After next Tuesday’s election, Republicans will be the ultimate political powerin the universe — or, at least, in the United States of America. That is, if GOP candidates perform anywhere near expectations and, indeed, capture even the slimmest majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
More powerful than the man who put the “O” in Obamania, the POTUS, the commander-in-chief with his finger on the nuclear trigger?
Well, yes. (Unless President Obama intends to aim missiles at the Congress. In which case, his popularity might improve.)
Forget the U.S. Senate. A Senate majority is not required. The House, alone, possesses the most awesome weapon in the federal government’s arsenal: the power of the purse.
Article I, Section 7 of our Constitution clearly reads: “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives . . .” And Section 9 states, “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.”
So, if Republicans in Congress are serious about restoring fiscal sanity to Washington, they will hold all the cards necessary to do so. The Obama Administration simply cannot spend money the U.S. House refuses to raise or appropriate.
What does this mean for post-November 2nd governance?
Two very important things: (1) Holding Republicans feet to the fire will be critical, requiring the Tea Party movement to continue to be an engaged, energized and take-no-excuses force, and (2) Democrats are likely to look back at their public relations success in 1995, when the new Republican Congress and Bill Clinton, their man then in the White House, had a showdown over the longest government shutdown in history — some 21 days.
Tea Party activists, smartened up by past bad behavior by Republican officeholders, are no longer willing to play the patsy role. From the special election race in New York’s 23rd congressional district, in which conservatives abandoned a moderate to liberal Republican in favor of a long-shot Conservative Party candidate, to the surprise dumping of three incumbent U.S. Senators in Republican primaries, conservatives and libertarians are putting principle before party.
The political class and Standard-Issue Punditry (SIP) don’t “get it”: Americans have completely lost faith in their Financial Elites and government, for abundantly obvious reasons.
Anyone who believes the foreclosure crisis can be contained is deluded, because the real issue in play is the citizens’ trust in their government’s ability to govern the nation’s Financial Elites according to the rule of law. Clearly, our government has failed its citizens–utterly, completely, totally, at every level of governance (Federal, State, local) and at every level of oversight and regulation.
The bitter truth is that the nation’s Financial Power Elites are not constrained by rule of law, and as a result of this revelation Americans’ trust in their government and political class has been shattered. Despite raising their voices 600 to 1 against the TARPand related bailouts of the nation’s Financial Power Elites (who stripmined the nation’s wealth from their investment banking and mortgage banking fortresses) in 2008, the government shoved trillions of dollars of bailouts and guarantees into private hands with pathetically little control in return.In their rage at this abject, cowardly surrender of their government to the Financial Elites, the American people tossed the craven bankers-lapdogs Republicans out and replaced them with an untested young president who talked the talk and old-line Democrats.
All of whom proceeded to attach the same leash to their necks and become craven lapdogs of the Financial Elites. Less than two years after the inevitable meltdown of the Power Elites’ stripmining operation and its unprecedented rescue by the Federal government, the Financial Power Elites are once again caught flouting the laws of land as if the U.S. were a “banana republic” in which laws are “only for the little people.”
And now the inevitable calls are arising for a “Federal solution” which will bail the bankers out of the foreclosure crisis with their ownership of the political class and the nation’s wealth firmly in hand.
The people have lost their trust in their government for good reason: it has betrayed their trust.
On October 27, 2010, a computer failure emerged at the FE Warren Air force Base in Wyoming. “Mr President we’ve lost control of FIFTY nuclear warheads”
“Pentagon chiefs were stunned to discover that a U.S. air force base had lost control of 50 nuclear, inter-continental missiles.
A power failure meant that one-ninth of America’s nuclear arsenal went offline for three-quarters of an hour, it emerged yesterday. Minuteman missile: Computer breakdown meant the U.S. Air Force lost control for 45 minutes
As multiple error codes appeared on the computer control system at FE Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, the Minuteman III missiles went into ‘LF Down’ status, which meant that officers were unable to communicate with them.
The failure involved the launch control computers at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, “causing a loss of communication with the missiles”.
“The failure also meant that certain security protocols were down as well. While the missiles were still able to be launched, control was only possible via an airborne communications platform.”Failure at U.S. Air Force Base Takes 50 Nukes Offline)
This is not the first time there is a “glitch” in the control over America’s nuclear arsenal. Invariably, these failures are not reported.
A far more serious incident emerged in August 2007. As documented by CRG Research Associate Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, several nuclear warheads actually disappeared.
In total there were six W80-1 nuclear warheads armed on AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles (ACMs) that were “lost.”
This was not a computer glitch. It was something far more serious.
“There is a rigorous, almost inflexible, chain of command in regards to the handling of nuclear weapons”.
Why then did these nuclear warheads go missing?
Nazemroaya’s research suggests that “unauthorized removal” of nuclear warheads is an impossibility unless the chain of command is bypassed, “involving the deliberate tampering of the paperwork and tracking procedures.”
The incident went virtually unreported and was casually categorized by the media as ”negligence”.
See Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya’s detailed analysis, published in October 2007, on how these nukes went missing.
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, October 28, 2010
The following is a sample from an forthcoming book by Andrew Gavin Marshall on ‘Global Government’, Global Research Publishers, Montreal. For more by this author on the issue of the economic crisis and global governance, see the recently-released book by Global Research “The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century,”Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall, (Editors), in which the author contributed three chapters on the history of central banking, the rise of a global currency and global central bank, and the political economy of global government.
Problem, Reaction, Solution: “Crisis is an Opportunity”
In May of 2010, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the IMF, stated that, “crisis is an opportunity,” and called for “a new global currency issued by a global central bank, with robust governance and institutional features,” and that the “global central bank could also serve as a lender of last resort.” However, he stated, “I fear we are still very far from that level of global collaboration.”[1] Well, perhaps not so far as it might seem.
Let’s face it: Most Americans don’t have much use for either of the major political parties and think it would be better to dump the entire Congress on Election Day.
A new Rasmussen Reportsnational telephone survey finds that 65% of Likely U.S. Voters say if they had the option next week, they would vote to get rid of the entire Congress and start all over again. Only 20% would opt to keep the entire Congress instead. Fifteen percent (15%) aren’t sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Of course, the Political Class strongly disagrees. While 84% of Mainstream voters would opt to get rid of the entire Congress, 64% of the Political Class would vote instead to keep them all.
Not surprisingly, 82% of Republicans and 78% of unaffiliateds say dump them all. Despite their party’s control of both the House and Senate, Democratic voters are fairly evenly divided: 44% say it’s better to keep the entire Congress, but 38% would prefer to give all the national legislators the heave-ho.
It is a well known fact that any country that the IMF *helps* soon becomes not only idebted to them but also owned by them…~jude
The IMF is responsible for the impoverishment of many developing countries. instead of destroying it, the G 20 countries have reinforced its powers. in the same way the US government is accelerating the sucking of taxpayers money to Wall Street well-offs, the IMF will accelerate its policy of impoverishment of developing countries.
Scores dead and thousands homeless after volcanic eruption and tsunami hit Indonesia.
Rescuers search for victims at a village hit by rock and ash from Tuesday’s eruption of Mount Merapi in Kinahrejo, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
Image Credit: AP
Jakarta: Indonesian authorities appealed for aid on Wednesday after a tsunami smashed into an island chain and a volcano erupted less than 24 hours later, leaving scores dead and thousands homeless.
A disaster official says the death toll from an earthquake and killer tsunami in Indonesia has climbed to 272 as helicopters with rescuers and emergency supplies finally reach the remote islands.
I would say what I think of Dimon but it’s unprintable…~jude
The Huffington Post | William Alden
As the economic recovery remains tepid, companies continue to sit on piles of cash, shifting it around internally rather than spending it.
The hoard totals about $1 trillion for U.S. companies, Reuters reports, citing data from Moody’s. For non-financial companies, the total is about $943 billion as of the middle of 2010, compared to $775 billion at the end of 2008, Moody’s said.
Even though revenue decreased in the second quarter, corporate profits in the S&P 500 were up 38 percent from the same period last year, the Wall Street Journalreported earlier this month. Thanks to massive cost-cutting strategies, such as firing employees, it was corporate America’s sixth highest quarterly profit ever.
Banks, which also have large cash reserves, used that money to pad their earnings reports, the WSJ says. Of the combined $16.8 billion that the 18 biggest U.S. commercial banks earned in the third quarter (not counting the $10.4 billion charge that stained Bank of America’s earnings report), $8.1 billion came from their reserve funds, the WSJ says. At some banks, the contributions from these rainy-day funds outweighed the actual earnings. Of Citigroup’s $2.2 billion profit, for instance, 92 percent, the WSJ says, came from its reserves.
According to the WSJ, banks didn’t want to prettify their profits. There are rules that say they have to free up cash reserves as soon as it becomes apparent that they don’t need them. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, the WSJ says, called the rules “silly.”
With interest rates near zero, banks and other companies can borrow money cheaply. But, as the New York Times pointed out earlier this month, the readily available cash won’t stimulate the economy unless banks actually put it to use.
Charles Evans, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said earlier this month that the U.S. economy is in aliquidity trap, in which low interest rates don’t spur spending. Companies and timid consumers gather piles of money and simply sit on them — as the NYT put it, “because they can.”
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has always closely guarded the secrets of its lucrative high-speed trading system. Now the securities firm is getting a help from an unusual source: federal prosecutors.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan this week asked a federal district judge to seal the courtroom at the forthcoming trial of a former Goldman computer programmer accused of stealing the firm’s computer code. The move was a formal request to empty the courtroom of the general public when details of Goldman’s trade secrets are being discussed. The trial is set to start to late November.
Prosecutors also asked that any documents related to Goldman’s trading strategies remain under seal.
After next Tuesday’s election, Republicans will be the ultimate political power in the universe — or, at least, in the United States of America. That is, if GOP candidates perform anywhere near expectations and, indeed, capture even the slimmest majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
