Help identify them                                                                                            Contribute

No Less Than Treason

Over the course of the past three decades there has been a subtle surreptitious takeover of the economic and political heart of America in the name of “Globalization.”  This movement is led by a new class of Americans, to this point being identified as NeoCons.

By promoting what they call “Free Trade,” “World Trade,” and “Globalization,” the NeoCons have set the stage for an extraordinary transfer of national assets and infrastructure to select groups of international business associates.  These financial maneuvers have left our nation weakened and vulnerable.

For example, Our Great Country no longer has a vital steel industry, the lead in electronic manufacturing and assembly, or even competitive clothing manufacturing.  As if this isn’t bad enough, we now have learned that even or most essential infrastructure and utilities are no longer exclusively American owned.

This has led us all to be far more at risk than we ever imagined politically, economically, and open to the threat of global terrorists.  It is coming to light that our ports, highways, bridges, public utilities, and even our armed forces, are subject to so called “global market forces.”

            The definition of Treason,  based on Webster’s Collegiate, is to “give over or up,” as part of a “betrayal of trust or faith,” particularly as it relates to the “betrayal of one’s country,” and “giving aid and comfort” to rivals and entities that may wish harm upon the nation and its people. 

That definition is a perfect evaluation of how those who have championed legalizing inappropriate and self-serving privatization, deregulation and globalization have surreptitiously eroded the sovereignty and security of the United States.

             Our elected legislature has allowed bureaucratic deregulators, corporations, globalists, and their minions to take apart and sell parts of what should be our sovereign nation.  Technically is it “legal”?  Yes, it is.  They made it legal by purposefully confusing the American people and inappropriately manipulating the mechanisms of democracy!  They used the legal machinery of democracy (as well as illegal practices, including subtle and sometimes not so subtle forms of bribery or power brokering) to overturn laws against inappropriate deregulation or unwise globalization.  We explore how they accomplished this feat throughout this book.

We call this particular type of subversion of the American way of life -- “Legal Treason”.

(COMING SOON -- Signed, limited edition
              advanced copies of Legal Treason)

Return to TOP

Thank God for Dubai!

Thank God!  Let’s say that again: Thank God! 

We also wish to thank Allah, Mohammed, Jesus, Buddha and any other manifestation there may be of the concept that there is a Supreme Being with at least some passing interest in what transpires on Planet Earth.

“Thank God for what,” you ask? 

Thank God for a tiny but extraordinarily wealthy Middle Eastern country (city/state) called Dubai.  In particular, thanks for Dubai’s attempt to take control of several of our nation’s most vital seaports. 

Why be so thankful?  Because the political firestorm that was sparked among the American people and many members of Congress may become the catalyst that eventually saves the nation not only from a security debacle that could cost hundreds of thousands of lives, but also from an even more far reaching economic calamity that could permanently cripple America.  Although this looming economic catastrophe has been in the making for more than a quarter century, the extent of its threat is just now starting to become apparent to the general public.

Point being, this is not at all a book about Dubai, the city state country.  Rather, it is a book determined to join the newly rising chorus of voices that are recognizing just how far the wealthy elite have gone in subverting the natural resources of our country at the expense of the vast majority of its citizens.

After Dubai, even Congressional members who passed legislation making deregulation and globalization possible could not ignore the public outrage against the practice of selling our nation’s most vital and valuable resources.  The deal painted a dramatic, readily visible, and bleak picture of the negative impact and lack of common sense (or something much worse) behind Congress’s approval of certain aspects of deregulation, privatization and globalization.  One cannot ignore the fact that the systemic changes that made Dubai possible were harmful to the American public, but extremely beneficial to a select group that wished them enacted…and Congress, for some reason, accommodated their wish.  Why?

Thanks to Dubai, the public’s new awareness of all this may lead it to finally force Congress to halt the selling of America’s most vital national assets to special interests and worse, to foreign interests!  Dubai makes it undeniably clear to most Americans that much of what has been passed off as “globalization” and “deregulation” simply boils down to an insidious, legalized method of dismantling America’s most valuable assets and slowly picking the pockets of all Americans. 

(COMING SOON -- Signed, limited edition
            advanced copies of Legal Treason)

Return to TOP

The Political Pendulum

One tenet shared by most religions and scientific communities is the concept of eternal balance.  In religion, it is often expressed in terms such as karma, good vs. evil, Yin and Yang, etc.  In science, terms like, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,” describe this balance.  So does the “Law of the Conservation of Matter and Energy”, in which the matter and energy are in an ever evolving dance of balance.

This same concept of balance is equally applicable to politics.  Under a theory that has been called “The Pendulum of Politics”; if macro political forces swing too far in one direction in response to a specific set of interests or fears at the cost of other interests or fears, eventually a back-swing (a re-balancing) occurs that drives the political system back in the opposite direction and back into balance.  In 2006, the nation finds itself at the cusp of just such a reversal in the pendulum swing.

The Dubai Port Deal became a wake up alarm that has sounded for all Americans and opened the eyes of the general population, perhaps for the first time, to the deeper meanings (and risks) of unbridled privatization and “Globalization” of our nation’s most vital and vulnerable infrastructure assets. 

Until Dubai, most political leaders, as most Americans, had also failed to grasp the extent of the implications of globalization or how its tentacles were slowly but steadily wrapping themselves around the country’s most vital infrastructure assets; its ports, its highways, its toll roads and bridges, even its communication and power sectors. 

