(from No One Left To Lie To; The Values of the Worst Family by Christopher Hitchens)
". . . Two full terms of Clintonism and of "triangulation" and of loveless dogged bipartisanship, reduced the American scene to the point where politicians had become to politics what lawyers had become to the law: professionalized parasites battening on an exhausted system that had lost any relationship to its original purpose (democracy or popular sovereignty in the first instance; justice or equity in the second). The permanent political class and its ancillaries held all the cards by the 2000 campaign, controlled all the money, decided on all the predigested questions in all the manipulated polls. They did their job almost too well, leaving insufficient room for illusion and inadequate grounds for maintaining any steady or principled party allegiance. As a result, the only realists were the cynics. And this in turn permitted some alarming honesties to be committed in public. . ."
My latest solo offering, No Frills, is now available at - No Frills
(To Access all Ray Jozwiak - Gonzo Piano music you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/RayJozwiak)
The NFL made $10.5 billion in 2013 and paid its chief executive Roger Goodell $44.2 million. Taxes? The National Football League pays taxes through its various money-making offshoots such as NFL Properties and NFL Ventures. The league office in midtown Manhattan, which paid Goodell pays non. Why? Because in 1942 the IRS ruled the NFL was a trade association (for its current 32-member teams) and therefore exempt from taxes as a nonprofit under section 501(c)6 of the tax code. In 1966, when two powerful Louisiana politicians, Sen. Russell Long and Rep. Hale Boggs, wanted a football team in New Orleans, then NFL Comissioner Pete Rozelle got his wish for antitrust protection and confirmed tax-exempt status for the league office, slipped into an unrelated federal bill on investments and depreciation and the New Orleans Saints were born. (thanks to http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/22/us/nfl-nonprofit-taxes/)
OHO's
"Ocean City Ditty," the
CD single is now available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oho4
(and, if
you're in town, at Trax On Wax on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville, MD) OHO is Jay Graboski, David Reeve & Ray Jozwiak
My latest solo release, '2014' of original, instrumental piano music, can be downloaded digitally at:
(or you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/rayjozwiak4)
(from wikipedia.com)
"Machiavellianism", is a widely used negative term to characterize unscrupulous politicians of the sort Machiavelli described in The Prince. The book itself gained enormous notoriety and wide readership because the author seemed to be endorsing behavior often deemed as evil and immoral.
(from The Hidden History of 9-11, Edited by Paul Zarembka)
". . . It is vital in a democracy to question the state's own account of itself - to engage in what I call, oppositional theorizing. Rather than accepting the official story of 9-11, which contains so many unsatisfactory elements, the left ought to theorize the attacks on New York and Washington from an oppositional standpoint. "Citizens are free . . . so long as nothing is hidden from them. Thus, they must watch, surveil, expose and reveal" (Dean, 2000, p. 16). Sadly, the established left has done the opposite. Respected left commentators have embraced a radicalized version of the White House 9-11 account of September 11. (sic) Claiming the attacks are payback for globalization exposes the left to charges of supporting terrorism. Even while denying stereotyped views of Islam, the left hardly doubts bin Laden's "cartoonish parody ... [of] Muslims as angry and violent" (Gusterson, 2004, p. 144).
The left embraces a distorted notion of political violence that sees it as an understandable response of the weak to provocations of the powerful. Yet, what I have called Machiavellian state terrorism is a common feature in history. Acts of terror are vulnerable to manipulation, and far more likely to be a weapon of state rulers and their agents, than the oppressed masses. As a legitimized protection racket, the state may be tempted to inflict harm secretly on its own citizens in order to achieve unpublicized but highly desired goals. Rival power holders may find it inconvenient to confront lies which help maintain the current regime. This is likely the case with September 11, which provided American power a convenient excuse to conduct ware on Afghanistan and Iraq that had been planned well before. The left abjures conspiracy theory (while enabling the official bin Laden story) but oppositional theorizing - questioning government and looking for connections between events, perceiving the world "to be organized beneath the surface" (Sturken, 1997, p. 77) - is a critical feature of what it means to be vitally active in the political universe. . . "
(by Charlie Reese, a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper)
"Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The President does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a President to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits.. ( The President can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.)
