Moneylaundering: The process of concealing from the public or law enforcement officials the source, transfer, and final use of funds.
Members of the House and the Senate, with the massive "stimulus" bill and the omnibus spending bill, have fully committed themselves to a variety of moneylaundering schemes.
These are not new of course, and such shenanigans have gone on for the last couple of centuries, but they are now, apparently, considered acceptable and have reached massive figures only dreamed of by the crooks and cronies of the past.
The schemes fall into two major categories: 1) the traditional payoffs and bribes paid to companies owned in full or part by those lawmakers or by their family members and 2) what is being referred to on capitol hill in terms like "revolving campaign financing".
The traditional schemes are mostly successful when kept secret; such as Speaker Nancy Pelosi's pushing through earmark funding in the millions for her husband's business firms (whoops...there goes the secret). Such earmarks number literally in the thousands when the new spending bills are broken down and analyzed.
The second type of scheme, "revolving campaign financing" is far more heinous, if that's even possible, as it directly affects the balance of power between us, the owners of this nation, and the people we have hired to sit on the board (congress). It is, literally, a scheme to take away our ability to monitor...hire...and fire our employees (congress) and the schemers are using our money to pull it off.
It is clever...very deceptive...and possibly the most immoral practice ever put into play by those who are supposed to be representing our interests. This is how it works:
Lawmakers choose their favorite lobbyists, they obtain verification either through past support, or by a wink and a nod, that those lobbyists are ready to fund their re-election campaigns. Then the lawmaker funnels money to the lobbyist as an earmark or part of a "stimulus" package.
Anyone who has ever run for office knows that the majority of effort goes into fundraising. If you're challenging an incumbent, the process is more than tough as the incumbent not only has name recognition, but some historic funding already in place.
Funding can make all the difference in a race. There have been recent house and senate seats narrowly won by darkhorse candidates who outspent their competitors as much as ten-to-one. It doesn't always work, but the combination of being an incumbent, and being outrageously well-funded, provides a near 100% probability of keeping a seat.
What do I mean by outrageously well-funded? One lobbying group, the notorious ACORN, was given more than $2 Billion dollars in the "stimulus" bill. This is an immense amount of money...let's say a 20,000% increase in their budget. Pretty sweet, huh?
(To put that into perspective: that's 2,000 million dollars or $2,000,000,000. If Americans' average annual salary is $50,000...that's 40,000 people's annual salaries. And it's only one lobbyist out of hundreds now receiving funding from Congress.)
ACORN's function is to get selected politicians re-elected. The average congressional campaign is nearing $10 Million at this time. That $2 Billion will fully fund 200 congressional campaigns.
Such a deal...for the incumbents who took part in this sham at least. I can certainly understand why they are "stimulated" by the "stimulus" package.
So congress has taken your money, given it to a third party, who will then give it back to the congress members for their use. This is what we call moneylaundering. "Revolving campaign finance" is a great propaganda term...an attempt to cover-up the actual process...but it doesn't quite cut the mustard in the way the truth does.
So let's call it what it is! It is straight-out moneylaundering!
Unfortunately, if you or I were to practice moneylaundering at our local bank, misleading others as to the source of funds and then converting them to our own use, we would be invited to a long stay at a federal hospitality institution usually referred to as "prison."
Our employees in Congress have become so jaded, or have figured out we're too stupid to pay attention, that they are moneylaundering openly. The next step will be to simply place earmarks or "stimulus" money directly into their personal bank accounts. Why not? They'd probably call that "direct deposit"...we'd be wondering why it wasn't called "embezzlement."
But these petty legal terms are becoming somewhat fluid and we'd be dismissed as being "old fashioned" or "so yesterday."
It's just so hard to keep up with the times...
The Professor
545 People; By Charlie Reese
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered; if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered; if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does. You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does. You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because it was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party. What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall.
No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.
When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.
If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ, it's because they want them in IRAQ.
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power.
Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible. They, and they alone, have the power. They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses. Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.
We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!
Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.
Have you ever wondered; if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered; if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does. You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does. You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because it was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party. What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall.
No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.
When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.
If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ, it's because they want them in IRAQ.
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power.
Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible. They, and they alone, have the power. They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses. Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.
We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!
Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.
“WHAT IN THE WORLD IS GOING ON?”
This is a paper presented a few years back by Herb Meyer at a Davos, Switzerland meeting which was attended by most of the CEOs from all the major international corporations -- a very good summary of today’s key trends and a perspective one seldom sees.
Herbert E. Meyer served during the Reagan Administration as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council. In these positions, he managed production of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimates and other top- secret projections for the President and his national security advisers.
Meyer is widely credited with being the first senior U.S. Government official to forecast the Soviet Union's collapse, for which he later was awarded the U.S. National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, the intelligence community's highest honor.
THE FOUR MAJOR TRANSFORMATIONS TAKING PLACE
Currently, there are four major transformations that are shaping political, economic and world events. These transformations have profound implications for American business leaders and owners, our culture and on our way of life.
1. THE WAR IN IRAQ
There are three major monotheistic religions in the wo rld: Christianity, Judaism and Islam. In the 16th century, Judaism and Christianity reconciled with the modern world. The rabbis, priests, and scholars found a way to settle up and pave the way forward. Religion remained at the center of life, church, and state became separate. Rule of law, idea of economic liberty, individual rights, and human Rights-all these are defining points of modern western civilization. These concepts started with the Greeks but didn't take off until the 15th and 16th century when Judaism and Christianity found a way to reconcile with the modern world. When that happened, it unleashed the scientific revolution and the greatest outpouring of art, literature and music the world has ever known.
Islam, which developed in the 7th century, counts millions of Moslems around the world who are normal people. However, there is a radical streak within Islam. When the radicals are in charge, Islam attacks Western civilization. Islam first attacked Western civilization in the 7th century, and later in the 16th and 17th centuries. By 1683, the Moslems (Turks from the Ottoman Empire) were literally at the gates ofVienna. It was in Vienna that the climatic battle between Islam and Western civilization took place.
The West won and went forward. Islam lost and went backward. Interestingly, the date of that battle was September 11. Since then, Islam has not found a way to reconcile with the modern world.
Today, terrorism is the third attack on Western civilization by radical Islam. To deal with terrorism, the U.S. is doing two things. First, units of our armed forces are in 30 countries around the world hunting down terrorist groups and dealing with them. This gets very little publicity.
Second we are taking military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. These actions are covered relentlessly by the media. People can argue about whether the war in Iraq is right or wrong. However, the underlying strategy behind the war is to use our military to remove the radicals from power and give the moderates a chance. Our hope is that, over time, the moderates will find a way to bring Islam forward into the 21st century. That's what our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is all about.
The lesson of 9/11 is that we live in a world where a small number of people can kill a large number of people very quickly. They can use airplanes, bombs, anthrax, chemical weapons, or dirty bombs. Even with a first-rate intelligence service (which the U.S. does not have), you can't stop every attack. That means our tolerance for political horseplay has dropped to zero. No longer will we play games with terrorists or weapons of mass destructions.
Most of the instability and horseplay is coming from the Middle East. That's why we have thought that if we could knock out the radicals and give the moderates a chance to hold power, they might find a way to reconcile Islam with the modern world. So when looking at Afghanistan or Iraq, it's important to look for any signs that they are modernizing.
For example, women being brought into the work force, and colleges in Afghanistan is good. The Iraqis stumbling toward a constitution is good. People can argue about what the U.S. is doing and how we're doing it, but anything that suggests Islam is finding its way forward is good.
2. THE EMERGENCE OF CHINA
In the last 20 years, China has moved 250 million people from the farms and villages into the cities. Their plan is to move another 300 million in the next 20 years. When you put that many people into the cities, you have to find work for them. That's why China is addicted to manufacturing; they have to put all the relocated people to work.