The primary defense of the Dubai ports transaction used by the supporters of the deal has been to insinuate that the public’s resistance to the deal has mostly to do with anti-Arab prejudices.  The fact that these ports have been under British control for several years, with no public outcry about foreign ownership, is supposed to be proof of this prejudice. 

But the fact was:  Hardly anyone knew that the British controlled the ports in the first place!  The typical American, including the authors of this book, (who are at least mildly aware of the political landscape) had no idea.  But the Dubai deal changed all that.  Suddenly…everyone knew!  And whether it was Arab, British, or Greek ownership, almost all clear thinking Americans knew they didn’t like the idea, didn’t want it, and wouldn’t permit it.

Now that the Dubai deal has shed light on just how far “Globalization” has eaten away at the fabric of what once were American assets, people are beginning to recognize how manipulative a certain segment of our population has become as it attempts to further its own interests, at the expense of the interests of the United States as a whole.

Any time you hear or read of an individual extolling the benefits of “Globalization” be forewarned that that person considers themselves to be “Global Citizens” first and American citizen second.  This explains much of what we focus on in this book – the fact that decisions and actions that are good for some special interests often are detrimental to the United States America and Americans in general.

Return to TOP

Class and Culture in America

            In a nostalgic sort of way, Americans like to think of themselves as a Nation composed of, and governed by, a large and ever-growing middle class.  There is a deeply ingrained sense of the American Dream.  But reality is, we now have FREE elections, which cost billions.  We have laws that are supposed to protect workers that have either supplanted or made Union movements largely irrelevant, and the environmental legislation that has been abandoned or “realigned” to permit the neglect of major environmental concerns. 

            Make no mistake, nostalgia and reality have collided in 21^st century America.  The Dubai ports deal, perhaps better than any other recent event, makes it clear that there is an elite class of American citizens and corporations.  For them the old, hard won worker protections and environmental standards that working Americans cherish represent obstructions to their ability to increase their wealth, power, and global influence.

While decades of expanding workers’ rights, higher minimum pay, safer working conditions, better retirement and benefits packages led to a growing sense of contentment and complacency among American workers, these social advances simultaneously caused a growing sense of anxiety among the elite.

            The left swinging pendulum of social protections started to swing back to the right with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.  Millions of comfortable and prosperous middle class voters had begun to understand that government could not be the end-all-be-all answer for everything that ailed humanity and the economy.  Over regulation by government had, in fact, become an obvious barrier to economic growth in the minds of many voters.  President Reagan vowed to combat the problem and won voter confidence.  This led to the development of a political phenomenon known as “Reagan Democrats.”

This mostly affluent group of Americans ushered into office one of the most popular Presidents in United States history.  Due to his incredible popularity, congeniality, and ability to communicate, President Reagan was able to convince and cajole congress into a series of sweeping reforms aimed at freeing businesses of what many saw as regulatory paralysis.  Many of his reforms were indeed helpful to the economy and became part of a new system of doing business in America.     Predictably, the rich became even richer.  The wealthiest among them began to stake claim to control and influence the future direction of the Republican Party, which by then had grown to closely rival the then majority Democratic Party in raw numbers.

            The “Reagan Revolution” was an eye opening period of realization for the super-rich and elite that were entrenched within the leadership of the GOP.  What better than populist rhetoric to attract voters?  It was not lost on the elite that the “Great Communicator” was simply saying the things that the populous most wanted to hear…and believe, despite the literal accuracy. 

Ironically, the excellent manufacturing wages of the fifties and sixties had elevated enough people into tax brackets where they could begin to relate to the machinations and terminologies (if not the life styles) of the rich.  Some things that the elite were saying made sense to great masses of people who believed that their proposed changes would enhance their ability to climb the ladder of prosperity.

            Case in point; by 1994, as the pendulum picked up momentum on its swing to the right, the “Contract with America” swept out the last vestiges of Democratic control of both houses of Congress.  Bill Clinton may have been President in 1994, but the Republican Party was now well on its way to taking complete control of government, which was ultimately achieved, (albeit through a Supreme Court appointment), by the election of George W. Bush in 2000.

All this begs the question:  Who is in charge of America’s Democrat and Republican Parties?  The Republican Party has been, (and remains), the party most closely aligned with corporate and big money interests.  However, big money interests are increasingly hedging their bets by buying and gaining influence in the Democrat Party.

“Money is the mother’s milk of politics.”  Given this, on the Republic side, traditional Republicans began being swept aside by what many now call “NeoCons” – New Conservatives, the Super-Rich.  With nearly unlimited financial resources, the NeoCons were able to take control of the national Republican Party organization and to put in place a plan to establish total dominance of the political process.  They fully understood that by doing so they would be repositioned to enhance and accumulate additional wealth in historic proportions.

George W. Bush captured the presidency and the Republicans continued to control Congress, because the NeoCons brilliantly cobbled together big business interests with an alliance of well organized Conservative Christians, single-issue anti-abortion groups, Southern voters, all committed to go along with the large number, (yet a minority), of traditional Republican voters. 

The NeoCons had assembled a team of strategists who knew how to present a united front, pithy slogans, and populist propaganda.  This was enough to enable Bush to questionably win election in 2000, followed by the narrow win in 2004, which eliminated any semblance of balance between the House, Senate, or Judiciary.  Until Dubai, it also eliminated any possibility of a veto of any neocon sponsored legislation from the Republican dominated Congress.

