NSLs and the National Surveillance State
[Phillip Carter,
Friday March 14, 2008 at 6:53am ]
I agree with Yale law professor Jack Balkin -- we live today in a national surveillance state. This article in the Washington Post detailing the FBI's use of "national security letters" (NSLs) tells an important part of that story. According to the Post:The FBI has increasingly used administrative orders to obtain the personal records of U.S. citizens rather than foreigners implicated in terrorism or counterintelligence investigations, and at least once it relied on such orders to obtain records that a special intelligence-gathering court had deemed protected by the First Amendment, according to two government audits released yesterday.My thoughts: For reasons of convenience, expediency, secrecy and efficiency, federal law enforcememnt has increasingly turned towards surveillance and investigative methods which do not require ex ante review or approval by an Article III court. These letters raise very significant concerns, as do the other expansions of law enforcement surveillance authority over the lsat 20 years. If you still think you've got a reasonable expectation of privacy in your daily life -- check again. The exceptions very nearly swallow the rule today.
The episode was outlined in a Justice Department report that concluded the FBI had abused its intelligence-gathering privileges by issuing inadequately documented "national security letters" from 2003 to 2006, after which changes were put in place that the report called sound.
A report a year ago by the Justice Department's inspector general disclosed that abuses involving national security letters had occurred from 2003 through 2005 and helped provoke the changes. But the report makes it clear that the abuses persisted in 2006 and disclosed that 60 percent of the nearly 50,000 security letters issued that year by the FBI targeted Americans.
Because U.S. citizens enjoy constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, judicial warrants are ordinarily required for government surveillance. But national security letters are approved only by FBI officials and are not subject to judicial approval; they routinely demand certain types of personal data, such as telephone, e-mail and financial records, while barring the recipient from disclosing that the information was requested or supplied.
According to the findings by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, the FBI tried to work around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees clandestine spying in the United States, after it twice rejected an FBI request in 2006 to obtain certain records. The court had concluded "the 'facts' were too thin" and the "request implicated the target's First Amendment rights," the report said.
But the FBI went ahead and got the records anyway by using a national security letter. The FBI's general counsel, Valerie E. Caproni, told investigators it was appropriate to issue the letters in such cases because she disagreed with the court's conclusions.
Is this a problem? Depends on your perspective. What worries me here is the slow bureaucratic expansion of power -- like the ever-expanding Blob of movie fame. The FBI and intelligence community may need administrative tools like this. Ultimately, we may decide it's in our interest to allow law enforcement the use of these tools -- whether for targeting suspected terrorists, drug dealers, organized crime figures, or even Client No. 9. But that's got to be a public debate, and it's got to be a debate held by accountable officials, not agency officials behind closed doors. We have a stake in this policy, and we should get a say.
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We make that calculation when we go to war - hundreds of troops and civilians (mostly other civilians, but hey - they're all people) lose their lives in pursuit of our freedoms. Shouldn't we accept that there will be loss of life at home sometimes - when a terrorist attack that might have been prevented using totalitarian surveillance goes ahead - in order to protect these other freedoms?
Absolutely right. There are risks involved in everything we do in life. Every time we get in the car, we take a risk, but we accept that there will be thousands of traffic deaths in return for the advantage motor vehicles give us. The risk-free life is a chimera, and seeking it is foolish.
The problem, though, is that politicians are risk-averse. They know that if something big does happen, they will be held to be at fault unless they can show that they have taken all preventive measures. They therefore have a powerful tendency to over-react to the merest possibility of a threat.
This also leads to what Uk academic Martin Shaw calls 'risk transfer war': http://www.martinshaw.org/newwesternwayofwar/
By waging war on foreign states - e.g. Iraq, you transfer the risk from yourself as a politician to the people of the country you are attacking. If they really were a danger, you have eliminated the risk to yourself, but if it turns out that you were wrong, and they weren't, no harm comes to you, just to them -ie, you have transferred the risk.
Something similar applies to domestic security measures - political leaders transfer the risk from themselves to the people they are meant to be serving.
Paul
http://www.cdfai.org/PDF/
FP%20Harvey%20Homeland%20Security%20June06.pdf
Paul
There is always a temptation to use tools to the maximum extent possible - particularly if they can be "creatively" used outside their intended scope. I've seen well-meaning people justify to themselves the inappropriate use of such tools by using what amounts to an ends-justify-the-means type of argument. It's a dangerous and slippery slope and pretty soon the tool intended to only go after terrorists is going after Joe and Jane average citizen. That's why STRONG oversight is always needed with these types of programs and I fear the measures currently in place are not nearly strong enough.
OMB takes some of the responsibility and inspector generals could theoretically try to enforce it, but there is no "top privacy cop" in the federal government.
The Canadians, by way of comparison, have a national privacy commissioner and each province has a privacy commissioner and they issue advisory opinions on the privacy implications of corporate and government actions much like Attorney General opinions here in the US.
The Privacy Act of 1974 has also been largely eviscerated b/c gov't now purchases digital dossiers from vendors like Choicepoint that it is explicitly prohibited from creating on its own under the Privacy Act... but the Act doesn't say they can't buy them.
The greatest risk is always that our own leaders will abuse their powers. Like for example, the greatest threats the German and Soviet peoples faced in 1935 were Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
And the people who founded this country by revolting against a much less abusive leader than those two were not confused about it, unlike the fools who support the Bush gang.
It is because we fail to enforce the laws that people feel free to side step and violate them. We don't accept the fact that you were late for a movie as grounds for speeding, we should not accept "because I thought the court was wrong" I decided that I could commit a crime.
We should also seek to prosecute and impeach any person who authorized, or knew and failed to report, and prosecute to the fullest any lawyer who attempted to give legal cover by suggesting that courts should be ignored. The layer has a duty to advise his client that courts are always to be obeyed. When a layer, who should know better, argues or provides a legal opinion that people can ignore the orders of a court needs to be promptly suspended pending a hearing for disbarment, and then charged with conspiracy in an attack on the constitution, and by extension the nation.
I think that was Hitlers argument, the laws don't apply to me because I am the commander in chief, and if the law does then it is the law that must be changed to give me the powers I have already taken.
