Announcement and links

I have taken the ads off the site and gone non-commercial.  I don’t want even the subconscious influence of making money through advertising upon my writing.  I have a day job, and am glad of it.

Let me know if any ads pop up.

I commend to you the writings and links on my recommended blogger sites to the left.  These colleagues provide consistently high quality, linked-to-authoritative-sources copy with an intelligent organizing principle behind it that puts the mainstream propaganda-blathering press to shame.

Everything I read reinforces the impression that American society has ceased to cohere, that not just the government but the social contract is broken.  While “animal spirits” are increasing (because hope springs eternal and humans try to adapt) the potential for very negative social psychology in the next downturn is great—whether it’s outright repression a la Hank Paulson’s dream of martial law implemented by Blackwater/Xe—or simply a loss of long-term “animal spirits” in the context of a rigidified neo-feudalism that kills the dreams in Americans breasts—or sends them deep underground—any of the above is awful to contemplate.  The current repositioning of the Republican party as “libertarian” is the latest in the charade of the do-nothing two-party system and is just another ruse to lower taxes on rich people (a la  Peter Schiff).

Among MSM-sanctioned talking heads, Marc Faber has been most vocal in warning that the hidden powers behind the American throne are clamoring for a big war.  I fear we have some very sick people pulling the strings behind the scenes.  A population in a state of fear is easier to manipulate than otherwise.  Be wary of news of “provocations” from “enemies.”  George Washington has addressed the issues of “false flag” attacks here and here.  Hitler famously used a false flag attack to cement his hold on the German psyche.  Be wary.

As I have suggested many times, the appropriate response to the current maldistribution-induced failure of effective demand to to provide health care and livable workfare to those who need it, funded by progressive increases in marginal tax rates on the super-rich (say, the top 5 percent of the income distribution that receives ~37 percent of income per Saez).  With personal income currently running at $12 trillion and un- and underemployment totaling 25 million, a simple diversion of a trillion dollars, 8.3 percent, from the richest to the most needy would provide $40,000 to each unemployed person and would reignite a healthy circular flow of income and product domestically.  Half that amount would get things going, and the other half could go to health care.

You say this would kill growth, Neocon?  American growth rates were highest in the early postwar period when marginal income tax rates were highest, when we had a sense of shared sacrifice paying off the war debt, when we had a viable social contract.

Here are a few recent links I found interesting or amusing (sorry no hat tips):

The doomsday cycle - Peter Boone, Simon Johnson, VoxEU
US Military Drone pilots will have a front-row seat slaughtering citizens resisting Federal Tyranny
Terrorism Derangement Syndrome
Cheney Confesses to War Crimes
General Petraeus: Torture is Unnecessary, Hurts O...
"Only 21% Say U.S. Government Has Consent of the G...
Yet Another Congressman Questions 9/11

"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force,of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

- “Political Observations” (1795-04-20) and Letters and Other Writings of James Madison (1865), Vol. IV, p. 491