Through billions of dollars poured into elections,  funding of political front groups, and fomenting of Tea Party protests,  Bill and David Koch are attempting to weaken democracy in the United States.  If you don’t know much about the modus operandi of these two fanatical right wingers, I suggest that you spend some time reading Jane Mayer’s article “Covert Operation” in the August 30, 2010 issue of the New Yorker. 

I appreciate articles exposing the Koch’s shenanigans and encourage anyone to write them and send them to The Tallgrass Activist.  People should know what Bill and David Koch are up to and how they go about their sleazy political business. 

The following letter by Clark Coan appeared in the Lawrence Journal World:

 Lawrence, KS

 September 26, 2010

Billionaire Charles Koch reportedly runs privately held Koch Industries as an autocrat, so a case can be made that he is responsible for any malfeasance.

In 2000, a federal grand jury issued a 97-count indictment against the company for knowingly releasing 91 metric tons of benzene and concealing this crime from regulators. The company was subject to $350 million in fines, and four Koch employees faced a combined total of 100 years in prison and $50 million in fines.

Also in 2000, the Justice Department imposed a $30 million fine against Koch, the largest civil penalty ever levied against a company under federal environmental laws. It was determined that Koch was negligent in causing more than 300 oil spills that polluted waters in six states, including Kansas.

A federal jury issued a verdict in 1999 that Koch Industries had, “purposely falsified oil measurements on federal and Indian lands, a practice that allowed it to collect more oil than it paid for. Several Koch employees testified that they were instructed to alter their measurements. Koch Industries admitted it received about $170 million worth of oil it didn’t pay for.”

To paraphrase Balzac, “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.” Maybe several crimes.

For the second year in a row, there will be no cost of living adjustment for Social Security beneficiaries.  We are talking zip, de nada, zilch, nothing.  I have to wonder how many people realize that this is not based on any rational, scientific framework for calculating the actual growth of the economy and real increase in the cost of living.

The truth is that manipulation of inflation measures is done through voodoo economics for the purpose of political expediency.  As Kevin Phillips discussed in Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, the GOP congress, in the mid-1990s, appointed the Boskin Commission under Michael Boskin, former head of George H. W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors.  This commission set about to scrap the market basket of goods and services utilized to calculate inflation up to that time and replace it with something that would result in the gradual reduction of Social Security benefits.

On page 82 and 83 of Bad Money, Phillips says the following:

“Social Security payments were not vulnerable to frontal political and legislative attack, so attention shifted to the CPI determination of how much retiree payments would rise each year.  Greenspan and Boskin charged that the CPI overstated inflation by as much as 1.5 percent, and the Boskin Commission recommended a set of revisions to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which generally concurred.  These changes were implemented between 1997 and 1999, while the public and the politicians were preoccupied by bull market euphoria and the actions in Congress to impeach Bill Clinton.”

It is also worthwhile for readers to check out the website of John Williams, a respected economist, and expert regarding the CPI (http://www.shadowstats.com/).  According to Williams, the methodology scrapped and replaced with the Boskin Commission’s recommendation, would have resulted in an official inflation rate of 5 to 7 percent between 2005 and 2007 instead of the BLS determined 2 to 4 percent.

Thanks to the Republicans’ mean-spiritedness and the Democrats’ passivity, cluelessness, and compliance, for the past 20 years, fixed income retirees, workers with COLA clauses in their contracts, and average Americans in general, have been cheated by having their incomes suppressed by the power-elite’s cynical, dishonest manipulation of economic analyses.  Now Democrats are in charge of both houses of Congress and the White House and what do they do right before an election? 

They whack the elderly by increasing deductions for Medicare from Social Security checks while claiming zero inflation.  Brilliant Democrats!  Absolutely brilliant!  Brilliant, that is, if you are trying to lose elections by unjustly and unnecessarily hurting elderly voters a few weeks before an election.

It looks like Democrats are anxious to hand Congress and the Presidency back to the Republicans.  The party in charge of both houses of Congress and the Presidency could force the BLS to make a fair and accurate determination of the inflation rate.  But they choose not to do that. So, to relieve themselves of power, all they have to do is maintain their deluded belief that seniors are stupid enough to believe that the inflation rate is zero while at the same time their health care costs are increasing.

SOS (SAVE OUR SOCIAL SECURITY) is ready to collect pledges from candidates for the U.S. Congress that they will not vote to weaken Social Security.  We are serious about this.  We will not stand by and watch the most successful economic security program in the history of the United States “thrown under the bus.” 