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House?( John Boehner. He is the leader of the majority party. He and fellow House members, not the President, can approve any budget they want. ) If the President vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to. [The House has passed a budget but the Senate has not approved a budget in over three years. The President's proposed budgets have gotten almost unanimous rejections in the Senate in that time. ]
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.
If the Army & Marines are in Iraq and Afghanistan it's because they want them in Iraq and Afghanistan ..
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems.
Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible. They, and they alone, have the power.
They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses. Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees... We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!"
(from http://www.voterocky.org/corporate_welfare)
". . . The U.S. federal government is facing the largest debt in its history – over $15.5 trillion. (How much is that? If you had $15 trillion and spent $15 million every day since Jesus was born, you would still have $4,500,000,000 today.) The interest on that debt is crushing. The annual interest payment on the debt is now $474 billion – more than it costs for the Departments of Commerce, Education, Energy, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Justice, State, Transportation, and Treasury, and the Environmental Protection Agency, combined. Imagine what could be done with that money were it not being wasted as interest payments on debt irresponsibly built up over the years.
Politicians proclaim to be concerned about the debt, while in the next breath they defend the creation or extension of policies that actually add to the outrageous debt burden. Much of that addition is for corporate interests which are being provided favors by the recipients of their campaign contributions or the targets of their lobbyist blitzes.
Corporate welfare is not need-based and is largely embedded in the tax code. It manifests in the form of tax expenditures, deductions, credits, bail-outs, guaranteed and low interest loans, and subsidies. Corporate welfare benefits the wealthiest corporations, which also happen to be among the biggest campaign donors to candidates of both Republicans and Democrats. Many of these benefits continue in perpetuity until Congress votes to end them, which is not likely to happen because to end the benefits would be adverse to the interest of corporations to whom members of Congress and the President often feel indebted.
Some of these corporate welfare programs actually promote degradation of the environment while privatizing profits and socializing risks. The following are examples of wasteful and, in some instances, environmentally harmful subsidies.
The 1872 Mining Act allows companies to extract billions of dollars worth of resources from public land at $5 per acre while paying no royalty fees. (See Rocky Anderson’s column on this issue, published in The Enterprise in February 1998. http://www.voterocky.org/the_mining_law_of_1872)
The Department of Agriculture’s Commodity Crop subsidies waste billions of dollars annually supporting a small number of corporate farming operations that encourage over-production and in some cases harm the environment.
The Market Access Program subsidizes overseas ad campaigns that benefit profitable multinational corporations.
The Department of Agriculture’s Crop Insurance program benefits the largest agricultural producers and guarantees a return on even marginal land, providing an incentive to plant in environmentally sensitive areas. Claims are projected to rise due to weather issues related to climate change.
Essential Air Service provides a subsidy to airlines that operate flights from non-hub airports that are 90 miles or more from the nearest large or medium hub airport. It essentially subsidizes flights for a relatively small number of passengers and contributes to air pollution.
It appears American citizens actually pay corporations to log on public lands. However, because of the reporting system implemented by the Department of Agriculture, it is impossible to evaluate the cost to taxpayers.
The Forest Service and BLM Public Land Grazing Program benefits only 2% of the nation’s livestock producers, yet cost taxpayers approximately $136 million in 2004 to operate. The program earned only $21 million. The below-cost grazing fees encourage overgrazing and result in extensive and severe environmental damage.
The Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services Program spends millions of dollars each year to kill predators at the request of ranchers, which leads to the degradation of ecosystems that rely on healthy predator populations.
The Army Corps of Engineers is often involved in projects that are not based on national priorities and are often economically unjustified and environmentally harmful.
Taxpayers subsidize lending for American corporations that export and foreign firms that import through the Export-Import Bank, leaving taxpayers at risk for potentially bad loans.
Subsidies to coal, oil, and gas companies totaled approximately $72 billion from 2002-2008, notwithstanding that the fossil fuel industry is a mature, developed industry not in need of government assistance.
General Electric, which made $14.2 billion in profits in 2010, paid no corporate income taxes in 2011 as a result of “innovative accounting” and fierce lobbying. . . "
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