There are 2 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Their Own Economic Reality
From: "President, USA Exile Govt." <prez@usa-exile.org>
2. NYC March for 9/11 Truth Monday!
From: "President, USA Exile Govt." <prez@usa-exile.org>
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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 08:38:12 -0500
From: "President, USA Exile Govt." <prez@usa-exile.org>
Subject: Their Own Economic Reality
Forwarded with Compliments of Government of the USA in Exile (GUSAE):
Free Americans Proclaiming Total Emancipation and Working Towards
Democracy. NOTE: This is a splendid summary of what's going down
economically. -- kl, pp
Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 07:25:18 -0000 From: "Rowan Berkeley"
<rowan_berkeley@yahoo.co.uk> To: "Peter Myers" <myers@cyberone.com.au>
"Even Jobs
at McDonald's Aren't Safe":
Their Own Economic Reality
By Paul Craig Roberts, CounterPunch, February 16, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02162006.html
Who can forget the neocons' claim that under their leadership America
creates
its own reality? Remember the neocons' Iraq reality--a "cakewalk" war?
After
three years of combat, thousands of casualties, and cost estimated at
over $1
trillion, real reality must still compete with the White House spin
machine.
One might think that the Iraq experience would restore sober judgement
to
policymakers. Alas, neocon reality has spread everywhere. It has
infected the
media and the new Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, who just gave
Congress
an upbeat report on the economy. The robust economy, he declared, could
soon
lead to inflation and higher interest rates.
Consumers deeper in debt and fresh from their first negative savings
rate since
the Great Depression show high consumer confidence. It is as if the
entire
country is on an acid trip or a cocaine trip or whatever it is that
lets people
create realities for themselves that bear no relation to real reality.
How can the upbeat views be reconciled with the Bureau of Labor
Statistics'
payroll jobs data, the extraordinary red ink, and exploding trade
deficit?
Perhaps the answer is that every economic development, no matter how
detrimental, is spun as if it were good news. For example, the
worsening US
trade deficit is spun as evidence of the fast growth of the US economy:
the
economy is growing so fast it can't meet its needs and must rely on
imports.
Declining household income is spun as an inflation fighter that keeps
mortgage
interest rates low. Federal budget deficits are spun as letting
taxpayers keep
and spend more of their own money. Massive layoffs are spun as evidence
that
change is so rapid that the work force must constantly upgrade skills
and
re-educate itself.
The denial of economic reality has become an art form. Except for Lou
Dobbs, no
accurate economic reporting is available in the "mainstream media."
Occasionally, real information escapes the spin machine. The National
Association of Manufacturers, one of outsourcing's greatest boosters,
has just
released a report, "US Manufacturing Innovation at Risk," by economists
Joel
Popkin and Kathryn Kobe. The economists find that US industry's
investment in
research and development is not languishing after all. It just appears
to be
languishing, because it is rapidly being shifted overseas: "Funds
provided for
foreign-performed R&D have grown by almost 73 percent between 1999 and
2003,
with a 36 percent increase in the number of firms funding foreign R&D."
US industry is still investing in R&D after all; it is just not hiring
Americans
to do the R&D. US manufacturers still make things, only less and less
in America
with American labor. US manufacturers still hire engineers, only they
are
foreign ones, not American ones.
In other words, everything is fine for US manufacturers. It is just
their former
American work force that is in the doldrums. As these Americans happen
to be
customers for US manufacturers, US brand names will gradually lose
their US
market. US household median income has fallen for the past five years.
Consumer
demand has been kept alive by consumers' spending their savings and
home equity
and going deeper into debt. It is not possible for debt to forever rise
faster
than income.
When manufacturing moves abroad, engineering follows. R&D follows
engineering,
and innovation follows R&D. The entire economy drains away. This is why
the "new
economy" has not materialized to take the place of the lost "old
economy."
The latest technologies go into the newest plants, and those plants are
abroad.
Innovations take place in new plants as new processes are developed to
optimize
the efficiency of the new technologies. The skills required to operate
new
processes call forth investment in education and training. As US
manufacturing
and R&D move abroad, Indian and Chinese engineering enrollments rise,
and US
enrollments decline.
