decades simply on interest? It is yet another con by banker-Eurocrats and Greek politicians. Greece has been on default since the day she entered the EU and began spending like Abramovich. (It’s easy to blow ill-gotten gains.) European taxpayers will be left holding the bag. The bureaucrooks who run our lives know this but are simply playing for time. George Papandreou knows this. Merkel and Sarkozy know this. Brussels knows this, yet the burlesque goes on, an Archie Rice-like debacle to the bitter end.

Will there be a coup in Greece? I sure hope so, but the answer is never. People have turned soft after years of feasting on other people’s moolah. I am even building a house there, just like King Constantine is. Mind you, the king has an excuse. He suffers from excessive Hellenophilia. I do not have an excuse, but I don’t need one—I like to live dangerously.