Money Matters

High War And Disaster Costs Due Entirely To Privatization

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The biggest plank on the GOP pirate ship of state is privatization. This was supposed to save us taxpayers money but instead is obviously costing us an arm and a leg. We now have military bases and embassies being guarded by private companies instead of the military! These schemes were designed only to funnel money through political contacts and the army of retired military and retired politicians working on K Street are bankrupting America.

Washington Post:

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 27, 2006; Page A16

The cost of the war in Iraq will reach $320 billion after the expected passage next month of an emergency spending bill currently before the Senate, and that total is likely to more than double before the war ends, the Congressional Research Service estimated this week.

The analysis, distributed to some members of Congress on Tuesday night, provides the most official cost estimate yet of a war whose price tag will rise by nearly 17 percent this year. Just last week, independent defense analysts looking only at Defense Department costs put the total at least $7 billion below the CRS figure.

Once the war spending bill is passed, military and diplomatic costs will have reached $101.8 billion this fiscal year, up from $87.3 billion in 2005, $77.3 billion in 2004 and $51 billion in 2003, the year of the invasion, congressional analysts said. Even if a gradual troop withdrawal begins this year, war costs in Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to rise by an additional $371 billion during the phaseout, the report said, citing a Congressional Budget Office study. When factoring in costs of the war in Afghanistan, the $811 billion total for both wars would have far exceeded the inflation-adjusted $549 billion cost of the Vietnam War.

The Vietnam war was a real war. This fractured fracas isn't. We faced armies and airforce during Nam. The Vietnamese had MIG jets and the support of the Soviet Union. So why is a police action costing more than a full blown war raging over three countries? And this, in less than four years?

The only change I see that matters is the concept of "privatization" which was launched by that crony of the Japanese, Reagan, and the craven GOP. Bush Jr put nearly everything into "privatization." We now see military bases guarded by private guards. The FEMA trailer parks aren't patrolled by regular police officers, they are patrolled by private guards. Private guards went into New Orleans at tremendous cost to disarm the public. Private companies do KP for the military. It used to be done by soldiers. Now, if they go into "combat zones", the KP companies want extra money for the danger so it ends up costing a fortune plus on top of all these costly extras, the executives have to make a lot of money for themselves.

Imagine if government workers had to skim off an extra $300-500 million for doing their jobs! Well, politicians and generals do this via "retirement" whereby they walk over to K Street and immediately turn arond and cash in hand, begin the work of bribing the remaining politicians to fork over even more taxpayer funds. This circular system is totally out of control and is now so ruinous, no matter how much money is voted to "fix" something, it gets only worse.

During WWII, war profitteering was forbidden and America churned out ships, planes, jeeps, guns, equipment, everything and anything with great rapidity and efficiency. No skimming of millions was allowed. We won that war and came out of it in fine fiscal shape thanks to the wise actions of the Democratic Presidents.

Now, war is all about maximizing profits. And it shows. The company responsible for bullet proof vests couldn't make them fast enough or good enough but the executive who bribed his way into the contracts made so much money, he threw a bat Mitzvah for his spoiled daughter that cost $2 million dollars! These criminals are throwing around money like it is confetti and we and our children will have to pay for all this and we are losing the stupid war they started! The finances of America has two huge holes in its bucket: corrupt contracts thanks to privatization and tax cuts for the rich and corporate entity.

ABC News:

His injuries forced him out of the military, and the Army demanded he repay an enlistment bonus of $2,700 because he'd only served two-thirds of his three-year tour.

When he couldn't pay, Johnson's account was turned over to bill collectors. He ended up living out of his car when the Army reported him to credit agencies as having bad debts, making it impossible for him to rent an apartment.

"Oh, man, I felt betrayed," Johnson said. "I felt like, oh, my heart dropped."

Payroll Errors, Says Military
And there are many more like Johnson. Staff Sgt. Ryan Kelly lost his leg in a roadside bomb attack in Iraq.

He didn't realize it, but the Army continued to mistakenly pay him combat bonus pay, about $2,000, while he was in the hospital rehabilitating, and then demanded that he pay it back.

He, too, was threatened by the Army with debt collectors and a negative credit report.

While the war monger piggies roll in dough, our doughboys die. The Pentagon can't track trillions in contract messes but they can track pennies going to our wounded heroes! The little guy must pay back while the big guy piggy backs.

AP:

By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer 57 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Hurricane Katrina's latest fatality should be FEMA, the nation's disaster response agency, a Senate inquiry concluded in calling for a government overhaul to avoid future failures like those the devastating storm exposed.

Eighty-six recommendations by the bipartisan panel indicate the United States is still woefully unprepared for a storm of Katrina's scope with the start of the hurricane season little more than a month away.

The recommendations conclude that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is crippled beyond repair by years of poor leadership and inadequate funding. They call for a new agency — the National Preparedness and Response Authority — to plan and carry out relief missions for domestic disasters.

See! FEMA was handed over to Bush and his gang of privateers and they made an utter mess of a fine organization that worked effortlessly under Clinton and the solution the GOP coughs up is to destroy what they destroyed and replace it with what?

More privatization!

The Chinese are happy we are going bankrupt. I can't fathom what the rich parasites killing our government think. Maybe they imagine the Chinese will be happy with them and keep them on some state-run pig farm as livestock when America falls.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Report: USA Is Sort Of Prepared For Disasters, Maybe Not, What The Hell

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Every time there is a disaster as if the entire Repub rule isn't by definition a disaster, the Republicans claim, if we spend more money and live without any rights, everything will be all right and then another disaster hits and they are just as inept and clueless as in previous disasters. Arrest them all.

Guardian UK:

By LARA JAKES JORDAN

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. is unprepared for a disaster of Hurricane Katrina's scale, according to a Senate inquiry that lawmakers said Wednesday took a critical look at failures in responding to the storm.

The final report is ``fair and tough, and it charts a course to strengthen our nation's emergency preparedness at all levels,'' leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee wrote their colleagues.

The Associated Press on Wednesday obtained a copy of the letter written by the committee's head, GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, and the top Democrat, Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. The report's title is ``Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared.''

The roof continues to leak! All the little dirty inner circle secrets, this is a top priority disaster for the maladministration. Of course, Congress has the eternal solution: spend oodles of more money and spend more money on puppet shows and paper shuffling and of course, spying on Americans. We have a disaster on our borders as aliens pour in unhindered. We have the ongoing disaster of the Katrina people who are still displaced.

Democracy Now:

Earlier this month, Democracy Now went down to Louisiana and had a chance to take a rare look inside Renaissance Village - a trailer park on the outskirts of Baton Rouge that houses over 2,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees. The trailer park has been described in the Louisiana press as "Fema's Dirty Little Secret" in part because of FEMA's tight control over who has access to the park. Prior to being kicked out of the trailer park by private security guards, we managed to speak to Donna Azeez who lives at the trailer park.

Seems there is a private guard company that is turning the place into a miniature Gitmo where no one is allowed to talk to reporters without FEMA political officers like the sort that flourished in the Soviet Union, lurking around to insure no one says anything about FEMA.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Donna Azeez, speaking to us in Renaissance Village in Baker, Louisiana. As we traveled around, the security guards told us that we had to leave. These were security guards from C.S.S. of Grand Rapids, Michigan, hired by FEMA. That's Corporate Security Solutions. These were guards, a number of whom had been in Afghanistan and Iraq. The residents, though, of Renaissance Village, seemed surprised that they weren't allowed to speak in their own community, and one man asked if he could talk to us. And this is what happened.

So FEMA has plenty of money for political operatives but nothing for anything useful. There are still thousands of empty trailers rotting away in Arkansas, for example, though I would hope some of them were handed out to all the tornado victims this spring, not that it is a solution at all since tornadoes love trailers for munchies!

We spend more money for disasters, wars and security than the entire planet put together and we can't seem to be able to do the simplest tasks. This inabilty is directly connected to the train robber-baron attitude cultivated by the party in power. Public service is stupid. Making profits off of the public purse is smart. So they are getting filthy rich while our situation grows worse and worse.

