Paul Craig Roberts' farewell address to the American People was posted here before, but it somehow disappeared from my site. All the more reason to put it up again ...and encourage all of you to read it again!

Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Paul Craig Roberts Farewell Address To The American People

Good-Bye

Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.

Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.

Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded “anti-American,” “anti-semite” or “conspiracy theorist.”

Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.

Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.

Truth is inconvenient for ideologues.

Today many whose goal once was the discovery of truth are now paid handsomely to hide it. “Free market economists” are paid to sell offshoring to the American people. High-productivity, high value-added American jobs are denigrated as dirty, old industrial jobs. Relicts from long ago, we are best shed of them. Their place has been taken by “the New Economy,” a mythical economy that allegedly consists of high-tech white collar jobs in which Americans innovate and finance activities that occur offshore. All Americans need in order to participate in this “new economy” are finance degrees from Ivy League universities, and then they will work on Wall Street at million dollar jobs.

Economists who were once respectable took money to contribute to this myth of “the New Economy.”

And not only economists sell their souls for filthy lucre. Recently we have had reports of medical doctors who, for money, have published in peer-reviewed journals concocted “studies” that hype this or that new medicine produced by pharmaceutical companies that paid for the “studies.”

The Council of Europe is investigating the drug companies’ role in hyping a false swine flu pandemic in order to gain billions of dollars in sales of the vaccine.

The media helped the US military hype its recent Marja offensive in Afghanistan, describing Marja as a city of 80,000 under Taliban control. It turns out that Marja is not urban but a collection of village farms.

And there is the global warming scandal, in which NGOs. the UN, and the nuclear industry colluded in concocting a doomsday scenario in order to create profit in pollution.

Wherever one looks, truth has fallen to money.

Wherever money is insufficient to bury the truth, ignorance, propaganda, and short memories finish the job.

I remember when, following CIA director William Colby’s testimony before the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan issued executive orders preventing the CIA and U.S. black-op groups from assassinating foreign leaders. In 2010 the US Congress was told by Dennis Blair, head of national intelligence, that the US now assassinates its own citizens in addition to foreign leaders.

When Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that US citizens no longer needed to be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of a capital crime, just murdered on suspicion alone of being a “threat,” he wasn’t impeached. No investigation pursued. Nothing happened. There was no Church Committee. In the mid-1970s the CIA got into trouble for plots to kill Castro. Today it is American citizens who are on the hit list. Whatever objections there might be don’t carry any weight. No one in government is in any trouble over the assassination of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government.

As an economist, I am astonished that the American economics profession has no awareness whatsoever that the U.S. economy has been destroyed by the offshoring of U.S. GDP to overseas countries. U.S. corporations, in pursuit of absolute advantage or lowest labor costs and maximum CEO “performance bonuses,” have moved the production of goods and services marketed to Americans to China, India, and elsewhere abroad. When I read economists describe offshoring as free trade based on comparative advantage, I realize that there is no intelligence or integrity in the American economics profession.

Intelligence and integrity have been purchased by money. The transnational or global U.S. corporations pay multi-million dollar compensation packages to top managers, who achieve these “performance awards” by replacing U.S. labor with foreign labor. While Washington worries about “the Muslim threat,” Wall Street, U.S. corporations and “free market” shills destroy the U.S. economy and the prospects of tens of millions of Americans.

Americans, or most of them, have proved to be putty in the hands of the police state.

Americans have bought into the government’s claim that security requires the suspension of civil liberties and accountable government. Astonishingly, Americans, or most of them, believe that civil liberties, such as habeas corpus and due process, protect “terrorists,” and not themselves. Many also believe that the Constitution is a tired old document that prevents government from exercising the kind of police state powers necessary to keep Americans safe and free.

Most Americans are unlikely to hear from anyone who would tell them any different.

I was associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. I was Business Week’s first outside columnist, a position I held for 15 years. I was columnist for a decade for Scripps Howard News Service, carried in 300 newspapers. I was a columnist for the Washington Times and for newspapers in France and Italy and for a magazine in Germany. I was a contributor to the New York Times and a regular feature in the Los Angeles Times. Today I cannot publish in, or appear on, the American “mainstream media.”

For the last six years I have been banned from the “mainstream media.” My last column in the New York Times appeared in January, 2004, coauthored with Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer representing New York. We addressed the offshoring of U.S. jobs. Our op-ed article produced a conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and live coverage by C-Span. A debate was launched. No such thing could happen today.