When we decide to manufacture something in the U.S., it's based on market needs and the opportunity to make a profit. In China, they make the decision because they want the jobs, which is a very different calculation.
While China is addicted to manufacturing, Americans are addicted to low prices. As a result, a unique kind of economic codependency has developed between the two countries. If we ever stop buying from China, they will explode politically. If China stops selling to us, our economy will take a huge hit because prices will jump. We are subsidizing their economic development; they are subsidizing our economic growth.
Because of their huge growth in manufacturing, China is hungry for raw materials; which drives prices up worldwide. China is also thirsty for oil, which is one reason oil is now at $100 a barrel. By 2020, China will produce more car s than the U.S. China is also buying its way into the oil infrastructure around the world. They are doing it in the open market and paying fair market prices, but millions of barrels of oil that would have gone to the U.S. are now going to China. China's quest to assure it has the oil it needs to fuel its economy is a major factor in world politics and economics. We have our Navy fleets protecting the sea lines, specifically the ability to get the tankers through. It won't be long before the Chinese have an aircraft carrier sitting in the Persian Gulf as well.
The question is, will their aircraft carrier be pointing in the same direction as ours or against us?
3. SHIFTING DEMOGRAPHICS OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
Most countries in the Western world have stopped breeding. For a civilization obsessed with sex, this is remarkable. Maintaining a steady population requires a birth rate of 2.1 In Western Europe, the birth rate currently stands at 1.5, or 30 percent below replacement. In 30 years there will be 70 to 80 million fewer Europeans than there are today. The current birth rate in Germany is 1.3.
Italy and Spain are even lower at 1.2. At that rate, the working age population declines by 30 percent in 20 years, which has a huge impact on the economy. When you don't have young workers to replace the older ones, you have to import them.
The European countries are currently importing Moslems. Today, the Moslems comprise 10 percent of France and Germany , and the percentage is rising rapidly because they have higher birthrates. However, the Moslem populations are not being integrated into the cultures of their host countries, which is a political catastrophe. One reason Germany and France don't support the Iraq war is they fear their Moslem populations will explode on them.
By 2020, more than half of all births in the Netherlands will be non-European. The huge design flaw in the postmodern secular state is that you need a traditional religious society birth rate to sustain it. The Europeans simply don't wish to have children, so they are dying. In Japan , the birthrate is 1.3. As a result, Japan will lose up to 60 million people over the next 30 years.
Because Japan has a very different society than Europe , they refuse to import workers. Instead, they are just shutting down. Japan has already closed 2,000 schools, and is closing them down at the rate of 300 per year. Japan is also aging very rapidly. By 2020, one-out-of-every five Japanese will be at least 70 years old. Nobody has any idea about how to run an economy with those demographics.
Europe and Japan , which comprise two of the world's major economic engines, aren't merely in recession, they're shutting down. This will have a huge impact on the world economy, and it is already beginning to happen. Why are the birthrates so low? There is a direct correlation between abandonment of traditional religious society and a drop in birth rate, and Christianity in Europe is becoming irrelevant.
The second reason is economic. When the birth rate of a civilization drops below replacement— it is for certain the population ages. With fewer working people to support more retired people, it puts a crushing tax burden on the smaller group of working age people. As a result, young people delay marriage and having a family. Once this trend start, the downward spiral only gets worse. These countries have abandoned all the traditions they formerly held in regard to having families and raising children.
The U.S. birth rate is 2.0, just below replacement. We have an increase in population because of immigration. When broken down by ethnicity, the Anglo birth rate is 1.6 (same as France) while the Hispanic birth rate is 2.7. In the U.S., the baby boomers are starting to retire in massive numbers. This will push the elder dependency ratio from 19 to 38 over the next 10 to 15 years. This is not as bad as Europe , but still represents the same kind of trend.
Western civilization seems to have forgotten what every primitive society understands-you need kids to have a healthy society. Children are huge consumers. Then they grow up to become taxpayers. That's how a society works, but the postmodern secular state seems to have forgotten that. If U.S. birth rates of the past 20 to 30 years had been the same as post-World War II, there would be no Social Security or Medicare problems.
The world's most effective birth control device is money. As society creates a middle class and women move into the workforce, birth rates drop. Having large families is incompatible with middle class living. The quickest way to drop the birth rate is through rapid economic development. After World War II, the U.S. instituted a $600 tax credit per child. The idea was to enable mom and dad to have four children without being troubled by taxes. This led to a baby boom of 22 million kids— a huge consumer market. That turned into a huge tax base. However, to match that incentive in today's dollars would cost $12,000 per child.
China and India do not have declining populations. However, in both countries, there is a preference for boys over girls, and we now have the technology to know which is which before they are born. In China and India, families are aborting the girls. As a result, in each of these countries there are 70 million boys growing up who will never find wives. When nature is left alone, it produces 103 boys for every 100 girls. In some provinces, however, the ratio is 128 boys to every 100 girls.
The birth rate in Russia is so low that by 2050 their population will be smaller than that of Yemen. Russia has one-sixth of the earth's land surface and much of its oil. You can't control that much area with such a small population. Immediately to the south, we have China. With 70 million unmarried men, who are a real potential nightmare scenario for Russia.
4. RESTRUCTURING OF AMERICAN BUSINESS
The fourth major transformation involves a fundamental restructuring of American business. Today's business environment is very complex and competitive. To succeed, you have to be the best, which means having the highest quality and lowest cost. Whatever your price point, you must have the best quality and lowest price. To be the best, you have to concentrate on one thing. You can't be all things to all people and be the best.
A generation ago, IBM used to make every part of their computer. Now Intel makes the chips, Microsoft makes the software, and someone else makes the modems, hard drives, monitors, etc. IBM even out sources their call center. Because IBM has all these companies supplying goods and services cheaper and better than they could do it themselves, they can make a better computer at a lower cost. This is called a fracturing of business. When one company can make a better product by relying on others to perform functions the business used to do itself, it creates a complex pyramid of companies that serve and support each other.
This fracturing of American business is now in its second generation. The companies who supply IBM are now doing the same thing - outsourcing many of their core services and production process. As a result, they can make cheaper, better products.Over time, this pyramid continues to get bigger and bigger. Just when you think it can't fracture again, it does.
Even very small businesses can have a large pyramid of corporate entities that perform many of its important functions. One aspect of this trend is that companies end up with fewer employees and more independent contractors. This trend has alsocreated two new words in business, “integrator” and “complementor.” At the top of the pyramid, IBM is the integrator. As you go down the pyramid, Microsoft, Intel and the other companies that support IBM are the omplementors.
However, each of the complementors is itself an integrator for the complementors underneath it. This has several implications, the first of which is that we are now getting false readings on the economy. People who used to be employees are now independent contractors launching their own businesses. There are many people working whose work is not listed as a job. As a result, the economy is perking along better than the numbers are telling us.
Outsourcing also confused the numbers. Suppose a company like General Motors decides to outsource all its employee cafeteria functions to Marriott (which it did). It lays-off hundreds of cafeteria workers, who then get hired right back by Marriott. The only thing that has changed is that these people work for Marriott rather than GM. Yet, the media headlines will scream that America has lost more manufacturing jobs. All that really happened is that these workers are now reclassified as service workers. So the old way of counting jobs contributes to false economic readings.
As yet, we haven't figured out how to make the numbers catch up with the changing realities of the business world. However, he assumes that U.S. workers can quickly and effortlessly convert from one state to another with any given downsizing. Only over the long term, with global equalization of wages, can there be any such state of equilibrium. In the short term, with every 'downsizing' (fracturing), existing US workers are going have to compete for fewer and lower paying jobs, suffering a significant loss in earnings - and purchasing power. This is and will continue to have a wrenching impact on our economic culture – including on our birthrates and willingness to work, which has always been our heritage.
