← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · toddbrendanfahey
Thread ID: 4780 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2003-02-04
2003-02-04 05:31 | User Profile
Bush: America's Biggest Spender Ever!
By Chuck Baldwin February 4, 2003
Yesterday, the New York Times reported, "President Bush sent Congress a $2.23 trillion spending plan." The plan will swell the budget deficit to record levels. The Times reported on January 29, "White House officials suggested today that the federal budget deficit could surpass $300 billion this year, setting a record."
Furthermore, members of the House Budget Office are expected to report tomorrow that "the deficit this year could hit $306 billion and that the government will run up $1.7 trillion in deficits by the end of 2011."...
During his State of the Union speech, Bush proposed 20 new federal policy initiatives including billions of new tax dollars for things such as hydrogen-powered automobiles, training and recruiting of mentors and new drug treatment programs. To date, President Bush has proposed nearly 100 new federal programs and has planned to spend more tax dollars than any president in history.
Bush's budget also sends $10 billion to twelve African nations for AIDS education and drugs. This is in addition to the $5 billion already sent to Africa for the same purpose. This massive expenditure of U.S. tax dollars is taking place even though no one at the White House seems to know exactly how this money is going to help the more than 30 million Africans who have already contracted the AIDS virus....
[complete article here --- ### SARTRE *2003-02-04 12:24* | [User Profile](/od/user/144) Todd, Welcome back. Wonder why the two party system is so hopeless! Not only will our individual wealth become worthless, but each person will be assessed their future obligations, accordingly. The future - higher prices, lower 'real value' paying jobs, investments with no returns, private sector unemployment and sinking real estate. Only the government will hire, decide who get paid, and who will be feed. The rest will just have their assets stolen. Welcome back!!! Wish you were in America??? SARTRE :ph34r: --- ### Angler *2003-02-05 05:54* | [User Profile](/od/user/230) > ****Bush's budget also sends $10 billion to twelve African nations for AIDS education and drugs. This is in addition to the $5 billion already sent to Africa for the same purpose.** ** That's funny...I don't recall ever reading anything in the Constitution authorizing the government to spend tax dollars in this way. If people want to send their own private funds to overseas charities, then more power to 'em. But no government has the right to take money from citizens at gunpoint and then spend it in a way that provides no benefits to those citizens. This is a fact, Constitution or no Constitution. All taxation that does not directly benefit those who are taxed is nothing but robbery. --- ### darkeddy *2003-02-06 00:27* | [User Profile](/od/user/296) Given inflation and economic growth, it is surprising whenever a budget *isn't* the 'biggest' budget yet. Absolute numbers aren't very meaningful in assessing the job a president is doing. We need to know what percentage of the national economy he or she is commandeering. --- ### xmetalhead *2003-02-06 00:42* | [User Profile](/od/user/80) *I think this article relates to the topic in a bigger way* **SuperPower Junkie** by Chris Conole February 4, 2003 Forward: While writing this essay, I came across an extremely thoroughly well written essay on rense.com: [url=http://www.rense.com/general34/realre.htm]http://www.rense.com/general34/realre.htm[/url] that explains the real reason for the coming war. My essay is a boiled-down, simplified version of events as I see them, but Mr. Clark's essay covers the points in more detail. Consider, then, my brief write-up as an intro to his. Disclaimer: I have no connection to Mr. Clark other than having read and largely agreed with his essay. ------------------ Suppose that there are three men stranded on an island. Lacking the ordinary essentials of civilization, they need to recreate human society in miniature, an economy of Robinson Crusoes. The first man grows the food, say, the second man makes the clothing, and the third man creates the money as a medium of exchange to value all transactions and to create a store of value for this island economy. How does #3 create the money? By lending it into existence to the other two men. He writes "$1" on each of 200 sheets of paper and lends 100 of each to the first two men, demanding an annual 10% rate of return on the loans. This means that having lent out 200 "dollars" total to both men they both owe the third man $220 by the end of the year. But since only $200 has been created at the beginning of the year, that leaves a deficit of $20 that is mathematically impossible to pay off. Only by having the loan rolled over, whereby it accumulates more interest, or by selling off something already owned, can the first two men stave off bankruptcy in their miniature island economy. This farcical scenario basically describes the economic system of the whole world today. The third man on the island is the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank (along with its enforcer, the U.S. government) while the first and second man support him as representative of everyone else in the economy. Many people have recognized this system is a pyramid-debt scheme, for like a pyramid scheme, it can only sustain itself by growing both by drawing its existing "members" deeper into debt, and by drawing new people into it. As RaZoR pointed out in a recent letter, this is why the government looks so favorably upon open borders, as it increases the number of debtors to shoulder