AP:

By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer 47 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - The Senate voted Wednesday to divert some of the money President Bush requested for the war in Iraq to instead increase patrols against illegal immigrants on the nation's borders and provide the Coast Guard with new boats and helicopters.

An amendment was adopted, 59-39, to cut Bush's Iraq request by $1.9 billion to pay for new aircraft, patrol boats and other vehicles, as well as border checkpoints and a fence along the Mexico border crossing near San Diego.

Later, the Senate voted by a veto-proof 72-26 margin to kill an attempt by conservatives to cut the overall bill back to Bush's request — just a day after the White House issued a toughly worded promise to veto the $106.5 billion bill unless it is cut back to below $95 billion.

All our emergency bills seem to be for wars. A four year war isn't an emergency anymore. Obviously, these clowns should be able to plan for things that are obviously happening but this is obviously impossible for the GOP. Their idea of planning ahead is to plan how to get ahead.

In its veto statement, the White House said the bill contains too many items that are "unrelated to the war or emergency hurricane relief needs." It said a final House-Senate compromise "must remain focused on addressing urgent national priorities while maintaining fiscal discipline."

The bill is sure to be carved back in House-Senate negotiations next month, and Bush may very well not have to follow through on his veto promise.

To accommodate the White House's objections would require the Senate to shed numerous projects. That would represent a departure from the way a disaster aid bill was handled in December, when Congress added $12 billion in new spending not requested by Bush.

Even as the White House raised the potential of a first-ever Bush veto, the administration on Tuesday asked the Senate for $2.2 billion more to repair and strengthen levees in and around New Orleans. The request wouldn't add to the overall cost of the bill since it was accompanied by a decrease in Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster funds.

As Congress and Bush juggle various balls while failing to cut to the bone, spending on obviously bad things like private contractors as guards, for example. All our embassies are guarded by private guards! This is insane. All other countries with bigger brains figured out, you use trustworthy soldiers who are also fairly cheap, not pay an executive $4,000,000 a year to provide cheap labor, most often, imported from some cheap third world nation.

The privatization push has run alongside the biggest deficits in our history. The more we privatize, the worse the red ink becomes. Now, to do even the simplest task like patrolling our borders or saving people in hurricanes, costs a fortune. And it gets worse and worse. Is Congress debating this?

When hell freezes over.

We need more tax revenues. The biggest, richest corporations which also happen to be the same ones who are pushing us into all these oil wars, are the big oil companies like Exxon/Mobile. Washington Post:

GOP Blocks Measures Boosting Taxes on Oil Companies' Profits
Provisions Passed by Senate Would Raise About $5 Billion
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 26, 2006; Page A06

While Republican leaders sharply criticize soaring gasoline prices and energy industry profits, GOP negotiators have decided to knock out provisions in a major tax bill that would force the oil companies to pay billions of dollars more in taxes on their profits.

House and Senate tax writers have been struggling to reach an accord on separate tax bills approved last year to extend some expiring tax cuts enacted during President Bush's first term. But House Republicans have raised strong objections to Senate-passed provisions that would raise nearly $5 billion in taxes over five years -- primarily by changing arcane accounting rules that have allowed oil companies to substantially lower their tax bills, according to House and Senate tax aides familiar with the talks.

Heaven forbid, the richest companies in America pay taxes! Obviously, they won't pump oil unless we let them keep all the profits, forget the idea that we own the oil in the first place, jointly! Another case of rampant privatization run amock!

The Republicans are no more serious about raising revenues as they are about spending wisely. Bush's bluster about vetoing anything is all fake since the money is all flowing to his supporters and family, of course, he and his ilk are utterly blissful about the way things are. They are getting richer by the second! And Americans will die thanks to this venal attitude. The next disaster will find these monsters, safe, plump, happy and "I won the Trifecta!" pleased as punch.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Off Budget Spending Bill Balloons As Pork Is Added

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Like drunks in a bar, the minute the GOP voted to raise the debt ceiling nearly a trillion dollars, they go on a spending spree. They plan to ask the Chinese to buy these debts. I suggest the Chinese shall for they are still putting the chokehold on us. The Japanese just made a deal to move our bases only they are making us take loans to do it. The red ink hemmorage continues unabated.

AP:

By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 19 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Border security, gasoline prices and lawmakers' appetites for homestate projects promise to entangle an emergency Iraq-hurricane relief spending bill after it arrives on the Senate floor Tuesday.

The $106.5 billion bill has ballooned by almost $15 billion over President Bush's February request, and that figure could grow as senators of both parties press amendments to add money for border security and medical care for veterans.

The White House, itself — despite its own concerns about the measure's spiraling cost — plans to ask as early as Tuesday for another $2 billion to repair and strengthen levees in and around New Orleans.

Lawmakers also are itching to get into the act. Among the first amendments will be one by Sen. Judd Gregg (news, bio, voting record), R-N.H. and endorsed by Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to add $2 billion in new border security funds.

All our wars are "off budget." All our loans to Israel are "off budget." Emergency budgets go abounding across the fruited plains. When Congress and Bush hand out money stats, they lie about nearly everything. I keep saying, the red ink has been more than $500 billion a year, last year, $750 billion, thanks to these various accounting tricks which simply have decided to keep two sets of books, the fake one that makes the news and the real one that shows up only when Congress has to raise the debt ceiling. Some Senators and Congressmen in the GOP want to do away with the annual or actually, every 8 months, raising the debt ceiling. This last round, they refused to even talk about it until it was way overdue and the Feds had to raid retirement funds, before voting at night, quietly, to raise the ceiling a gigantic amount.

I said at the time, they would immediately go on an off budget spending binge and bingo! Right, as usual. It is way too easy to predict the future these days. I don't have to dust off my crystal ball or lay out my Tarot Cards from France. I just close my eyes for five seconds and think, "What god awful, stupid thing are they going to do?" and viola! Bull's eyes every time!

The raiding of Social Security funds, replacing them with Fed IOUs, continues apace. Instead of investing this money in, say, Swiss francs or buying yuan (hehehehe), the Fed hands the entire sum to itself and pays a ridiculous interest rate way below the rate of inflation which it causes, and then when they publish the budget figures, they don't point out that $250 billion is missing because this is the SS funds! So they can pretend it isn't so hideously out of whack and therefore, can grant even more tax cuts for the very rich.

Which continues apace, too, little inserts in every bill hide tax cuts for various special interests. Of course, over time, the tax code becomes an impenetrable thicket of laws and these same creeps creating this mess will whine about how complicated the tax code is and demand tax cuts along with "simplification" which always ends up flattening the tax base and taxing the middle class with increasing harshness.

In the old days, when the Fed printed too much money or energy costs soared, workers created "inflation" by demanding pay hikes and of course, the Fed would not index taxes to inflation so one would rise in the tax codes while not gaining any wealth, thus the previous tax revolts which always follow inflationary cycles like the seventies.

This time around, the workers can't agitate for higher wages so they are biting the bullet unlike Congress which is causing much worse inflation via voting for mega gallons of red ink. To pay back creditors in Asia, we will destroy the value of the dollar which is why we are screaming at the Chinese to destroy the value of the dollar for us because it really isn't worth all that much, ya hear?

Oh, they hear. Perfectly well.

Culture of Life News Main Page

The Fed Loses Money When They Make Pennies

Elaine Meinel Supkis

We want the yuan to be better than the dollar. This is one wish I am betting we will get. We will hate it. Inflation has run past the latest debasement of our coinage and so they will either have to put in even cheaper metals or give up on having pennies which are mostly ZINC!

NYT:

This week the cost of the metals in a penny rose above 0.8 cents, more than twice the value of last fall. Because the government spends at least another six-tenths of a cent — above and beyond the cost of the metal — to make each penny, it will lose nearly half a cent on each new one it mints.

The real problem could come if metals prices rise so high that it would be economical to melt down pennies for the metals they contain.