Don't tell me about votes in the Senate. If the House passed articles of impeachment following a full watergate-style investigation, Bush would be crippled, the Republicans would be worse off than before, and those who voted against impeachment in favor of a president with such low approval ratings and such high "strongly disapprove" ratings would suffer for it.
And that aside, Mr. Bush is clearly violating the Constitution and has committed multiple felonies (FISA violations).
So why no impeachment? Why does Ms. Pelosi say it is "off the table" when Nixon was threatened with impeachment and forced to resign for much less?
EVERY POLICE STATE USES ITS INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES TO SPY UPON POLITICAL OPPONENTS. The government (any government) really doesn't give a rat's ass about ordinary criminal activity, intelligence agencies are used to spy on enemies, not criminals. And if an intelligence agency is spying on its own citizens, who are they? Al Queda? My ass.
Bush is probably blackmailing members of Congress.
Don't believe me? Fine, but given the fact of admitted warrantless wiretaps and the refusal to provide Congress any information about them, how do you know it is not happening?
Sure, I admit it is difficult to prove a negative, but should we ever have to prove such a negative - isn't the point that such unlawful surveillance is prohibited by the 4th Amendment? Because if it isn't, governments will spy on domestic political opponents?
Call me a conspiracy nut, but the NSA being used illegally against Americans is a REALLY BIG DEAL, much more dangerous than the dross we see on the news about hookers and governors and Barack's church or Hillary's income taxes. Much bigger than gay right-wing senators in restrooms or blowjobs by interns.
And the fact is, and it is a fact, that the NSA has been used in America in violation of the law, and the "war on terror" does not explain why, nor does any explanation why hearings aren't being held to investigate this administration.
I think our secret police are being used for domestic partisan political purposes.
But of course I am a conspiracy nut. Next thing you know, my crazy self will suggest that US attorneys are being hired or fired for partisan reasons (crazy, right?) or that a governor in Alabama is in prison as a result of a partisan criminal prosecution. Or that the sealed and hidden details regarding a high-profile governor involved in prostitution would be leaked to the press.
Or that a president would tell lies to gain the power to wage a war.
Right, I guess I am just crazy. The idea of using intelligence agencies to spy on political enemies - of course that has never happened. Ever. Not here in America, and not anywhere else.
right?
Since when did our liberty depend upon trust of those in power?
WASF.
The greatest risk is always that our own leaders will abuse their powers. Like for example, the greatest threats the German and Soviet peoples faced in 1935 were Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
And the people who founded this country by revolting against a much less abusive leader than those two were not confused about it, unlike the fools who support the Bush gang.
In principle I would agree with you about oversight, but the problem is that there is no decent system of oversight in operation anywhere. On the one hand you need the oversight mechanism to be fairly intrusive and knowledgeable of what is going on, but the more intrusive and knowledgeable it is, the more it becomes part of the system it is meant to be overseeing and ceases to be an oversight mechanism. This is what has happened to a fair degree to the congressional oversight committees.
I know of no way of overcoming this problem, and the more I study it (and teach the subject to my students) the more I'm convinced it can't be done. The only way out is not to give powers to the security and intelligence services which need that sort of oversight.
Paul
Even today, John McCain, cowardly old fool, a hero once, is starting the fear mongering of al-Qaeda at the gates - fears they will disrupt the election.
If after all the years of money, blood, surges, hearing; we are in no better than before 911, then why would we placing the same party, cabal, back in office; excepting that it will be led by Don Quoxite as a replacement to Alfred E. Neuman and his side kick, Rasputin?
As asked in the Baghdad Blog in the Times the other day, what sins have we committed to deserve such punishment?
There is more chance of us fallingout of the sky:
Safety Probe Puts FAA in Hot Seat
By SUZANNE GAMBOA
The Associated Press
Saturday, March 8, 2008; 6:44 AM
WASHINGTON — The Federal Aviation Administration should "clean house from top to bottom" and has too cozy a relationship with the airlines, the head of a congressional committee investigating airline safety inspections said Friday.
The problems have led to the sort of lax enforcement that allowed Southwest Airlines Co. to fly at least 117 aircraft past mandatory inspection deadlines, said Rep. James Oberstar, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chairman.
Oberstar also said he believes similar violations may have occurred involving other airlines, but that those who have such evidence are afraid to come forward.
"Complacency has likely set in to the highest levels of FAA management," the Minnesota Democrat said in a Capitol Hill news conference. "I think we have seen the pendulum swing away from vigorous enforcement of compliance toward a carrier-favorable, cozy relationship with the airlines."
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We may choke on the air we breathe:
EPA Staff Reps: We're Mad As Hell And We're Not Gonna Take It Anymore
By Paul Kiel - March 5, 2008, 2:27PM
If you're a staffer at the Environmental Protection Agency, you might have found yourself wondering what the point is. As EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson likes to put it, the final decision is his to make. And he has a history of disregarding the recommendations of EPA staff when he makes them.
Which makes this not very surprising:
You can read the letter from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility here.
As you can see, the union senses a pattern in Johnson's leadership. Scientific standards get junked they say, "whenever political direction from other federal entities or private sector interests so direct." Johnson's denial of a waiver for California's greenhouse gas rules, of course, being a prime example.
Our children may get sick and die from School Lunches:
You know, we could die from all this lack of necessary and reasonable safeguards to the health of our people.
I believe the people who are most likely to kill us Americans in our own country do not have to "come over here" and blow us to smithereens.
They are situated right now at 1600 Pennsylvania, Washington DC.
We should impeach Bush ASAP, and end this terrible danger to our society.
You know, security is as security does!
;)
...
The greatest risk is always that our own leaders will abuse their powers. Like for example, the greatest threats the German and Soviet peoples faced in 1935 were Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
And the people who founded this country by revolting against a much less abusive leader than those two were not confused about it, unlike the fools who support the Bush gang.
America (We) has failed to have an all hands, hoedown of a civil war on domestic soil (see Civil War 1860's). Many of the oxygen thieving sub specimens who believe such McCainoidal propaganda would be seriously challenged in surviving through the aforementioned.....lack of tactical snap, doncha know. There is no extant, humanoid focused, culling mechanism in the Grand Ole Republic, that has the same salutary effect that Nature has on its' critters. Watch Drankman Franckman post something about illiterate johnny rebs' contribution to warfare, and society in general.