We don’t want to hear that entitlements are busting the budget.  That isn’t true.  We don’t want to hear that Social Security must be “reigned in” and that reducing Social Security benefits “is necessary if we are willing to make the hard decisions we need to make.”

The truth is, Social Security has a 2.5 trillion dollar surplus.  The Social Security Trust Fund can fully fund the program payouts until 2037.  After 2037, the program is funded at 75% into the foreseeable future.  The 25% deficit after 2037 can be easily eliminated by a simple change in the cap of $106,800.  Currently, only 83% of taxable payroll is taxed.  Move this to 90% and voila, problem solved.

This information comes from the 2010 report of the Trustees of the Social Security Trust Fund.  We could make a very large number of arguments that would destroy the Social Security propaganda promoted by both Democrats and Republicans – but mainly by Republicans.

Candidates running around discussing Social Security had better have their facts in order.  We do.  And, whenever possible, we will be present where they show up.

Why is no one talking about the out of control, bloated defense budget?  See post below about spending by the military-industrial complex.

In his latest book, Dismantling the Empire, Chalmers Johnson explains that empire building and defense spending is not only leading to militarism and weakening of democracy in the United States, but that it is also leading to an economic disaster.  Consider the following from Dismantling the Empire:

1. “The Department of Defense’s planned expenditures for fiscal year 2008 were larger than all other nations’ military budgets combined.” (page 137)
2. “The supplementary budget to pay for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not part of the official defense budget, was itself larger than the combined military budgets of Russia and China.” (page 137)
3. “Some 30 to 40 percent of the defense budget is ‘black,’ meaning that these sections contain hidden expenditures for classified projects.  There is no possible way to know what they include or whether their total amounts are accurate.”  (page 137)
4. Relying on the reports of William D. Hartung of the New America Foundation’s Arms and Security Initiative and Fred Kaplan of Slate.org, Johnson provided the following breakdown (page 138): “In 2008, the Department of Defense requested $481.4 billion for salaries, operations (except in Iraq and Afghanistan), and equipment.An additional $141.7 billion was requested to fight the war on terror.

   $93.4 billion was requested to pay for “hitherto unmentioned war costs in the remainder of 2007.”

   An additional allowance of $50 billion to be charged to fiscal year 2009.

   $23.4 billion in the Department of Energy “goes toward developing and maintaining nuclear weapons.

   The Department of State receives $25.3 billion for foreign military assistance to Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Pakistan.

   “The Department of Veteran Affairs currently gets at least $75.7 billion, 50% of which goes for the long-term care of the grievously injured among the at least 28,870 soldiers so far wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

   “Another $46.4 billion goes to the Department of Homeland Security.”

   The Department of Treasury receives $38.5 billion to the Department of Treasury for military retirement.

   Finally, let’s not forget the interest on debt for military outlays, which totals $200 billion.

Professor Johnson believes that the U.S. conservatively spent $1.1 trillion on the military-industrial complex in 2008.

The Democrats are probably going to take a bath in the November elections.  I wonder why?  Perhaps a clue is provided by this quote from a New York Times article today regarding pushing back Social Security retirement age:  “John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, and the House minority leader, has called for raising the age to as high as 70 in the next 20 years, and many Democrats have endorsed similar steps, against opposition from some liberal groups” (John Leland, “Retiring Later is Hard Road for Laborers”, NYT, September 13, 2010).

The Democrats control both houses of Congress and the White House.  They have not only failed to end futile, immoral wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they have added 40,000 more troops to the Afghanistan invasion.  Instead of taking care of the common people, they are continuing to feed the military/war machine; they are keeping a regressive tax system in tact; they gave the store away to the medical-industrial complex in their so-called health care reform effort; and, Elizabeth Warren, adored by progressives and liberals alike, has still not been appointed as head of the new consumer protection commission. 

I could keep adding to the list of issues of grave importance to progressives and critical to the very survival of many poor and middle class Americans.  But what’s the point.  Most of us don’t need to be reminded of the great big kick in the teeth we received as a reward for flocking to the polls in 2006 and 2008.  Nor do we need to be reminded of the corrupt, out of touch Democrats in the House and Senate.

This is nothing new for the “new Democrats.”  The other day I came across an out of print book at the Dusty Book Shelf entitled Generations Apart: Xers vs Boomers vs the Elderly edited by Richard Thau and Jay S. Heflin (Prometheus Books, 1997).  Thau and Heflin were behind the now defunct Third Millennium, an organization dedicated to slamming the “Baby Boom” generation and promoting inter-generational conflict.  One chapter was co-written by former Democratic Senator J. Robert Kerrey (the Kerrey from Nebraska, not John Kerry of Massachusetts) and former Republican Senator John Danforth. 

