The JvL Bi-Weekly
James van Luik
Publisher & Editor
Friday, May 30, 2003
Volume 2, No. 10
5 Articles, 1 List
1. The Discretionary Budget of the United States
5. Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy
1.THE DISCRETIONARY BUDGET OF THE UNITED STATES
BY
JAMES VAN LUIK
As is well understood in the US and all over the world the United States has the largest budget of all nations, and the largest military budget, probably of all the nations' military budgets combined. The government's primary source of money is the tax system. The five hundred largest corporations in the US, and the rich, owning together most of the nation's wealth, [by the rich I mean those of working age who do not have to work for their living. This is in contrast to the working class; they who have no private means of support] pay the smallest portion of taxes on a percentage or any basis. The corporations and the rich manage to achieve this by a variety of legal maneuvers, and legislation made possible by Congress in collusion with the Administration and the Court. Therefore their contribution to the national budget is much smaller than that of the working class in America. The working class pays the major portion of taxes generally, and the major portion of the military budget specifically.
. The national budget pays for all expenses, for every aspect of US governmental activities and is divided into two major parts: 1. the non-discretionary part and 2. the discretionary part. The non-discretionary part cannot be adjusted much without the government defaulting on its financial commitments. This portion of the budget consists of obligations such as bonds, government employees' retirement benefits, veterans' benefits, social security, and of course there are many other areas that could be listed.
The discretionary budget consists of money for government purchases, the military budget, health, education and welfare, conservation and again many other areas could be listed.
So, then, when a tax cut is made it affects overwhelmingly the discretionary budget. It should be noted that tax reductions as designed by this administration result in a small tax reduction for members of the working class on a per capita basis. However, for the rich and the corporations the tax cut was designed by all three branches of government to result in huge tax reductions for them.
A reduction in income taxes for working people, for the rich and corporations results in a smaller discretionary budget. And this is important, as is the fact that the money for increasing the military comes from the discretionary budget. This means, of course, that automatically with any increase in the military budget every other part of the discretionary budge is proportionately reduced, including funding for programs and benefits important to the working class: for their health, educational, and welfare concerns.
Let us take an example: this administration with the acquiescence of the Congress has increased the military budget by 40 billion dollars. Let us also remember that there has been a very large tax cut which has still years to go. So these two items, the tax cut plus the large increase of revenue to the military has reduced the discretionary budget by that amount. Which, plainly, means far less money for health, education, and welfare for the working class. In fact, as is already obvious there have been severe cuts in all program areas.
One should recognize here two administration lies put forth with the blatant participation of the corporate ruling class. This is no secret, one only has to read the business press for verification. There are countless straightforward articles on this subject in the business press, unlike the more ideological presentations of the national media exemplified by the television channels of ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, and newspapers such as The New York and Los Angeles Times.
First lie: the tax cut was good for the working class. Since this money was taken directly out of the discretionary budget it cannot be good for the working class. On the other hand if the military budget was reduced or remained frozen the health, education and welfare services would not have been nor would continue to be further damaged.
Second lie: Since the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon we, the general public, must be fearful, afraid, avoid dissent, and submit ourselves to important diminutions of our civil liberties, and above all do what the administration tells us. This manufactured fear psychology in the general population is made possible only by the continued creation of alerts: red alerts, orange alerts, the Department of Homeland Security alerts, Security checks the effectiveness of which is highly questionable, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction alerts; they are everywhere, in the zeitgeist. "They" are out to get us. And of course, we need millions of Americans to spy on millions of Americans. We need to take off our shoes. We must not dissent. Anyone who questions the administration's behavior is the enemy. And any sign of suggesting morality problems is disloyalty. The Nazis understood this well.
How can we deal with these many threats? We have to have a perpetual war. To do this we must increase the size of our military, increase the size of the CIA, increase the size of the FBI, and of course we must create a Homeland Security Agency, and naturally increase security and citizen spying in all places.
This is going to cost billions of dollars, obviously paid by the working class if we believe the lies of the government and do not protest. So from where will this money come, what is its source? Plainly, from the discretionary portion of the national tax collection.
2. BALANCING ACT
(Will Proposed Pension Plan Changes Help Companies or Hurt Employees?)