Appearances aside, pennies no longer contain much copper. In the middle of 1982, after copper prices rose to record levels, the mint starting making pennies that consist mostly of zinc, with just a thin copper coating.

But these days, zinc is newly popular. Rising industrial demand and speculation have sent the price rocketing. Since the end of 2003, zinc prices have tripled. Gold, by contrast, is up only about 50 percent.

The debasement of our currency is directly tied to the growth in military costs of holding onto our empire and the fact that we import much of our energy. All my life, since the beginning of the stupid Vietnam war (thank YOU, stupid imperialist warmongers!), our coinage has been relentlessly devalued. I remember real coins, my family collects coins and we have some going back 200 years. In the olden times, when a government went to war and needed to debase the coins, they either shrank them physically or did substitutions. Coins can become very small indeed if a war rages on and on with no end in sight. This has been the bane of all banking systems since the dawn of time. Clipping the edges of coins to remelt the shavings and sell it is quite common in the old days and one could be executed after torture for doing this except if one was the King, then the King would demand everyone hand over the coins and then he would remelt them and reissue them at a lighter weight plus "base" metals which is why it is hard to collect really old coins, they get melted!

Various depressions/inflations/currency collapses, the government not only has to seize all currency, they often seize control of the metals markets so people can go to raw metals. During the Great Depression, the price of gold was frozen so the government could force peope to use the paper currency it issued through the odd system of private banking boards called "The Fed."

By the way, this isn't a new story, the fact that pennies are costing the government more than they are "worth" is old news. CNN, 2002:

Everyone has to put in their two cents (sorry): Penny haters argue the coin is obsolete and costs more to make than it's worth. They think rounding purchases to the nearest nickel makes a better alternative (you'd pay a buck for 99-cent paper towels, and so on).

But supporters say the penny has a loyal fan base. A survey by Coinstar, a company that makes coin-exchange machines, said 65 percent of people polled favored keeping the penny in circulation. And some lobby groups -- Americans for Common Cents is just one -- say the rounding system would rip people off.

A neighbor of mine came back from England and he showed me a 2pound coin. It looked really big only it was of such cheap metal that it was light as a feather and if melted, would have cost virtually nothing. It was a metallic reproduction of a piece of paper and just as valuable. Namely, the value attached it only whatever the bankers and government want it to be except for a fly in the ointment: it can buy only that which people want which means, if it is losing value, you need more tokens to buy something.

We keep being told "there is little or no inflation" yet I have beenn hammered by inflation all over the place. Things I can bid on even are going up and up and up like properties but this is only because the bankers are willing to hand over lots of paper tokens to people bidding on properties, one might say, BANKERS are bidding up properties! After all, they and the Fed have conspired to offer interest rates pegged to a false estimation of the relative value of the dollar.

This is why we are hotly demanding China force us into facing the reality of our dollars: they ain't worth much of anything. So, what we want is for all those cheap Chinese goods to suddenly shoot up in price which will cause....INFLATION! Whoopee doo! If the real inflation rate shows up, maybe Bush can totally imitate Nixon and have wage/price controls! Of course, Nixon didn't know about letting the labor market be flooded with illegal labor, driving down wages so nicely, he had to contend with unions but now they are dead and gone so there is no need for wage controls, the workers are eating inflation all the time! Hooray for that, eh?

So we get price controls. Energy Bulletin:

by Philip K. Verleger, Jr.

...[The power of the U.S. Federal Reserve] to contain prices, however, is still not absolute. Constraints remain. Today, one of those limitations can be found in the energy sector where an industry already operating at essentially full capacity has just suffered major, nontransitory capacity losses. Additional capacity reductions can be expected in the next year. Repair of existing capacity, not to mention expansion, will take several years.1

In 2006, inflation rates may rise to above 5 percent in the United States if economic growth continues at current rates, even if the dollar holds its value. Such an increase in inflation would be caused by economic growth that would pull oil prices to $100 per barrel. It is unlikely that the Bernanke-chaired Federal Reserve Board can or will tolerate such increases in inflation. Interest rates will rise. Output growth will slow and the United States could fall into recession. This recession, like the previous three instances, will be caused by constraints in the energy sector.

When energy rose to the levels we are seeing now, back in my wayward early working years, I remember it like it was yesterday: interest rates always lagged inflation so both shot up and up and up and so on until Volker used very harsh, high interest rates to kill the cycle. The oil prices were due to war and we were still paying for the Vietnam war and were reducing our military as much as possible, to save money, and we were in severe trouble because we hit the Hubbert Oil Peak but the oil from Alaska helped ease the drop off.

Then Russia went bankrupt and joined the world energy markets to sell something to pay for the bankruptcy and the price of oil fell like a rock and even though we still had inflation, we were happy as larks. Of course, inflation has raged despite the drop in energy costs thanks to America's huge budget deficit which is now totally out of control and inflation hasn't caught up with it at all, no. It is getting much worse!

AP:

By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 13 minutes ago
SAN JOSE, Calif. - As oil prices hit a record, drivers worried about $3-a-gallon gas and politicians feared the impact on elections, President Bush on Friday acknowledged the pain but seemed resigned to being able to do little about it.

"I know the folks here are suffering at the gas pump," the president said while promoting his competitiveness initiative at the Silicon Valley headquarters of Internet networking company Cisco Systems Inc. "Rising gasoline prices is like taking a — is like a tax, particularly on the working people and the small-business people."

But to address the immediate problem, Bush offered only a pledge that "if we find any price gouging it will be dealt with firmly."

If Bush keeps this up, he will be lucky to find a helicopter to fly out of DC like Nixon. Bush did the dirty work for the free traders and neo cons and every action he did in their names has made him increasingly unpopular and it will be a happy day when he leaves. Just like with the hurricanes, the oil companies cheerfully collect huge windfalls while claiming they are helpless, just helpless, neither they nor Bush nor the free traders can stop the invisible hand of Dawinian Economics which means the weak shall die and the rich shall get much richer, whoo hoo.

So back to the Chinese: AP:

The U.S. should export more high technology to China and stop making political judgments about the Asian nation to improve relations between the two countries, China's President Hu Jintao said.

``Ideological obstacles and prejudices shouldn't impede'' relations between the two countries, Hu said in an address delivered today at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. China also ``won't simply copy the political models of other nations,'' Hu said in answer to a question about political freedom.

The U.S. restricts exports to China of some products with technology that can be used for military purposes. China's government blames these restrictions for a widening trade surplus with the U.S., which has prompted some lawmakers including Senator Chuck Grassley to call for trade sanctions against China.

There is a ton of propaganda in America pretending the Chinese are manipulating currency when the biggest currency gamer is the USA which is why our own coinaige can't keep up with the increasing debasement. The Chinese didn't drive our government into issuing massive amounts of dollars that MUST be used in China! Our government is doing this so we can not pay taxes for our war machine! It is laughably simple. We want to stop this mess?

Cut the Pentagon and Homeland Security's budgets by around 75%! Voila. The dollar will stop inflating. Secondly, we can outlaw gas guzzling vehicles. Of course, we will do neither. Instead, in article after article, I read that high world oil prices are due to "politics" (the USA attacking oil pumping countries) or the Chinese driving more cars!

We consume far more fuel per capita and in aggragate than any country on earth. So ergo, the oil problems are due to the USA consuming oil, not China. China is bidding for this oil using debased American currency which is driving up the cost of oil but that is our fault, not theirs! Eventually, the Chinese will buy oil with yuan and if we are really stupid, and I have no hope for us becoming smarter, we will too.

The old Chinese curse, may your wishes come true, is going to bite our silly asses with a vengence.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Monthly War Costs Double

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Iraq is bleeding and we are bleeding red ink. Each year, the war terrorizing Muslims gets more and more expensive. Cost have doubled in Iraq, for example. Bin Laden's plan was to bankrupt us and he is right on target.