Another implication of this massive restructuring is that because companies are getting rid of units and people that used to work for them, the entity is smaller. As the companies get smaller and more efficient, revenues are going down but profits are going up. As a result, the old notion that revenues are up and we're doing great isn't always the case anymore. Companies are getting smaller but are becoming more efficient and profitable in the process.
IMPLICATIONS OF THE FOUR TRANSFORMATIONS
1. THE WAR IN IRAQ
In some ways, the war is going very well. Afghanistan and Iraq have the beginnings of a modern government, which is a huge step forward. The Saudis are starting to talk about some good things, while Egypt and Lebanon are beginning to move in a good direction. A series of revolutions have taken place in countries like Ukraine and Georgia. There will be more of these revolutions for an interesting reason. In every revolution, there comes a point where the dictator turns to the general and says, “Fire into the crowd!” If the general fires into the crowd, it stops the revolution. If the general says No, the revolution continues.
Increasingly, the generals are saying “No” because their kids are in the crowd. Thanks to TV and the Internet, the average 18-year old outside the U.S. is very savvy about what is going on in the world, especially in terms of popular culture. There is a huge global consciousness, and young people around the world want to be a part of it. It is increasingly apparent to them that the miserable government where they live is the only thing standing in their way. More and more, it is the well-educated kids, the children of the generals and the elite, who are leading the revolutions.
At the same time, not all is well with the war. The level of violence in Iraq is much worse and doesn't appear to be improving. It's possible that we're asking too much of Islam all at one time. We're trying to jolt them from the 7th century to the 21st century all at once, which may be further than they can go. They might make it and they might not. Nobody knows for sure. The point is, we don't know how the war will turn out. Anyone who says they know is just guessing.
The real place to watch is Iran. If they actually obtain nuclear weapons it will be a terrible situation. There are two ways to deal with it. The first is a military strike, which will be very difficult. The Iranians have dispersed their nuclear development facilities and put them underground. The U.S. has nuclear weapons that can go under the earth and take out those facilities, but we don't want to do that.
The other way is to separate the radical mullahs from the government, which is the most likely course of action. Seventy percent of the Iranian population is under 30. They are Moslem but not Arab. They are mostly pro-Western. Many experts think the U.S. should have dealt with Iran before going to war with Iraq. The problem isn't so much the weapons; it's the people who control them. If Iran has a moderate government, the weapons become less of a concern.
We don't know if we will win the war in Iraq. We could lose or win. What we're looking for is any indicator that Islam is moving into the 21st century and stabilizing.
2. CHINA
It may be that pushing 500 million people from farms and villages into cities is too much too soon. Although it gets almost no publicity, China is experiencing hundreds of demonstrations around the country, which is unprecedented. These are not students in Tiananmen Square. These are average citizens who are angry with the government for building chemical plants and polluting the water they drink and the air they breathe.
The Chinese are a smart and industrious people. They may be able to pull it off and become a very successful economic and military superpower. If so, we will have to learn to live with it. If they want to share the responsibility of keeping the world's oil lanes open, that's a good thing. They currently have eight new nuclear electric power generators under way and 45 on the books to build. Soon, they will leave the U.S. way behind in their ability to generate nuclear power.
What can go wrong with China? For one, you can't move 550 million people into the cities without major problems. Two, China really wants Taiwan, not so much for economic reasons, they just want it. The Chinese know that their system of communism can't survive much longer in the 21st century. The last thing they want to do before they morph into some sort of more capitalistic government is to take over Taiwan.
We may wake up one morning and find they have launched an attack on Taiwan. If so, it will be a mess, both economically and militarily. The U.S. has committed to the military defense of Taiwan. If China attacks Taiwan, will we really go to war against them? If the Chinese generals believe the answer is no, they may attack. If we don't defend Taiwan, every treaty the U.S. has will be worthless. Hopefully, China won't do anything stupid.
3. DEMOGRAPHICS
Europe and Japan are dying because their populations are aging and shrinking. These trends can be reversed if the young people start breeding. However, the birth rates in these areas are so low it will take two generations to turn things around. No economic model exists that permits 50 years to turn things around. Some countries are beginning to offer incentives for people to have bigger families. For example, Italy is offering tax breaks for having children. However, it’s a lifestyle issue versus a tiny amount of money. Europeans aren’t willing to give up their comfortable lifestyles in order to have more children. In general, everyone in Europe just wants it to last a while longer.
Europeans have a real talent for living. They don’t want to work very hard. The average European worker gets 400 more hours of vacation time per year than Americans. They don’t want to work and they don’t want to make any of the changes needed to revive their economies. The summer after 9/11, France lost 15,000 people in a heat wave. In August, the country basically shuts down when everyone goes on vacation. That year, a severe heat wave struck and 15,000 elderly people living in nursing homes and hospitals died. Their children didn’t even leave the beaches to come back and take care of the bodies. Institutions had to scramble to find enough refrigeration units to hold the bodies until people came to claim them. This loss of life was five times bigger than 9/11 in America, yet it didn’t trigger any change in French society.
When birth rates are so low, it creates a tremendous tax burden on the young. Under those circumstances, keeping mom and dad alive is not an attractive option. That’s why euthanasia is becoming so popular in most European countries. The only country that doesn’t permit (and even encourage) euthanasia is Germany, because of all the baggage from World War II.
The European economy is beginning to fracture. Countries like Italy are starting to talk about pulling out of the European Union because it is killing them. When things get bad economically in Europe , they tend to get very nasty politically. The canary in the mine is anti-Semitism. When it goes up, it means trouble is coming. Current levels of anti-Semitism are higher than ever. Germany won’t launch another war, but Europe will likely get shabbier, more dangerous and less pleasant to live in.
Japan has a birth rate of 1.3 and has no intention of bringing in immigrants. By 2020, one-out-of-every five Japanese will be 70 years old. Property values in Japan have dropped every year for the past 14 years. The country is simply shutting down. In the U.S. we also have an aging population. Boomers are starting to retire at a massive rate. These retirements will have several major impacts: Possible massive sell off of large four-bedroom houses and a movement to condos.
It is an enormous drain on the treasury. Boomers vote, and they want their benefits, even if it means putting a crushing tax burden on their kids to get them. Social Security will be a huge problem. As this generation ages, it will start to drain the system. We are the only country in the world where there are no age limits on medical procedures. This is an enormous drain on the health care system. This will also increase the tax burden on the young, which will cause them to delay marriage and having families, which will drive down the birth rate even further.
Although scary, these demographics also present enormous opportunities for products and services tailored to aging populations. There will be tremendous demand for caring for older people, especially those who don’t need nursing homes but need some level of care. Some people will have a business where they take care of three or four people in their homes. The demand for that type of service and for products to physically care for aging people will be huge.
Make sure the demographics of your business are attuned to where the action is. For example, you don’t want to be a baby food company in Europe or Japan. Demographics are much underrated as an indicator of where the opportunities are. Businesses need customers. Go where the customers are.
4. THE RESTRUCTURING OF AMERICAN BUSINESS
The restructuring of American business means we are coming to the end of the age of the employer and employee. With all this fracturing of businesses into different and smaller units, employers can't guarantee jobs anymore because they don't know what their companies will look like next year. Everyone is on their way to becoming an independent contractor.
The new workforce contract will be: Show up at the my office five days a week and do what I want you to do, but you handle your own insurance, benefits, health care and everything else. Husbands and wives are becoming economic units. They take different jobs and work different shifts depending on where they are in their careers and families. They make tradeoffs to put together a compensation package to take care of the family. This used to happen only with highly educated professionals with high incomes. Now it is happening at the level of the factory floor worker. Couples at all levels are designing their compensation packages based on their individual needs. The only way this can work is if everything is portable and flexible, which requires a huge shift in the American economy.