BY
CHRIS PENTTILA
The Bush administration is proposing controversial new pension rules that, if adopted, will make it easier for employers to implement cash-balance pension plans, a type of defined benefit plan that looks like a 401(k). But unlike traditional pension plans, where workers' retirement benefits increase the longer they stay, workers under cash-balance plans accumulate benefits at the same rate no matter how long they stay. Some large companies have saved millions for themselves by switching to them.
Cash-balance plans have been around since the mid-1980s, but employers who converted to them were vulnerable to age-discrimination claims and didn't receive tax-exempt status for the plan from the IRS—two things these rules will change.
Critics, however, say cash-balance plans discriminate against baby boomers, particularly those who've spent many years at one company but are still 10 years away from retirement. These workers aren't old enough to be protected by rules that obligate employers to stick to the original plan if the employee is a few years from retirement. "Employees mid-40s and up are going to get hammered by this," say Jeff Gates, who crafted federal pension law in the 1980s as benefits counsel to the US Senate Finance Committee.
Then there's the ethical question of switching plans on employees who have been counting on a pension. "[The company] says 'That $1800 a month you were expecting? It's going to be 30 to 50 percent less,"' Gates says. "That's a major ethical issue."
Large employers have offered credits added to a worker's cash-balance plan to ease the transition for older workers, says Eva T. Cantarella, senior litigation counsel for pensions and employee benefits at Hertz, Schram & Saretsky in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. "Companies that haven't done that have been accused of being age-discriminatory," Cantarella says. She says cash-balance plans might work better for young companies that aren't converting from an older pension and anticipate high turnover. If you have an existing pension plan and employees over forty, however, tread carefully.
3. THE FEDERALIST NUMBER TEN
BY
(The Federalist paper Number Ten is of great importance for an understanding of how and also why the US constitution and the federal government was put together the way it was. As you will see the argument is very interesting in that it discusses big government and class. James Madison uses the word faction in the same meaning as one uses the word class today. That is, there are two classes the ruling-owning class, and the rest of the population. James Madison was one of the founding father of the constitution and one of the most perceptive ones. One must remember that Madison was in favor of a federal government to be the central government over the collection of state governments already in existence. Since the Federalist Number Ten is a bit long I will put in part of it this issue and the remainder in the next two issues of the Bi-Weekly.)
PART I
JAMES MADISON, 1787
To the People of the State of New York: Among the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations. The valuable improvements made by the American constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired; but it would be an unwarrantable partiality, to contend that they have as effectually obviated the danger on this side, as was wished and expected. Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true. It will be found, indeed, on a candid review of our situation, that some of the distresses under which we labor have been erroneously charged on the operation of our governments; but it will be found, at the same time, that other causes will not alone account for many of our heaviest misfortunes; and, particularly, for that prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements, and alarm for private rights, which are echoed from one end of the continent to the other. These must be chiefly, if not wholly, effects of the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administrations.
By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.
There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects.
There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.
It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment, without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.
The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passion will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.
The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, dividend mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.
4. THE "SEPARATION WALL"
(separating Palestinians from their land…)
FROM
GUSH SHALOM
(042703)
The Wall is the concrete manifestation of the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and yet another method of carrying out a policy of confiscating more Palestinian land. If Israel would genuinely be interested in the security of it's citizens, and in separation from the Palestinian people, it would have erected the wall on the "Green Line" (the border that existed before the 1967 war). But this is not the case. The majority of the planned wall cuts deep into Palestinian territory, incorporating into Israel about 10% - 15% of the occupied territories, a huge portion of very fertile land full of olive groves, greenhouses, vegetable fields and water resources. It will cut off villages and town from their farmland, centres of trade, education and culture. It will intensify the ongoing environmental destruction and degradation taking place in the occupied territories. It is also an attempt to legitimize the Israeli settlement policy. In short, it is intended to be a death blow to any possibility of a viable Palestinian state.
For hundreds of thousands of Palestinian farmers, the wall will represent a prison with no warden, with no means of sustaining their families – to the point that will force many of them to simply leave their homes, and try living elsewhere as refugees. This is an intention of quiet ethnic cleansing, the sort that cannot be photographed, but is nevertheless as effective and devastating. For this reason, we have decided to refer to the wall as a transfer wall.