During this relentless attack on the spirit of a balanced form of government and on the American way of life and the values that most of us thought were part and parcel of the American ideal ---  NeoCons thrived like never before.  Although these NeoCons are a very small part of the population, perhaps only the top 1% or so in income, 1% means that there are nearly three million of them representing approximately two million voters.  Their impact at the polls however, is increased by the fact that this group has an excellent voting record vs. the overall very poor voting record of so many other groups of Americans, with so much on the line, that simply fail to vote.

These “Global Citizens” who for the moment live in America but can easily live anywhere else they choose, are the people who control the Republican Party.  These are the people who put up the money.  George W. Bush calls them, his supporters, the “Haves” and the “Have Mores.” 

Return to TOP

No Longer Democrat vs. Republican

What we are about to witness in the next two elections, thanks in large part to the public furor over Dubai’s efforts to take control of our nation’s largest ports, is a dramatic rebalancing of the political pendulum and a dramatic fall from power for those currently controlling government.

            The rebalancing we are about to witness will be very different from previous such events.  Why?  Because the next political tide change will not be a simple ebbing of the Republican power base balanced by a mild increase in Democratic power.  It will not constitute merely a Liberal vs. Conservative ebb and flow of influence.  Rather, circumstances and events are aligning themselves in such a fashion as to suggest the political realignment will not be a simple tide change…but something more akin to a tidal wave and, perhaps, a day of reckoning for the Elite with the Middle Class.    

This change is poised not to be so much a battle between Democrats and Republicans, but a collision between “Haves” and “Rest of Us”.  We say this because it appears the American people are waking up to the fact that BOTH parties have failed them, and to the fact that the interests of big money, big corporations, and individuals greedy for power are behind the staggering failure of the American economy to sustain and replace good paying, middle income jobs.  And nothing could demonstrate that more than the Dubai debacle.

            Thanks to Dubai, Americans for the first time are beginning to more fully appreciate the ramifications of the Holy Grail of “privatization and deregulation” and to question what “Globalization” really means to the typical middle class family.

Further still, they want to know who is behind globalization…and why.  Although for more than twenty five years Americans have been feeling the somewhat amorphous and slowly tightening grip of globalization, Dubai, for the first time, crystallized the true risks of allowing the super wealthy of the world to become part of the ruling class of our country.

Helping snap the picture into perspective was Rep. Duncan Hunter, R - California, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and normally one of the administration's most trusted allies.  He said, ''Dubai cannot be trusted!'' and called the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a member ''a bazaar for terrorist nations."   He then listed instances between 1994 and 2003 in which Dubai helped move materials for weapons of mass destruction, such as heavy water and high-speed electrical switches, to Pakistan, Iran and other countries.   "Their track record,” he said, “is terrifying!"

            Which begs the question:  What was really behind the Administration’s such stubborn and persistent support for this obviously reckless’ deal?  Could it be big money interests of global citizens or global corporations that are more interested in what’s most profitable and beneficial for them, rather than what’s best for America and its people?

            Exposing the U.S. to terrorism, though important, is almost beside the point in the ports deal formula.  Ports are an American Treasure that rightfully belongs to the American People; they are not a wholly owned commodity of the super-wealthy to be bought, sold and traded globally by them at their whim!  The real issue here is which Democrats and Republicans are infected by big money interests and which aren’t.  Which are prepared to buy and sell American assets and which truly, in their hearts, believe that they should put the best interests of all Americans and America first?        We include Democrats here as well as Republicans because globalist’s big money interests infect some Democrats as well as many Republicans.  President Clinton is a prime example of a politician being influenced by Dubai dollars, which were delivered to him by the millions in the form of speaking fees and donations to his Presidential Library.  The result: He strongly backed the Dubai ports deal while his wife, U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton was adamantly opposing it!  This vocal support changed in a matter of hours, however, when Hillary’s campaign team made it clear that the former President’s comments might jeopardize her chances at the presidency.  Power, politics, and money make strange bedfellows, indeed.

It is only human nature for a person to be influenced by such forces.  Self-interest is a fact of life and succumbing to it, even at the cost of the safety and welfare of others, is common human failing.  That is why our forefathers so assiduously sought to find ways of creating checks and balances to protect the public from the human frailties of its leaders. 

Return to TOP

New Political Identities in a Stratified Society

            It is important to respect, recognize, and to acknowledge that we are not dealing exclusively with Democrats or Republicans, per se, when we explore how best to categorize a new class structure that has formed under NeoCon stewardship. 

In order to better explore what is happening in our shrinking middle class society, we think addressing the new class division generated under the NeoCons in its simplest form may be the most productive. It essentially divides America into two classes: the super wealthy elitists who we call AmeriCONs and the “rest of America”, who we call AmeriCANs.   Although neither group is entirely “pure” in composition, the general categorization is helpful in being able to illustrate what is happening in our society.

The idea of only two segments in our society is a dramatic over simplification, of course.  Reality is that rather than two distinctive parties, Democrats vs. Republicans, as it might have been in the 1950s, the political spectrum has evolved into much more of a continuum of political philosophies, requiring multiple designations.  Bill Mahr, the political satirist, hypothesizes that we now need at least nine political parties in order to satisfy the demands of individuals that have very narrow interests leading them to support one candidate or another regardless of the effects in the big picture.

For example, millions of people voted Republican largely because of the gay marriage issues and abortion.  The AmeriCON strategists were quick to exploit these narrow minded individuals and were able to secure their votes in the most recent elections despite the fact that taken as a whole, the Republican philosophies are collectively at odds with their own best interests. The Hypocrisy of it all is stunning.

