Are the Beltway Elites Intentionally Throwing the U.S. Under the Bus?

Or just us Americans?  Between the on-going disaster of the incredibly complex Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, roll-out, which Nancy Pelosi famously said they have to pass to find out what it is;  the partial government shut-down spearheaded by a man married to a VP at Goldman Sachs; the threat of the first default in American history, which it appears will be ongoing (see quote below); the firing of top military leaders for what seem like trivial matters, not to mention, S&P rating downgrade of U.S. debt;  the fiscal cliff episode; sequestration, Wall Street provoked financial collapse in 2008, etc., the U.S. is a buffoon on the befuddled world stage right now, a continuous unfolding spectacle, and no one in power seems to give a damn. If anything, they're promoting that image for all it's worth. 

“Like the House GOP bill, the emerging Senate measure -- though not finalized -- would reopen the government through Jan. 15 and permit the Treasury to borrow normally until early to mid-February, easing dual crises that have sapped confidence in the economy and taken a sledgehammer to the GOP's poll numbers.

At the same time, beltway politicians have no problem allocating billions, if not trillions of dollars to fight unwanted, undeclared wars that extend  to nearly every corner of the globe; to supposedly "aid" other countries;  to prop up/bail out Wall Street; to fund the Department of Homeland Security, the NSA, the TSA, fusion centers, unconstitutional spying programs, etc,  yet we can't pay our own workers, feed our own people, or pay our troops?

From Asia Times:

“Instead of honoring its duties as a responsible leading power, a self-serving Washington has abused its superpower status and introduced even more chaos into the world by shifting financial risks overseas, instigating regional tensions amid territorial disputes, and fighting unwarranted wars under the cover of outright lies.

This is a nation that claims the moral high ground? American Exceptionalism? Hardly. Murder has become routine as civilians are slayed all over the world via remote-control drone attacks. Torturing prisoners of war is seen as par for the course. Covertly, or not so covertly, spying on American citizens is becoming normalized and a giant casino is what stands in as thee economy of choice. 

It seems the motive here is to pave the way for endless future extortion, plunder, fear-mongering, and the continuous subversion of the middle-class.

In Ted Cruz's own words:

“Everyone agrees that the debt ceiling is going to be raised,” Cruz told CNBC’s Larry Kudlow in an interview tonight.

“The question,” he continued, “is whether Harry Reid and the president will maintain the same negotiating position they have on the continuing resolution, which is we will bargain for nothing, give us 100 percent of what we want or we will threaten a default.” 

So, in my humble opinion, there is no question that the powers that be are throwing we, the Americans under the bus, but what about America, the nation?  What could possibly motivate the ruling class to do such a thing?  Well, in a nutshell, globalization.  Our privileged leaders are no longer loyal to our nation, only to the wealthy and powerful corporate elite, which has, "in effect, seceded". These magnates, capitalists, moguls, and banksters are global in every sense of the word, their only loyalty is to their ever-growing immense wealth, as they seek out the most beneficial havens with no regard for national boundaries. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a transnational agreement brokered by corporations and negotiated largely in secret, that President Obama is pushing, is very good evidence that this is indeed, true.

I think the following, by bullingdonmorons sums it up much better than I ever could:

“ALL our politicians know exactly what they are doing.

Our politicians are simply service managers for the banks and corporations who now rule the world. We have been shafted. We were never given any choice, no-one ever put it in any manifesto, we never voted for it, but we got it all the same. The bankrupt ideology of Neo-Liberalism, with its dogma of economic liberalization, free trade, privatization and deregulation, and its mantra that all human activity is a market from which a profit can be made.

The ruling elite now own our land, gas, electricity, railways, water and media. They have corrupted our politicians and our police. They are now coming for our pensions, our NHS, our roads, our schools and our green spaces. They have systematically destroyed the unions, dismantled our protections, created mass unemployment and are dismembering the welfare state, They caused an economic crash which bankrupted our economy and yet they walked away with their wealth intact.

And what do we get in return? Austerity, recessions, huge debts and deficits. A government conducting a systematic assault upon the sick, the poor and the disabled, slashing welfare budgets and forcing people off benefits. 500,000 of us now use food banks. They make it easier to sack us, make us work longer hours for less pay, force our kids to work for nothing, raise the retirement age whilst cutting our pensions and weaken our health and safety laws. And all just so a handful of people can be immensely rich. Frankly, it's sickening.

But by far the worst damage they have inflicted upon us is that they have destroyed our children's futures.

My generation grew up under governments that believed in full employment and a welfare state. We benefited from decades of struggle, hard won rights that enabled us to have a decent standard of living, own our homes and be cared for when we got old or sick.

However, for 30 years, we have let them slowly dismantle everything my parents and grandparents had fought for. For the millions born since 1980, the only assets they will own will be the ones passed on by their parents. They live in rented accommodation, or negative equity or have interest only mortgages. Their pensions are worthless. They spend every penny they earn, have no savings and buy everything with credit.

But it's even worse for our grandchildren. 50% of them are now loaded with debt before they even leave education. If they are lucky enough to have a job, it's on minimum wage, on zero hour contracts, or part time work, or stacking shelves for nothing. They have no protections, no rights. Pensions are just a pipe-dream. None of them have any hope of getting a mortgage. This is the true cost of the last 30 years. In our lifetime, they have managed to strip away everything our forefathers built for our kids, reducing them to the level of medieval serfs, possessing NOTHING. It's heartbreaking.