The transfer Wall, therefore, is not about 'security' or just another aspect of the Occupation. The planned expansion of the Wall can provide the outline of Sharon's plan as to the possible borders of a Palestinian 'entity' when the' roadmap' is unveiled. It must not be at the negotiating table as the starting point for a 'road map' to peace since it will not bring peace and will destroy any possibility of creating a Palestinian state.
"It is a tragedy for all of humanity that such forms of oppression are done against the poor and the defenceless, all the while the oppressor is heard and believed as he justifies and cheats other nations and cultures. And under the slogans of 'security' and 'terror' the crimes are committed. How can people give their blessing to this oppressor, as he acquires the financial support to establish this Wall and to commits his crime." These are the words of the people in the district of Qalqiliya whose lives have been devastated by the transfer Wall.
Qualqiliya exemplifies a dramatic example. Qalqiliya will become a huge prison. The wall will encompass Qalqiliya completely, leaving one opening guarded by two checkpoints. The city, once a flourishing centre of commerce, will suffocate and die.
More Facts and figures. All in all, the wall is expected to have a devastating impact on the lives of some 210,000 Palestinians, living in 67 towns or villages. 11,700 people in 13 villages will be imprisoned between the wall and the green line. At the demand of the Israeli settlers, the wall is planned to move far further to the east, to include the settlements of Ariel, Emanuel and Kedumim. This will increase dramatically the number of Palestinians who will be affected by the wall.
5. INSTANT-MIX IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY
(Buy One, Get One Free)
--this article is an extract--
BY
ARUNDHATI ROY
In these times, when we have to race to keep abreast of the speed at which our freedoms are being snatched from us, and when few can afford the luxury of retreating from the streets for a while in order to return with an exquisite, fully formed political thesis replete with footnotes and references, what profound gift can I offer you?
As we lurch from crisis to crisis, beamed directly into our brains by satellite TV, we have to think on our feet. On the move. We enter histories through the rubble of war. Ruined cities, parched fields, shrinking forests, and dying rivers are our archives. Craters left by daisy cutters, our libraries.
So what can I offer you tonight? Some uncomfortable thoughts about money, war, empire, racism, and democracy. Some worries that flit around my brain like a family of persistent moths that keep me awake at night.
Some of you will think it bad manners for a person like me, officially entered in the Big Book of Modern Nations as an "Indian citizen," to come here and criticize the US government. Speaking for myself, I'm no flag-waver, no patriot, and am fully aware that venality, brutality, and hypocrisy are imprinted on the leaden soul of every state. But when a country ceases to be merely a country and becomes an empire, then the scale of operations changes dramatically. So may I clarify that tonight I speak as a subject of the American Empire? I speak as a slave who presumes to criticize her king.
Since lectures must be called something, mine tonight is called: Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free).
Way back in 1988, on the 3rd of July, the USS Vincennes, a missile cruiser stationed in the Persian Gulf, accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner and killed 290 civilian passengers. George Bush the First, who was at the time on his presidential campaign, was asked to comment on the incident. He said quite subtly, "I will never apologize for the United States. I don't care what the facts are."
I don't care what the facts are. What a perfect maxim for the New American Empire. Perhaps a slight variation on the theme would be more apposite: The facts can be whatever we want them to be.
When the United States invaded Iraq, a New York Times /CBS News survey estimated that 42 percent of the American public believed that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And an ABC News poll said that 55 percent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein directly supported Al Qaida. None of this opinion is based on evidence (because there isn't any). All of it is based on insinuation, auto-suggestion, and outright lies circulated by the US corporate media, otherwise known as the "Free Press," that hollow pillar on which contemporary American democracy rests.
Public support in the US for the war against Iraq was founded on a multi-tiered edifice of falsehood and deceit, coordinated by the US government and faithfully amplified by the corporate media.
Apart from the invented links between Iraq and Al Qaida, we had the manufactured frenzy about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction. George Bush the Lesser went to the extent of saying it would be "suicidal" for the US not to attack Iraq. We once again witnessed the paranoia that a starved, bombed, besieged country was about to annihilate almighty America. (Iraq was only the latest in a succession of countries – earlier there was Cuba, Nicaragua, Libya, Grenada, and Panama.) But this time it wasn't just your ordinary brand of friendly neighborhood frenzy. It was Frenzy with a Purpose. It ushered in an old doctrine in a new bottle: The Doctrine of Pre-emptive Strike, a.k.a. The United States Can Do Whatever The Hell It Wants, And That's Official.