The process is a unified whole. It is not possible for a country to
lose parts
of the process and hold on to other parts. That is why the "new
economy" was a
hoax from the beginning. As Popkin and Kobe note, new technologies, new
manufacturing processes, and new designs take place where things are
made. The
notion that the US can lose everything else but hold on to innovation
is absurd.
Someone needs to tell Congress before they waste yet more borrowed
money. In an
adjoining column to the NAM report on innovation, the February 6
Manufacturing &
Technology News reports that "the US Senate is jumping on board the
competitiveness issue." The Bush regime and the doormat Congress have
come
together in the belief that the US can keep its edge in science and
technology
if the federal government spends $9 billion a year to "fund innovative,
big-payoff ideas that have the potential to transform the US economy."
The utter stupidity of the "Protecting America's Competitive Edge Act"
(PACE) is
obvious. The tremendous labor cost advantage of doing things abroad
will equally
apply to any new "big-payoff ideas" as it does to the goods and services
currently outsourced. Moreover, US research is open-sourced. It is
available to
anyone. As the Cox Commission Report made clear, there are a large
number of
Chinese front companies in the US for the sole purpose of collecting
technology.
PACE will simply be another US taxpayer subsidy to the rising Asian
economies.
The assertion that we hear every day that America is falling behind
because it
doesn't produce enough science, mathematics and engineering graduates
is a
bald-faced lie. The problem is always brought back to education
failures in
K-12, that is, to more education subsidies. When CEOs say they can't
find
American engineers, they mean they cannot find Americans who will work
for
Chinese or Indian wages. That is what the so-called "shortage" is all
about.
I receive a constant stream of emails from unemployed and underemployed
engineers with many years of experience and advanced degrees. Many have
been out
of work for years. They describe the movement of their jobs offshore or
their
replacement by foreigners brought in on work visas. Many no longer even
know
American engineers who are employed in the profession. Some are now
working in
sawmills, others in Home Depot, and others are attempting to eke out a
living as
consultants. Many describe lost homes, broken marriages, even
imprisonment for
inability to make child support payments.
Many ask me how economists can be so blind to reality. Here is my
answer: Many
economists are bought and paid for by outsourcers. Most of the studies
claiming
to prove that Americans benefit from outsourcing are done by economic
consulting
firms hired by outsourcers. Or they are done by think tanks or
university
professors dependent on corporate donors. Or they reflect the ideology
of "free
market economists" who are committed to the belief that "freedom" is
good and
always produces good results. Since outsourcing is merely the freedom of
property to act in its interest, and since this self-interest is always
guided
by an invisible hand to the greater welfare of everyone, outsourcing,
ipso
facto, is good for America. Anyone who doesn't think so is a fascist
who wants
to take away the rights of property. Seriously, this is what passes for
analysis
among "free market economists."
Economists' commitment to their "reality" is destroying the ladders of
upward
mobility that made America the land of opportunity. It is just as
destructive as
the neocons' commitment to their "reality" that is driving the US
deeper into
war in the Middle East.
Fact and analysis no longer play a role. The spun reality in which
Americans
live is insulated against intelligent perception.
American "manufacturers" are becoming merely marketers of foreign made
goods.
The CEOs and shareholders have too short a time horizon to understand
that once
foreigners control the manufacture-design-innovation process, they will
bypass
American brand names. US companies will simply cease to exist.
Norm Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin, says that even
McDonald's jobs
are no longer safe. Why pay an error-prone order-taker the minimum wage
when
McDonald's can have the order transmitted via satellite to a central
location
and from there to the person preparing the order. McDonald's experiment
with
this system to date has cut its error rate by 50% and increased its
throughput
by 20 percent. Technology lets the orders be taken in India or China at
costs
below the minimum wage and without the liabilities of US employees.
Americans are giving up their civil liberties because they fear
terrorist
attacks. All of the terrorists in the world cannot do America the
damage it has
already suffered from offshore outsourcing.
--
Peter Myers, 381 Goodwood Rd, Childers 4660, Australia ph +61 7 41262296
http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers Mirror:
http://mailstar.net/index.html I
use the old Mac OS; being incompatible, it cannot run Windows viruses or
transmit them to you.
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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 09:28:21 -0500
From: "President, USA Exile Govt." <prez@usa-exile.org>
Subject: NYC March for 9/11 Truth Monday!