For years I was a mainstay at the Washington Times, producing credibility for the Moony newspaper as a Business Week columnist, former Wall Street Journal editor, and former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. But when I began criticizing Bush’s wars of aggression, the order came down to Mary Lou Forbes to cancel my column.

The American corporate media does not serve the truth. It serves the government and the interest groups that empower the government.

America’s fate was sealed when the public and the anti-war movement bought the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory. The government’s account of 9/11 is contradicted by much evidence. Nevertheless, this defining event of our time, which has launched the US on interminable wars of aggression and a domestic police state, is a taboo topic for investigation in the media. It is pointless to complain of war and a police state when one accepts the premise upon which they are based.

These trillion dollar wars have created financing problems for Washington’s deficits and threaten the U.S. dollar’s role as world reserve currency. The wars and the pressure that the budget deficits put on the dollar’s value have put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block. Former Goldman Sachs chairman and U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is after these protections for the elderly. Fed chairman Bernanke is also after them. The Republicans are after them as well. These protections are called “entitlements” as if they are some sort of welfare that people have not paid for in payroll taxes all their working lives.

With over 21 per cent unemployment as measured by the methodology of 1980, with American jobs, GDP, and technology having been given to China and India, with war being Washington’s greatest commitment, with the dollar over-burdened with debt, with civil liberty sacrificed to the “war on terror,” the liberty and prosperity of the American people have been thrown into the trash bin of history.

The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off.

Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Here's the video that goes with Thursday's post of Jesse Freeston's article.

Do undocumented immigrants want citizenship? Are they more likely to be dangerous criminals? Do they hurt the economy? Do they steal jobs and lower wages? The two sides in the Arizona debate have vastly different answers to these questions. On the face of it, this stand-off appears to be more about information than opinion.

Produced by Jesse Freeston.

A Canadian reporter visits Arizona to take the pulse of supporters and opponents of the draconian new anti-immigrant law, recently placed on hold. It seems that some of those opposed cited lies told by the Governor.

ARIZONA: SB 1070 PUT ON HOLD

Are Latino Immigrants a 21st Century Invasion or the Latest Economic Scapegoat? After just a few days in Arizona, it's become abundantly clear to me that many of those active in the debate around the controversial immigration law SB1070 are operating on very different information. On Wednesday, a last-second injunction from Judge Susan Bolton temporarily stopped the most aggressive provisions of SB1070 from going into effect. In particular, she struck down the section that compels police officers to demand identification from anyone they stop whom they suspect of being in the country without papers. Arizona's state government has announced it will appeal Bolton's decision.

STATUS

In the hours after the injunction was announced, hundreds of SB1070 opponents gathered in front of the State Capitol building in Phoenix for a celebration that included mariachi music and dancing.

Jill Abbott was one of four supporters of the bill who stood some fifty feet from the celebration holding signs expressing their disapproval with the judge's decision. "They're celebrating their victory, but it's not gonna last long. Because when it gets to the Supreme Court, that's where we'll win."

Abbot questioned the sincerity of the demand for legalization that accompanies all anti-SB1070 protests. "They don't want to become citizens, they want everything free and handed to them on a silver platter."

This statement came just minutes after I met recent high-school graduate Alejandra Valenzuela, who would love nothing more than US citizenship.

When she was seven years old her father died of cancer. Her mother then moved the family to the US, without papers, to find a way to provide for the family. "Everything was going well until I found out I was undocumented," Valenzuela tells me with a confident smile. "[I] had a 4.0 GPA, was doing great, involved in my community clubs, and then they tell me I can't go to college because I don't have enough money and can't get money from the government."

I ask Carlos Alvarez of the Phoenix chapter of the ANSWER Coalition about allegations that people choose to avoid legal processes for getting papers. He rolls his eyes. "I think all the people that say that never had to cross the border. Meaning that they never had to run away from poverty, never had to run away from war, never had to run away from right-wing despots that the US has imposed on other countries. When we're talking about immigration we're talking about US foreign policy."

CRIME

"This is an invasion."

Says Judy Hoelscher, co-founder of the Cave Creek Patriots Tea Party Posse, one of numerous citizen groups that have formed under the Arizona Tea Party banner over recent months. Hoelscher is a firm supporter of the controversial SB1070 immigration law.