Raw Story:

With the expected passage this spring of the largest emergency spending bill in history, annual war expenditures in Iraq will have nearly doubled since the U.S. invasion, as the military confronts the rapidly escalating cost of repairing, rebuilding and replacing equipment chewed up by three years of combat. The cost of the war in U.S. fatalities has declined this year, but the cost in treasure continues to rise, from $48 billion in 2003 to $59 billion in 2004 to $81 billion in 2005 to an anticipated $94 billion in 2006, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

The U.S. government is now spending nearly $10 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan, up from $8.2 billion a year ago, a new Congressional Research Service report found. Annual war costs in Iraq are easily outpacing the $61 billion a year that the United States spent in Vietnam between 1964 and 1972, in today's dollars.

First of all, "privatization" was supposed to make things cheaper. It is a total failure. Our military used to cook their own food, build their own bases, make roads and ports, run airfields, etc. Now this has a thick layer of business executives skimming off huge hunks of loot, the labor costs are the same except overseas where we bring in what amounts to illegal immigrant labor to cut costs for the executives who still bill us as if they are paying real wages, thus giving them even more money to skim off. One main reason we have rebellion in countries we invaded is because nearly all the work we generate goes to illegal aliens we bring in from other third world countries.

Now it is too late. The countries we invaded hate us and won't work with us and we can't bribe them into cooperation, either. Rumsfeld must be fired el pronto or else. He is supervising this rapine. He is the one submitting out of control budgets to Congress. Fire Bush, too, the author of this mess.

Every day, I see news about vital domestic programs being cut and then the Pentagon demands more money. At first, the flood of IOU funds from Asia and the Gulf dictators, fed the American economy which mainly consumes what China produces. It gave America three years of false abundance. Even as we watched the red ink rise, anyone who spoke out about the war like Murtha did, was attacked by the media and the Bush crew and in response, the Democratic Party fled from the field of battle, scared that they might be considered "weak".

This is the same strange mindset of both Republicans and Democrats, we churn more and more wars, scared of being seen as weak but these same wars are weakening America, fatally. Now, we have decided to decapitate our economy by threatening war with Iran which is, as is their right of self-defence, working feeverishly on building nukes, this looming war is causing world-wide economic chaos.

NY Times:

By MICHELINE MAYNARD
Published: April 13, 2006
Carlos Ghosn, who now runs both the French automaker Renault and its Japanese affiliate, Nissan Motor, urged his fellow auto executives yesterday to wean themselves from costly incentives, which he said had become "an insidious, confusing carousel" on which the companies could not stop spinning.

Mr. Ghosn's plea, made at the New York International Auto Show, came with both General Motors and Ford Motor mired in problems that have led to billions of dollars in losses and their lowest market share in North America in decades.

Automakers desperately want to raise prices but thanks to the high cost of energy, they can't. This is because consumers are cutting back because they have less money to spend and are too deeply into debt and interest rates are going up and despite Bernanke announcing there is no inflation, there is inflation. And his belief that interest rates will now drop or stop going up is pure insanity. The yuan is relentlessly rising in value vis a vis the dollar because we are printing dollars like crazy and instead of defending our currency by restricting oil imports and putting tariffs on industrial imports, we are simply starting a world-wide race to the bottom, namely, any government wishing to preserve market share must buy dollars diluted in buying power and they can't raise prices so we have a classic energy-induced stagflation developing.

This race to the bottom is causing chaos in America in other ways. CNN:

From Terry Frieden and Mike M. Ahlers
CNN

Wednesday, April 19, 2006; Posted: 10:45 p.m. EDT (02:45 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Federal immigration authorities rounded up more than 1,000 illegal immigrants at dozens of sites and charged nine individuals of the firm that employed them, federal law enforcement officials announced Wednesday.

Seven current and former managers of IFCO Systems, which has offices in several states, were arrested and charged in connection with the employment of illegal immigrants, said U.S. Attorney Glenn Suddaby in Albany, New York.

Suddaby said two lower level employees were also charged in the case.

The action against IFCO Systems -- an industry leader in the manufacture of wooden pallets, crates and containers -- came as Homeland Security and Justice Department officials prepared to announce steps to toughen internal enforcement of the nation's immigration laws.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and other Bush administration officials and a federal prosecutor will appear at the agency's Washington headquarters Thursday. They will announce the new strategy aimed at employers and disclose the results of the enforcement actions targeting IFCO Systems.

The huge turnout of illegal immigrants demanding legality is now ripping through the body politic. Many, many corporations have hired illegals rather than Americans because they can do whatever they want to their employees who can't complain. This company is here in Albany, near where I live. We have illegal aliens working all over the place here. This is to keep inflation from raiding the bottom line and as inflation rages like a fire deep inside a compost heap, unseen but the hot air can be felt, the hollowing out of America's labor continues. I will also note that this corporation caught in blatant illegal hiring is now owned by a German company.

As the great American Red Ink Fire Sale rages, many seemingly "American" companies are now owned by foreigners. We have had many laws about hiring illegal aliens that Bush has, as a favor to both Fox of Mexico and the business community which wants super-cheap, helpless labor, not enforced. Now that the cat is out of the bag, they have to start enforcing the laws of the land. Of course, putting the executives of these corporations in prison will kill the illegal alien hiring halls. As it should.

But of course, in the case of the wood pallet company, they will blame the poor supervisors and the executives will skate away, yet again. Just like when Walmart hired only illegal aliens to clean their stores and then claimed ignorance about the practice. "Outsourcing" was their excuse.

AP:

By ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN, Associated Press Writer Wed Apr 19, 10:46 PM ET
TUCSON, Ariz. - Minuteman border watch leader Chris Simcox has a message for President Bush: Build new security fencing along the border with Mexico or private citizens will.

Simcox said Wednesday that he's sending an ultimatum to the president, through the media, of course — "You can't get through to the president any other way" — to deploy military reserves and the National Guard to the Arizona border by May 25.

95% of all jobs created this last year were service jobs, many of which can be filled by unskilled, illegal alien labor. And they are filling these jobs because they are forced to eat the costs of inflation and thus, forced to live in difficult circumstances. Which is forcing down the earning demands of citizens here. So long as many jobs are appearing, the citizens don't really mind. But now, this process is ending because the latest hikes in energy costs is really biting the average American very hard. Spared a cold winter, they are facing a record-hot summer which means more energy costs. Commuters are hurting badly now, over $3 a gallon is finally waking everyone up to the possibility that we may have to choose between commuting to work or buying even simple stuff like food.

Classically, when that happens, you get labor unrest, inflation, driving out of aliens from industrial countries and world chaos. Which the USA wants to patrol but can't get the funds except as IOUs which are piling up at a mad rate already.

China had an economic growth rate last quarter of over 10%. 99% of this growth was due to the effects of energy inflation forcing other countries to ship jobs to China to remove the effects of inflation. And thanks to this, China now produces 50% of all total industrial goods. This is an amazing statistic not seen since the end of WWII when America did the same, thanks to the fact that most of the world's factories were in smoldering ruins. Today, it is the opposite, and thanks to high energy costs, our factories lie in ruins here while rising in triumph in Asia. And this inflation is due to the Pentagon and Bush demanding more wars in the Middle East and this war is supposed to be waged to defeat Bin Laden whose strategic plan is to bankrupt America by driving up energy costs and sucking up public funds to pay for futile wars while neglecting domestic affairs.

Viola. Victory for the visionary in Afghanistan. Let's slit our other wrist.

April 20, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Elaine Meinel Supkis

We spend $2 billion a week on the war in Iraq which is getting nastier by the hour and Bush is cutting National Park Services by around 20% and the entire cost for one year for all the parks is exactly 9 1/2 day's worth of crap in Iraq! They are cutting everything but war and spying.

Real Cities:

By Matt Stearns
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has ordered America's national parks to show that they can function at 80 percent or less of their operating budgets, and that's forcing some parks to cut services for visitors as summer approaches.

National Park Service officials said the initiative was an effort to cope with the rising costs of salaries, utilities and other management expenses without harming the parks' "core" missions of protecting the nation's natural treasures and enabling visitors to enjoy them. The Park Service has more than 270 million visitors annually.