However, by our limiting of the biggest issue ever to face our society and the concept of what we collectively consider to be a vision of the United States of America we have decided to keep it really simple.  It is them, the AmeriCONs, the super wealthy global citizens, and “the rest of us,” AmeriCANs, people that believe America should always come first.

For this super wealthy class, AmeriCONs, we use “CON” not to imply conservative principles, as in NeoCons, but in the sense and meaning of CONtrarian.  This is because AmeriCONs’ policies, principles and interests so often, by their very nature, are CONtrary to the fundamental well-being of the “rest of us”.  This “rest of us” class of everyday citizens we call AmeriCANs, to imply the American “can do” spirit.  These terms establish a very clear divide, AmeriCONS vs. AmeriCANS, the Super-rich vs. the “Rest of Us.”

Again, this is not a Democratic or Republican issue.  True AmeriCONs probably represent less than 1% of the population.  However, they have been able to influence a vastly larger number of people through the clever and efficient use of their money.  The formula is as simple as white bread but the difficult execution of their plans took generations. 

Many of these AmeriCONs are direct descendents of the robber barons that required legislative control during the first part of the last century.  Big corporations and super wealthy individuals during those days so abused the general population that anti-trust legislation needed to be instituted in order to restore the order.  And here we are again, the masses being manipulated by the elite, only in a far more complicated set of international circumstances.

It is critically important however, to recognize that though virtually all AmeriCONs are wealthy, not all wealthy people are AmeriCONs.  Nor are they all Republican, or being a Democrat absolves one from being an AmeriCON.  For example, Pat Buchanan, an influential conservative voice and a one time candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination, is an AmeriCAN to the very core.  He is out there right now as this is being written, attempting to pretty much get the same message out that we are.  Our National identity is in big trouble.

Ross Perot is a different but very similar example.  Here is one of America’s most wealthy individuals, yet he toured the country trying to warn the AmeriCANs what was happening with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) when there still might have been a chance to stop it.  “That great sucking sound you ‘all will be hearing are our American jobs going south of the border,” he tried to warn.

Therefore, when identifying the AmeriCONs from the AmeriCANs, one has to be very careful not to let the forest hide the tree.  But they need to be identified in order to purge them from the equation that determines how we decide to protect America.  The idea that being called “Protectionist” or an “Isolationist” as an insult is ironically pathetic in the comedy of it all.  We consider being called “Protectionist” a supreme complement and these AmeriCONs are so far out of the main stream loop that they assign the title as an insult.  What the hell is wrong with wanting to “Protect” our own citizens first?  And if that takes becoming a bit more “Isolated” that’s great by us. 

(COMING SOON -- Signed, limited edition
          advanced copies of Legal Treason)

Return to TOP

America First

            AmeriCANs puts America First.  The safety of the nation and its citizens, creation of higher paying U.S. jobs, insuring decent U.S. living conditions, establishing fair minimum wages, maintaining a clean environment, and insuring new opportunities for the upward mobility of all Americans is of paramount importance to AmeriCANs.  But for AmeriCONs, insuring ever-increasing profits and deploying successful corporate global strategies are the paramount interests.

            This is not to say that AmeriCANs aren’t perfectly willing to compete on a world wide basis as the AmeriCONs like to say.  The issue here is that AmeriCANs want, and will now demand, a level playing field.  Major corporations allowing vendors to pay slave labor rates in counties that ignore basic tenets of environmental responsibility is not offering AmeriCANs low priced goods, it is nothing more than skirting the laws that we have here in the United States that eat into the AmeriCON profits.

By using this two tiered stratification of American society, it becomes quickly apparent that AmeriCON’s interests are threatened by AmeriCAN goals.  To protect their interests, AmeriCONs have launched numerous well orchestrated scare and misinformation tactics against AmeriCAN interests, in which well supported operatives, from carefully financed “scientists” to misguided fundamentalists, inflame debates by accusing AmeriCANs of “Protectionism,” “Isolationism,” “Immorality,” etc..  The result is a barrage of rhetoric laden with accusations and threats that portray not so much an exchange of facts and logical arguments against AmeriCAN interests, as they do a clear clash of class interests and propaganda.  As a result of this barrage of special interest orchestrated propaganda, much of today’s “news” reflects not fact or logic as much as  purposefully misleading patriotic-sounding slogans, emotional accusations, ceaselessly repeated distortions, and outright misrepresentation of scientific fact. 

Nowhere is this more apparent, perhaps, than in the area of global warming, where a coalition of 2,000 independent global scientists have underwritten the fact and dangers of global warning as opposed to a few handfuls of carefully AmeriCON groomed naysayers who have been paid directly or indirectly to support special AmeriCON political and economic interests.  Their job is simple: confuse the public to the point that it will take fewer votes to decide the issue in AmeriCON favor.  The strategy is working.  And “news”, for the most part, has become not news, but nonsense.  Often readers and viewer are provided not facts countered by facts, but facts countered by false science, deceptive slogans, purposefully manipulated data, and fear.  NPR and public television news are among the few exceptions.  There, for the most part, fact meets fact.  Bubbles of patriotic sounding slogans, and misleadingly named legislation that seek to advance a false premise are quickly burst by the prick of the reality and integrity.

Yes, globalization does have some strong inherent benefits for the general population, not only of the United States, but the world.  However, to date the real benefits of Globalization have been almost entirely confined to the coffers of the AmeriCONs.  If you require proof, ask the starving poor of Eastern Europe or the jobless, homeless, children working in international sweat shops, or the refugees of Darfur how they are benefiting from globalization. 