The U.S is in the process of building the world's first 21st century model economy. The only other countries doing this are U.K. and Australia. The model is fast, flexible, highly productive and unstable in that it is always fracturing and re-fracturing. This will increase the economic gap between the U.S. and everybody else, especially Europe and Japan.
At the same time, the military gap is increasing. Other than China, we are the only country that is continuing to put money into their military. Plus, we are the only military getting on-the-ground military experience through our war in Iraq. We know which high-tech weapons are working and which ones aren't. There is almost no one who can take us on economically or militarily.
There has never been a superpower in this position before. On the one hand, this makes the U.S. a magnet for bright and ambitious people. It also makes us a target. We are becoming one of the last holdouts of the traditional Judeo-Christian culture. There is no better place in the world to be in business and raise children. The U.S. is by far the best place to have an idea, form a business and put it into the marketplace. We take it for granted, but it isn't as available in other countries of the world.
Ultimately, it's an issue of culture. The only people who can hurt us are ourselves, by losing our culture. If we give up our Judeo-Christian culture, we become just like the Europeans.
The culture war is the whole ballgame. If we lose it, there isn't another America to pull us out.
Herbert E. Meyer served during the Reagan Administration as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council. In these positions, he managed production of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimates and other top- secret projections for the President and his national security advisers.
Meyer is widely credited with being the first senior U.S. Government official to forecast the Soviet Union's collapse, for which he later was awarded the U.S. National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, the intelligence community's highest honor.
THE FOUR MAJOR TRANSFORMATIONS TAKING PLACE
Currently, there are four major transformations that are shaping political, economic and world events. These transformations have profound implications for American business leaders and owners, our culture and on our way of life.
1. THE WAR IN IRAQ
There are three major monotheistic religions in the wo rld: Christianity, Judaism and Islam. In the 16th century, Judaism and Christianity reconciled with the modern world. The rabbis, priests, and scholars found a way to settle up and pave the way forward. Religion remained at the center of life, church, and state became separate. Rule of law, idea of economic liberty, individual rights, and human Rights-all these are defining points of modern western civilization. These concepts started with the Greeks but didn't take off until the 15th and 16th century when Judaism and Christianity found a way to reconcile with the modern world. When that happened, it unleashed the scientific revolution and the greatest outpouring of art, literature and music the world has ever known.
Islam, which developed in the 7th century, counts millions of Moslems around the world who are normal people. However, there is a radical streak within Islam. When the radicals are in charge, Islam attacks Western civilization. Islam first attacked Western civilization in the 7th century, and later in the 16th and 17th centuries. By 1683, the Moslems (Turks from the Ottoman Empire) were literally at the gates ofVienna. It was in Vienna that the climatic battle between Islam and Western civilization took place.
The West won and went forward. Islam lost and went backward. Interestingly, the date of that battle was September 11. Since then, Islam has not found a way to reconcile with the modern world.
Today, terrorism is the third attack on Western civilization by radical Islam. To deal with terrorism, the U.S. is doing two things. First, units of our armed forces are in 30 countries around the world hunting down terrorist groups and dealing with them. This gets very little publicity.
Second we are taking military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. These actions are covered relentlessly by the media. People can argue about whether the war in Iraq is right or wrong. However, the underlying strategy behind the war is to use our military to remove the radicals from power and give the moderates a chance. Our hope is that, over time, the moderates will find a way to bring Islam forward into the 21st century. That's what our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is all about.
The lesson of 9/11 is that we live in a world where a small number of people can kill a large number of people very quickly. They can use airplanes, bombs, anthrax, chemical weapons, or dirty bombs. Even with a first-rate intelligence service (which the U.S. does not have), you can't stop every attack. That means our tolerance for political horseplay has dropped to zero. No longer will we play games with terrorists or weapons of mass destructions.
Most of the instability and horseplay is coming from the Middle East. That's why we have thought that if we could knock out the radicals and give the moderates a chance to hold power, they might find a way to reconcile Islam with the modern world. So when looking at Afghanistan or Iraq, it's important to look for any signs that they are modernizing.
For example, women being brought into the work force, and colleges in Afghanistan is good. The Iraqis stumbling toward a constitution is good. People can argue about what the U.S. is doing and how we're doing it, but anything that suggests Islam is finding its way forward is good.
2. THE EMERGENCE OF CHINA
In the last 20 years, China has moved 250 million people from the farms and villages into the cities. Their plan is to move another 300 million in the next 20 years. When you put that many people into the cities, you have to find work for them. That's why China is addicted to manufacturing; they have to put all the relocated people to work.
When we decide to manufacture something in the U.S., it's based on market needs and the opportunity to make a profit. In China, they make the decision because they want the jobs, which is a very different calculation.
While China is addicted to manufacturing, Americans are addicted to low prices. As a result, a unique kind of economic codependency has developed between the two countries. If we ever stop buying from China, they will explode politically. If China stops selling to us, our economy will take a huge hit because prices will jump. We are subsidizing their economic development; they are subsidizing our economic growth.
Because of their huge growth in manufacturing, China is hungry for raw materials; which drives prices up worldwide. China is also thirsty for oil, which is one reason oil is now at $100 a barrel. By 2020, China will produce more car s than the U.S. China is also buying its way into the oil infrastructure around the world. They are doing it in the open market and paying fair market prices, but millions of barrels of oil that would have gone to the U.S. are now going to China. China's quest to assure it has the oil it needs to fuel its economy is a major factor in world politics and economics. We have our Navy fleets protecting the sea lines, specifically the ability to get the tankers through. It won't be long before the Chinese have an aircraft carrier sitting in the Persian Gulf as well.
The question is, will their aircraft carrier be pointing in the same direction as ours or against us?
3. SHIFTING DEMOGRAPHICS OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
Most countries in the Western world have stopped breeding. For a civilization obsessed with sex, this is remarkable. Maintaining a steady population requires a birth rate of 2.1 In Western Europe, the birth rate currently stands at 1.5, or 30 percent below replacement. In 30 years there will be 70 to 80 million fewer Europeans than there are today. The current birth rate in Germany is 1.3.
Italy and Spain are even lower at 1.2. At that rate, the working age population declines by 30 percent in 20 years, which has a huge impact on the economy. When you don't have young workers to replace the older ones, you have to import them.
The European countries are currently importing Moslems. Today, the Moslems comprise 10 percent of France and Germany , and the percentage is rising rapidly because they have higher birthrates. However, the Moslem populations are not being integrated into the cultures of their host countries, which is a political catastrophe. One reason Germany and France don't support the Iraq war is they fear their Moslem populations will explode on them.
By 2020, more than half of all births in the Netherlands will be non-European. The huge design flaw in the postmodern secular state is that you need a traditional religious society birth rate to sustain it. The Europeans simply don't wish to have children, so they are dying. In Japan , the birthrate is 1.3. As a result, Japan will lose up to 60 million people over the next 30 years.
Because Japan has a very different society than Europe , they refuse to import workers. Instead, they are just shutting down. Japan has already closed 2,000 schools, and is closing them down at the rate of 300 per year. Japan is also aging very rapidly. By 2020, one-out-of-every five Japanese will be at least 70 years old. Nobody has any idea about how to run an economy with those demographics.
Europe and Japan , which comprise two of the world's major economic engines, aren't merely in recession, they're shutting down. This will have a huge impact on the world economy, and it is already beginning to happen. Why are the birthrates so low? There is a direct correlation between abandonment of traditional religious society and a drop in birth rate, and Christianity in Europe is becoming irrelevant.
The second reason is economic. When the birth rate of a civilization drops below replacement— it is for certain the population ages. With fewer working people to support more retired people, it puts a crushing tax burden on the smaller group of working age people. As a result, young people delay marriage and having a family. Once this trend start, the downward spiral only gets worse. These countries have abandoned all the traditions they formerly held in regard to having families and raising children.