But park officials in the field said the initiative was forcing "gut-wrenching" decisions that visitors would notice. At many parks, volunteers will take on larger roles and there'll be fewer interpretive ranger programs, the officials said.

I suppose they will keep up patrols looking for gay couples taking their children to Easter Egg hunts. This is ridiculous. We are supposed to be the world's most powerful nation, we are supposed to be the shining example, we are supposed to be....aw, nuts. We are a threadbare monarchy slipping down the slippery slope of history into the slimey cesspool of bankruptcy.

Time for America to insult our bankers in China! All over the American media, nonstop attacks on the Chinese, boasts about how faaaaabulous we are and how the Chinese torture prisoners! And don't have trials for three years, no charges! And they are nasty, too, not like....aw, nuts. How on earth do these clowns get published? I can't. No matter how carefully I write, I won't get on the editorial pages of the great papers anymore because they have decided to go insane.

China bankrolls our government. Because of this, we have to go, hat in hand, to them for money. Being brats, we have decided, after inviting them here, to insult them and shove them around and act all high and mighty.

I'm sure they will send surveyors to map our our National Parks in preparation for taking them as collateral.

Culture of Life Main Page

Elaine Meinel Supkis

China just announced that not only are they the most fortunate of dragons, their FOREX reserves are mountainous and increased 32% this last year alone and the are now on top of the world and it is time for their currency to show its true value vis a vis the oil dollar. No surprise, the cost of oil is over $70 a barrel and the USA is begging Japan to pay for moving our troops out of Okinawa and the Japanese are refusing.

Xinhua Net:

China's foreign exchange reserves, which exceeded Japan's as the world's biggest in February, last month surged by 32.8 percent over March last year to 875.1 billion U.S. dollars.

A People's Bank of China report published Friday said the reserves grew by 56.2 billion dollars in the first quarter of the year alone.

The figures were made known the day after the bank announced a raft of measures to allow businesses and individuals to hold more foreign currency.

The country is now under international pressure demanding it to ease controls.

China requires its companies to sell to the government a part of the foreign currency that they earn abroad, and travelers are allowed to take a small amount out of the country.

The measures have forced the government to pile up huge foreign exchange reserves to control the export-fueled flood of money into the country and reduce inflationary pressure.

The government has been taking measures to free up foreign exchange controls, but the package announced Thursday is the most sweeping and profound, ranging from greatly facilitating the purchase of foreign exchange by enterprises and individuals to allowing individuals to obtain an equivalent of 20,000 U.S. dollars a year.

So much for our inflation sink! Interest rates on bonds are shooting up and will shoot up further just like the price of all precious metals are shooting up not to mention that most precious fluid, oil. Local gasoline prices here where I live are almost $3.00 a gallon. Remember to thank AIPAC next time you tank up!

Besides, the sunny happy days of us printing dollars and using them to buy oil and goods while backing it with IOUs is about to close. Once the Chinese raise the value of their currency and demonstrate to the world that their economy is strong and America is a sinking ship, we are in for terrifically painful times! There is no escaping this. I remember various economic blogs who shall not be named, hooting about how we had the Chinese over a barrel, they had to give us back our worthless pieces of paper or lose all value because it was worthless, hahaha, what a trick!

And whenever I explained the Chinese invented all of this in the first place and knew what they were doing and did what they wanted to do in the first place and have succeeded in doing it, I was mocked for being stupid.

Well, it is no joke. I had a lot to do with their very first exposure to capitalism. Har. As a cynical person. Their professional diplomatic duo is coming to America to finalize a few details. They will coddle our stupid leader and his gang and all the AIPAC Senators and Congresscreatures will huff and puff and pretend to be laying down the law but guess what?

MONEY TALKS!!!! And we are broke!!!!!

BBC news:

By Chris Hogg
BBC News, Tokyo

Okinawans are unhappy with the presence of US bases
Japan and the United States have failed to reach agreement over the details of their plans to redeploy some of the 50,000 US troops on Japanese soil.

Last year the two countries agreed in principle a number of measures including moving several thousand US troops off the island of Okinawa.

It is part of a worldwide realignment of US forces.

But arguments remain over who should foot the bill and the latest round of negotiations has ended in failure.

Washington's chief negotiator, Richard Lawless, told reporters that two days of talks had finished with several points of contention still to be worked out.

Like the chuckleheads running the USSR, we are trying to get the Japanese to pay for us to remove our much hated troops only the Japanese say what?

"We ain't got no yen for this!"

So, the Japanese are going to keep the economy afloat by offering us many loans but they have no money to pay $5.7 billion to move our obnoxious troops out of Okinawa? Hahahaha. They have a gigantic trade surplus with us, absolutely huge except for our twice as huge one with China and they can't afford this?

They can afford to hand us more IOUs. We can loan $5 billion from them which we will have to pay eternal interest on since we can't pay off anyone anymore and then they will happily give us what we want but we want it outright because our debts have mushroomed alarmingly which is why we are doing hideously expensive war games in the Caribbean Basin, right? To scare Cuba and Venezuela who is absolutely estatic we are sabre rattling at Iran and thus, raising their own oil profits not to mention Iran's oil profits, to the heavens.

Gads, and Putin is visiting Iran to talk about this! I can imagine their conversation: "Spasiebo, Tovarichii! We had a record trade surplus this last month thanks to the great work you have done, scaring the Israelis into pushing the USA fools into menacing you!" chortles Putin, wiping his tears of laughter from his face.

"Allah willing, we will triumph," laughs the President of Iran. "Every time everyone backs off, we poke at Israel with mere words and off they go, once again! See you at the UN."

Meanwhile, the American housing boom is busting so loudly, it will be heard around the world as interest rates climb and climb. As the Chinese like to say as a curse, "May your wishes come true."

Culture of Life News Main Page

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Americans still want to blame the Chinese for our wacked out currency problems. Today, the price of gold has continued its relentless rise thanks to Bush and the Feds mismanaging the value of the dollar. Pretending other nations control relative values is plain silly. It only happens thanks to conspiritors working in concert such as the Feds and the Japanese government banks, for example.

Xinhua Net:

Gold raced above $600-an-ounce level on Tuesday, the highest since December 1980, as investors poured money into the metal on worries about inflation, Middle East tensions and uncertainties over the dollar's outlook.

This story is, in Chinese, as terse as a fortune cookie script. And they are very interested in making fortunes, thank you! If Americans want to do gob-smack stupid things with their own dollars, why should the Chinese not accomodate them? They know the wailing about keeping the dollar "strong" is fake. If the dollar were "strong", gold would be weak, no? No? Hahaha.

Xinhua Net:

Boosted by buoyant world markets, the price of gold hit a record high of 154.97 yuan (19.37 U.S. dollars) per gram for 99.95 percent pure gold at the close of the Shanghai Stock Exchange on Tuesday.

A total of 3,034 kg of 99.95 percent pure gold was traded at the bourse on Tuesday at a price up 2.04 yuan (0.255 U.S. dollars)on the previous day.

Shanghai's jewelry dealers on Tuesday adjusted the benchmark price for jewelry made of pure gold from 174 yuan (21.75 U.S. dollars) to 182 yuan (22.75 U.S. dollars) per gram, and that for platinum from 320 yuan (40 U.S. dollars) to 326 yuan (40.75 U.S. dollars) per gram.

Meanwhile, as international investors eye the silver exchange-traded fund (ETF) recently approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the silver price passed 3,500 yuan (437.5 U.S. dollars) a kg on Monday at the Shanghai Huatong silver market for the first time in 23 years.

The Chinese invented paper money which is why they love gold so much. They know all about relative value and inflation. Americans are being told there is no real inflation and the continuously rising price of gasoline and energy is temporary, due to summer driving or storms or sudden cold waves or the sun being eclipsed or maybe the horoscopes don't line up the planets rightly. Whatever.

