Vol. 5, No.29

June 10-16, 1998

Front Page

Today, right now, the American people have more reason to revolt than did our forefathers when they threw tea into Boston Harbor and revolted against the British Empire. More reason than the French had when, in 1789, they stormed the Bastille. More reason than the Russian Proletariat had when they overthrew the Czar, and certainly more reason than the Mexicans had when Emilio Zapata and Poncho Villa overthrew oppressive regimes twice in the early years of this century.

Yet, the American people seem to sit back in a cocoon of apathy and complacency spun by theories that "the economy is doing great" while most are running twice as hard to keep up, working more time to pay taxes than the serfs worked for feudal lords, absorbing many new Orwellian type "soma" drugs for both they and their children, television included, and watching a plethora of bankruptcy ads lawyers address to a growing market. All this, while an Oligarchy robs us blind and returns solutions comparable to "let them eat cake."

As the gap between rich and poor becomes increasingly wider and wider, the average citizen wonders why a company like Volkswagen (the people’s car) wants to align with Rolls Royce (a car for royalty) and Chrysler merges with Mercedes Benz, but then end up thinking it will all probably be a good deal for everybody anyway. We've still got all the winter crops for ourselves, don't we?

The same sort of opinions prevail while independent banks go the way of the ma-and-pa grocery stores, big banks merge into even bigger conglomerates, and the government, feeling its methods have been successful, wants to spread its economic policies across the whole wide world while, at home, devising ways to raise your children for you, probably in uniform. Sieg Hiel!

Protecting the Oligarchy by diverting interest into the subject of who broke the old rules last election, completely avoids true campaign finance reform where the money might be taken out of politics and a poor person might be permitted to seek office without selling out and kissing up to millionaires or special interests. And the public, many of whom falsely believe that things would be different if Clinton were gone, swing right along with another diversion. How are Monica and Paula doing, by the way?

To top it all off, your government and its media spin doctors are telling absolute lies about Social Security's "problems" and a fictitious 70 to 77 million baby-boomers looming on the horizon. And they are doing this for no reason other than to rob citizens further, when the viable solution is to remove Social Security from their greedy grasp.

It begs the question of why we really need government at all, and what we are going to do about it.

In the last couple of months I have, through the good graces of this newspaper and with articles much too lengthy, been allowed to point out many of the areas where the American people are being thoroughly robbed by their own so called "democratic" government of individuals wealthy enough to run for and hold office. So far, there have been no welcome lawsuits, no black helicopters hovering over my house, no accusations of presenting false data, and hardly any letters to the editor. I do not, however, rule out the possibility of someday being run over by a school bus or some other black trick of the Oligarchy’s several Gestapo forces.

Gradually, other researchers, some newspaper editors, and a few columnists are beginning to see the same things we have been telling you for weeks. I don’t think that I converted them, but I do think the crimes should be obvious to everyone. They haven’t grasped the full implications yet, but the truth is starting to come to light and may shine briefly before being swallowed in a morass of political propaganda about stars and stripes, the economy, apple pie and saving our children.

Perhaps, what has given me a unique perspective is the fact that I have been researching the overriding national debt for a few years now. From this broader viewpoint, Social Security and all the more than fifty trust funds managed by the federal government are only important details. I do not need to get lost in the muck of actuarial tables or levels of statistical significance in order to see what’s going on with Social Security or otherwise miss the forest for the trees.

And I would not be doing this if I didn't feel that somehow, somewhere there is still some hope.

We could probably run an indefinite debt if it were not for the fact that interest against this mounting liability is rising proportionately and must be paid each and every year. Currently, right now, we are paying more than $1 billion a day in interest alone in order to sustain this debt.

While we won the Cold War by outspending the Russians, this spending has continued unabated while the Russians, who do not borrow or live on credit, went bust and are now recuperating --- and we dig ourselves deeper and deeper into a hole. A hole we may never be able to climb out of.

Three things cause the national debt to rise:

1 - BORROWING FOR DEFICIT: Since about 1979, the federal government has budgeted and required a great deal more money than was available in receipts. In eighteen years, the debt has sky-rocketed from less than $1 trillion to more than $5.5 trillion. When extra money is needed, the government simply sells more Treasury bonds, notes, bills, or securities to get it. Somewhere close to 14% of this money has been raised outside the country but whether it’s from American companies operating and banking on foreign soil or foreign countries picking up these securities for themselves is unclear. The rest of the money is raised from American citizens who believe that the yearly interest isn’t the greatest but government securities are the safest investment. Unfortunately, a great many citizens believe, or have been lead to believe, that’s the end of the story; i.e., reducing or eliminating the yearly "deficit" makes everything hunky-dory.