The U.S. birth rate is 2.0, just below replacement. We have an increase in population because of immigration. When broken down by ethnicity, the Anglo birth rate is 1.6 (same as France) while the Hispanic birth rate is 2.7. In the U.S., the baby boomers are starting to retire in massive numbers. This will push the elder dependency ratio from 19 to 38 over the next 10 to 15 years. This is not as bad as Europe , but still represents the same kind of trend.
Western civilization seems to have forgotten what every primitive society understands-you need kids to have a healthy society. Children are huge consumers. Then they grow up to become taxpayers. That's how a society works, but the postmodern secular state seems to have forgotten that. If U.S. birth rates of the past 20 to 30 years had been the same as post-World War II, there would be no Social Security or Medicare problems.
The world's most effective birth control device is money. As society creates a middle class and women move into the workforce, birth rates drop. Having large families is incompatible with middle class living. The quickest way to drop the birth rate is through rapid economic development. After World War II, the U.S. instituted a $600 tax credit per child. The idea was to enable mom and dad to have four children without being troubled by taxes. This led to a baby boom of 22 million kids— a huge consumer market. That turned into a huge tax base. However, to match that incentive in today's dollars would cost $12,000 per child.
China and India do not have declining populations. However, in both countries, there is a preference for boys over girls, and we now have the technology to know which is which before they are born. In China and India, families are aborting the girls. As a result, in each of these countries there are 70 million boys growing up who will never find wives. When nature is left alone, it produces 103 boys for every 100 girls. In some provinces, however, the ratio is 128 boys to every 100 girls.
The birth rate in Russia is so low that by 2050 their population will be smaller than that of Yemen. Russia has one-sixth of the earth's land surface and much of its oil. You can't control that much area with such a small population. Immediately to the south, we have China. With 70 million unmarried men, who are a real potential nightmare scenario for Russia.
4. RESTRUCTURING OF AMERICAN BUSINESS
The fourth major transformation involves a fundamental restructuring of American business. Today's business environment is very complex and competitive. To succeed, you have to be the best, which means having the highest quality and lowest cost. Whatever your price point, you must have the best quality and lowest price. To be the best, you have to concentrate on one thing. You can't be all things to all people and be the best.
A generation ago, IBM used to make every part of their computer. Now Intel makes the chips, Microsoft makes the software, and someone else makes the modems, hard drives, monitors, etc. IBM even out sources their call center. Because IBM has all these companies supplying goods and services cheaper and better than they could do it themselves, they can make a better computer at a lower cost. This is called a fracturing of business. When one company can make a better product by relying on others to perform functions the business used to do itself, it creates a complex pyramid of companies that serve and support each other.
This fracturing of American business is now in its second generation. The companies who supply IBM are now doing the same thing - outsourcing many of their core services and production process. As a result, they can make cheaper, better products.Over time, this pyramid continues to get bigger and bigger. Just when you think it can't fracture again, it does.
Even very small businesses can have a large pyramid of corporate entities that perform many of its important functions. One aspect of this trend is that companies end up with fewer employees and more independent contractors. This trend has alsocreated two new words in business, “integrator” and “complementor.” At the top of the pyramid, IBM is the integrator. As you go down the pyramid, Microsoft, Intel and the other companies that support IBM are the omplementors.
However, each of the complementors is itself an integrator for the complementors underneath it. This has several implications, the first of which is that we are now getting false readings on the economy. People who used to be employees are now independent contractors launching their own businesses. There are many people working whose work is not listed as a job. As a result, the economy is perking along better than the numbers are telling us.
Outsourcing also confused the numbers. Suppose a company like General Motors decides to outsource all its employee cafeteria functions to Marriott (which it did). It lays-off hundreds of cafeteria workers, who then get hired right back by Marriott. The only thing that has changed is that these people work for Marriott rather than GM. Yet, the media headlines will scream that America has lost more manufacturing jobs. All that really happened is that these workers are now reclassified as service workers. So the old way of counting jobs contributes to false economic readings.
As yet, we haven't figured out how to make the numbers catch up with the changing realities of the business world. However, he assumes that U.S. workers can quickly and effortlessly convert from one state to another with any given downsizing. Only over the long term, with global equalization of wages, can there be any such state of equilibrium. In the short term, with every 'downsizing' (fracturing), existing US workers are going have to compete for fewer and lower paying jobs, suffering a significant loss in earnings - and purchasing power. This is and will continue to have a wrenching impact on our economic culture – including on our birthrates and willingness to work, which has always been our heritage.
Another implication of this massive restructuring is that because companies are getting rid of units and people that used to work for them, the entity is smaller. As the companies get smaller and more efficient, revenues are going down but profits are going up. As a result, the old notion that revenues are up and we're doing great isn't always the case anymore. Companies are getting smaller but are becoming more efficient and profitable in the process.
IMPLICATIONS OF THE FOUR TRANSFORMATIONS
1. THE WAR IN IRAQ
In some ways, the war is going very well. Afghanistan and Iraq have the beginnings of a modern government, which is a huge step forward. The Saudis are starting to talk about some good things, while Egypt and Lebanon are beginning to move in a good direction. A series of revolutions have taken place in countries like Ukraine and Georgia. There will be more of these revolutions for an interesting reason. In every revolution, there comes a point where the dictator turns to the general and says, “Fire into the crowd!” If the general fires into the crowd, it stops the revolution. If the general says No, the revolution continues.
Increasingly, the generals are saying “No” because their kids are in the crowd. Thanks to TV and the Internet, the average 18-year old outside the U.S. is very savvy about what is going on in the world, especially in terms of popular culture. There is a huge global consciousness, and young people around the world want to be a part of it. It is increasingly apparent to them that the miserable government where they live is the only thing standing in their way. More and more, it is the well-educated kids, the children of the generals and the elite, who are leading the revolutions.
At the same time, not all is well with the war. The level of violence in Iraq is much worse and doesn't appear to be improving. It's possible that we're asking too much of Islam all at one time. We're trying to jolt them from the 7th century to the 21st century all at once, which may be further than they can go. They might make it and they might not. Nobody knows for sure. The point is, we don't know how the war will turn out. Anyone who says they know is just guessing.
The real place to watch is Iran. If they actually obtain nuclear weapons it will be a terrible situation. There are two ways to deal with it. The first is a military strike, which will be very difficult. The Iranians have dispersed their nuclear development facilities and put them underground. The U.S. has nuclear weapons that can go under the earth and take out those facilities, but we don't want to do that.
The other way is to separate the radical mullahs from the government, which is the most likely course of action. Seventy percent of the Iranian population is under 30. They are Moslem but not Arab. They are mostly pro-Western. Many experts think the U.S. should have dealt with Iran before going to war with Iraq. The problem isn't so much the weapons; it's the people who control them. If Iran has a moderate government, the weapons become less of a concern.
We don't know if we will win the war in Iraq. We could lose or win. What we're looking for is any indicator that Islam is moving into the 21st century and stabilizing.
2. CHINA
It may be that pushing 500 million people from farms and villages into cities is too much too soon. Although it gets almost no publicity, China is experiencing hundreds of demonstrations around the country, which is unprecedented. These are not students in Tiananmen Square. These are average citizens who are angry with the government for building chemical plants and polluting the water they drink and the air they breathe.
The Chinese are a smart and industrious people. They may be able to pull it off and become a very successful economic and military superpower. If so, we will have to learn to live with it. If they want to share the responsibility of keeping the world's oil lanes open, that's a good thing. They currently have eight new nuclear electric power generators under way and 45 on the books to build. Soon, they will leave the U.S. way behind in their ability to generate nuclear power.