The Fed officially won't show us the M3 numbers which is how many dollars they are churning out and we get to only guess at it and the raging inflation in things that are always leading edge items in inflationary times: gold, oil, real estate, etc, each of these items show clearly that inflation is raging out of control and it is only a matter of time for the firey birds of monetary irresponsibility to land right on top of our homes and set them alight.

For the only tool to deal with inflation is raising interest rates and this hits properties very hard as well as other items which depend on going into debt while collecting fabulous price hikes in whatever is inflating rapidly. Kill the cheap money going in, the other end collapses. Ideally, the only form of making steady money should be via saving funds and loaning them out. This ticks everyone off because one can't get rich quick and the government always ends up lowballing interest rates so they can use the spread between the money being held and the interest being charged to run up deficits in all areas and then repay the patient savers with devalued currency, this is the key to wealth!

Every once and a while, the savers get pissed off (I am such a person!) and stop saving because it makes no sense and to attract savings, the government raises interest rates over and over again. This particular train wreck is due to the fact that China and Japan both purchased debased dollars and then loaned it back to us at ridiculous interest rates in order to keep their merchantile machinations running smoothly.

Now the Chinese are diversifying and so they have less and less need to buy our dollars, they are buying gold. So is Russia.

Novosti:

Russia's foreign trade surplus reached $11.99 billion in February, a 54.9% year-on-year increase, the Central Bank said Monday.

Foreign trade turnover totaled $32.3 bln, an increase of 30.8% on the previous year. Exports grew 36.6% to $22.14 bln, and imports increased by 19.8% to $10.15 bln.

The share of non-CIS countries in Russia's exports grew 35.3% year on year to $18.97 bln, and the share of CIS countries grew 44.9% to $3.17 bln. The share of non-CIS countries in Russia's imports grew 22% year on year to $8.5 billion, while the share of CIS countries rose 9.8% to $1.65 bln.

Boy, did our ruling class overlords yell at Putin! Like with China, they can't believe that a bunch of communists can outwit and outrun them! Yet here we are, the American capitalist experiment sinking like a lead weight and Russia and China running huge trade surpluses plus high profit margins! Imagine that!

They studied their prey well. They know that our system depends on sucking the suckers dry and leaving a mess behind so they are doing the same to us and probably one of the funniest ironies of history will be the utter triumph of communist operatives over the entire capitalist systems!

Culture of Life News Main Page

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The world gave us only $125 million when we went begging after Katrina. $100 million came from the UAE. Now it is missing. This doesn't suprise me at all. Bush probably took it for he claimed they gave him the same exact sum, sperately, for the Bush "libraries." I smell a bribe.

San Francisco Chronicle:

Federal auditors laid out a scenario of omissions, missteps and bureaucratic nightmares that caused the loss of money and other donations sent from abroad to help victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The Government Accountability Office attributed the errors, which involved as many as eight government agencies, to the United States' lack of experience as a recipient of huge amounts of aid from others.

"Given that the U.S. government had never before received such substantial amounts of international disaster assistance, ad hoc procedures were developed to manage the acceptance and distribution of the cash and in-kind assistance," the GAO said in remarks prepared for delivery to a House committee Thursday.

"It is understandable that not all procedures would be in place at the outset."

The agency said $126 million in cash came in from 36 countries after the Aug. 29 hurricane devastated New Orleans and much of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

$100 million came from one source. This isn't mentioned in the article. Simultaneously, Bush secretly recieved this same amount for his family library which has only one book, "My Pet Goat." Well, Reagan took bribes but he waited until he was out of office. I suppose the shiekhs want to preserve the advantegeous bribes immediately so they pay up and demand repayment simultaneously.

Well, our country is run by traitors. Of course, the money to help the New Orleans victims will be charged to the Chinese and my grandchildren. Isn't that sweet? And like Bush's Stygian mother, Babs, giving money as charity only if it was spent on her son, Neil's, crummy school company which also got a huge sum from the UAE, too, by the way, well.

No wonder we are going bankrupt and the New Orleans victims are now forgotten. Arrest these clowns, arrest the Bush clan. Ship them to their favorite country, the UAE.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Congress, upon failing to do their Constitutional Duties by writing and passing a budget, went of vacation! They went home! To mess around and prepare for the next elections! To attend fund raisers sponsored by corporate interests that have set up this disaster by voting themselves unpatriotic tax cuts and then an illegal war. Arrest these traitors. Arrest Bush.

New York Times:

By CARL HULSE
Published: April 7, 2006
WASHINGTON, April 6 — House Republican leaders on Thursday abandoned their efforts to win approval of a budget for the coming year after they were unable to bridge widening differences on fiscal policy in their party.

The decision to halt the budget debate hours after it had begun and send lawmakers home for a two-week spring recess was the latest and clearest illustration of the Republicans' difficulties in holding lawmakers together with a crucial election approaching.

After struggling all week to round up votes for the budget, House leaders abruptly threw in the towel when they could not find a compromise to appease conservatives who want new budget rules and members of the Appropriations Committee who see those rules as cutting into their power.

"We're hung up on the process right now," said Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois.

There is an old saying that facing a hangman concentrates the mind wonderfully. Perhaps we could apply that here. The fact that all of America sits there, gape-mouthed, while our entire government collapses speaks volumes. I suspect most people are in the mental frame of mind that bankrupt people slip into: keep up the spending on credit, keep the ball rolling, perhaps the creditors won't notice, maybe if we don't pay this month's bills, no one will call or pull our credit. Oh, look, more toys! Let's buy them!

More fires in the Midwest as well as violent storms and tornadoes, all simultaneously. As Nature goes into meltdown mode, so does our government. As the money hemorraging in Iraq reaches epic proportions, we increase spending there even as the religious war (this is not a civil war, it is much nastier) causes yet another mosque to blow up today, Condi's attempts at strongarming people fails, our own courts are persuing the President who openly lied about the Valarie Plame case, the President might be an unindited co-conspiritor and the papers handed over to the dead Congress who will probably go on vacation for the rest of the century rather than follow Constitutional rules.

And Americans will hope no one will notice we are collapsing. Of course, the Chinese track all of this. They know we are at the end of our rope and they will play it out some more, they are not done with us yet, the Japanese are hitched to us and they are in a panic because they can't hitch themselves to China thanks to WWII's atrocities which they steadfastedly refuse to correct or even apologize for.

We managed to crush the Palestinians and steal their pathetic few possessions and gave it to wealthy American Jews, now we are attempting to literally starve them into submission a la Hitler. We are still poking the Iranians in the eye and talk today is for the Iranians to be boycotted, just what we need, to send world oil prices to the moon.

And Congress is going on vacation. Time for all those K Street junkets! On corporate jets! Time to put the old palm out and to talk about how more tax cuts and benefits can be funneled to the rich. The media talks about how mean the French people are, refusing to give up hard won worker's benefits, how dare they! Americans must ignore the illegal worker's demonstrations! These prove the government fears NON VOTING Hispanics more than VOTING American citizens! Because the illegal workers are acting French! They took the streets!

Maybe working class voters are awake and aware that protecting unwanted fetuses means destroying their living children! And they will vote out the GOP and the right wing Christians. Finally. And maybe Congress might begin to do some work again. This is why we pay them! They gave themselves five pay raises in the last 20 years and didn't raise the minimum wage! They hate us, they are not us, they are traitors just like Bush and Cheney and that whole lot of criminals.

Arrest them. Put them out of office. TIME FOR MASS DEMONSTRATIONS!

By the way, the only reason the illegal workers got organized is because they have radio and TV stations directed soley towards their own needs and wants. A clue here, America! Corporate TV and radio is run by traitors who want to mislead.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Bush Cutting National Parks 20%

Elaine Meinel Supkis

We spend $2 billion a week on the war in Iraq which is getting nastier by the hour and Bush is cutting National Park Services by around 20% and the entire cost for one year for all the parks is exactly 9 1/2 day's worth of crap in Iraq! They are cutting everything but war and spying.

Real Cities:

By Matt Stearns
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has ordered America's national parks to show that they can function at 80 percent or less of their operating budgets, and that's forcing some parks to cut services for visitors as summer approaches.