the burgeoning pyramid. More consumers, more borrowers, more tribute-paying debt serfs on the global plantation. Bob Wallace (http://www.lewrockwell.com/wallace/wallace86.html) on LewRockwell.com stumbled on this very point recently. Here is the real reason the frat boy in chief is so hot for war in Iraq. This war is not about oil per se, and it's not even about Israel, at least directly. This coming war is nothing more than a desperate act to stave off the coming collapse of the American World Empire/New World Order. Like the Roman Empire of old, the U.S. version must use a mix of carrots and sticks to maintain its lofty but wobbly perch. As a general rule, it's mostly carrots for the domestic drones, (cheap beer and trash TV for the proles; low-interest mortgage and car loans for the outer-party unisex soccer twats) who after all comprise the pillar that supports it with their blood, sweat, and apathy. It's sticks in the form of cruise missiles for foreign leaders who refuse to help themselves to IMF loans. Loans that cannot, and are not meant to, ever be repaid. This is why certain third-world countries are always breaking into the news with another currency crisis every few years. In spite of highly touted bailout packages arranged through the IMF and World Bank, the problems always come back with an ever higher dollar figure to roll over until the next crisis. Knowing this essential fact helps to explain much of U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. Since the base of the pyramid must continue to grow to keep the top fed with interest tribute, the American government has been engaging in a ceaseless quest to find new territories to expand its dollar-debt economy to, as well as inviting new people into its own territory. This is why all countries in Latin America are being dollarized, as has already happened in Panama and Ecuador, which use the dollar as their sole currency. Other countries like Mexico already are de facto heavily dollarized. The current crisis in Argentina is a prelude to introducing the dollar as sole legal tender for that country. Russia was another prominent victim of all the "help" from IMF cadres sponsored by the U.S. government in the '90s. Since debt-dependency is an addiction that constantly grows, it is useful to compare the behavior of our current regime to a drug addict. Since many drug addicts cannot support their lifestyle with their own resources, they often turn to crime as way of feeding their ever expanding and more expensive habit. So with our current regime going through some painful withdrawal symptoms what with the deflating of the stock-market bubble, the dollar itself in decline -- and with it the soccer-twats watching with dismay as their 401(K) plans melt away -- the need for a new debt fix has to be found, and fast, before the shakes get too bad. So here lies Iraq, a country with proven reserves of over 100 billion barrels of crude, TRILLIONS of dollars worth at current prices. All of that oil just lying there, collateral without a loan. For Bushy II and his crew must see that the current economic system is tottering dangerously close to catastrophic ruin, and what better prop for it than to unleash all the crude into the sclerotic veins of a strung out economy getting increasingly desperate for a fix. By dropping the price of gasoline below $1, the drones will get on with what they do best, mindlessly (everything they do is mindless) spending, consuming, and borrowing the country back to "prosperity." It simply boils down to this. The classic economic definition of inflation is too many dollars chasing too few goods. Since the U.S. has been creating dollars at a breakneck pace not only to equip its armies, but also to bribe Joe 24-pack by allowing him to live far beyond his means, it needs to increase the goods on the world market, in this case oil. So, all talk of the pundits in the mainstream press openly admitting that they don't understand why Bush is so hot for war all miss the point. Saddam could allow the inspectors to use a proctoscope on him to search for weapons of mass destruction and it won't matter a bit because such weapons are simply not the issue. Even Israel is not the issue directly, for Israel has more formidable opponents in Syria and Iran that are not (currently, at least) under the gun. Israel's survival as a state rests on the viability of the American World Empire, as the "neo-cons" well know to keep it well armed, and that, in turn, requires that the American natives be well fed. This war, despite the best intentions of many good people, as well as the efforts of the usual suspects in the dreadlocks and Birkenstocks crowd, will go on because it must go on. If the frat boy in chief can pull off a relatively painless war (for us, of course, nobody cares about the Iraqis or anyone else for that matter) then the empire has a new lease on life for at least a little longer, until the debt monkey on its back comes back to harry it for another fix. If anything should go awry, the oil fields destroyed, a nuke or dirty bomb that Saddam might have after all and fling with fury as he goes down, another al-Qaida strike a la 9/11, then things may spin well out of control of all the self-appointed best and brightest who may have fewer pat words to calm the masses of asses than they pretend. We will then learn the true meaning of the ancient Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times." They say that often the only way a junkie can help himself is when he confronts the fact that he has reached rock bottom. I'll leave it at that for now. CHRIS CONOLE [url=http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/feb03/index676.htm]http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/feb03/index676.htm[/url] ---