- Deputy Reichsfuehrer Ashcroft has dictated that everybody
must go out and buy three days' worth of food and water to have on hand
in the event the "terrorists" attack. You would think that World
War III was around the corner and the sky was ready to fall the way this
Ashcroft talks. Now under "Orange Alert" status, doctors are
allowed to give emergency prescriptions so you can double up on your medication
in the event there is a disruption in the supply. Then you have to make
sure you have plenty of petrol and plenty of batteries and a radio in your
home with short wave capabilities. They even announced the new emergency
short wave frequencies for the Office of State Security (this is what we
will be calling the Office of Homeland Security from now on) in the event
"terrorists" knocked out US communications.
-
- The threat level is such that you would think that these
"terrorists" are actually organized into vast armies with tanks,
warplanes and missiles. They don't say they're just a bunch of rag-tag
towel heads. After hearing this statement, you would think that these "terrorists"
have the same capability as the Soviet Army of old.
-
- Deputy Reichsfuehrer Ashcroft is definitely cranking
up the fear factor. Now he's claiming that the "terrorists" have
the capability to completely disrupt the US economy, to cause the banking
system to fail, to disrupt the distribution of food and water, and to destroy
power plants.
-
- Meanwhile Iraq has knuckled under to the United Nations.
One of the key sticking points that UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix had
pointed out was their refusal to allow U2 spy planes to fly over Iraq and
now they are allowing that to happen. Furthermore Iraq has agreed to immediately
sign on to the international treaty ban on weapons of mass destruction
which would force them to be obligated to everything that goes along with
it, like inspections from the International Atomic Energy Commission and
so on. And all this has stolen Bush's thunder, stung the Bush Administration
and caught them off guard.
-
- About an hour later, Bush was addressing the Praise the
Lord and Send Me a Check Crowd in Nashville. You could tell that the entire
tenor of his reasoning for the war has changed. They have essentially resorted
to an entirely different political game plan. They are no longer harping
about the threat that Iraq represents with its weapons of mass destruction.
Now they/re saying that it's "America's moral duty" to invade
Iraq, kill Saddam Hussein and "liberate" the Iraqi people from
oppression.
-
- Bush is now taking the infamous American "moral
high ground" that we are the torchbearers of freedom across the world.
It was so syrupy it nearly made me gag. Bush said he's already embracing
the widows and orphans of American servicemen who have died in the fight
to free other people from tyranny.
-
- Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were there, and that's
the new tone since Iraq has knuckled under and stolen Bush's thunder about
the Iraqi regime refusing to meet the mandates under UN Resolution 1441.
-
- Putin and Chirac made a joint press release in Paris
stating that they have backed away from their previous approval of the
War on Iraq. Then Germany, France and Belgium blocked the NATO emergency
meeting to send a military shield to Turkey, which further stung the Bush
Administration. The markets then immediately turned higher.
-
- The Bushonian effort to topple the Saddam Regime (and
to isolate that regime as a precursor) has completely backfired. Now it
is the United States that is being isolated.
-
- Saddam Hussein has played Bush like a fiddle. He allowed
Bush to stick out his political neck with all this war mongering and he
forced Bush to call in a lot of favors to get the Europeans on board -
knowing that the deepest wedge he could drive was to suddenly knuckle
under (not to all, but to some of the most important) UN demands and to
continue to stretch the process out.
-
- Bush likes to say that he's the master strategist and
that we're controlling the agenda, but it's not true. Saddam Hussein is
controlling the agenda. He suckered Bush into painting America into a corner.
-
- And this new "moral" stance plays well to right-wingers
here in the United States, but it does not play well in Europe or Asia.
In other words, you can read into this that the US is going to go into
Iraq militarily and we have abandoned any efforts (and any pretense) in
bringing our allies into the situation and we will take unilateral action.
That's what they are signaling by playing the "moral" card and
playing directly into the narrow minded right within the United States.
-
- This obviously puts Tony Blair into a box because he
had stuck out his neck much more than Bush had. Blair was committing Britain
to the war when more than two-thirds of his own Labor Party voted against
it and two-thirds of the British people were against it. It puts Blair
in an untenable position within the left wing of his own party because
the Labor Party is already nervous about its drop in public support because
of Blair's actions.