Regarding the AQ propaganda, the Wingnuts are right, but not in the way they declare. As with Kerry in 04, Osama will crawl out of his CP and endorse the Dem (in so many convoluted words); and that will be that. They (AQ) want McCain to rule so bad because he assures their future as a growth industry....notwithstanding the attendant healthy turmoil in junior personnel turnover.
That's simply not true. There was a lot of effective oversight during my time in the intelligence community. A combination of training, audits and inspections work quite well actually. I also reject the idea that somehow oversight is doomed to become "part of the system." That does happens when there is weak oversight or when conflicts of interest are built into the system, but it doesn't have to be that way.
Today Harriet Meirs simply refuses to even appear in response to a Congressional subpoena, and a lot of people think that is ok.
We should have seen this coming after the right-wing made a hero out of Oliver North, a traitor who broke his sacred oath to the Constitution because he disagreed with Congress.
So where are we headed if we don't fix this problem, regardless of who is elected in November? Watch THIS.
The behavior of the "jackbooted thugs" in that video is angelic compared to what will actually happen. Great clip, nonetheless.
Just saw a couple of police officers at the local convenience store and belatedly wondered when the "high and tight" became part of the police uniform.
The war on terror is the war on drugs on meth..
Almost everything you think you know about "drugs" and the war on drugs is not so. The great majority of "drugs" have originally been prohibited not because of their effects but because of who it is perceived uses those drugs.
Opium? Chinese immigrants..
Cocaine.. Blacks
Marijuana.. Mexicans, then Blacks and then Dirty F**ing Hippies.
LSD and the other hallucinogens.. DFH's
Alcohol is a drug and is in fact one of the more dangerous recreational drugs around.. Alcohol is almost uniquely violence provoking in users and there is considerable cultural recognition of that fact. Mean drunk, barroom brawl, don't listen to him it's the liquor talking, ten feet tall and bulletproof.
Unlike virtually every other drug around, you can actually die from alcohol withdrawal when you are addicted to it.
Given these facts, the meme that "drugs" are prohibited for reasons of public safety does not stand up to scrutiny, if that were so then alcohol would also be illegal.
America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, bar none.. One in every hundred Americans is in prison. And yet when I tell people this, the citizens of "the land of the free" almost always just shrug their shoulders and ignore me.
Like the proverbial frog in the pot of water we have slowly approached being cooked and now it is, I fear, too late.
You already allow the government to force your employer to spy on your very bodily fluids, your bank account is watched for suspicious transactions, your electric bill is monitored to make sure you aren't using too much power, helicopters with sophisticated infrared viewers are flown over your home to make sure that no rooms are too warm, your car can be stopped and ransacked at the whim of any police officer, your property can be confiscated with no proof of a crime having been committed.
The list of violations is nearly endless and Americans have come to accept these intrusions as normal and necessary.
NSLs and the like are only the latest in a long history of surveillance techniques used against the public under the guise of making us more safe.
It is not what you don't know that is the most dangerous to you.. It is what you think you know that isn't so.
And don't forget, Blackwater was hired to "police" the streets of New Orleans after Katrina.
Where is the outrage? Where did my America go? It wasn't a myth, we were self-governed and did not fear our government once.
Maybe that is the problem - we decided we need not fear the government. Our Founding Fathers sure did, and they created the damn thing.
Big Brother is here.
Fuck Big Brother.
<blockquote>
So many cops today wear combat boots, fatigues, web gear, etc. etc., wear high and tight haircuts, and act like they are on duty in freaking Iraq instead of what they are - peace officers in America.
</blockquote>
They are in a war, haven't you heard?
It's only been going on, in its present incarnation, since 1971.
http://november.org/graphs/Americans.gif
Lost in ignorance and confusion?
I shall put a check mark in the "ignored" column.
When you seek to restrict the freedom of others, it will inevitably lead to your own freedom eventually becoming constrained.
Welcome. I think you are not being ignored, but quietly agreed to. We are (mostly) at a loss as to how to change things.
Thanks for the welcome..
I've been fighting this fight for very nearly twenty years now and things are considerably worse than when I started.
There are precisely two politicians in DC who do not support the drug war 100% and they are both considered kooks..
This pretty well sums up my attitude these days.
http://tinyurl.com/yvmp8x
To paraphrase Reverend Niemoller:
First they came for the druggies, but I did not speak up since I was not a druggie.
Have any of you ever wondered why *everyone* cannot be satisfied with alcohol as their sole recreational drug? I mean, everyone reacts in the same manner to every drug and the biochemistry of all humans is identical, right?
Eighty percent of American adults drink alcoholic beverages of one sort or another.
An interesting set of facts that I have never seen anyone other than myself put together..
The original Woodstock rock festival had a great deal of "drugs" other than alcohol and not much alcohol and yet had no violence.
The Woodstock reenactment some years ago had a great deal of alcohol and not so many other "drugs" and ended in a drunken riot.
But "drugs" cause violence, everybody knows that, we are told that by the government and the news media on a constant basis. The government and the news media would never lie to us about something so important, would they?
When was the last time you heard of a shootout between alcoholic beverage distributors?
I have to commend y'all for your restraint, by now on most forums I would have been called a druggie who just wants easier and cheaper access to drugs.
I mean, no one would stand up for the rights of a class of people to which they did not belong, would they?
Boston Tom's mostly got it right. The other reason for the silence is that you haven't connected this up to the primary reasons this blog exists, national security issues and military affairs. Do so and I'm sure that you'll get more response.
My only argument with your line of thinking is that individuals can do some amazingly stupid things to themselves (think Darwin awards), and free access to drugs (including alcohol) increases the odds of innocent bystanders being injured or killed in our ever-more interconnected world.
Do I think that my statement above justifies our current system? Absolutely not! It's just that, like Congress, I haven't put enough time and thought into figuring out what a better system would look like. It's obvious to anybody who thinks about it for a while that the whole "war on drugs" thing is mostly a series of expensive knee-jerk reactions to a situation that may or may not have been a problem. Kind of like the Iraq war.