National Park Service officials said the initiative was an effort to cope with the rising costs of salaries, utilities and other management expenses without harming the parks' "core" missions of protecting the nation's natural treasures and enabling visitors to enjoy them. The Park Service has more than 270 million visitors annually.

But park officials in the field said the initiative was forcing "gut-wrenching" decisions that visitors would notice. At many parks, volunteers will take on larger roles and there'll be fewer interpretive ranger programs, the officials said.

I suppose they will keep up patrols looking for gay couples taking their children to Easter Egg hunts. This is ridiculous. We are supposed to be the world's most powerful nation, we are supposed to be the shining example, we are supposed to be....aw, nuts. We are a threadbare monarchy slipping down the slippery slope of history into the slimey cesspool of bankruptcy.

Time for America to insult our bankers in China! All over the American media, nonstop attacks on the Chinese, boasts about how faaaaabulous we are and how the Chinese torture prisoners! And don't have trials for three years, no charges! And they are nasty, too, not like....aw, nuts. How on earth do these clowns get published? I can't. No matter how carefully I write, I won't get on the editorial pages of the great papers anymore because they have decided to go insane.

China bankrolls our government. Because of this, we have to go, hat in hand, to them for money. Being brats, we have decided, after inviting them here, to insult them and shove them around and act all high and mighty.

I'm sure they will send surveyors to map our our National Parks in preparation for taking them as collateral.

Culture of Life Main Page

China's FOREX Is Biggest In The World

Elaine Meinel Supkis

China just announced that not only are they the most fortunate of dragons, their FOREX reserves are mountainous and increased 32% this last year alone and the are now on top of the world and it is time for their currency to show its true value vis a vis the oil dollar. No surprise, the cost of oil is over $70 a barrel and the USA is begging Japan to pay for moving our troops out of Okinawa and the Japanese are refusing.

Xinhua Net:

China's foreign exchange reserves, which exceeded Japan's as the world's biggest in February, last month surged by 32.8 percent over March last year to 875.1 billion U.S. dollars.

A People's Bank of China report published Friday said the reserves grew by 56.2 billion dollars in the first quarter of the year alone.

The figures were made known the day after the bank announced a raft of measures to allow businesses and individuals to hold more foreign currency.

The country is now under international pressure demanding it to ease controls.

China requires its companies to sell to the government a part of the foreign currency that they earn abroad, and travelers are allowed to take a small amount out of the country.

The measures have forced the government to pile up huge foreign exchange reserves to control the export-fueled flood of money into the country and reduce inflationary pressure.

The government has been taking measures to free up foreign exchange controls, but the package announced Thursday is the most sweeping and profound, ranging from greatly facilitating the purchase of foreign exchange by enterprises and individuals to allowing individuals to obtain an equivalent of 20,000 U.S. dollars a year.

So much for our inflation sink! Interest rates on bonds are shooting up and will shoot up further just like the price of all precious metals are shooting up not to mention that most precious fluid, oil. Local gasoline prices here where I live are almost $3.00 a gallon. Remember to thank AIPAC next time you tank up!

Besides, the sunny happy days of us printing dollars and using them to buy oil and goods while backing it with IOUs is about to close. Once the Chinese raise the value of their currency and demonstrate to the world that their economy is strong and America is a sinking ship, we are in for terrifically painful times! There is no escaping this. I remember various economic blogs who shall not be named, hooting about how we had the Chinese over a barrel, they had to give us back our worthless pieces of paper or lose all value because it was worthless, hahaha, what a trick!

And whenever I explained the Chinese invented all of this in the first place and knew what they were doing and did what they wanted to do in the first place and have succeeded in doing it, I was mocked for being stupid.

Well, it is no joke. I had a lot to do with their very first exposure to capitalism. Har. As a cynical person. Their professional diplomatic duo is coming to America to finalize a few details. They will coddle our stupid leader and his gang and all the AIPAC Senators and Congresscreatures will huff and puff and pretend to be laying down the law but guess what?

MONEY TALKS!!!! And we are broke!!!!!

BBC news:

By Chris Hogg
BBC News, Tokyo

Okinawans are unhappy with the presence of US bases
Japan and the United States have failed to reach agreement over the details of their plans to redeploy some of the 50,000 US troops on Japanese soil.

Last year the two countries agreed in principle a number of measures including moving several thousand US troops off the island of Okinawa.

It is part of a worldwide realignment of US forces.

But arguments remain over who should foot the bill and the latest round of negotiations has ended in failure.

Washington's chief negotiator, Richard Lawless, told reporters that two days of talks had finished with several points of contention still to be worked out.

Like the chuckleheads running the USSR, we are trying to get the Japanese to pay for us to remove our much hated troops only the Japanese say what?

"We ain't got no yen for this!"

So, the Japanese are going to keep the economy afloat by offering us many loans but they have no money to pay $5.7 billion to move our obnoxious troops out of Okinawa? Hahahaha. They have a gigantic trade surplus with us, absolutely huge except for our twice as huge one with China and they can't afford this?

They can afford to hand us more IOUs. We can loan $5 billion from them which we will have to pay eternal interest on since we can't pay off anyone anymore and then they will happily give us what we want but we want it outright because our debts have mushroomed alarmingly which is why we are doing hideously expensive war games in the Caribbean Basin, right? To scare Cuba and Venezuela who is absolutely estatic we are sabre rattling at Iran and thus, raising their own oil profits not to mention Iran's oil profits, to the heavens.

Gads, and Putin is visiting Iran to talk about this! I can imagine their conversation: "Spasiebo, Tovarichii! We had a record trade surplus this last month thanks to the great work you have done, scaring the Israelis into pushing the USA fools into menacing you!" chortles Putin, wiping his tears of laughter from his face.

"Allah willing, we will triumph," laughs the President of Iran. "Every time everyone backs off, we poke at Israel with mere words and off they go, once again! See you at the UN."

Meanwhile, the American housing boom is busting so loudly, it will be heard around the world as interest rates climb and climb. As the Chinese like to say as a curse, "May your wishes come true."

Culture of Life News Main Page

Price of Gold Rushes Past $600 @ Oz

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Americans still want to blame the Chinese for our wacked out currency problems. Today, the price of gold has continued its relentless rise thanks to Bush and the Feds mismanaging the value of the dollar. Pretending other nations control relative values is plain silly. It only happens thanks to conspiritors working in concert such as the Feds and the Japanese government banks, for example.

Xinhua Net:

Gold raced above $600-an-ounce level on Tuesday, the highest since December 1980, as investors poured money into the metal on worries about inflation, Middle East tensions and uncertainties over the dollar's outlook.

This story is, in Chinese, as terse as a fortune cookie script. And they are very interested in making fortunes, thank you! If Americans want to do gob-smack stupid things with their own dollars, why should the Chinese not accomodate them? They know the wailing about keeping the dollar "strong" is fake. If the dollar were "strong", gold would be weak, no? No? Hahaha.

Xinhua Net:

Boosted by buoyant world markets, the price of gold hit a record high of 154.97 yuan (19.37 U.S. dollars) per gram for 99.95 percent pure gold at the close of the Shanghai Stock Exchange on Tuesday.

A total of 3,034 kg of 99.95 percent pure gold was traded at the bourse on Tuesday at a price up 2.04 yuan (0.255 U.S. dollars)on the previous day.

Shanghai's jewelry dealers on Tuesday adjusted the benchmark price for jewelry made of pure gold from 174 yuan (21.75 U.S. dollars) to 182 yuan (22.75 U.S. dollars) per gram, and that for platinum from 320 yuan (40 U.S. dollars) to 326 yuan (40.75 U.S. dollars) per gram.

Meanwhile, as international investors eye the silver exchange-traded fund (ETF) recently approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the silver price passed 3,500 yuan (437.5 U.S. dollars) a kg on Monday at the Shanghai Huatong silver market for the first time in 23 years.