Return to TOP

Finally - Exposed For all To See!

When the “Reagan Revolution” began in earnest to deregulate and “privatize” America, it, perhaps inadvertently, started the push that eventually led to legalization of the auctioning off of America’s most valuable (and critical) national security assets to private corporations, foreign governments, and transnational interests.  Big money in America and elsewhere begged, borrowed, lobbied and bribed legislative and regulatory “reforms” into existence that enabled them to seize ever increasing monetary benefits from unrestrained privatization and subsequent globalization, even to the detriment, well being, and security of the United States of America and the vast majority of its people. 

The Dubai port-grab, and the bizarre machinations behind it, was the spark that turned the public’s smoldering discontent with certain negative aspects of uncheck globalization into a firestorm of protest.  It may have come just in time to save the country from an economic disaster of such far ranging scope that it would be far worse than the mere use of a port for a terrorist attack. 

The economic collapse of a country is just as devastating, perhaps more so, than the atomic obliteration of one of its cities.  As horrendous as this would be, the U.S. can recover from the destruction a major city, but the implosion of its economy is a death knell from which there is no recovery -- especially in today’s world where our own national leaders have alienated so many nations and turned them into eager aggressors.

A portion of this book is dedicated to tracing the chronology of important changes in law governing the privatization of our most critical national assets, the selling off of America’s infrastructure, the deregulation of vital services such as communication and transportation, and the global export of American jobs.   During the past two and half decades, erosion of laws and regulations has transformed much of America into something that few of our so-called “Greatest Generation” would even recognize as the America they fought to preserve!

A single “deal” – the Dubai Ports Deal – has forced open the eyes of young and old AmeriCANs alike.  No longer can anyone help but recognize the fact that something has gone very wrong with our democracy when our leaders themselves lobby to sell what should be America’s most vital and valued sovereign national assets…from ports to utility companies…to AmeriCONS, self-serving corporations, or foreign governments.  None of these three entities has or ever should be expected to have what is best for America and its people as their top priority.  It is against their own self interest.  They value what is best for them, their bank accounts, their stockholders, their people, their countries, and their political agendas – not ours. 

Return to TOP

A Natural Progression

            In many respects it is not surprising that something that has become a relatively common practice, like the Dubai deal, became the “straw that broke that camel’s back” in here America.  Countless such deals have transpired under the guise of “globalization” and deregulation during the past few decades.  A few of the more recent involving just our highways and bridges include:

• The Indiana Toll Road (“Crossroads of America”) – FOR SALE TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER.  The deal as of March 2006?  Governor plans to sell control of the highway for $3.85 billion to a foreign company.  Where will toll profits go?  Out of the country.

• The Chicago Skyway Toll Bridge and eight miles of heavily traveled toll roads --  SOLD for $1.83 billion to a consortium including foreign companies such as Macquarie and Cintra.  They immediately raised tolls 25 percent.  Where do toll profits go?  Out of the country.

• Washington, D.C.’s crucial Dulles Greenway, a major six lane toll road connecting Leesburg, Va., to the Dulles Toll Road and Washington Dulles International Airport -- SOLD to a foreign company in 2005 that paid $711 million to control 86 percent of the 14-mile toll highway.  Where do toll profits go?  Out of the country.

• The Detroit-Windsor Tunnel -- SOLD to a foreign corporation, which now controls it.  Where do profits go?  Out of the country.

(SOURCE:  Indianapolis Star – 2/20/2006)

Such deals compromise the security of an interstate system that was conceived in the 1950s by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as a means to move weapons, troops and supplies for the military from coast to coast.

"There is a security question of having interstate roads in foreign hands," according to Indiana House Minority Leader B. Patrick Bauer, D-South Bend, who has spearheaded opposition to the Indiana Toll Road scheme.  As concerned as he is that foreign interests are taking over our roads, he rightfully observed that he is even more concerned with the underlying merits of privatization than with the nationality of the consortiums involved.  The above mentioned sell off of roads and bridges are just a few recent deals in the transportation sector.  There are hundreds more all across the nation involving not only highways, but a myriad of other critical infrastructure assets as well. 

Thankfully, the Dubai deal dramatically synthesized the problems related to privatizing and selling these assets in a national way that all previous deals had not.  By looking through the lens of the Dubai scheme, normally complacent and trusting Americans suddenly grasped the frightening near and long term impact of deregulation and unbridled globalization of our infrastructure…and the fact that something had gone terribly wrong in the Oval Office…and in Congress…to permit such deals. 

Thankfully, what AmeriCONs wanted to happen with our ports and Dubai was so dramatically wrong for America that it quickly became a “tipping point” for AmeriCANs, one at which they came, at last, to recognize privatization, special interest driven deregulation, and unbridled globalization were a deadly threat not only to national security and public safety, but just as importantly to the economic security and future of all AmeriCANs! 

That is why we have declared, “Thank God for Dubai and the ports deal!”  Without it, America’s drift into international economic serfdom would have continued unchallenged, unchecked, and unregulated.  Perhaps it would have continued until it reached a “point of no return” from which economic collapse was inevitable for the country.  To the one percent of the population that comprises the super-wealthy AmeriCONs, this makes comparatively little difference.  They would simply move to their homes in London or Paris or Bermuda and manage their international interests from there.  But for AmeriCANs, the economic implosion of America would leave them and their families in a state of chaos and deprivation…or worse.