If you really want to go out on a limb and try to connect our justice system to military affairs, go research the German use of Penal Battalions at the end of WWII and see if it is applicable to the current situation.
To get back to the main topic, I want to argue against one of the Administration's goals that is frequently cited in discussions on NSL's, 100% prevention of terrorist attacks. While this is a laudable goal, it's sort of like winning the war on drugs. Only possible if you completely redesign our society and our government. Based on past experience with the war on drugs; we, the frequent posters in this blog, would not like the results very much.
In fact, I'd argue that we are better off with an occasional terrorist attack succeeding than we are with enduring the changes required to achieve the goal. I recall that the Europeans had a nasty run of terrorist incidents back in the 1980's with a variety of terrorist organizations. They mostly asked their citizens to suck it up for a while until the police caught up with the idiots who perpetrated the crimes. Why can't we ask the same of our citizens?
Basilbeast has made a good point that the discussion over NSL's is mostly arguing about changing the lock on the house while it is burning down because the government doesn't DO maintenance anymore. They just contract it out to the lowest bidder and then assume everything is okay until we hear otherwise.
I can find additional evidence of this tendancy in the astonishingly lax mortgage requirements of the last few years and the news that our drinking water is laced with small but increasing quantities of pharmaceuticals. Just imagine the world our children are going to inhabit in 30 years or so...
I'm not going to end this diatribe with WASF (though it is tempting), I'm just going to note that our ever-more connected world requires ever-better judgement in using our ever-increasing technology. And that this seems to be a quality that our government and society seem to be lacking.
Hopefully the next superpower will do better as it is far too late for us to change our ways now.
I've been reading off and on here for about three years now and find the conversation to be generally some of the most intelligent to be found on teh intertoobz.
Sorry, I just don't have the time or really the patience to lead you step-by-painful step in order to perceive what is to me glaringly obvious. Nearly twenty years of experience tells me that if you do not already make the connections then you will bitterly resist any attempt on my part to explain them to you. I've found that trying to argue with those who do not see my points fairly quickly strongly resembles nailing jello to the wall.
I have grandchildren and would prefer that they live in a free society rather than a police state, that really is the only reason I bother to post any more since my health is not all that good and I don't really expect to live a great deal longer.
I'll go back to lurk mode now..
Farewell and Godspeed.
For what it's worth I do agree with you about the drugs laws, but just don't think we have have any practical chance of doing anything real about them at this point -- and we have bigger fish to fry in the here and now.
But you should stick around.
The vast majority of Americans have absorbed authoritarianism through their very pores. My view of things is simply too alien, too freedom oriented, for Americans to accept now.
I'll leave you with one final point..
How many people are in prison thanks to the war on terror?
How many people are in prison thanks to the war on drugs?
Which is *really* the bigger fish to fry?
Good luck and good night.
Don't lurk! Why do I say that? Because not everybody is capable of posting things like this:
Outstanding.
We didn't ignore you - there being a lot of military guys, we probably respond three or four times faster to those we disagree with than those we agree with. And I sure think you are on to something. When the "war on drugs" first began there was talk of how it could, or would, erode civil liberties.
But only hippy dope-smoking flag-burning "librals" appeared to care. Of course they were wrong - and they will know that when we round them up soon, right?
The land of the free has the highest incarceration rate in the world, the home of the brave spends more on defense the rest of the world combined - and the right-wing is still pissing its pants and insisting all is nearly lost.
I think the drug war is a symptom, Soliton, a very disturbing symptom, but not the disease itself.
Good to see you posting again!
I recall that the Europeans had a nasty run of terrorist incidents back in the 1980's with a variety of terrorist organizations. They mostly asked their citizens to suck it up for a while until the police caught up with the idiots who perpetrated the crimes.
Not to mention that, once this had come to be known as standing policy, it engendered enthusiastic civilian cooperation with the police agencies in question, many of which had come into the game with shaky post-1968 reputations for abusive conduct.
Once the police had made it sufficiently clear that they intended to work by the book, respect civil liberties and deliver fair trials to those apprehended, lo and behold, they began to get tip-offs and other such necessary cooperation.
--
Kristallnacht and the horrendous aftermath was but a symptom of fascism and prejudice against Jews.
I posted the fourteen points of fascism quite a while ago on this forum under another handle, pointed out that the the US exhibits every single one to a greater or lesser extent (several of them perfectly) and was roundly ignored for my trouble.
http://www.ellensplace.net/fascism.html
Everyone knows it can't happen here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can't_Happen_Here
We gave up on "the war on poverty" when it became clear that it could never be won.
We now are engaged in a war on inanimate objects and a war on a tactic used by the weak against the strong.
Given that "drugs" are available in high security prisons, it is pellucidly clear that the drug war can never be won even by turning the entire nation into a a high security prison.
Does anyone else find it ironic that politicians who consume alcohol advocate for "a drug-free America"?
Probably not, the very language is designed to make it appear that alcohol is not a drug. "Drugs and alcohol".. Even people who should know better use the phrase, like my physician brother in law who drinks quite a bit and yet teaches his son that marijuana is a dangerous drug.
Given that there will always be the weak and the strong it is also clear that the terror war can never be won either.
We have always been at war with Eastasia, eh?
I do recall that post. As JD mentioned earlier, people here tend to pounce on things that irritate them. Not getting a response doesn't mean you were ignored, it means you were assimilated without complaint.
Since you've been lurking here for the last three years, you probably recall my story as well. I originally started posting messages about the country's extreme lack of financial health and how it was going to impact national security priorities and the military. As you'll recall, I didn't get much of a response at first either, at best I'd get an occasional "he's right, you know."
But I kept posting when I felt I had something to offer that would further the discussion and I've received more and more feedback over time.
It's your call over whether you're going to post more frequently or not but I say that you've got content to add and I'd like to hear more from you about how you think the war on drugs informs our discussions. If you want more response, I'd suggest making giving your goal-oriented audience some future courses of action to think about. It's one thing to say "the situation is terrible," it's quite another to say "here's how we can make it better."