The Chinese invented paper money which is why they love gold so much. They know all about relative value and inflation. Americans are being told there is no real inflation and the continuously rising price of gasoline and energy is temporary, due to summer driving or storms or sudden cold waves or the sun being eclipsed or maybe the horoscopes don't line up the planets rightly. Whatever.

The Fed officially won't show us the M3 numbers which is how many dollars they are churning out and we get to only guess at it and the raging inflation in things that are always leading edge items in inflationary times: gold, oil, real estate, etc, each of these items show clearly that inflation is raging out of control and it is only a matter of time for the firey birds of monetary irresponsibility to land right on top of our homes and set them alight.

For the only tool to deal with inflation is raising interest rates and this hits properties very hard as well as other items which depend on going into debt while collecting fabulous price hikes in whatever is inflating rapidly. Kill the cheap money going in, the other end collapses. Ideally, the only form of making steady money should be via saving funds and loaning them out. This ticks everyone off because one can't get rich quick and the government always ends up lowballing interest rates so they can use the spread between the money being held and the interest being charged to run up deficits in all areas and then repay the patient savers with devalued currency, this is the key to wealth!

Every once and a while, the savers get pissed off (I am such a person!) and stop saving because it makes no sense and to attract savings, the government raises interest rates over and over again. This particular train wreck is due to the fact that China and Japan both purchased debased dollars and then loaned it back to us at ridiculous interest rates in order to keep their merchantile machinations running smoothly.

Now the Chinese are diversifying and so they have less and less need to buy our dollars, they are buying gold. So is Russia.

Novosti:

Russia's foreign trade surplus reached $11.99 billion in February, a 54.9% year-on-year increase, the Central Bank said Monday.

Foreign trade turnover totaled $32.3 bln, an increase of 30.8% on the previous year. Exports grew 36.6% to $22.14 bln, and imports increased by 19.8% to $10.15 bln.

The share of non-CIS countries in Russia's exports grew 35.3% year on year to $18.97 bln, and the share of CIS countries grew 44.9% to $3.17 bln. The share of non-CIS countries in Russia's imports grew 22% year on year to $8.5 billion, while the share of CIS countries rose 9.8% to $1.65 bln.

Boy, did our ruling class overlords yell at Putin! Like with China, they can't believe that a bunch of communists can outwit and outrun them! Yet here we are, the American capitalist experiment sinking like a lead weight and Russia and China running huge trade surpluses plus high profit margins! Imagine that!

They studied their prey well. They know that our system depends on sucking the suckers dry and leaving a mess behind so they are doing the same to us and probably one of the funniest ironies of history will be the utter triumph of communist operatives over the entire capitalist systems!

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The $100 Million From the UAE For Katrina Victims Is LOST

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The world gave us only $125 million when we went begging after Katrina. $100 million came from the UAE. Now it is missing. This doesn't suprise me at all. Bush probably took it for he claimed they gave him the same exact sum, sperately, for the Bush "libraries." I smell a bribe.

San Francisco Chronicle:

Federal auditors laid out a scenario of omissions, missteps and bureaucratic nightmares that caused the loss of money and other donations sent from abroad to help victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The Government Accountability Office attributed the errors, which involved as many as eight government agencies, to the United States' lack of experience as a recipient of huge amounts of aid from others.

"Given that the U.S. government had never before received such substantial amounts of international disaster assistance, ad hoc procedures were developed to manage the acceptance and distribution of the cash and in-kind assistance," the GAO said in remarks prepared for delivery to a House committee Thursday.

"It is understandable that not all procedures would be in place at the outset."

The agency said $126 million in cash came in from 36 countries after the Aug. 29 hurricane devastated New Orleans and much of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

$100 million came from one source. This isn't mentioned in the article. Simultaneously, Bush secretly recieved this same amount for his family library which has only one book, "My Pet Goat." Well, Reagan took bribes but he waited until he was out of office. I suppose the shiekhs want to preserve the advantegeous bribes immediately so they pay up and demand repayment simultaneously.

Well, our country is run by traitors. Of course, the money to help the New Orleans victims will be charged to the Chinese and my grandchildren. Isn't that sweet? And like Bush's Stygian mother, Babs, giving money as charity only if it was spent on her son, Neil's, crummy school company which also got a huge sum from the UAE, too, by the way, well.

No wonder we are going bankrupt and the New Orleans victims are now forgotten. Arrest these clowns, arrest the Bush clan. Ship them to their favorite country, the UAE.

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Congress Repubs Can't Pass Budget Anymore--Arrest Them All

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Congress, upon failing to do their Constitutional Duties by writing and passing a budget, went of vacation! They went home! To mess around and prepare for the next elections! To attend fund raisers sponsored by corporate interests that have set up this disaster by voting themselves unpatriotic tax cuts and then an illegal war. Arrest these traitors. Arrest Bush.

New York Times:

By CARL HULSE
Published: April 7, 2006
WASHINGTON, April 6 — House Republican leaders on Thursday abandoned their efforts to win approval of a budget for the coming year after they were unable to bridge widening differences on fiscal policy in their party.

The decision to halt the budget debate hours after it had begun and send lawmakers home for a two-week spring recess was the latest and clearest illustration of the Republicans' difficulties in holding lawmakers together with a crucial election approaching.

After struggling all week to round up votes for the budget, House leaders abruptly threw in the towel when they could not find a compromise to appease conservatives who want new budget rules and members of the Appropriations Committee who see those rules as cutting into their power.

"We're hung up on the process right now," said Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois.

There is an old saying that facing a hangman concentrates the mind wonderfully. Perhaps we could apply that here. The fact that all of America sits there, gape-mouthed, while our entire government collapses speaks volumes. I suspect most people are in the mental frame of mind that bankrupt people slip into: keep up the spending on credit, keep the ball rolling, perhaps the creditors won't notice, maybe if we don't pay this month's bills, no one will call or pull our credit. Oh, look, more toys! Let's buy them!

More fires in the Midwest as well as violent storms and tornadoes, all simultaneously. As Nature goes into meltdown mode, so does our government. As the money hemorraging in Iraq reaches epic proportions, we increase spending there even as the religious war (this is not a civil war, it is much nastier) causes yet another mosque to blow up today, Condi's attempts at strongarming people fails, our own courts are persuing the President who openly lied about the Valarie Plame case, the President might be an unindited co-conspiritor and the papers handed over to the dead Congress who will probably go on vacation for the rest of the century rather than follow Constitutional rules.

And Americans will hope no one will notice we are collapsing. Of course, the Chinese track all of this. They know we are at the end of our rope and they will play it out some more, they are not done with us yet, the Japanese are hitched to us and they are in a panic because they can't hitch themselves to China thanks to WWII's atrocities which they steadfastedly refuse to correct or even apologize for.

We managed to crush the Palestinians and steal their pathetic few possessions and gave it to wealthy American Jews, now we are attempting to literally starve them into submission a la Hitler. We are still poking the Iranians in the eye and talk today is for the Iranians to be boycotted, just what we need, to send world oil prices to the moon.

And Congress is going on vacation. Time for all those K Street junkets! On corporate jets! Time to put the old palm out and to talk about how more tax cuts and benefits can be funneled to the rich. The media talks about how mean the French people are, refusing to give up hard won worker's benefits, how dare they! Americans must ignore the illegal worker's demonstrations! These prove the government fears NON VOTING Hispanics more than VOTING American citizens! Because the illegal workers are acting French! They took the streets!

Maybe working class voters are awake and aware that protecting unwanted fetuses means destroying their living children! And they will vote out the GOP and the right wing Christians. Finally. And maybe Congress might begin to do some work again. This is why we pay them! They gave themselves five pay raises in the last 20 years and didn't raise the minimum wage! They hate us, they are not us, they are traitors just like Bush and Cheney and that whole lot of criminals.

Arrest them. Put them out of office. TIME FOR MASS DEMONSTRATIONS!

By the way, the only reason the illegal workers got organized is because they have radio and TV stations directed soley towards their own needs and wants. A clue here, America! Corporate TV and radio is run by traitors who want to mislead.

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