-
- This series of moves that the Iraqi government made,
bending to UN demands, has changed the international dynamics. The price
of gold immediately dropped $8 an ounce. The price of oil immediately dropped
$1 a barrel.
-
- The Bush Cabal is still committed to war on Iraq. The
101st Airborne Division, which includes 23,000 men including support staff
plus 268 helicopter gun ships, has been sent and when that is completed
in two weeks, there will be 150,000 troops in the immediate area.
-
- This is another move that is designed to isolate the
United States. This is not a pro-active move by the Iraqis. The Iraqis
are allowing the Bush administration to be proactive, to let Bush stick
his neck out and then chop it off.
-
- The Bush Administration has completely underestimated
the savviness of Saddam Hussein. George Bush seems to think that he's just
some stupid tinhorn dictator. But in fact who is stupid? Who's the one
who's being isolated?
-
- Hussein has very craftily made it appear that he's knuckled
under to the two key points the UN had - which Bush kept pushing. Now
it's Bush's move and he's signaled that move by saying that the United
States is going to change its political focus. We are now essentially resorting
to Plan B - no further concessions and no further efforts to get the
allies on board. We will simply pander to the right within the United States
and we will go it alone.
-
- Now the big advantage to our allies is that if the United
States acts unilaterally, then it will be the American taxpayers who will
have to pay the entire 20-year, $1 trillion rebuilding Iraq package. The
so-called allies won't have to share any of the expenses, but they'll still
get all the gravy of all the contracts. The Bush administration has already
pre-agreed to guarantee continuity of contracts.
-
- Now if Saddam is smart (and he is), he will go to the
Russians, the Germans, the British and the French, and offer them very
lucrative new oil contracts, weapons contracts, and natural resources contracts
in Iraq. This is the logical thing for him to do because he knows that
the politics of France and Russia in particular are propelled by commercial
interests.
-
- Now our would-be allies are becoming, not the Axis of
Evil, but the Axis of Profits, while the US taxpayers are becoming the
Axis of Losses. If the US acts unilaterally, it all comes down to a balance
sheet. It means that the "allies" will all profit and the cost
to the US taxpayers will simply increase.
-
- Bush even said that the American taxpayers "have
never been concerned about how much money they have to pay to liberate
foreign peoples from oppression." During the Second World War, he
might have been right. But to say that now, when the American people have
lost half of their money in the stock market, to say that they're not concerned,
is just not true.
-
- And that's how it stands. Saddam Hussein Chops George
Bush's Political Neck Off, Thanks to America, Home of the Naive and Land
of the Brain Dead.
-
- In other news, there was a letter that was delivered
to the Bush White House by the world's ten leading economists, all of whom
are Nobel Prize winners. It's the first time such a consensus, spanning
left to right, of Nobel laureates have agreed to deliver such a joint statement.
This has been getting a lot of news play because these economists span
the political spectrum from arch-capitalists to arch-Keynesians to agree
to anything. The gist of it is that the Bush "economic stimulus plan"
is just a thinly veiled guise for a political agenda, to wit, the continuous
transfer of tax burdens to the middle class.
-
- Even Professor Milton Friedman signed it and, as you
may remember, he was the chief economist during the Bush I Regime. Friedman
is and always has been quoted by the Bushonian Faction to augment the credibility
of their economic agenda. Friedman was never an advocate of deficit spending,
but the Bush I Regime was very cozy with him, appointing him to numerous
economic commissions simply to trade off of his credibility as an anti-deficit
fighter.
-
- Meanwhile the Bushonian Regime kept accumulating larger
and larger deficits. This is a trick that the Bushonian Cabal consistently
uses - both in the late 1980s, the early 1990s, and now once again -
and that is to have in its cabinet people who are anti-deficit hawks in
order to have some of their credibility rub off on Bushonomics, which can
not be defended by any other means.
-
- Now the nation's Republican Wealthy pay 23% of the federal
taxes. If the Bush "economic stimulus plan" were to pass intact,
the nation's wealthy would then pay 11% of the nation's income tax burden.
The other 12% would simply be shifted to middle and lower middle classes.
