Endgame

  Ok. Now I feel better after that musical interlude so let’s get back to Politics. As Sherlock Holmes would say “the game's afoot” and I’m in my element. The first question is why does the White House want Erick Canton to be at the negotiations so badly when they know that he wants to torpedo the whole affair?  I mentioned in my last political  post that Canton has both financial and supporter reasons to trash the negotiations but there is also another reason. Both internal polls and a recent external poll have indicated that the American population would blame the Republicans if the dire effects of an impasse came to pass. Cantor has been lusting after House Speaker John Boehner’s position for awhile and if the economy tanked with the Republicans blamed by the public, Big John is toast. This would put Cantor in a great place for a 2016 presidential run if Obama by some miracle wins in 2012 or later if a Republican becomes president. He certainly has the ambition and cojones to try.

  What’s in it for the Democrats? Basically they’re playing a double game. In public they want to succeed even to the extent of trashing every social advance since the New Deal. Privately they know that the economy is going to tank before the elections in November of 2012 so it’s better to have the economy fall off the cliff now and blame the Republicans than have it collapse next year and really be toast. Obama knows (he’s a constitutional lawyer for Christ’s sake) that he can use the 14th amendment to tell congress to take a hike and ignore the debt ceiling and as Bill Mitchell pointed out:

“[T]he whole edifice surrounding government spending and bond-issuance is also ‘just an accounting gimmick’. The mainstream make much of what they call the government budget constraint as if it is an a priori financial constraint when in fact it is just an accounting statement of the monetary operations surrounding government spending and taxation and debt-issuance.

There are political gimmicks too that lead to the US government issuing debt to match their net public spending. These just hide the fact that in terms of the intrinsic characteristics of the monetary system the US government is never revenue constrained because it is the monopoly issuer of the currency which makes the whole debt ceiling debate a political and accounting gimmick.”

  The public is being scared shitless by all this Kabuki theatre in Washington especially comparing America to Greece. Anyone who knows anything about monetary policy realizes that this is comparing apples and oranges. The States have a sovereign currency and can print all the money it wants while Greece uses an external currency over which it has no control so without the monetary levers which America has it is seriously screwed and has to practice severe austerity. It’s a bit like being on the gold standard back in the 1920’s.

  The advantage to the real rulers of the universe, corporations, is that they can now eliminate such fundamental rights such as minimum wage laws and overtime which are foundation of the protection of the working class. Discussions on these matters have already started but the public seems to be unaware. The only fly in the ointment to a new post democratic American society is the progressive movement. This is the reason for bills such as S978 which I mentioned in a previous post. It’s alright to believe what you want but if you try to communicate with others then we’re coming after you. If you read the White house paper as approved by Obama you’ll notice that if you have a previous conviction for even a misdemeanour such as using a copy written photo on your blog instead of  5 years in jail you’ll probably get 10 years. To wit:

To appropriately increase the punishment for recidivist intellectual property offenders, we recommend that Congress direct the U.S. Sentencing Commission to consider imposing a two-level enhancement when a defendant has a previous intellectual property conviction (either under Federal or state law, whether the conviction was a misdemeanor or a felony, and regardless of the type of the previous intellectual property offense).

Recommendation: The Administration recommends that Congress direct the U.S. Sentencing Commission to consider providing a two-level enhancement for defendants with a previous conviction for an intellectual property offense.

   And the FBI will be allowed to tap your internet and phone connections. To wit:

Give Wiretap Authority for Criminal Copyright and Trademark Offenses: The Joint Strategic Plan committed Federal agencies to identify gaps in current intellectual property laws and ways that the U.S. Government could enhance enforcement. One such gap involves wiretapping authority (that is, authority to intercept wire, electronic, and/or oral communications). Title 18, United States Code, Section 2516 contains an extensive list of offenses for which the U.S. Government is authorized to seek wiretap authority from a court to obtain evidence of those offenses, including for economic espionage (18 U.S.C. § 1831) and theft of trade secrets (18 U.S.C. § 1832). See 18 U.S.C. § 2516(1)(a) (listing offenses under chapter 90). Omitted from this list are criminal copyright (17 U.S.C. § 506(a)(1), 18 U.S.C. § 2319) and criminal trademark offenses (18 U.S.C. § 2320). Wiretap authority for these intellectual property crimes, subject to the existing legal protections that apply to wiretaps for other types of crimes, would assist U.S. law enforcement agencies to effectively investigate those offenses, including targeting organized