To move slightly beyond your topic, as I've occasionally mentioned in the past, I use this blog as a sounding board for my visions of the future. Soliton, what do you foresee for the future, given current and past trends?
My view is that the US is heading for the biggest economic meltdown in the history of the world and the current credit crunch is just the first (and smallest) of several massive tidal waves that will destroy the country in fact, if not in name. I should warn you that I'm a bit of a pessimist, but now my most optimistic forecast is for the US to last about 20 years in its current form.
Do you see things differently? If so, why?
I'm an economic illiterate but my brother follows this stuff quite closely and he thinks just as you do.
In fact my brother pointed me at this column just this morning:
http://www.coloradogold.com/archive/Powerless-387.html
And then there is this:
http://www.the-privateer.com/chart/gold-pf.html
The smart folks started buying gold when Bush was elected.
Me? I have a hundred pounds each of rice and beans stored and am going to get another hundred pounds of each as well as vitamin/mineral supplements and other sorts of absolute necessities..
Both my brother and my son in law have multi acre family compounds and enough firearms to outfit a squad.. If things get bad we will go and move in with one of them. Bro already has a pretty decent garden and I have two copies of the Encyclopedia of Organic Farming. I also have numerous books on low tech ways of survival, solar heating and other subjects that will be vital in a real economic crash.
I'm one of the guys you want around after a nuclear war, I can fix a diesel generator with bubble gum and a paper clip.. (well, almost).. I'll be able to pull my weight just by providing tech assistance even if I'm physically incapable of doing much.
I can still shoot too, if the rifle has a scope..
That said, I think that this MAY be the final swing of the cycle of power that has waxed and waned with the national conciousness since that founding year. Let me try and expound a bit.
Our revolution - unlike most of the other well-known revolutions, the French and the Russian most of all, was a profoundly conservative one. There was no real social "agenda" to the Founders' rejection of monarchy, no call for an overturn of social classes or an abolition of privledge and wealth. The bulk of the Founders and Framers WERE wealthy elites in their states, and their product showed a marked lack of enthusiasm to promote "equality of outcomes", shall we say.
So IMO the most consistent tension in this country has been one between wealth and birth on one side and aspirations to the same on the other. Not that for much of our history the poor and unpowered have been fighting to abolish the rich - they have, more often, been fighting to avoid the entrenchment of the two groups. Their rivals have been doing what the wealthy and powerful have been doing since the days of the Pharoahs: ensure that their kids and kids' kids remain the wealthy and powerful.
The best single quote I've heard that sums this up comes from the otherwise hopeless musical "1776", wherein the plutocrat Founder sneers that "Most people wish to preserve the fantasy of becoming rich rather than face the reality of being poor."
Throughout our history the haves and the have-nots have pushed and pulled over power. The have-not Jacksonians pushed for power in the 1840s...the haves pushed back in the Gilded Age of the late Nineteenth Century...the have-nots made another push in the "Good Government" and muckraking first decades of the Twentieth...the haves settled in nicely after WW1 until the meltdown of 1929 pushed them out of the limelight for a generation.
This is NOT to say that the leadership of this country ever stopped being the same mix of rich, well-born and able that it started with. But the WAY these elites governed was swayed by the tenor of the public's desire for republicanism. FDR, that great enemy of the old Republican money was as patrician as any of them - but he GOVERNED to the left - not because of his flaming socialist philosophy, but because in many ways he was frightened of the REAL Socialists and Communists and knew that the best way to foment another Revolution was to grind the lot of the common American down to the poorest nub. Likewise, Henry Ford wasn't anything less of a loathsome semifascist plutocrat because he paid his workers a decent wage. He just knew that better paid workers were less likely to become Wobblies and strike. Better paid workers bought Fords and voted Republican.
IMO the present governing class in this country has largely forgotten this. The inequity of wealth in America is almost where it was in 1890. Huge amounts of this wealth pour into our political process, abusing and debasing our politics and buying our politicians. Those like John Edwards or Ron Paul who warn against this are derided as kooks and lunatics (OK, well, Paul IS sort of a kook, but, whatever). We are becoming a nation of poor sheep governed by wealthy wolves.
An entrenched wealthy elite soon learns to fear its own domestic rivals - and its disenfranchised populace - as much or more than the nation's external enemies. They recall that it was the Paris canaille that destroyed the Bourbons rather than the Hapsburgs or the Hanovers; the Russian peasants that brought down the Romanovs, rather than the Hohenzollerens. ISTM that all of this frenetic secret spying is a symptom rather than the disease. The disease is the sickening and elitism that is overcoming our society, a poisoning not from external lead but from internal silver. We are subsiding into the kind of intellectual rut that senescent democracies fall to; Alcibidean Athens, or Late Republican Rome. The fact that we have NOT revolted against the clearly observed corruption, venality, temerity and cronyism of the current Administration is a straightforward consequence of our lack of civic virtue. The Founders and Framers left us a republic but only if we continued active enough in the politial process to keep it.
Entrenched wealth, crony capitalism, seperate societies for poor and rich - these do not keep a republic.
I am not optimistic. I would say that as this point the only hope for the Tree of Liberty is a fresh watering of patriot blood. I do not expect to see it. A nation that is not outraged by NSLs, by secret prisons, by lies and more lies and still more lies, a nation that does not fear the power craving of its own leaders enough to haul them down when they themeselves admit to breaking the People's Law is a nation that is, link by heavy link, forging its own well-deserved chains.
Precisely the meme the Republicans have been running on for.. A long time, anyway.
Get people to vote against their own best interests by convincing them they are going to become wealthy "real soon now" and by playing on their bigotry against anyone who doesn't act, talk, think, look or go to the same church they do.
Not that the Democrats are all that much better but at least they aren't totally divorced from reality.
I've pretty much concluded that both parties are really controlled by the same people, they would prefer Republicans to be in power since their agenda is more easily pushed to the front burner then but they keep the Dems in reserve as a "b" team.
Classic "good cop, bad cop" routine..
Which is why I wonder that I got such a harsh reception when I stated I think torture is ongoing at Guantanamo..