-
- In other news, which signifies that the Bush Administration
has thrown in the towel on the economy, Bush said in his speech to the
Praise the Lord and Send Me a Check Crowd that he now intends to push,
not just tacitly support, a Federal Consumption Tax to replace the federal
income tax.
-
- This would be in other words a National VAT Tax ("Value
Added Tax"). Of course, this is nothing new since the Bush I Regime
talked about it as well. The problem is that none of the Democrats will
support it and even none of the liberal or moderate Republicans will support
it either. Wealthy Republicans do support it because a consumption tax
would dynamically shift the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class
and particularly to the working poor, who spend much more of their income
on what would now be taxable goods, as a percentage of their net income.
-
- In fact the working poor now only pay 6% of the total
federal income taxes in the nation. With a consumption tax, they would
pay 13% and that additional 7% reduction would be taken directly from the
wealthy.
-
- This idea has universal support within the Bushonian
Faction. It is also heavily supported by the Republican Right and all wealthy
people in the country. Steve Forbes has been pushing this for a long time.
They can couch it in such a way that they can spin it to the middle class
telling them that "you don't have to pay any more income tax."
They won't say that even the middle class would be paying more with a consumption
tax in total federal tax burden than they would, based on the current income
tax code.
-
- This is the final recognition that the only way a multi-trillion
dollar tax cut for the Republican Rich can be supported is through a consumption
tax. The numbers simply don't work any other way. Someone must begin to
pick up the burden of taxation that the wealthy will no longer be paying.
-
- In order to generate the same amount of income for the
federal treasury that the income tax generates, you would have to have
a flat 13% consumption tax. Then they would accomplish the third great
agenda of the Bushonian Cabal, namely to turn the United States into a
defacto tax-free nation for the Republican Rich. That's when the offshore
slush funds could be repatriated back into the United States.
-
- Even the new Treasury Secretary Snow Job has used this
as an argument - that it would repatriate the trillions in offshore accounts
and that would provide economic stimulus by bringing Republican Scamscateer
money back into the nation, from which it was originally first purloined.
-
- With the latest SEC changes, Republicans who scammed
money out of the system through stock, insurance and banking frauds and
have hidden the money offshore could repatriate their money and it would
be held sovereign and immune from all challenge. This came with the collapse
of Enron and WorldCom when the Bush Regime came up with the 60 day no prosecution
and no civil attachment orders to allow wealthy Republican Scamscateers
enough time to file under the statute for expatriation from the United
States. They then would have time to liquidate all their remaining assets
in the United States and move those monies to untouchable offshore accounts.
-
- Now the Bush Regime is telling Republican Scamscateers
that their offshore money, if repatriated, will be sacrosanct and immune
from any private or governmental action, even shareholder lawsuits.
-
- In terms of packaging this consumption tax, it's very
appealing to the working poor and lower middle class, who are certainly
no rocket scientists, when they're told there's no more income tax to pay,
and instead there's a consumption tax.
-
- Three quarters of them would not understand what a consumption
tax and the concept that it'll cost them more. The only part they'd hear
is that there is no more income tax. It wouldn't occur to them to ask,
"Well, where is the revenue going to come from?"
-
- Bushonian policies always discourage anyone from asking
questions. You can see how the Bush Regime treats people. Anyone who questions
these policies or asks questions is called "disloyal" or "unpatriotic."
-
- On the other hand, when you're a bridge person (homeless
and living under a bridge), you're the ultimate realist.
-
- One of the unfortunate side effects for the Bushonian
Cabal is that they spread realism by creating more economic distress, which
in turn creates a new class of bridge people. When you're cold and wet
and sitting in a dirty overcoat under a bridge and you've lost your home
and pension because of Bushonomics, then suddenly reality sets in.
-
- And when there's too much "reality," the State
Security will come around and spray people with the high potency Valium
gas to relieve them of the misery caused by Bushonomics.
-
- But this has been a turning point for the Bush Cabal.
The way the Bush Cabal will package this consumption tax plan is to make
the IRS look like the boogeyman and they'll claim that the IRS will go
out of business. This is very appealing to a lot of people, those on the
lower end of the economic spectrum, to the patriots and the conspiracy
people. People will jump on it without thinking of the consequences. And
that's what the Bush Cabal is counting onÖ
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- http://www.almartinraw.com
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