Forwarded with Compliments of Government of the USA in Exile (GUSAE):
Free Americans Resisting the Fourth Reich on Behalf of All Species.
NOTE: Thanks to flyingsnail.com for this; I hope everyone within 100
miles of NYC will attend this critically important, deftly focused
demo; by the way, many other groups can be added to the list of
"establishment left gatekeepers" below and the one that comes most
quickly to mind for me is so-called MoveOn: Move on over, MoveOn.org,
or we'll move on over you. -- kl, pp
http://www.flyingsnail.com/
Presidents' Day "March for 9/11 Truth,"
NYC Ground Zero, 10 a.m. Monday,
2/20/06
Activists Plan 60s-Style Protest against "War Crimes" and
"Media Cover-Up of 9/11" in downtown Manhattan.
New York City, NY (PRWEB) February 18, 2006 -- Vermonter Greg Nixon is
a man on a mission to save America - from itself. He is one of a new
breed of issue-oriented activists who were often not even involved in
politics before 9/11. What mobilizes him is a prospect of indescribable
horror: he sees plain proof that the WTC was destroyed on 9/11 in an
undercover operation within America's own military-intelligence
establishment.
From all angles, it's a topsy-turvy world view, that can bowl one over
with vertigo at first. A mirror world with such contrarian coordinates
as:
- the terrorists are Americans, not Arabs;
- ex-mayor Giuliani and George Bush are suspects, not heroes of 9/11;
- much as the Bush administration capitalized on 9/11 to advance its
agenda, the 9/11 Truthers seize on it as the Achilles Heel of the "new
militarism," with evidence of a controlled demolition of WTC 1, 2 and
7 as the smoking gun or fatal flaw in the official version;
- "left-leaning" media like The Nation, Pacifica's Democracy Now, and
The New York Times, along with groups like ANSWER and the Democratic
Party, are not seen as a real opposition; because they don't accept
"9/11 Truth," they are just playing a part in the plans for World War
IV on the oil fields of the Middle East.
Indeed, Greg Nixon would like the President's Day March to take aim
especially at the "establishment left gatekeepers."
The plan for Monday's march is fairly ad hoc. After assembling at WTC
Ground Zero, the protesters may march to Attorney General Elliot
Spitzer's office with a letter demanding his resignation for failing to
investigate 9/11. Last year, 9/11 activists in New York filed an
extensive complaint with Spitzer, and hopes were high for a time that
he might take up the case. Offices of the above-mentioned "left-wing
gatekeepers" could be next.
Speakers expected are Greg Nixon and others, including:
Craig Hill, the Vermont Green Party senatorial candidate, who
includes photographic evidence of the WTC demolition in his campaign
platform. His website is
http://www.hillsenatenow.org.
Sander Hicks, author of the 9/11 expose "The Big Wedding" and owner of
the Vox Pop Democracy Cafe in Brooklyn,
http://www.voxpopnet.net.
9/11 activist, historian and radio personality Webster Tarpley will
speak at a Greg Nixon event on April 27th at the University of
Vermont. Tarpley is devoting his energies to opposing the latest war
drive on Iran. He says the plan is to attack Iran already by the end of
March, which leaves much less time for mobilizing springtime
demonstrations such as we saw before the attack on Iraq. (see
http://www.waronfreedom.org/activists/stop-amerigeddon.html)
He is the author of "9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA".
During the run-up to the Iraq war, 9/11 activists tried but failed to
convince the peace movement that exposing 9/11 was the only way to stop
the juggernaut of war. They felt that rank-and-file pacifists were
receptive, but the leadership marched to a different, establishment
tune.
More details on the Presidents' Day march at
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/01/332307.shtml.
See also the feature article on the march at
http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/132464/index.php
"2/20 March for 9/11 Truth NYC: The Tipping Point? The world is at the
most serious crossroads in modern history. The fraudulent 'War on
Terror' threatens the very future of humanity."
For an interview with Greg Nixon, see
http://www.phillyimc.org/en/2006/02/19016.shtml.
Quote: "Bring your digital camera, too. Because something tells me
that history is going to be made in New York City this upcoming Monday,
in honor of President's Day. That's the day those actually informed
about 9/11 will gather together in NYC to honor the birthday of the
first GW. You know, the GW who was unable to tell a lie."
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