The Kerrey-Danforth approach grew out of the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform:  Final Report to the President, January 1995 (Washington, D.C.), pp. 7-35. Here is what the Kerrey-Danforth approach would do: (1) raise the age for full retirement to 70, and (2) increase the age for Medicare eligibility to age 70.  John Danforth, Ralston-Purina heir, comes from one of the wealthiest families in the United States.  Kerrey and Danforth, both wealthy men, have Senate retirement plans that most of us would be thrilled to have.

Yes, 1995 was a long time ago.  But, this sentiment is widespread now in the Democratic Party.  Very rich Democrat senators in particular seem to be insensitive to the needs of the working people ( which is most of us).  Progressives are basically tired of working to elect Democrats who seem to expend most of their energy on behalf of Wall Street, the Pentagon, Big Pharma, etc., etc.  I will vote in November but I can certainly understand the disaffected Democrats who will be sitting home.

I swear, the American public has had a mental melt down and is now totally MESHUGGINA (Yiddish for crazy).  The biggest crisis of the past few days has been generated by a Florida “pastor” with a 50 member congregation who would like to burn copies of the Koran.  Who is upset, even apoplectic, over this?   Everyone from the President on down, including the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the  head general of our invasions of Muslim countries, CNN, NPR, PBS, the New York Times, and just about everyone else in the U.S. elite has been worked into a snit over a dimwitted, attention-seeking, fundamentalist preacher who thinks that burning a few copies of the Koran is his religious duty.  There are several reasons this whole affair should be ignored.

First, sane or crazy, any man or woman has a right to burn any book he or she so chooses.  Let them do it.  Why make an attention seeker famous for competing with Fred Phelps for designation of “America’s Crazy Preacher Laureate?” Had he been ignored by the press and our government officials, he would have had a little fire in his little church parking lot and, consequently, would have stayed ensconced in an obscure, psychotic little corner of the universe.  But no, the press loves these kinds of guys.  The media folks can’t bring themselves to ignore a spectacle that might grab attention from their competitor’s viewers, readers, and listeners.

Second, the idea that a crazy preacher’s Koran burning event places our troops in harm’s way is laughable. Believe it or not, our President absurdly claimed this very morning that a nutty preacher in Florida could be responsible for attacks on American military personnel in Afghanistan.  The fact is, he and his predecessor are responsible for putting Americans in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan.  In our Petraeus-designed, perpetual, never-ending wars with Muslim populations, insurgencies have naturally developed and will continue until we take our troops out of their lands.  The number one thing an insurgent in Afghanistan and Iraq would like to do is kill or at least seriously hurt an American soldier.

What really makes these populations angry and prone to finding ways to hurt Americans, is what they see as an invasion by foreign troops – especially an invasion by a super power that claims to be primarily Christian. As long as we arrogantly think we have a right to station our troops in Muslim countries and build military bases throughout the World, we will find resentment, hatred, and insurgencies.

Third, as Andrew Bacevich has pointed out in his recently released book Washington Rules, the U.S. elite has been able to reprise and strengthen a delusional American credo, which was seriously undermined by the Viet Nam and Iraqi military misadventures.  According to this credo, “the minimum essentials of international peace and order require the United States to maintain a global military presence, to configure its forces for global power projection, and to counter existing or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism (page 14).  This is Viet Nam on steroids.

Militarism – with Muslim countries as the target of our aggressiveness – will cause far more harm to Americans than nutty, Muslim-hating preachers.  Did everyone forget that the terrorist hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi Arabians and that they were motivated to commit their dastardly deed because  American troops were on Saudi soil?   It is the arrogance of power (to borrow a term from J. William Fulbright) that will kill Americans in Muslim countries.

Former Senator Alan Simpson - Co-Chair of the Commission on Fiscal Responsibility & Reform

It is my fervid hope that President Obama will keep Alan Simpson on as a co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, otherwise known as the “whack the elderly commission.”  Former Senator Simpson has given a tremendous boost to the Older Women’s League, the AARP, the Gray Panthers, NOW and progressive groups everywhere.  Furthermore, he has exposed the nature of an illegimate and phony process that has been passed off on the media and the public as a serious, deliberative effort to reduce the budge deficit.