What can go wrong with China? For one, you can't move 550 million people into the cities without major problems. Two, China really wants Taiwan, not so much for economic reasons, they just want it. The Chinese know that their system of communism can't survive much longer in the 21st century. The last thing they want to do before they morph into some sort of more capitalistic government is to take over Taiwan.
We may wake up one morning and find they have launched an attack on Taiwan. If so, it will be a mess, both economically and militarily. The U.S. has committed to the military defense of Taiwan. If China attacks Taiwan, will we really go to war against them? If the Chinese generals believe the answer is no, they may attack. If we don't defend Taiwan, every treaty the U.S. has will be worthless. Hopefully, China won't do anything stupid.
3. DEMOGRAPHICS
Europe and Japan are dying because their populations are aging and shrinking. These trends can be reversed if the young people start breeding. However, the birth rates in these areas are so low it will take two generations to turn things around. No economic model exists that permits 50 years to turn things around. Some countries are beginning to offer incentives for people to have bigger families. For example, Italy is offering tax breaks for having children. However, it’s a lifestyle issue versus a tiny amount of money. Europeans aren’t willing to give up their comfortable lifestyles in order to have more children. In general, everyone in Europe just wants it to last a while longer.
Europeans have a real talent for living. They don’t want to work very hard. The average European worker gets 400 more hours of vacation time per year than Americans. They don’t want to work and they don’t want to make any of the changes needed to revive their economies. The summer after 9/11, France lost 15,000 people in a heat wave. In August, the country basically shuts down when everyone goes on vacation. That year, a severe heat wave struck and 15,000 elderly people living in nursing homes and hospitals died. Their children didn’t even leave the beaches to come back and take care of the bodies. Institutions had to scramble to find enough refrigeration units to hold the bodies until people came to claim them. This loss of life was five times bigger than 9/11 in America, yet it didn’t trigger any change in French society.
When birth rates are so low, it creates a tremendous tax burden on the young. Under those circumstances, keeping mom and dad alive is not an attractive option. That’s why euthanasia is becoming so popular in most European countries. The only country that doesn’t permit (and even encourage) euthanasia is Germany, because of all the baggage from World War II.
The European economy is beginning to fracture. Countries like Italy are starting to talk about pulling out of the European Union because it is killing them. When things get bad economically in Europe , they tend to get very nasty politically. The canary in the mine is anti-Semitism. When it goes up, it means trouble is coming. Current levels of anti-Semitism are higher than ever. Germany won’t launch another war, but Europe will likely get shabbier, more dangerous and less pleasant to live in.
Japan has a birth rate of 1.3 and has no intention of bringing in immigrants. By 2020, one-out-of-every five Japanese will be 70 years old. Property values in Japan have dropped every year for the past 14 years. The country is simply shutting down. In the U.S. we also have an aging population. Boomers are starting to retire at a massive rate. These retirements will have several major impacts: Possible massive sell off of large four-bedroom houses and a movement to condos.
It is an enormous drain on the treasury. Boomers vote, and they want their benefits, even if it means putting a crushing tax burden on their kids to get them. Social Security will be a huge problem. As this generation ages, it will start to drain the system. We are the only country in the world where there are no age limits on medical procedures. This is an enormous drain on the health care system. This will also increase the tax burden on the young, which will cause them to delay marriage and having families, which will drive down the birth rate even further.
Although scary, these demographics also present enormous opportunities for products and services tailored to aging populations. There will be tremendous demand for caring for older people, especially those who don’t need nursing homes but need some level of care. Some people will have a business where they take care of three or four people in their homes. The demand for that type of service and for products to physically care for aging people will be huge.
Make sure the demographics of your business are attuned to where the action is. For example, you don’t want to be a baby food company in Europe or Japan. Demographics are much underrated as an indicator of where the opportunities are. Businesses need customers. Go where the customers are.
4. THE RESTRUCTURING OF AMERICAN BUSINESS
The restructuring of American business means we are coming to the end of the age of the employer and employee. With all this fracturing of businesses into different and smaller units, employers can't guarantee jobs anymore because they don't know what their companies will look like next year. Everyone is on their way to becoming an independent contractor.
The new workforce contract will be: Show up at the my office five days a week and do what I want you to do, but you handle your own insurance, benefits, health care and everything else. Husbands and wives are becoming economic units. They take different jobs and work different shifts depending on where they are in their careers and families. They make tradeoffs to put together a compensation package to take care of the family. This used to happen only with highly educated professionals with high incomes. Now it is happening at the level of the factory floor worker. Couples at all levels are designing their compensation packages based on their individual needs. The only way this can work is if everything is portable and flexible, which requires a huge shift in the American economy.
The U.S is in the process of building the world's first 21st century model economy. The only other countries doing this are U.K. and Australia. The model is fast, flexible, highly productive and unstable in that it is always fracturing and re-fracturing. This will increase the economic gap between the U.S. and everybody else, especially Europe and Japan.
At the same time, the military gap is increasing. Other than China, we are the only country that is continuing to put money into their military. Plus, we are the only military getting on-the-ground military experience through our war in Iraq. We know which high-tech weapons are working and which ones aren't. There is almost no one who can take us on economically or militarily.
There has never been a superpower in this position before. On the one hand, this makes the U.S. a magnet for bright and ambitious people. It also makes us a target. We are becoming one of the last holdouts of the traditional Judeo-Christian culture. There is no better place in the world to be in business and raise children. The U.S. is by far the best place to have an idea, form a business and put it into the marketplace. We take it for granted, but it isn't as available in other countries of the world.
Ultimately, it's an issue of culture. The only people who can hurt us are ourselves, by losing our culture. If we give up our Judeo-Christian culture, we become just like the Europeans.
The culture war is the whole ballgame. If we lose it, there isn't another America to pull us out.
To Spot a Demagogue...
By the Professor...
Webster's defines a "demagogue" as a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power.
Demagoguery is defined as "to manipulate, to obscure, to distort with emotionalism and/or prejudice, using rhetoric and propaganda".
I rather prefer H.L. Mencken's quote; "a demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots."
Of course Mencken's comment is rather insulting to women, as female demagogues are in great abundance in modern times.
Political scientists sometimes define modern demagogues as being government employees or elected officials who attempt to use their positions to coerce, intimidate, legislate with false stated intent, and make other attempts to manipulate the lives and behaviors of those citizens they look down upon as inferior beings. This is a sad, but true, statement on the reality of human behavior; that those who are given responsibility too often become seduced by the power that comes with that responsibility.
But the trick, now that we have defined a demagogue, is to spot them. Some are far too easy...almost as if they are setting themselves up as examples for our discussion.
When the current house speaker, Nancy Pelosi, stated that "every month we don't take action...500 million more Americans lose their jobs" pretty much fills every possible requirement of a demagogic statement. It's obviously untrue; not only because there are only some 300 million Americans total in our population, but for more subtle reasons.
She was attempting to rabble rouse a crowd to support the so-called economic stimulus bill then in Congress. Creating panic and stress, promising disaster, threatening complete and total calamity if the people did not immediately do as she was instructing...all are huge flashing electric signs of demagoguery. The 500 million remark is more a facet of her complete failure to understand numbers in any way, shape, or form.
So some demagoguery is painfully easy to spot. More subtle examples exist in abundance. From lawmakers and bureaucrats we can watch for key phrases:
We can't afford to wait
It's a fact...not a theory
Tax breaks for the rich
We have to change
We have to make (plug in just about anything here) fair
Health care/ housing/ food (plug in any product or service) is a right...not a privilege
Now is the time
Those whom society has left behind
We must take action now
We cannot afford to wait for a discussion of the issues...there is simply no time
The words "fair" or "fairness" used in almost any form or context
These, and many more"hot button" phrases, are constantly dragged out by demagogues. This is done partly to put the listener's brain to sleep, and partly to arouse emotion over rational thought. Rational thought is the demagogue's enemy.