We hope we have not already reached that “tipping point” where economic collapse is the inevitable outcome, a thing that can only be delayed but not avoided. Often it is difficult to gauge such pivotal moments except through the retrospective lens of history.  Time will tell.  In the interim, it is important to note that economic collapse can just as completely and irrevocably destroy a nation as warfare or terrorisms. 

            The demise of the Soviet Union did not occur because of terrorism or as the result of a long feared attack by the United States.  What destroyed the Communist empire was an economic implosion brought on by incompetent governance that was subject to the natural frailties of human nature manifested as the “special interest.”  The United States never had to launch a single rocket, drop a single bomb, or send a single division of soldiers into the USSR to defeat it.  The special interests that ran the government of the Soviet Union defeated it.

Perhaps that is worth repeating: The special interests, suffering from human nature, that ran the government of the Soviet Union defeated it.

The same could happen here, only in reverse.  Instead of trying to maintain an impossibly Utopian society through a communal form of governance, (communism), the AmeriCONs in United States may very well destroy the possibility of the “American Dream” promised by a capitalist system by the flaws in their human nature.  However you look at it, it’s the special interest, (really personal self interest), that poisons the prospects of a true “middle class.”

The Dubai debacle was a concrete awakening of AmeriCANs to the extent our government has become overly influenced by wealthy special interests that connive at the edges of what is legal, and often resort to the illegal, in order to shape legislation and regulations and to influence our presidents, congressmen and even our judges to do not what is best for the Country, but what is best for them.

Seldom are we able to clearly define specific moments of historic value, but the Dubai Affair, we believe, was one of those moments.  As with other pivotal events in our history, many will long remember where they were, what they were doing, or how they first heard about the “Dubai Affair”.  Nor are they likely to forget the President’s support for the deal.  In many respects, the Dubai Affair evoked a strong visceral reaction from millions of AmeriCANs that was right up there in magnitude with those evoked by Watergate, the Nixon Resignation, and McCarthyism.

            What evolved after the first tidal wave of news about the Dubai Affair swept across the landscape of the American consciousness was as predictable as what happens after a spot light sweeps across a dark alley:  People see what’s there. Sometimes it is a parked Mercedes, sometimes piles of garbage and scurrying rats.

After seeing what was there, AmeriCANs began asking, “What’s going on here?  If selling control of our ports is as “good” a deal as President Bush claims, why not also sell control of our air traffic system to Saudi Arabia or, perhaps, ENRON?  Or turn over control of our reservoirs and railroads to Afghanistan or, maybe, a Syrian based transnational corporation?  Or, since a British firm, the National Grid, already has achieved control of much of the utility infrastructure, why not just “spin off” that part of its business and sell it to an Iranian corporation?  What’s to stop them?”

None of this makes sense to AmeriCANs, but it made plenty of economic sense to AmeriCONs eager to capitalize on such deals and justify their international conglomerates that have begun to suck the life blood out of less sophisticated and corrupt governments.  Yet the least educated to the most political savvy AmeriCANS instinctively knew such transactions were not good for them…or America.   The “Dubai Deal” made no sense to them.  What’s more, no amount of administration or corporate “spin” could make the deal look like anything other than what it was – a scheme to benefit a certain few financial and political interests, but not the American public.

So what happened?  Where was the disconnect?  How could a transaction that was immediately seen as illogical, dangerous, and un-American by almost all AmeriCANs be deemed “good” by those proposing and supporting it, including Sen. John Warner, R-Virginia, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee?  Warner firmly sided with the Administration on the deal, praising the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a member, as a key ally in the fight against terrorism, as if this, even if true, made the deal palatable?

Does no one in the Administration “get it”?  The problem isn’t whether or not Dubai or the Arab Emirates are allies or not; the problem is that certain infrastructure assets that are critical to the operation and survival of the country like its ports, air traffic control system, communications system, utility companies, reservoirs, and its roads and bridges should not be sold to ANY entity whether it be a foreign country, a multinational corporation or even an American corporation!  These assets do and should belong to and be run by the people of the United States, i.e., through its government on behalf of the people. 

(COMING SOON -- Signed, limited edition
         advance copies of Legal Treason)

Return to TOP

To really understand why the sell off of critical American infrastructure assets is happening, requires that we look a lot further back in time than 9/11 or even the rise to power of today’s NeoCons.  We need to look back to a time even before Ronald Reagan although it was through his administration that privatization, deregulation and globalization first got a toe hold on America’s vital organs. 

To understand what is happening today, we need to revisit fundamental thinking about politics, government and human nature.  In the broadest sense, just as many sociologists, psychologists, and economists predicted that Communism was destined to fail because it lacked reward-based work incentives; others predicted unrestrained capitalism also would ultimately fail because, as Mao Tse Tong rightfully observed (along with many psychologists and sociologists), man’s inherent self interest will always cause some individuals to form groups that will eventually take inappropriate and disproportionate advantage of any purely capitalistic system. 

It is our contention that what Mao and numerous human behaviorists predicted is precisely what is occurring in America today:  Those who formed the groups that have seized power have inappropriately manipulated the tools of democracy to legalize privatization, deregulation and globalization in order to take “inappropriate and disproportionate advantage” of our capitalistic system to the grave detriment of the nation and its people.

            Remarkably, knowing the fatal flaw that unregulated capitalism presented, our nation’s founders were prophetic enough to create a representative democracy based on a carefully regulated form of capitalism along with government ownership and control of assets vital to the nation’s security and economy.  This structure, though currently circumvented in some areas now, was designed by our forefathers to prevent profiteers from manipulating either “necessities of life” or components vital to the nation’s economic or military security.