If the government would lie to put over a million citizens in prison, why would it balk at lying about a few terrorists being tortured?
Your response to my comments are quite reasonable but I'm going in a different direction.
I'm not thinking the end of civilization as we know it, I'm much more thinking Holy Roman Empire (neither Holy, nor Roman, nor really an Empire) as the model. The country isn't going out with a bang or even a whimper, it's just going to fade away into obscurity. We'll still be electing Presidents for quite a while, they'll just have ever less power and authority.
We're already beginning to send the limits of real Presidential power, for example Arnold Schwartzenegger signed the Kyoto Accord on behalf of the
nationstate of California when the Federal government didn't act.The Minnesota governor set up a website to assist MN citizens in purchasing lower-priced Canadian drugs before Medicare Part D plan went into effect. Bush and Congress had declared that doing so was a crime but they never responded to Pawlenty's actions.
Two and a half years after Katrina, far too many of the good people of New Orleans are still living in FEMA trailers (the ones that don't contain poisonous amounts of formaldehyde) while Federal bureaucrats argue over what the president meant when he promised that "New Orleans will be rebuilt completely and quickly." Local businessmen and activists like Brad Pitt are stepping in to rebuild the city without Federal aid, not just because they want to but because they feel it won't happen any other way.
The IRS estimated last year that taxpayers are underpaying their taxes by $370 billion dollars. That's approximately 17% of the taxes actually collected and I expect the percentage to start going up drastically in the near future.
Do you recall when Cheney sneered at the notion that "soft power," (international respect for the US government) had any value? "Soft power" is sole way the Federal government maintains control over the country and it is sadly lacking in that department these days.
I could go on and on with examples but everybody here has seen it all before. So what DOES the future look like?
To be honest, I don't really have a clue. Here's what I do know, people will still inhabit this land. Children will still be born, crops will still be harvested, and factories will still convert raw materials into finished goods. Money of some sort, perhaps US dollars or Euros, will be used to purchase those goods and transport them to consumers who will find some way to purchase them. Our frayed infrastructure will be held together somehow, perhaps with duct tape.
FDChief wrote an excellent description of the motivations of the founding fathers above. We're facing the same issues now except that the leaders who can't get the job done are now on this side of the Atlantic.
Will we rebel? I don't think so. We've all seen how incredibly destructive and expensive open warfare is; remember the Vietnamese village that was destroyed to save it? I do, and so do far too many other people in this country. Modern warfare really is the course of last resort when you have absolutely nothing left to lose.
Will we submit to dictatorship? I don't think that will happen either. I believe the American people will respond much the way that they are already responding to the leadership vacuum in Washington, by filling the gap themselves and trying to fix their own problems rather than looking to Washington to fix things for them.
FDC struck kind of a Star Wars theme at the end with the people in the Republic facing a choice between revolt and tyranny. I'll end by paraphrasing Princess Leia on a third option, "The tighter you squeeze your iron fist the more people will find a way to escape." If I'm wrong then JD and FDC will have to lead the revolution.
P.S. - I've got mixed feelings about the people who buy gold. I understand EXACTLY why they do it but it hasn't really held its value that well in modern times except during certain rare peaks like the one we are experiencing right now. Me, I bought oil instead and while its value bounces around like a ping pong ball in a hurricane, it predictably comes back higher than ever.
You're right. Now how can we realistically fix it?
Given that cannabis is the nation's largest cash crop I suspect the IRS is drastically underestimating the size of the underground economy.
We actually used to pay a bit more in taxes than we had to, trying to avoid an audit we didn't take every deduction we were really entitled to.. The home office deduction in particular is a very sensitive audit trigger.. Legitimately we could have claimed it but we didn't want the hassle of an audit. If you are wealthy, which we by no means are, an audit is not really a big deal, for the little guy without the means to hire representation it can be a killer.
Look at ebay, there are vast amounts of money changing hands there, I know because I do a fair bit of trading on ebay myself.. Likewise craigslist.. huge number of transactions going on, I do business there too.
As for the end of the world scenario, if gas skyrockets like I think there is a very good chance it will, I'm looking forward to throngs of people unable to afford to get to work in their SUV's.. The number of jobless, homeless people will soar.. We already have entire families living in their cars in my exurban area.. I've spoken to my grandchildren's teachers about it and there are such children in their classes.. It is not something people wish to advertise and they try very hard to escape notice.
To be poor where everyone else is poor is one thing, to be poor where it appears you are surrounded by wealthy people is entirely another.
Without jobs, here in our capitalist utopia, how are people even going to afford to eat?
That's why I am stocking up on storeable food, not because I expect the end of society but because I may not have sufficient income to feed myself and my wife.. My brother is better off than I am but his reserves aren't equal to more than a year or so of living expenses. He has a commercial painting business and his income has been dropping precipitously for the last couple of years and he sees no relief on the horizon and indeed says things are going to get worse and that the paint stores are laying off salesmen and closing stores.
Transportation is key and sufficiently high gas prices will paralyze the transportation net.. Diesel is already only a hairbreadth from $4.00/gallon.
I was in Home Depot yesterday, it used to be packed on Saturday to the point it was hard to move around.. The store was almost eerily empty and half the cashiers were standing out in front of their registers.
It seems to me that the official economic numbers are being manipulated to make things appear better than they really are.
These things work like an avalanche, one snowflake shifts which dislodges two more, they multiply in a geometric progression and pretty soon the entire mountainside is coming down.
There is no "seed corn" left any more.. Agricultural societies that ate the seed corn in lean winters were creating misery for themselves..
We don't even have the excuse of eating the seed corn in a lean winter, we are burning our seed corn to bomb and kill people on the other side of the world who have never done anything to us..
We are burning the seed corn to needlessly lock essentially innocent people into filthy steel cages under the total control of sadists.
As soon as they are old enough to understand what I'm saying I'm telling my grandchildren how I feel about things and what I have done to try to remedy the situation..
I don't want them cursing my memory when I'm gone and the bottom truly drops out.
I honestly wish I had a clue.. I can't even get my own family to listen to me, they roll their eyes and start mentally putting their fingers in their ears and singing when I talk about politics or economics.. My brother is the only one who listens to what I say and we basically already agree on just about everything.