"We simply cannot afford illegal immigration," explains Hoelscher. "We're suffering from the crime wave, the drugs that are coming across, murders, rapes, and kidnappings." There's no question that Mexico-based drug cartels are operating in Arizona, often violently. However, the ease with which SB1070 supporters link them to undocumented workers is troublesome. The crime wave that Hoelscher refers to is difficult to substantiate when Department of Justice statistics show that the violent crime rate has dropped by 23% over the past ten years. Over that same decade, Department of Homeland Security statistics estimate that the population of undocumented immigrants in Arizona roughly doubled.

Public figures like Arizona governor Jan Brewer haven't helped to clarify any of these errors. Brewer has said that "the majority" of those that cross the border undocumented are carrying drugs. Meanwhile, the Tucson Border Patrol reports that less than 1% of those apprehended without documents are charged with drug offenses. (http:// azstarnet.com/news/local/border/article_debfe208-b825-591b-85d2-d85d3db52094.html) "What that's called is a lie," says Carlos Alvarez of Phoenix's ANSWER Coalition. "She's also said that they've found headless bodies, which we know they have not." (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/09/ AR2010070902342.html)

But why lie?

"[The statements are] meant to terrorize the undocumented community and turn the white community against the undocumented workers." Alvarez believes it's all part of an electoral strategy based on hate mongering. "Arizona is the state with the most active white supremacist groups in the nation. It's a very real social relationship that people have to racism." (http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bastard/2010/07/neo- nazi_jt_ready_and_us_borde.php)

Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris, who opposes SB1070, told the LA Times that "[a]ll you have to do in Arizona is come out with anything that's anti-immigrant and you will be in good shape in the polls." (http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/03/nation/la-na- arizona-crime-20100503/2)

FLASHBACKS FOR CIVIL RIGHTS VET

Raymond Nowakowski is the father of the current Vice-Mayor of Phoenix. He wears his US Army cap with pride while attending the 101st straight day of anti-SB1070 vigils in front of the State Capitol building. Nowakowski was part of the 101st Airborne Division that was deployed by President Eisenhower in 1957 to escort nine black students into Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. They marched the students past the governor, the Arkansas National Guard, and the white segregationist crowds that just weeks earlier had worked together to keep the students out of the building. The 'Little Rock Nine' became known the world over for breaking Arkansas' racially segregated school system.

"There was a hatred against a certain class of people back then," says Nowakowski, "and I see that same hatred being built up now." He adds that during his 44 years in Phoenix, there's always been friction between the white-Anglo majority and communities of color, but that its been growing over recent years, with the passing of SB1070 marking its apex. Nowakowski believes that the angst directed at Latino immigrants in Arizona has its roots in election demographics. He says that in 5-10 years, the quickly aging white-Anglo majority might become a minority, and that means losing power.

JOBS

The night before the injunction was passed, I was at a meeting of the Sun City Tea Party. As the meeting came to a close, I struggled to find anyone amongst the all-white crowd who appeared to be of working age. Hoelscher was one of only a handful that fit the profile. She's a seamstress by trade who has been unable to find steady employment for the last few years. She says that undocumented workers have lowered the wages in Arizona, and rendered employment in sectors like hers all but impossible. I can see the concern in her eyes as she routinely shifts her gaze from me to her young daughter, who is waiting patiently to go home.

If it's about wages, I ask, then why not support legalization? Wouldn't the accompanying labor protections force the wages up?

"Real unemployment is at 18% here, and growing," she explains. "To have to compete for that few jobs? Millions and millions of more people for that few jobs? We need to take care of our own. America's citizens first and not the rest of the world's third world citizens."

For Monica Ruiz, who traveled from New York City to be a part of the actions in Arizona, the jobs argument is a dangerous misconception that is taking hold at a national level. She tells me that workers both take and create jobs by spending their earnings. So, she explains, there's no such thing as a fixed number of jobs because growth through immigration is the history of the United States. "[This is the] hysteria they've created around the country, where even liberals are saying 'well, we really have an immigration problem.'" Her voice deepens and her pace slows while she takes on her 'liberal persona' before returning to her original, determined rhythm. "The only reason this is an issue today is because there is a downturn in the economy and somebody has to be blamed."

"It's easier for the majority of middle-class people, who are losing more than anybody else right now, to direct their hatred and their anger toward the ones that have the least. Rather than making sure that they're actually looking up, instead of down." I will be in Arizona all week. Keep checking www.therealnews.com for video coverage of these events and more.