Mr. Simpson has also questioned the loyalty of Vietnam veterans who are asking for some compensation for illnesses due to agent orange exposure during the Vietnam War.  He thinks that by expecting their country to take care of them for injuries and illnesses suffered in service to their country, these people, who risked their lives for their country, are being selfish and unpatriotic.

The former Senator, who has a fantastic pension from the U.S. government, has been one of the leading cheerleaders for a Wall Street cabal, e.g. Peter G. Petersen and David Rubenstein, that would like to pay even lower taxes than the compariatively low taxes they pay now.  One way to do that would be to help the government escape its 2.5 to 3.0 trillion dollar liability to the Social Security Trust Fund.  They can accomplish that by reducing Social Security benefits.

So, in his typical crude, rude manner Alan Simpson insulted the executive director of the Older Women’s League by telling her to get a real job.  Apparently working for social justice for women in poverty is not a real job.  A real job is helping Wall Street billionaires escape their fair share of taxes by taking it out of safety net programs for the elderly.  You’re doing a heck of a job Alan!

In addition to insulting the nature and mission of OWL and calling ill Vietnam veterans unpatriotic, the former Senator came up with a metaphor for the U.S. government on which we all depend for our safety, security, and basic needs:  “A milk cow with 310 million udders.”  He did not say udder.  He used a word that many people consider crude, so I won’t use it in this blog. 

The cow that Mr Simpson is talking about actually has hundreds of millions of udders, which are so small they can’t be seen with the naked eye.  But it does have a few, gigantic udders.  There is, for instance, the medical-industrial complex udder, the wall street udder, the military-industrial complex udder, the upper-two-percent-income  udder, and retired senator udder.  This cow is fed mostly by the middle and low income classes who are receiving far less nourishment than the few upper class people suckling on the big udders.

Alan Simpson helps clarify all of this.  His words, his attitude, in fact his entire history is illustrative of an illigitimate commission stacked with anti-Social Security conservatives.  President Obama, please don’t dump him!

“Granny pods,” “silver tsunami,” the “graying of America:” these metaphors typify the current NPR obsession with what public radio apparently sees as the coming horde of “Baby Boomers.”   For instance, Jennifer Ludden’s current series focuses on technology and programs for keeping dependent, frail, and elderly folks in their homes.  This is an issue with which I don’t have a problem per se.  I am all for improving the quality of life for the “frail elderly.”

The problem, as I see it, is the repetitious presentation of the growing elderly population as a problem rather than as positive facet of U.S. culture.  When Linda Wertheimer introduces Jennifer Ludden’s segment on needy, decrepit elderly parents (and their burden on their children) with terms like “graying of America,” and “silver tsunami,” the narrative becomes:  “We will have all of these old people that we will need to babysit – “oy vey” what to do?”

Here is a quote from a professional caregiver on Ms Ludden’s segment this morning:  “At the same time that we have this huge population of aging folks, we have a shrinking population of caregivers, of younger people able to provide the care that these older people are going to need.”  Because this professional person works for a company that provides electronic monitoring of elderly persons, she alarmingly proclaimed that her technology will save the day.  She said, “If we don’t find other ways to do that, then we are really going to be in big trouble in the future.”

Well, Ms Taylor – that’s her name – is just plain wrong about the “shrinking population of caregivers.”  Every segment of the U.S. population is growing rather rapidly and will continue to grow rapidly.  The child population surpassed the 70 million mark (the peak of the “Baby Boom” population in 1964) in 1996 and has risen to 75 million.  This population will continue to grow rapidly and reach 101 million by 2050.   

Furthermore, the 18 to 65 population reached 190 million by 2010 and will grow to 249 million by 2050.  No doubt, the 65+ population will grow from the current 40 million to 88 million by 2050.  As a proportion of the total population, the 65+ demographic group will shift from 13% to 20% of the total population.  Is this a big problem for an advanced, industrialized society with a GDP of $13 trillion? 

Demographic characteristics and trends presented above are not disputed by demographers in general – I have taken them from the U.S. Census Bureau.  Nevertheless, my research suggests that most everyone in the U.S. has a distorted view of the size of age categories.  The media is helping spread this distortion.

A big portion of the elderly 20% will be capable of making positive contributions to society.  Most elderly Americans are independent and do not need long term care and assisted daily living.  However, if we stereotype and infantilize the elderly, public policy will be misguided and counterproductive.  The problem, in my mind, isn’t that we will have too many old people but rather the problem is too many myths and misperceptions about older Americans.