            During the past quarter century the crucial balance between reasonable regulation (as envisioned and provided for by our Precursors) and unbridled capitalism (as championed by today’s NeoCons, the AmeriCONs) has been allowed to dramatically shift toward deregulation, privatization, and even sale of critical national assets to foreign interests!  We see evidence of this shift in everything from the deregulation of airlines and the phone company, to deregulation and sale to foreign interests of our electric utilities, toll roads, highways, and bridges!  Even highly sensitive military equipment manufacturing is being “outsourced” to foreign countries, for the enrichment of personal interests.  

Some say this is good.  They claim it saves money, improves services, increases competition, and improves profits.  But this headlong drive to deregulate and sell America’s critical infrastructure to U.S. or foreign companies responsible only to stock holders, but not the American public, has a downside.  So does Dell Computer’s outsourcing of 20,000 computer related jobs to India.  The downside in both cases impacts AmeriCANs, but not AmeriCONs.

Thanks to policies supported by the Bush Administration, AmeriCONs, a cooperative Congress, and a NeoCon stacked Supreme Court, more and more corporations and AmeriCONs can take advantage of AmeriCANs through such processes as outsourcing U.S. jobs and privatizing, deregulating, and globalizing our national assets.  Unfortunately for the American workers who helped vote AmeriCONs into office, these workers have made it possible for their employers to legally export their jobs and take unfair profit advantage of foreign wage and worker-rights disparities.  Make no mistake, there are no level playing fields for AmeriCan workers.

This is not to say that all forms of deregulation or globalization are bad.  Good deregulation has and does result in the creation of more and better products and services, often at lower prices.  Well reasoned deregulation can even stimulate job growth not only in low paying service jobs, but in high paying fields both here and abroad.  Similarly, strategically employed deregulation can bring about a need for more workers at higher (not lower) wages.  But, contrary to broad brush claims that deregulation, privatization, and globalization are always good for America, we see stark evidence of their darker side when erroneously (or greedily?) employed.  The result then is fewer jobs, erosion of wages in formerly well-paying sectors, off-shore “sheltering” of corporate profits that allow individuals and multinational companies to avoid paying their fair share of taxes and forcing working AmeriCANs to pay make up for it, and the shipping of millions of American jobs, particularly good paying blue collar jobs, to cheap unregulated overseas labor pools and sweat shops.

Just as Ying has Yang, and Day has Night, deregulation’s good side has a dark side.  The Law of Unintended Consequences has resulted in politicians who initially sought and approved privatization and deregulation with every belief it would be good for America now have come to come to grips with discovering that it has led to circumstances such as foreign ownership of vital utility companies, foreign control of our nation’s ports, loss of millions of American jobs, and declining standards of living for American families. 

Return to TOP

The Insidious Birth of Globalization

In the 50’s we were a one-worker-per-family nation with a rapidly growing economy and an equally rapidly growing middle class.  There was talk of a four day work week, free health care, longer vacations, subsidized college educations, and a higher standard of living for everyone; now, with a shrinking middle class and growing numbers of poor, even with two parents working, many go without health care, health benefits are consistently cut, and families struggle to get by financially.  Why?

The answer lies partially at the feet of deregulation, divestment of critical American infrastructure, and misapplied globalization practices.  Indeed, the reason so many more American families struggle to “make it by” these days may well reside in the fact that the slowly tightening grip of globalization takes decades to fully strangle its victims.  Improperly regulated globalization offers American workers an odd combination of cheap goods (for a while) from abroad…and slow but steady financial strangulation at home.

It is true that deregulation helped get the profit ball rolling in the right direction for AmeriCONs decades ago, but deregulation by itself, despite (or perhaps because of) political forces, has limits.  For instance, to keep profit margins growing for AmeriCONs, no one was going to roll back the minimum wage, worker safety rules, emission controls, child labor laws, or the need for environmental standards in America.  What to do?  How, AmeriCONs wondered, could they not only increase profits but also keep increasing them year after year after year?

When hit with the hard reality that America had “standards” that they couldn’t subvert to reduce costs and increase profits, the AmeriCONs decided to seek out less troublesome territory to squeeze out more profit:  The global labor market.  Shipping was recognized to be substantially cheaper than American labor.

It was this crucial decision that ultimately led to the subversion of the very system that was designed to protect American families, jobs, and national security interests.  The unintended (we hope) subversion began when AmeriCONs started setting up off shore corporations and banking systems, systems that later evolved into complex mechanisms designed primarily to avoid taxation and regulatory scrutiny.

            Simultaneously they began shutting down American factories and building new ones in countries where societal protections such as minimum wage standards, pollution standards, child labor laws, worker safety rules, etc. did not exist.  This twin flight of jobs from America and tax money to off shore “shelters” enabled AmeriCONs to achieve their goal of dramatically reducing costs and increasing profits.  Hence, the birth of “Globalization”.

Thanks to Dubai, however, some in Washington are now starting to comprehend the deeper significance of what has been happening and what the long term outcome is likely to be for America and AmeriCANs.  Senator Richard C. Shelby, the Alabama Republican who leads the Senate Banking Committee, perhaps most clearly stated what so many people were thinking when he said, "Everything in this country can't be for sale!"  Many voters in coffee shops across the USA were saying the obvious, “Commercial benefits have to be balanced against our right to national sovereignty and protection from terrorism.”

One cannot help but believe that those at the highest levels of our nation’s government and corporate structures always fully understood the need for such “balance”, but had and continue to have interests that are in direct personal conflict with such ideals… and in conflict the best interests of average, hard working, patriotic AmeriCANs. 