Jesse Freeston is a video-journalist with The Real News Network. He is originally from Ontario, Canada, but has spent most of the last two years reporting from El Salvador, Honduras, and the United States. His work has covered a variety of topics including: the military-industrial complex, economics & labor issues, Central American social movements, and resource rights.

Blogger's Note: See what the AFL-CIO has to say about illegal workers.

Bill Black is back ...pointing out that Obama has retained all of the nonfeasant, misfeasant, and malfeasant financial regulators appointed by Bush.

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: "...the way the [finance reform] bill is established, everything depends so much on regulators. And given how powerful Wall Street is in lobbying and appointing regulators, [with lax regulators] you wind up with very little in this bill. Am I reading it correctly?"

WILLIAM K. BLACK, ASSOC. PROF. ECONOMICS AND LAW, UMKC: "You end up with nothing. Indeed, you end up with, potentially, two very bad things. One, you end up with complacency. After all, everybody said this is going to prevent all future crises, so we don't have to worry about future crises. The second thing that you end up [with] is that there are actually provisions in the bill which make the world worse."
...
"But your question also raises the more fundamental point. If Obama and his economic team really wanted to regulate banks more intensively, well, you know, we're a long way into the administration at this point."
...
"Obama left in charge the absolutely disastrous leader who was supposed to regulate Fannie and Freddie, a guy who, by the way, had been a personal friend of Bush for 40 years..."
...
"[The Obama administration] left the worst regulator in the history of the Office of the Comptroller of Currency. This is a guy that not only didn't protect us from frauds; he ran a holy war against state regulators who tried to crack down on predatory lending—it's called 'preemption'."
...
"If the Obama administration really wanted to regulate, to protect us, it had ample authority under the existing laws, without any passage, to revolutionize the protection. And instead... they have [Lawrence] Summers and [Timothy] Geithner, who are lifelong opponents of effective regulation, running their economic policies."

JAY: "...Should people simply be demanding some kind of public alternative for credit and for financing?"

BLACK: "Yes, they should. But the broader logic also applies, and that was you've got to change the incentive structures. If you leave the private insurers in place, the incentive structure is inherently anti-public."
...
"So, yes, we have to change the fundamental incentive structures. And, again, this bill, the dominant fact about it is it doesn't even examine, much less attempt to fix, the perverse incentives that are causing not just this crisis [but also those in Britain, Spain, Greece, Latvia, and Iceland, who have] all had their own versions of this crisis, not driven by the US crisis, but driven by these perverse incentives that I've talked about and this belief that you didn't need to regulate or supervise."

Blogger's Note: This is Part 3 of the series begun in my previous post below.

The recently passed "financial reform bill" -- by design -- will NOT prevent a repeat of big bank crashes and consequent additional taxpayer bailouts ...proving once again our government to be "Of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich."

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA (speaking on the new financial reform bill): "There will be no more tax-payer funded bailouts, period. If a large financial institution should ever fail, this reform gives us the ability to wind it down without endangering the broader economy."

WILLIAM K. BLACK, ASSOC. PROF. ECONOMICS AND LAW, UMKC (commenting on Obama's statement above): "Now, that is nonsense. There is nothing in the bill that will prevent that. Actually, there's nothing in any bill that really could ensure that you would never have those circumstances."



PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN (after listing to Black's discouraging answer to his first question): "And there's no—nothing in the current bill will change this?"

BILL BLACK (excerpt): "No. And indeed, more generally, there's nothing to fix rating agencies." ... "Americans don't know that over 10 percent of all appraisers in America have signed a petition calling for the government to step in and regulate and enforce [the rating agencies] because of this Gresham's dynamic. A Gresham's dynamic is where cheaters and the least moral people prosper, and they drive the honest, moral people out of the marketplace. (emphasis added)"



Bio

William K. Black, author of THE BEST WAY TO ROB A BANK IS TO OWN ONE, teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri — Kansas City (UMKC). He was the Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from 2005-2007. He has taught previously at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and at Santa Clara University, where he was also the distinguished scholar in residence for insurance law and a visiting scholar at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Black was litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, deputy director of the FSLIC, SVP and general counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and senior deputy chief counsel, Office of Thrift Supervision. He was deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement. Black developed the concept of "control fraud" — frauds in which the CEO or head of state uses the entity as a "weapon." Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime combined. He recently helped the World Bank develop anti-corruption initiatives and served as an expert for OFHEO in its enforcement action against Fannie Mae's former senior management.

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