The Military Industrial Complex: The Enemy from Within

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John: (Should it be reverend?)

The problem with essays such as yours is not that they are inaccurate (they are quite accurate in fact) but that they are not read by the people who need to read them.

Military analysts and economists have been writing about these very same issues for quite a while and all corroborate exactly the same things that your recent essay proposes. In fact, this same type of writing has been accomplished on every issue facing the world currently... all to no avail.

This type of information reaches only a minor portion of the public because it is only that amount of people who are cognizant of the overall problems facing the United States as well as other nations.

The rest simply don't care or simply believe whatever the mass media presents them. Even if such information did in fact reach a wider portion of the public there would be little reaction since most of the public is indoctrinated from years of propaganda as to what should be believed.

Winslow Wheeler and Franklin Spinney (it may be Chuck Spinney, I always get the two confused) have written extensively on the US military and its ridiculous budgets and they have exposed far, far worse than your essay does... and yet no one I know has the faintest of ideas. For example, the F-22 Raptor, which had $4,000,000,000 allocated for future production has been scrapped in favor for more F-35s. The reason is that the F-22 is a completely hand-built aircraft making production expensive, slow, and resulting in fewer aircraft. The F-35 on the other hand is cheaper and is more easily produced for field implementation. Do you think the US saved any money by this decision?

Absolutely not! Lockeed simply added in an extra $4,000,000,000 to the F-35s after-production and maintenance costs. The F-35 is also not nearly as capable as the F-22 and like all stealth aircraft, vulnerable to long-wave radar and less capable of fending off projectile attacks on its skin.

Its not a bad idea to believe that an educated citizen will keep the government in line. And in simpler times has worked on occasion. However, with technology comes more stealthy ways to attack the way people think and that is the biggest threat to this planet's future. And the people in charge simply do not "think", they only do what is in their best interest.

As noted investigative journalist Arundhati Roy of India said just a short while ago, the idea that peaceful resistance can overcome such issues plaguing societies is long gone...

Steve

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Dear Mr. Rutherford,

Thank you for your excellent article. There is no question that the military-industrial complex is a terrible drag on the country, and a deeply corrupting one.

At the same time, the public--including our politicians, from the top down--is operating under a very serious lack of knowledge regarding how our currency and banking system actually works.

One has to distinguish between federal debt and all other debt. The various states of the US, all private business and households, are users of the currency. They must "balance their books" to stay solvent.


The Federal government is the issuer of the currency. The currency acquires its legal status and practical reality owing to the fact that it alone is accepted as payment of taxes. This point is absolutely fundamental.




No currency, no credited accounts in the entire economy of the US would exist without it first having been spent into existence by the Federal government or its designated agens, such as its member banks. If this point isn't grasped, it is not possible to think accurately about our present economic system. It isn't a debatable point. It is simple fact.




The "debt" of the Federal government is the LIABILITY side of the ledger. Thus, when the government spends the money to buy goods and services in the private sector in order to accomplish its purposes, it creates a CREDIT in a given private sector account, which is an asset to the private sector and the gov't accounts for its position as a liability. In an ordinary household economy (and states and businesses) a liability represents a debt to pay which that agent needs to obtain dollars through income or borrowing to meet its obligations. But the federal government, being the monopoly issuer of the currency, literally creates what it owes with the stroke of a computer--as Ben Bernanke has acknowledge quite publically.





The problem here is that most humans are superstitious, and believe that money must be a "thing"; they must reify what is really a concept. Hence they confuse currency, which is termed nomical wealth, with what is termed real wealth--that is, real goods and services. If the country is incapable of producing anything of value, all the currency issued is worthless.





It goes without saying that the private debt in the US represents a very serious situation, and much of it is the result of the extraordinary corruption of the financial industry. See the articles of William K. Black at the "New Economic Perspectives" blog. See also the articles of Michael Hudson, often published at Counterpunch.





The Federal government, as the monopoly issuer of the currency--as distinct from the various states, which are users of the currency--does not need taxes to obtain the dollars to buy anything whatsoever. Federal--as distinct from state or local--taxes serve a quite different set of purposes in a fiat system, among them being removing purchasing power as a control on inflation, should the economy approach a condition of full employment (something we are very far from indeed). It can also serve various other political purposes, as should be evident.




The entire debate over the "debt ceiling" is essentially wrong-headed, as economists such as James Galbraith and Marshall Auerback, Michael Hudson, Warren Mosler, Randall Wray, Bill Mitchell, Scott Fulwiller, Cullen Roche, and others, have valiantly tried to explain. I earnestly recommend you read these authors.





The transfer of dollars to the banks represents a tremendous problem. Not because the gov't is "printing too much money" but because it represents a tremendous, dangerous, unjust concentration of wealth and power. And the same holds true regarding the Pentagon--with the added disadvantage of creating enmity abroad. These monies should have gone to create productive resources and renewal of infrastructure, all of which would have meant employment and therefore spending power, and therefore a means of rescuing our debt-burdened population.




The ridiculous theater of the "debt ceiling" does nothing more than to reduce the middle class to penury and debt peonage, and the various states are reduced to selling their public assets and utilities. This means the country falls into the hands of the vast corporate entities who wish to turn our country into a toll both-serf economy. This, incidentally, is exactly what is happening in Europe, since the various EC countries stupidly gave up their currency sovereignty in favor of the Euro, thereby rendering their status like those of the various states of the US.




We have a system that is perfectly capable of generating once again an enormous prosperity. But we are being savaged by a double parasite.

Best wishes,

Jim

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Dear Mr. Whitehead:

I read with interest your article on the Future of Freedom Foundation’s website http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd1110f.asp .

And the situation is much, much worse than the military alone. The federal government now spends vastly more on entitlements and on subsidies to businesses (particularly the medical and insurance industries), universities, and a host of “social services” parasites, than it does on the military. Washington DC is an enormous feeding trough. It is not going to end well for individual liberty.

I urge you to read Professor Charlotte Twight’s book, “Dependent on DC the Rise of Federal Control Over the Lives of Ordinary Americans,” Palgrave/St. Martins Press, 2002. She is a Ph.D. economist and a lawyer. Nobel Laureate economist James Buchanan wrote a jacket-copy endorsement. http://www.amazon.com/Dependent-D-C-Federal-Ordinary-Americans/dp/1403961468/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240863324&sr=1-1

Her book shows that the growth of government and the fostering of dependency has been systematic, deliberate, and bipartisan. She states that “growing federal power—driven by legislation, validated by Supreme Court decisions, and accelerated by presidential ambition—has eroded the rule of law in our nation, leaving almost no activity that the central government cannot at its discretion regulate, manipulate, or prohibit.” “A constitutional counterrevolution has occurred in America—one so profound that few today can imagine Americans free of dependence on government.”

Dependent on DC is the outgrowth of her doctoral dissertation which focused on the techniques government has systematically developed to expand the scope of government power even in the face of widespread public opposition.

You may be familiar with her 1975 book, “America’s Emerging Fascist Economy” (Arlington House Publisher) that received excellent reviews from National Review, Libertarian Review, Reason, and Human Events at that time. http://www.amazon.com/Americas-emerging-Fascist-economy-Charlotte/dp/0870003178

Dr. Twight referred to it as “capitalistic collectivism” and “participatory fascism,” the latter in reference to the insistence of those in power on demanding “participation” by the populace, --particularly by their opponents. Ayn Rand referred to this as demanding the “sanction of the victim.”

I think both of these books are highly relevant to what is happening to our nation. But of course, I am biased.

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