The war against Iraq has been fought and won and no Weapons of Mass Destruction have been found. Not even a little one. Perhaps they'll have to be planted before they're discovered. And then, the more troublesome amongst us will need an explanation for why Saddam Hussein didn't use them when his country was being invaded.
Of course, there'll be no answers. True Believers will make do with those fuzzy TV reports about the discovery of a few barrels of banned chemicals in an old shed. There seems to be no consensus yet about whether they're really chemicals, whether they're actually banned and whether the vessels they're contained in can technically be called barrels. (There were unconfirmed rumours that a teaspoonful of potassium permanganate and an old harmonica were found there too.)
Meanwhile, in passing, an ancient civilization has been casually decimated by a very recent, casually brutal nation.
Then there are those who say, so what if Iraq had no chemical and nuclear weapons? So what if there is no Al Qaida connection? So what if Osama bin Laden hates Saddam Hussein as much as he hates the United States? Bush the Lesser has said Saddam Hussein was a "Homicidal Dictator." And so, the reasoning goes, Iraq needed a "regime change."
Never mind that forty years ago, the CIA under President John F. Kennedy orchestrated a regime change in Baghdad. In 1963, after a successful coup, the Ba'ath party came to power in Iraq. Using lists provided by the CIA the new Ba'ath regime systematically eliminated hundreds of doctors, teachers, lawyers, and political figures known to be leftists. An entire intellectual community was slaughtered. (The same technique was used to massacre hundreds of thousands of people in Indonesia and East Timor.) The young Saddam Hussein was said to have had a hand in supervising the bloodbath. In 1979, after factional infighting within the Ba'ath Party, Saddam Hussein became the President of Iraq. In April 1980, while he was massacring Shias, the US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinksi declared, "We see no fundamental incompatibility of interests between the United States and Iraq." Washington and London overtly and covertly supported Saddam Hussein. They financed him, equipped him, armed him, and provided him with dual use materials to manufacture weapons of mass destruction. They supported his worst excesses financially, materially, and morally. They supported the eight–year war against Iran and the 1988 gassing of Kurdish people in Halabja, crimes which 14 years later were re-heated and served up as reasons to justify invading Iraq. After the first Gulf War, the "Allies" fomented an uprising of Shias in Basra and then looked away while Saddam Hussein crushed the revolt and slaughtered thousands in an act of vengeful reprisal.
The point is, if Saddam Hussein was evil enough to merit the most elaborate, openly declared assassination attempt in history (the opening move of Operation Shock and Awe), then surely those who supported him ought at least to be tried for war crimes? Why aren't the faces of US and UK government officials on the infamous pack of cards of wanted men and women?
Because when it comes to Empire, facts don't matter.
Yes, but all that's in the past we're told. Saddam Hussein is a monster who must be stopped now. And only the US can stop him. It's an effective technique, this use of the urgent morality of the present to obscure the diabolical sins of the past and the malevolent plans for the future. Indonesia, Panama, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan – the list goes on and on. Right no there are brutal regimes being groomed for the future – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, The Central Asian Republics.
US Attorney General John Ashcroft recently declared that US freedoms are "not the grant of any government or document, but….our endowment from God." (Why bother with the United Nations when God himself is on hand?)
So here we are, the people of the world, confronted with an Empire armed with a mandate from heaven (and, as added insurance, the most formidable arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in history). Here we are, confronted with an empire that has conferred upon itself the right to go to war at will, and the right to deliver people from corrupting ideologies, from religious fundamentalists, dictators, sexism and poverty by the age-old, tried-and-tested practice of extermination. Empire is on the move, and Democracy is its sly new war cry. Democracy, home-delivered to your doorstep by daisy cutters. Death is a small price for people to pay for the privilege of sampling this new product: Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (bring to a boil, add oil, then bomb).
But then perhaps chinks, negroes, dinks, gooks, and wogs don't really qualify as real people. Perhaps our deaths don't qualify as real deaths. Our histories don't qualify as history. They never have.
Speaking of history, in these past months, while the world watched, the US invasion and occupation of Iraq was broadcast on live TV. Like Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan, the regime of Saddam Hussein simply disappeared. This was followed by what analysts called a "power vacuum." Cities that had been under siege, without food, water, and electricity for days, cities that had been bombed relentlessly, people who had been starved and systematically impoverished by the UN sanctions regime for more than a decade, were suddenly left with no semblance of urban administration. A seven-thousand-year-old civilization slid into anarchy. On Live TV.