Listening to recent street interviews by news reporters indicates how effective demagoguery truly is. One might recall how a large number of respondents, following the 2008 US national elections, were jubilant in celebration as they were certain that "car payments would now be made by the government," that they "don't have to worry about my mortgage payments anymore", and now "everything is going to go my way." These are the classic examples of people completely seduced by the propaganda of a demagogue.
Of course this propaganda wins elections; and that is why the classic "chicken in every pot" campaign promise will never go out of style. The promise of something for nothing, whether made by a con artist lifting an elderly person's life savings, or a politician doing the same, tends to find plenty of ready and willing victims.
Other signs; a politician speaking out for the taxation of, and control of, any and all means of communications. Government already controls many facets of the communications industry; and many in government want to control everything. The free-flowing Internet is seen as a threat to demagogues and they constantly speak of "taxing" and "regulating" it.
Open media is demagoguery's worst nightmare. The advent of cable television, Internet and satellite radio, and talk radio forums are all seen as aberrations which must be forced by law to be "fair"...fairness, of course, is to be defined by the demagogue.
Demagogues exist in business and other organizations as well. During the allied invasion of Iraq, a number of reporters who were embedded with US troops began to send dispatches back to their home offices praising the actions and discipline of our fighting men and women. Dozens of these reporters were suddenly cut off from home office communications or were actually fired while in-country. Some stayed on in Iraq at their own expense and ended up writing successful books about the conflict. Others ended up being hired by other news organizations in allied countries or competing news organizations. It was a fascinating example of demagoguery in the corporate context.
Why is it important to separate demagogues and demagoguery from the pack? It's because demagoguery is the tool not only of less than scrupulous politicos and other characters, it has always been the starting point from whence ambitious men attempt to steal power away from the people. The demagogue doesn't always successfully become a tyrant...but every tyrant starts off as a demagogue.
Webster's defines a "demagogue" as a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power.
Demagoguery is defined as "to manipulate, to obscure, to distort with emotionalism and/or prejudice, using rhetoric and propaganda".
I rather prefer H.L. Mencken's quote; "a demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots."
Of course Mencken's comment is rather insulting to women, as female demagogues are in great abundance in modern times.
Political scientists sometimes define modern demagogues as being government employees or elected officials who attempt to use their positions to coerce, intimidate, legislate with false stated intent, and make other attempts to manipulate the lives and behaviors of those citizens they look down upon as inferior beings. This is a sad, but true, statement on the reality of human behavior; that those who are given responsibility too often become seduced by the power that comes with that responsibility.
But the trick, now that we have defined a demagogue, is to spot them. Some are far too easy...almost as if they are setting themselves up as examples for our discussion.
When the current house speaker, Nancy Pelosi, stated that "every month we don't take action...500 million more Americans lose their jobs" pretty much fills every possible requirement of a demagogic statement. It's obviously untrue; not only because there are only some 300 million Americans total in our population, but for more subtle reasons.
She was attempting to rabble rouse a crowd to support the so-called economic stimulus bill then in Congress. Creating panic and stress, promising disaster, threatening complete and total calamity if the people did not immediately do as she was instructing...all are huge flashing electric signs of demagoguery. The 500 million remark is more a facet of her complete failure to understand numbers in any way, shape, or form.
So some demagoguery is painfully easy to spot. More subtle examples exist in abundance. From lawmakers and bureaucrats we can watch for key phrases:
We can't afford to wait
It's a fact...not a theory
Tax breaks for the rich
We have to change
We have to make (plug in just about anything here) fair
Health care/ housing/ food (plug in any product or service) is a right...not a privilege
Now is the time
Those whom society has left behind
We must take action now
We cannot afford to wait for a discussion of the issues...there is simply no time
The words "fair" or "fairness" used in almost any form or context
These, and many more"hot button" phrases, are constantly dragged out by demagogues. This is done partly to put the listener's brain to sleep, and partly to arouse emotion over rational thought. Rational thought is the demagogue's enemy.
Listening to recent street interviews by news reporters indicates how effective demagoguery truly is. One might recall how a large number of respondents, following the 2008 US national elections, were jubilant in celebration as they were certain that "car payments would now be made by the government," that they "don't have to worry about my mortgage payments anymore", and now "everything is going to go my way." These are the classic examples of people completely seduced by the propaganda of a demagogue.
Of course this propaganda wins elections; and that is why the classic "chicken in every pot" campaign promise will never go out of style. The promise of something for nothing, whether made by a con artist lifting an elderly person's life savings, or a politician doing the same, tends to find plenty of ready and willing victims.
Other signs; a politician speaking out for the taxation of, and control of, any and all means of communications. Government already controls many facets of the communications industry; and many in government want to control everything. The free-flowing Internet is seen as a threat to demagogues and they constantly speak of "taxing" and "regulating" it.
Open media is demagoguery's worst nightmare. The advent of cable television, Internet and satellite radio, and talk radio forums are all seen as aberrations which must be forced by law to be "fair"...fairness, of course, is to be defined by the demagogue.
Demagogues exist in business and other organizations as well. During the allied invasion of Iraq, a number of reporters who were embedded with US troops began to send dispatches back to their home offices praising the actions and discipline of our fighting men and women. Dozens of these reporters were suddenly cut off from home office communications or were actually fired while in-country. Some stayed on in Iraq at their own expense and ended up writing successful books about the conflict. Others ended up being hired by other news organizations in allied countries or competing news organizations. It was a fascinating example of demagoguery in the corporate context.
Why is it important to separate demagogues and demagoguery from the pack? It's because demagoguery is the tool not only of less than scrupulous politicos and other characters, it has always been the starting point from whence ambitious men attempt to steal power away from the people. The demagogue doesn't always successfully become a tyrant...but every tyrant starts off as a demagogue.
The nature of power...
By the Professor...
When the founding fathers of our nation designed our political system they did so only after long years of study and contemplation. There did not exist at that time the modern American need for instantaneous gratification or demagogic demands for speed in all decisions.
Instead, these wise and thoughtful gentlemen were dedicated to building a form of self-government that would survive the ages. They began by designing a new type of document, one they labeled the "Constitution of These United States". This document was created for one simple purpose...to spell out the limitations of how much power the people should grant to an administrative body...a federal government to stand over and above the separate governments of the states themselves.
Never before in history had the concept been put into practice that the people "owned" the nation and had imbued in themselves all rights due them by the simple fact that they existed. Prior to that time, government granted rights to the people...for the first time the people understood all rights came from a higher power, and were not granted to them by other human beings. The people, instead, had the right to assign certain powers and responsibilities to a government they themselves designed, created, and managed.
The founding fathers spent many years debating the content of the document that would, for all time, clearly spell out what government and those in government could not do to infringe on the natural rights of the people who owned that government. The responsibilities and duties of those employees in the government would be decided largely by future generations and were subject to change.
This dedication to the limitations of governmental powers was a result of first-hand knowledge of what an abusive government could do. These men acknowledged such a thing should never come to pass in a free society such as the one they envisioned.
Our Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the constitution, is a testament to their wisdom and their understanding of the nature of power. To more clearly comprehend what the Bill of Rights actually accomplishes we can look at the very nature of power in a society.
Firstly, the power of the individual to make life decisions, to live where they wish to live, to do what they wish to do, is mainly a function of finance. When a person chooses a means to make an income, to trade their time and labor for money, that person also creates the opportunity to make certain life choices.
Tyrants throughout history have clearly understood that one means of obtaining and maintaining power was to control the people's finances. The tighter the controls, the less life choices the people could make, and the more dependent they became on obtaining governmental permissions and on government largess. This control was usually created through taxation, regulation of prices and wages, and regulation of economic activities.