So, It's time to get angry, and we need someone to express that anger, because none of our politicians are going to do it. Someone to speak for the millions of hard working people who only want a decent life for themselves and for their kids to have a decent future. Someone that speaks up for all of us, not just a privileged few. Someone that tells us that our worth is not measured by our wealth, but our value as human beings. Someone that tells us that compassion and empathy are not bullshit. Someone that tells us that ordinary people can expect to have a decent job, a decent house and decent healthcare. Someone that tells us our elderly can live out their final years in a degree of comfort. Someone that tells us our sick and disabled should be allowed to exist with a shred of dignity. Someone that tells us that the most disadvantaged will not be looked down upon as scum.

Someone that tells us that our kids can still have hopes and dreams.

We should all be born equal, with an equal chance to develop, to achieve, to succeed. But far too many are now condemned to a life of struggle by a system that creates so many losers for the benefit of so few winners. It is not only unfair and unjust, it is unsustainable.

And it's time we all stood up and said, enough is enough.

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US Government's Dual Accounting System and Their Enormous Hidden Surplus

Our nation was setup as a Republic supposedly governed by the "Rule of Law" in order to protect wealthy and powerful individuals and their property from the tyranny of government and the tyranny of the mob. It is not a democracy as we're so often told. But what they don't tell you is that our nation is a massive and all-powerful corporation, complete with a Dun and Bradstreet number(s). Not only that, every single agency, county, city, township, municipality, etc., is also a corporation, also complete with Dun and Bradstreet numbers.

While some may brush this aside as the government's need to act as a corporation in order to do business on a large scale--to purchase/to supply/invest--it does not explain the two sets of books the government keeps: public and "public".  The public budget, we're told, has such a severe deficit and that is used as justification for cutting basic human services to the 99% of taxpayers who have sacrificed a good portion of their paycheck to gain these services when most needed. However, what you're not told is that this public budget only records approximately only one-third of our tax money, which brings us to the "public" budget, where the other two-thirds is reported?

As I've posted about before: here, here, here, here, here, and here,  hidden in plain sight, silenced from public disclosure, it's called the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the CAFR. These CAFRs, various “investment funds,” “dedicated funds” and “pension funds” show the billions, possibly trillions of public dollars that are not available to us.

"The scam works something like this: Anything that was a cost or expense for public services (the traditional side of the Annual Service Budget, such as the Department of Transportation, health and welfare, etc.) was reported on the Budget where public taxes paid 100% of the bill for those services...

However, any governmental agency that was a profit center (the Port Authority for New Jersey, the New Jersey Turnpike, an investment account, etc.) that generated non-tax revenue was “restricted by statute” from being reported in the Annual Budget. Why? Because the state legislature passed laws to prevent reporting the income from profit centers on the Budget. Instead, income from these profit centers was disclosed only on the CAFR.

But that disclosure was not immediately apparent. For example, when Mr. Burien looked for New Jersey’s 1989 “gross cash receipts” in the CAFR, he found the figure buried on page 174, under the “Waste Water Treatment Trust Fund.” It showed the amount of the total cash receipts for 1989 from all 69 autonomous state agencies and departments was almost $87 billion. In other words, New Jersey was charging $87 billion to provide $17 billion in public services. New Jersey citizens were paying $5 for every $1 in services they received, and the state was pocketing the other $4 as “profit”.

The CAFR also reported the state owned $32 billion in common stocks – but this figure was footnoted. The footnote revealed that the stocks were valued according to their original purchase price, not current market value. In other words, if the state bought a stock in 1968 at $1.25 a share and it’s worth $3,000 a share now, they still report it on the CAFR as worth $1.25 a share. Burien determined that the true market value for the “$32 billion” in stocks reported on the New Jersey CAFR was actually about $70 billion.[...]

[As of 1998] “CAFR reports indicate that the composite totals for all government
(Federal, state, county and city) ownership of publicly traded stock exceeds $32 TRILLION (53% of the total ownership of all listed stocks), $8 TRILLION in insurance company equity (should we be surprised by high priced mandatory auto insurance or unaffordable health care?), and $5 TRILLION in Bond Surety Escrow Accounts for future liability of existing or potential debt."

So while our legislators cry poverty and bankruptcy, proclaiming "austerity for the masses" from every rooftop, the truth is our government has a surplus of billions, if not trillions, in very profitable investments, unaccounted for in the budgets that  are disclosed to a very uninformed, and all too trusting We-the-People. That's right. Our federal and state governments own at least 53% of the stock in all publicly traded companies. This, of course, allows our government, at all levels, to wield enormous power over the stock market, and our economy in general, all the while casting "We, the People" into an ever-growing black hole.

Take the state of Washington's fiscal crisis and their proposal to use state higher education funds to gamble in the derivatives markets that was on the ballot--Washington SJR 8223, which thankfully did not win--once again and may be coming to a state near you. Many of these government investments are in toxic investment instruments such as collateralized debt options (CDOs) set on unstable “trading platforms,”  set to collapse in the near future. These toxic investment instruments are based on the purchase of packaged debts, and constitute legalized gambling on the stock markets with billion/trillions of our money using the most irresponsible methods imaginable. (1)

Moreover, there is a little known agency of the Federal Reserve called the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) or Cede, INC. Notice, the website link is .com, not .gov. It is a private, for profit corporation as are all the government agencies. What is the DTCC? Well, once you invest money, as an individual or institutional, and it's registered with a stock broker, which is required, that money or investment is ceded--property of--to the DTCC. In other words, according to corrupt corporate statutory law, you no longer own that stock, you are a beneficiary.

(1) Now is the Time -

Rebecca Campbell, who owns this website, filed a lawsuit on behalf of all of the peoples of the world so that they might hold their own governments accountable for the crimes that these governments have perpetrated in their names against other peoples, as well as against themselves.

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