2 - BORROWING FROM TRUST FUNDS: Already included in "receipts" within #1 above is borrowing from trust funds. No department or government entity would have a trust fund if it didn’t take in, through its own taxes, more money than it needs to operate. And it would not continue to have such an account if it had withdrawn all of its savings during times of no excess income. Excess or surplus money, what you or I would call profits, are credited to the trust fund and the Treasury issues nonmarketable bonds (meaning they cannot be sold publicly) to replace the actual cash. The real money goes into the general fund, which is one definition of the common pool called the U.S. Treasury, and is used by Congress and the administration as "receipts." In other words, it’s borrowed by Congress and IOUs are left in its place and the transaction is recorded as "receipts" long before the budget is balanced or even considered. Some say that this has been going on since the "Unified Budget Act" of 1968 and the difference is that there was not much excess money in trusts like Social Security until payroll taxes were dramatically increased in 1983 or 1984 --- after the last time Washington claimed Social Security was "in trouble." Since then, it has become an enormous source of revenue for the borrowholics . Thousands of Treasury bean counters keep track of this and know pretty much what each of the more than fifty trusts are going to receive each year. The borrowholics know what they can expect in these "off budget" receipts and count on it during their budget proposals every year. It’s already part of the receipts counted and mentioned in #1 above. It does not matter to the borrowholics that the public paid this cash for something else. Paid taxes for services (entitlements) due. Or that the government has absolutely no way to pay it back without charging you twice for the same service. This year, 1998, the borrowholics have taken in about $113.6 billion from trusts and Social Security, the largest trust, will contribute about $52 billion of that figure. You should also know that this borrowing not only violates every principle of "trust" and "anti-trust" law over which the borrowholics rule, but the fact that the borrowholics who took it have absolutely no way to pay it back, without collecting from you a second time, makes it flagrant theft. And the monies available this way have grown so fast they have replaced the need for deficits, #1 above. Clinton may have jumped the gun a few years, but it hasn’t changed that crossover much. In other words, as long as the trust funds are building so fast, the borrowholics can well afford to give up deficits. It's like the alcoholic who gives up drinking at business lunches but doubles up before and after such events.

3 - INTEREST ON #2 ABOVE: Perhaps the most insidious of all, and not reported anywhere except by the Bureau of Public Debt, is interest paid to trusts. Because the more than fifty trust funds held a total of $1.6 trillion (29% of the debt) in Treasury bond IOUs at the close of fiscal 1997, with interest due every year, the government will pay, in 1998, about $72.4 billion in interest to these trusts. This interest is paid with more bond issues. The borrowholics simply hand the trust more bonds. Why not, they don’t care and have no way to buy them back. Thus, the debt rises $113.6 billion from #2 borrowing above, and $72.4 billion from interest payments in the form of more nonmarketable IOUs, for a grand total of about $186 billion increase to the debt this year, 1998, --- with no deficit at all --- and, in fact, big arguments about what they might do with "surplus" monies they’ve stolen. Because it’s the largest, the Social Security trust fund will receive about $44 billion in interest against the $631 billion it held at the close of fiscal 1997, for a grand total of $96 billion in profits ($52 billion in overcharges plus $44 billion in interest from the borrowholics) during 1998. All of your congressional representatives should know this as well as I do. What you need to know here is that even if the government stopped borrowing from all trust funds today, right now, or by the end of its fiscal year Sept. 30th, the national debt would continue to rise by at least $72.4 billion per year from this interest factor alone. And each year you add to the national debt makes the next year’s payment higher yet. There is no escaping this without bankruptcy (default) or a sensible payment plan much like your own home mortgage.

The only way to reduce this debt is to take real cash from receipts (taxes, and such, not trust funds) --- pay off Treasury securities as they mature --- and not auction new bonds, bills, etc., to replace them as we now do 12 to 16 times per month. ( See statement from Treasury's Bureau of Public Debt)

Even if we manage to get Social Security and all of the trust funds out of the grasp of Washington’s borrowholics, even if we manage to privatize Social Security, set it up as a quasi-private government entity like the Federal Reserve, or otherwise separate it from thieves --- we will still have the national debt to contend with, accompanied by its $1 billion a day interest payments. Just stopping the theft is not enough.

Every time the Federal Reserve blinks at interest rates, Wall Street and every investor in this country trembles. Yet, Alan Greenspan and a majority of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve are appointed by the President of the United States. Appointed by the world's greatest debtor, greatest credit card abuser, leader of a system $5.5 trillion in the hole. A government, to whom a 1 percent rise in interest would mean an immediate $55 billion increase in interest to be paid. Do you really think Alan wants to do this to his buddies? Doesn't the concern about interest rates rising seem just a little unwarranted, a little out of whack? What do you suppose it would do to their "balanced budget?"

At $5.5 trillion, it would take a fifty or sixty year mortgage, with real cash payments of about $340 billion per year, just to pay down the national debt to levels of the 1970s. All other plans, such as H.R. 2191, Mark Neumann’s debt reduction balloon payment plan, are pie-in-the-sky proposals suitable only as part of the script for Friends, the Jerry Seinfeld show, Jerry Springer or the Letterman and Leno programs. We cannot expect viable solutions from the crooks themselves.