Vandals plundered shops, offices, hotels, and hospitals. American and British soldiers stood by and watched. They said they had no orders to act. In effect, they had orders to kill people, but not to protect them. Their priorities were clear. The safety and security of Iraqi people was not their business. The security of whatever little remained of Iraq's infrastructure was not their business. But the security and safety of Iraq's oil fields were. Of course they were. The oil fields were "secured" almost before the invasion began.
On CNN and BBC the scenes of the rampage were played and replayed. TV commentators, army and government spokespersons portrayed it as a "liberated people" venting their rage at a despotic regime. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said: "It's untidy. Freedom's untidy and free people are free to commit crimes and make mistakes and do bad things." Did anybody know that Donald Rumsfeld was an anarchist? I wonder – did he hold the same view during the riots in Los Angeles following the beating of Rodney King? Would he care to share his thesis about the Untidiness of Freedom with the two million people being held in US prisons right now? (The world's "freest" country has the highest number of prisoners in the world) Would he discuss its merits with young African American men 28 percent of whom will spend some part of their adult lives in jail? Could he explain why he serves under a president who oversaw 152 executions when he was governor of Texas?
Before the war on Iraq began, the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) sent the Pentagon a list of 16 crucial sites to protect. The National Museum was second on that list. Yet the Museum was not just looted, it was desecrated. It was a repository of an ancient cultural heritage. Iraq as we know it today was part of the river valley of Mesopotamia. The civilization that grew along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates produced the world's first writing, first calendar, first library, first city, and, yes, the world's first democracy. King Hammurabi of Babylon was the first to codify laws governing the social life of citizens. It was a code in which abandoned women, prostitutes, slaves, and even animals had rights. The Hammurabi code is acknowledged not just as the birth of legality, but the beginning of an understanding of the concept of social justice. The US government could not have chosen a more inappropriate land in which to stage its illegal war and display its grotesque disregard for justice.
The only institution more powerful than the US government is American civil society. The rest of us are subjects of slave nations. We are by no means powerless, but you have the power of proximity. You have access to the Imperial Palace and the Emperor's chambers. Empire's conquests are being carried out in you name, and you have the right to refuse. You could refuse to fight. Refuse to move those missiles from the warehouse to the dock.. Refuse to wave that flag. Refuse the victory parade.
You have a rich tradition of resistance. You need only read Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United Stats" to remind yourself of this.
Hundreds of thousands of you have survived the relentless propaganda you have been subjected to, and are actively fighting your own government. In the ultra-patriotic climate that prevails in the United States, that's as brave as any Iraqi or Afghan or Palestinian fighting for his or her homeland.
If you join the battle, not in your hundreds of thousands, but in your millions, you will be greeted joyously by the rest of the world. And you will see how beautiful it is to be gentle instead of brutal, safe instead of scared. Befriended instead of isolated. Loved instead of hated.
I hate to disagree with your president. Yours is by no means a great nation. But you could be a great people.
History is giving you the chance.
Seize the time.
(According to a May 1 Gallup poll for CNN and USA Today, 79 percent of Americans said the war with Iraq was justified even without conclusive evidence of the illegal weapons, while 19 percent said discoveries of the weapons were need to justify the war. An April Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 72 percent supported the war even without a finding of chemical or biological weapons. Similarly, a CBS News poll found that 60 percent said the war was worth the blood and other costs even if weapons are never found.)
6. ANTIWAR ORGANIZATIONS
A.J. Muste Memorial Institute
American Friends Service Committee
Americans Against Bombing
Buddhist Peace Fellowship
Cities for Peace
Fellowship of Reconciliation
Guardian Unlimited: Guide to Anti-War Websites
International Action Center
International ANSWER
Jewish Peace Fellowship
Librarians for Peace
Lutheran Peace Fellowship
Miami Valley Peace Information
MoveOn.org
National Coalition for Peace and Justice
Not in Our Name
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
PAX Christi USA
Peace and Justice Support Network of Mennonite Church USA
Traprock Peace Center
United for Peace
US Labor Against the War
Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Inc. (VVAW)
War Resisters League