When government creates internal debt, such as our national debt, there is the opportunity for government to further erode the power of the people through increased taxation and the devaluation of the currency. When the government uses that taxation to create dependency, it clearly is usurping the individual's rights and replacing them with governmental regulation. This is a clear form of "power grabbing" whether done maliciously or with an honest intent to provide aid.
Think of it this way; there is only so much economic power available. Consider a full bucket of water. The people hold the bucket, and dole out a little water at a time to their servants...the workers in government, as everyone needs water to survive. At a certain point, there is a balance, where the functions these servants provide and the needs of the people for water are in harmony.
If the doling out continues, however, at some point the people become short of water and are forced to request it from their servants. At this point the ability of the servants to turn on their employers is obvious. This is where power begins to shift, away from the people and toward the government, and this is what our forefathers feared most of all.
Of course this is a simplistic example, but clearly illustrates the concept.
Financial freedom, the ability to create income and spend it as willed, is the first of three legs of the stool...let's call it the stool of freedom for lack of a better term. If any of the three legs are cut short, the stool will topple and our constitutional republic would fall along with it. At that point a government, normally a strong and abusive one, will step in and fill the void left by the loss of the people's freedom.
The second leg of the stool is clearly addressed in the first amendment to the Bill of Rights. We refer to the "freedom of speech" when we discuss this amendment. This amendment limits the ability of government to keep the people from freely informing one another of events. It is literally the freedom to communicate. This amendment not only protects organizations, such as media groups and associations, but protects every individual.
Financial freedom, the ability to amass funds and to build companies, created a situation where the power to communicate did become somewhat concentrated within organs of mass media. The first amendment has been greatly strengthened and power has been brought back into balance by the advent of the internet and such innovations as cable television and talk radio. Of course there are those who are not happy with this return of balance.
When tyrannical governments are studied, it is obvious that control of information, like control of cash flow, is absolutely necessary in order to allow subjugation of the populace.
The third leg of the stool consists of actual physical power; the ability to threaten, or carry out the threat of, violence. The second amendment to the constitution guarantees that the people will always have the ability, in the final extreme, to rebel against a government that is attempting to usurp the power and rights of the people through force or intimidation.
Fortunately, the ability of the people to defend themselves against government abuse, whether in the courts are in the streets, has been enough of a deterrent to keep even the most ambitious of tyrants at bay. History is replete with examples of peoples who enjoyed a certain level of freedoms maintained by being an armed populace. The ancient Greeks, the Saxons, the Israelites, and numerous other cultures required the people to maintain weapons and the ability to use them. For in the final extreme...when all else fails...the ability to force government to back down and revert to its administrative duties, versus the tendency to "rule", lies completely in the hands of an armed citizenry.
Keeping in mind the nature of power opens our eyes to an understanding of the actual motivations and personal desires of some of our elected officials. While many truly wish to serve as our representatives, and sincerely want to do what is right, the siren song of government is always calling to those whose only wish is to increase their personal power...and in doing so decrease the power and the rights that belong to the people.
The Professor
When the founding fathers of our nation designed our political system they did so only after long years of study and contemplation. There did not exist at that time the modern American need for instantaneous gratification or demagogic demands for speed in all decisions.
Instead, these wise and thoughtful gentlemen were dedicated to building a form of self-government that would survive the ages. They began by designing a new type of document, one they labeled the "Constitution of These United States". This document was created for one simple purpose...to spell out the limitations of how much power the people should grant to an administrative body...a federal government to stand over and above the separate governments of the states themselves.
Never before in history had the concept been put into practice that the people "owned" the nation and had imbued in themselves all rights due them by the simple fact that they existed. Prior to that time, government granted rights to the people...for the first time the people understood all rights came from a higher power, and were not granted to them by other human beings. The people, instead, had the right to assign certain powers and responsibilities to a government they themselves designed, created, and managed.
The founding fathers spent many years debating the content of the document that would, for all time, clearly spell out what government and those in government could not do to infringe on the natural rights of the people who owned that government. The responsibilities and duties of those employees in the government would be decided largely by future generations and were subject to change.
This dedication to the limitations of governmental powers was a result of first-hand knowledge of what an abusive government could do. These men acknowledged such a thing should never come to pass in a free society such as the one they envisioned.
Our Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the constitution, is a testament to their wisdom and their understanding of the nature of power. To more clearly comprehend what the Bill of Rights actually accomplishes we can look at the very nature of power in a society.
Firstly, the power of the individual to make life decisions, to live where they wish to live, to do what they wish to do, is mainly a function of finance. When a person chooses a means to make an income, to trade their time and labor for money, that person also creates the opportunity to make certain life choices.
Tyrants throughout history have clearly understood that one means of obtaining and maintaining power was to control the people's finances. The tighter the controls, the less life choices the people could make, and the more dependent they became on obtaining governmental permissions and on government largess. This control was usually created through taxation, regulation of prices and wages, and regulation of economic activities.
When government creates internal debt, such as our national debt, there is the opportunity for government to further erode the power of the people through increased taxation and the devaluation of the currency. When the government uses that taxation to create dependency, it clearly is usurping the individual's rights and replacing them with governmental regulation. This is a clear form of "power grabbing" whether done maliciously or with an honest intent to provide aid.
Think of it this way; there is only so much economic power available. Consider a full bucket of water. The people hold the bucket, and dole out a little water at a time to their servants...the workers in government, as everyone needs water to survive. At a certain point, there is a balance, where the functions these servants provide and the needs of the people for water are in harmony.
If the doling out continues, however, at some point the people become short of water and are forced to request it from their servants. At this point the ability of the servants to turn on their employers is obvious. This is where power begins to shift, away from the people and toward the government, and this is what our forefathers feared most of all.
Of course this is a simplistic example, but clearly illustrates the concept.
Financial freedom, the ability to create income and spend it as willed, is the first of three legs of the stool...let's call it the stool of freedom for lack of a better term. If any of the three legs are cut short, the stool will topple and our constitutional republic would fall along with it. At that point a government, normally a strong and abusive one, will step in and fill the void left by the loss of the people's freedom.
The second leg of the stool is clearly addressed in the first amendment to the Bill of Rights. We refer to the "freedom of speech" when we discuss this amendment. This amendment limits the ability of government to keep the people from freely informing one another of events. It is literally the freedom to communicate. This amendment not only protects organizations, such as media groups and associations, but protects every individual.
Financial freedom, the ability to amass funds and to build companies, created a situation where the power to communicate did become somewhat concentrated within organs of mass media. The first amendment has been greatly strengthened and power has been brought back into balance by the advent of the internet and such innovations as cable television and talk radio. Of course there are those who are not happy with this return of balance.
When tyrannical governments are studied, it is obvious that control of information, like control of cash flow, is absolutely necessary in order to allow subjugation of the populace.
The third leg of the stool consists of actual physical power; the ability to threaten, or carry out the threat of, violence. The second amendment to the constitution guarantees that the people will always have the ability, in the final extreme, to rebel against a government that is attempting to usurp the power and rights of the people through force or intimidation.
Fortunately, the ability of the people to defend themselves against government abuse, whether in the courts are in the streets, has been enough of a deterrent to keep even the most ambitious of tyrants at bay. History is replete with examples of peoples who enjoyed a certain level of freedoms maintained by being an armed populace. The ancient Greeks, the Saxons, the Israelites, and numerous other cultures required the people to maintain weapons and the ability to use them. For in the final extreme...when all else fails...the ability to force government to back down and revert to its administrative duties, versus the tendency to "rule", lies completely in the hands of an armed citizenry.
Keeping in mind the nature of power opens our eyes to an understanding of the actual motivations and personal desires of some of our elected officials. While many truly wish to serve as our representatives, and sincerely want to do what is right, the siren song of government is always calling to those whose only wish is to increase their personal power...and in doing so decrease the power and the rights that belong to the people.
The Professor
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