What has been bothering me for some time now is not only why the media pundits and investigative reporters have not seemed to understand this but why the public puts up with it. In my mind, the citizens of this country should be up in arms about this trickery and outright theft. Instead of listening to schemes to "save" Social Security by the very same people who've already robbed them, the people should be ready to storm the Bastille.

In fact, the American public’s lack of action in this regard has prompted me to start researching phenomena you really don’t want to hear about. I’ve started a heavy investigation of theories and patterns of behavior among the oppressed.

It isn’t possible to do much research into oppression without encountering the works of Bruno Bettelheim who ran the Orthogenic School for autistic children at the University of Chicago. Bruno took the kids everyone else considered hopeless, and he cured most of them.

As an aside, Dr. Bettelheim also wrote a popular book called "The Uses of Enchantment" wherein he claimed that American parents go much too far in trying to protect or shelter their children from the evil sides of life. He claimed that even very young children know better, know that they have evil tendencies to tease or hurt their siblings or pets for instance, and trying to show them only the good side of life doesn’t help them cope, establish a positive identity, learn how to overcome evil, handle their own feelings or develop much conscience. Fairy tales do. Fairy tales show good overcoming evil, and Dr. Bettelheim lays out how and why kids relate to this and why it’s important to a child’s social development.

More importantly, Bruno Bettelheim spent years in Buchenwald and Dachau during the second world war. He claimed that the only way he preserved his own sanity was to study his fellow prisoners, noting their behavior and changes in what had to be the most extreme form of oppression. From this unfortunate beginning, Bruno Bettelheim became one of the leading authorities on the behavior of the oppressed.

Bruno Bettelheim did not mince words, evade issues, or try to be nice to students of oppression. He asked hard questions like: Why do you think thousands of Jews marched willingly into gas chambers where they knew they were going to die? Knew because they, themselves, had carried out and buried bodies for weeks before it was their own turn to die. Knew what was going to happen when they were stripped of their ragged clothing. And they outnumbered the guards hundreds to one. What difference would it have made if some of them had died attacking the guards and trying to escape or overcome their oppressors?

There are plenty of studies of other forms of oppression, like African Americans from the days of slavery right up to today, women and the fact that we never ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, plus the fact that many women, themselves, do not seem to want equality. I even ran across a good article on why nurses are often oppressed in their profession. But there is certainly no more extreme case to start with than Bruno Bettelheim’s studies of prisoner behavior during the holocaust. Plus, I believe in the rubber-band theory; i.e., sometimes you have to go a long way out of your way in order to come back a short distance correctly.

One of the patterns Dr. Bettelheim points out is that at first most of the prisoners in Buchenwald believed a mistake had been made. This should not be happening to them, and that somehow the oppressors would come any minute to tell them they were free to leave, free to return to their shops and former lives. This form of denial and dependence on someone else to correct mistakes may not be too far from the general apathy of Americans today. After all, what can one man do about it anyway? Might as well just sit here and watch TV. Or get into your car, crotch rocket, jogging outfit, or whatever, and take a ride --- but don't have rage.

I’m not very far into it yet, but other patterns are already raising questions. For instance, oppressed people tend to take on the values and behavior of their oppressors which, without going into detail, makes me wonder if many of the people who believe the economy is so great or that Clinton has anything at all to do with it, aren't really people who because they’ve kept their heads above water, purchased a few IRAs or 401ks, suddenly think they’re rich and may even become republicans.

There are also some patterns of self-mutilation among the severely oppressed which might relate to what many of the younger generations seem to be doing to themselves nowadays.

And when will the powers that be understand that drugs are the euphoria of the downtrodden and frustrated, and this includes children in the suburbs struggling against oppressive parents or parents simply out of it for one reason or another. Turning lessons in morality over to union schoolteachers much too often becomes yet another form of oppression leading to gangs and drugs for a sense of childhood identity.

In the world’s greatest market for narcotics, it has got to be a whole lot more than people simply experimenting or looking for a little excitement that attracts more people per capita than any other nation in the world. Drugs make people feel good, at least temporarily. Administered in hospitals when you’re in pain, they provide relief. Taken in the ghetto, they make it possible to feel better about your situation, and no platitudes like "just say no" are going to have any meaning. In fact, such silly sayings are not much different from "let them eat cake."

I don’t know how far this research is going to take me, and I don’t know if I will have the heart to ever write about it again, but I guess we’ll see.

In the meantime, good luck with a Social Security system that was never meant to be more than supplemental retirement insurance. Never meant to do more than ensure no one in this country who had ever worked would retire a pauper, as was happening all over the place in 1935, but has been turned into a borrowholic’s slush fund by your government in the last sixteen years or so.

The ball is in your court now. At least try to swing at it. --- Or do you prefer pepperoni and double cheese?

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