My son in law thought I was an upatriotic idiot when I told him I thought the Iraq invasion was going to turn out really badly. Even though I turned out to be right and he knows full well I know more of history, politics and damn near everything else than he does he still doesn't want to talk about it.
Son in law is a good man and good father but he has swallowed entirely too much feel good, we're #1 propaganda to be reached until things get considerably worse than they are now.
The New York Times is supposed to be a "liberal" newspaper. On the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion they had nine op eds on the Iraq war.
Not one single effin' one was by someone who originally opposed the war.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=9912#comments
Glenn Greenwald's column over at salon.com regularly deconstructs the chattering of the pundit class.. His point, which I agree with completely, is that if you do not accept the generally accepted "inside the beltway" consensus on things you will never be a "Serious" member of the pundit class.. The politicians and the press live inside a kind reality distortion field bubble where basic questions about policy may not be asked or even thought about. All dialogue takes place within rigid constrained parameters of thought and no deviation from the commonly accepted "wisdom" is allowed.
There are a lot of people who seem to think Obama might bring about basic change if he gets elected.. Frankly I doubt it though for reasons I'll be happy to discuss if anyone is interested.
Yep - the moonies. The freakin' Syung Yung Moon. Being celebrated by President Bush and the entire right-wing establishment.
And the right wing is freaking out about Obama's pastor? (whose comments, by the way, when taken in context, were not as outlandish as "God Damn America" makes it seem - what would YOU say if you were an African slave and somebody asked you what you thought of those that enslaved you? That is what he was talking about - but of course the right-wing takes it out of context and pretends he hates the USA and the Constitution and is some sort of black panther guy).
Sure, Obama's pastor said some things - but here is the Republican establishment celebrating with their buddy the Rev. Moon, of the Moonies. Yep, the guy who has thousands of people marry others in stadiums - even though the couples don't meet until the wedding.
Freaking crazy. It isn't the message that is the problem, it is that the media is controlled by a very few, they are in the pocket of the far right, and truth has to struggle to get out.
I think we may need a revolution - I really, really, really pray (not to Rev. Moon) that Obama can set things right, but I don't see how given that the nation has allowed these unconstitutional things to happen for so long, and given that the criminal in chief is going to get away with it and leave office as if he were an honorable man instead of the despicable criminal he is.
I would be willing to bet that most black Americans would predict that, given an Obama presidential swearing in ceremony being allowed to occur, their man from Hope would be cut down in short order by the Man. No scientific analysis used her, just a hunch.
OK, I have a question:
Do you think McCain or Clinton are more likely to bring about that sort of change than Obama is?
This ain't no grand opera. We've got what we have, can do what we can, and the only thing that will do us any good is doing things better than Mr. Bush and his gang have -- step by step by step.
It is to laugh..
But Obama has already shown himself to be a world class hypocrite.
Much has been made of Obama's faith, he makes it clear that he is a follower of Jesus the Christ.
The sin the Christ most often and vociferously denounced? That of hypocrisy.
In the parable of the Good Samaritan the Christ makes the point that when dealing with our fellow man His followers are to treat them as they would be treated themselves. Obama is a smart man who claims to read the Bible, there is no way that he can be ignorant of this.
Obama has admitted of his own free will that he has used both cocaine and cannabis in the past and yet supports a policy which would, if applied to himself as a young man, keep him from ever becoming president.
Obviously, Obama is either a world class hypocrite or wishes that he had a police record that would keep him from ever running for president.
I'll leave determining which explanation of Obama's actions is the most likely to you.
The Christ also strongly implies in the Good Samaritan parable that piety blinds us to our own flaws, I'll be happy to explain my reasoning on that also..
Not to mention McCain's endorsement by John Hagee, a megachurch preacher who has said some remarkably hateful things, among them:
It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God’s chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day.
And:
How utterly repulsive, insulting, and heartbreaking to God for his chosen people to credit idols with bringing blessings he had showered upon the chosen people. Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come.
And:
All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are — were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades. So I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing. I know that there are people who demur from that, but I believe that the Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment. And I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.
And last but not least, Hagee thinks the Pope is the antichrist and Catholicism, the single largest denomination in the country, is "The Whore of Babylon".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uViQ0hVV57Q
McCain enthusiastically and specifically sought the endorsement of Hagee..
We have heard no calls in the press for McCain to reject Hagee's endorsement.
Why might this be?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/opinion/17krugman.html
Use the login: fredfredfred38
Password is: password
http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2008/03/17/tomo/index.html
Spare me the sermon. I asked you a straight question, and would very much appreciate a straight answer.
Which is what I meant by "It is to laugh".
It is a rigged game, your vote is basically meaningless and the only candidates who might have possibly made anything vaguely resembling fundamental changes were driven out of the race quite a while ago.
I can tell you one thing that Clinton or Obama will do differently than McCain for sure: they won't appoint as many Republican judges, and they especially won't appoint any Republicans to the Supreme Court. I suspect they'll be a lot less inclined to continue the war in Iraq or start an even more idiotic war with Iran.
I answered your question forthrightly..
Will you answer one of mine in a similar fashion?
Do you think Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama are likely to do anything meaningful about the situation outlined below?
http://www.prisonsucks.com/
South Africa under Apartheid was internationally condemned as a racist society.
* South Africa under apartheid (1993), Black males: 851 per 100,000
* U.S. under George Bush (2006), Black males: 4,789 per 100,000
What does it mean that the leader of the "free world" locks up its Black males at a rate 5.8 times higher than the most openly racist country in the world?
You're making a fallacious argument here, in essence, that it's pointless to do anything unless you can do everything. I know too much history to buy that. The way we make progress is by doing what we can under the circumstances. Sometimes we get a chance to do more than usual, and this looks a lot like one of those times to me, much the way 1932 was.
Did FDR solve all our problems?
Nope, but he sure solved a lot more of them than Herbert Hoover did -- and Herbert Hoover was a very intelligent and well-meaning individual, which is a lot more than I can say for murderous criminals like Curious George Bush and Dirty Dick Cheney.
Not all problems are the same. The drug laws reflect some very deep seated social realities in ways that are way beyond the uncomplicated corruption and lawlessness of the Bush administration. How are you going to solve something like prohibition when you have politicians who are willing to resort to torture?
I don't think it's going to swing quite that way. The price of oil is determined by a large number of factors basically related to economic activity. If the economy slows the price of oil goes down (relative to other costs) and people can afford more of it which saves jobs etc.
You are right that transportation is a key factor but I think that you are overvaluing it because the current economy also does so. If the cost of transportation goes up then the cost of manufacturing the goods locally becomes more reasonable and jobs that have been sent far away start coming back home. An example of this occurred recently when a German car manufacturer decided that it should make the cars that it intends to sell in the US in the US because of transportation and other costs. We'll see more of that as this whole credit crunch evolves.
I've also been reading Paul Krugman recently, he just did a nice interview with Fortune recently that's worth reading. Here's the link. I don't agree with everything he says but at least he explains why he thinks the way he does and the reasoning does seem to be sound.
Your quote from Robert Heinlein, oddly enough, explains EXACTLY how Congress got into its current mess. Pretty near every member of Congress is reflexively voting against everything that comes across their radar screen rather than trying to figure out how incorporate other people's visions into their own view of how the world should work.
Democracy only works when people who regard themselves as reasonable are willing to talk to each other on all issues. Instead Congress has formed into the two massive blocs that won't communicate and keep shouting at each other "You started this mess and I'm going to finish it." The whole situation rather reminds me of World War I, and we all know how well that one turned out.
Your comparison between South Africa and the current US prison population is misleading. Blacks were such a high percentage of the population in South Africa that the white Africanners had a terrible time figuring out how to guard the prisoners, which seriously limited the prison population and was one of the factors that led to the end of Apartheit. Since blacks are a much smaller percentage of the US population, it gives us a much larger pool of guards.
We've all agreed that the current situation regarding prisons and drug laws is bad, please give us some reasonable suggestions on how to make it better.
As for McCain seeking Hagee's endorsement, everybody here recognized a long time ago that McCain wants the Presidency so badly that he'll do anything to get it regardless of future consequences so this isn't really anything new.
And he is already on record as supporting the drug war.
I'm interested, were you at all surprised at the statistic I pointed out above?
Frankly I think that only a conservative can end the drug war, just as only Nixon could go to China.
Liberals are just too scared of being painted as "weak on crime".
Prohibition *is* torture..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
Prisoners and guards rapidly adapted to their roles, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted and leading to dangerous and psychologically damaging situations. One-third of the guards were judged to have exhibited "genuine" sadistic tendencies, while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized and two had to be removed from the experiment early. Finally, Zimbardo, alarmed at the increasingly abusive anti-social behavior from his subjects, terminated the entire experiment early.
That took all of six days.. What do you think happens to people after decades?
Democracy only works when people who regard themselves as reasonable are willing to talk to each other on all issues. Instead Congress has formed into the two massive blocs that won't communicate and keep shouting at each other "You started this mess and I'm going to finish it." The whole situation rather reminds me of World War I, and we all know how well that one turned out.
Do you honestly see the Republicans as "reasonable"?
We just finished six years of the Democrats lying down for practically everything the Republicans wanted and you think the Dems should be more "reasonable"?
As for McCain seeking Hagee's endorsement, everybody here recognized a long time ago that McCain wants the Presidency so badly that he'll do anything to get it regardless of future consequences so this isn't really anything new.
That wasn't really my point.. The point is that Obama's minister's sermons are fodder for the media while Hagee's hatefulness is swept under the rug by the same media..
For at least a decade now, any time the media has wanted the "religious" viewpoint they have trotted out the likes of Falwell, Robertson and Hagee for public consumption. It is a determined effort to make what is really religious extremism nearly on the level of radical Islam appear to be the mainstream in America.
I loathe and despise double standards and from my point of view there is a tremendous double standard when it comes to the way the media reports religion and politics.
Even were I in good health a trip to the closest store in my area on foot would eat up half the day and I could only bring back a couple of bags of purchases, whatever I could carry. Which means I would have to do that at least twice a seek. There are no sidewalks and indeed not even any shoulders on at least a mile or two of the road I would have to traverse on foot. Walking or bicycling here is tantamount to Russian roulette..
I have family in NYC and it's quite possible to do without a care there, not so where I live.
If I make my fonts big enough on screen to see them easily I spend my entire time scrolling around to read it..
I'm familiar with the statistics. I'm also aware that the vast majority of blacks in this country are of mixed ancestry, and that the scientific evidence strongly suggest that ever human being is descended from common ancestry if you go back far enough.
All you're really telling me is something I already know: that doing anything major about the drug issues just isn't politically viable in the here and now, for the simple reason that the vast majority of people in both parties support prohibition.
Would you like to quibble about the fundamental injustice of the divorce laws or private land ownership too?
I think the genetic evidence shows that our species went through a point where there was less than a hundred individuals although it's been a while since I've read about that. So, yes we basically are all related..
Personally I find the entire concept of "race" to be insulting, we are but one race: homo sapiens sapiens..
Although the more I learn about people, the more I start to wonder about the "sapiens" part.
Nothing will ever be done about the drug war and the US will continue the ever downward slide into authoritarianism.
Electing a Democrat will probably slow the slide a bit, but it is basically inevitable.
Do you have kids or grandkids?
I forgot, my discussion on Obama's hypocrisy was not a sermon, but rather a logical deconstruction of his religious and moral stances.
I could hardly deliver a sermon since I'm basically an atheist.
But even illiterates can look at a graph and get something out of it..
What I got out of this one was "uh-oh" or maybe "oh crap" or possibly, if it were on a medical readout "flat line"..
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BOGNONBR
Sure explains why Bear Stearns agreed to sell itself so cheap so fast. Lehman Brothers is next up, we'll see if they can survive or not. My best guess is that they'll also sell out in 2-3 weeks.
As for Obama's "hypocrisy", it looks a lot more like your own from where I sit. It's a pretty cheap word to deploy against politicians in the best of times, but doing it against someone like Obama when we have festering degenerates like Bush and Cheney in office is vacuous BS.