Now we will explore how these special interests manipulate the political system and voters, to get what they want? 

Return to TOP

How AmeriCONs Got AmeriCANs
to Go Along

Interestingly, when it came time to get the public to “buy” new forms of deregulation and sweeping globalization, the Bush Administration used essentially the same strategy it used to secure massive tax reductions for the nation’s wealthiest people and corporations.  To get AmeriCANs to support what many called “draconian and disproportionate tax cuts for the rich”, the Bush Administration first doled out miniscule tax cut “crumbs” to middle class and blue collar workers.  The “bribe” worked: Congress, as the public yawned, passed some of the most massive tax cuts ever for some of the world’s wealthiest people and corporations!  Meanwhile, Congress dawdled on fixing the economic crisis looming over the two systems all AmeriCANs (but not AmeriCONs) most depend upon: Social Security and Healthcare.  That is how tax cuts for the wealthy were passed.

To assure support for further deregulation and globalization, AmeriCONs controlling both Houses of Congress, used the same strategy:  Instead of doling out small tax cuts to AmeriCANs, it doled out other “crumbs”, this time in the form of deceptively achieved low prices (for the moment) on many foreign goods.  Cheap products from third world, unregulated, sweat shops included everything from baby toys and sippy cups to fancy furniture, clothing, and hand woven baskets.

Both strategies (tax cuts and cheap foreign goods) effectively distracted AmeriCANs from an important underlying issue: the fact that these “great deals” came at the invisible cost of the slow erosion of millions of well paying U.S. middle class and blue collar jobs and the replacement of American made products with foreign made products produced by people forced into accepting wages and working conditions that were long ago outlawed in America.

But the crumb dolling strategy worked.  Day after day working class Americans, placated by minor tax cuts and cheap goods, swallowed hard and then bobbed and weaved as the resulting body blows of globalizations began pounding away at their incomes, their jobs, their access to healthcare, and their future.  As they gloated about saving ten cents at the “dollar store”, they groused over layoffs, pay cuts, factory closings, and pension plans that went “belly up” and left hundreds of thousands with retirement nest eggs that were nothing but empty shells.

The time, you see, has come to “pay the piper”.  And we predict that soon the temporary crumbs of low prices and tax cuts will be gradually retracted as AmeriCONs seek to extract ever more profits by raiding the salaries, benefit packages, healthcare plans, pensions, and Social Security funds of AmeriCANs.              Although we are still in the very early stages of this retraction, already we are seeing the Rust Belt grow rustier.  One industry after another, like the steel industry, is folding up.  The last shreds of the country’s once proud ship building industry has disappeared almost entirely.  Good paying blue collar jobs evaporate while bankruptcies and loan defaults climb. 

            This last fact bothered AmeriCONs because bankruptcies threatened their profits.  So much so that Congress, under the control of the AmeriCONs, changed the bankruptcy laws to better protect AmeriCON interests at the expense of the most vulnerable AmeriCANs, many of whom filed bankruptcy only due to health related family catastrophes.  

(COMING SOON -- Signed, limited edition
          advance copies of Legal Treason)

Return to TOP

Deceptive Portrayal of a Positive Outlook

As all this was transpiring, the government continued to issue rosy “New Jobs Reports”.  These upbeat reports routinely indicated thousands of new jobs were being created every month.  The reports, however, failed to indicate that the bulk of these new jobs were low paying service jobs paying appreciably less than the jobs that had been shipped overseas.  Many were fast food worker, shelf stocker or cash register clerk jobs.  Workers displaced from their former well paying jobs had to take two or even three such jobs to make up for the drop in pay they suffered.

During this period Administration spin doctors bombarded the public and Wall Street with news of “falling unemployment claims”.  Many news media outlets dutifully regurgitated the Administration’s “good news” as if it were genuine good news.  The stock market rose on it.  Times are “good” the Administration keeps assuring the country.  They repeated it incessantly, as if it were a mantra, until a kind of group-think, a well known psychological phenomenon, took hold among those still working, but watching their fellow workers get laid off. 

Careful examination of government issued jobs reports, however, reveals that they are more propaganda than balanced statistical fact.  What is really happening is people who were unemployed for months or years and who were still looking for work were unable to find jobs.  Their white and blue collar manufacturing jobs were now in China and Taiwan.  Their computer and software jobs were Japan and India.  Their clothing manufacturing jobs were in the Philippines and Indonesia.  There simply are no decent paying jobs here for them anymore!  But, because their unemployment benefits had run out, the government, using a peculiar statistical slight of hand, just “dropped” their names from its unemployment rolls simply because their unemployment benefits had run out!  They still had no jobs, but as far as the Administration was concerned, they didn’t “count” anymore! 

This is one strategy of how AmeriCONs make bad news sound statistically good to AmeriCANs and hide the true scope of a rapidly emerging employment / income catastrophe from the American people. 

            In the end, many globalization deals worked out this way:  AmeriCAN workers gained miniscule tax rebates and low prices on foreign made goods.  With this as a palliative, they watched hundreds of thousands, then millions of their jobs be shipped offshore.  When big companies “down sized” or “relocated”, people were thrown out of work by the tens of thousands at a swat.  Once these big companies began boarding up, numerous smaller support businesses started toppling, first by the score, then by the hundreds, and now by the thousands.  Bankruptcies have soared, so Congress, with its new AmeriCON wisdom, made filing bankruptcy more difficult if not impossible for victims of the deregulation and globalization that they themselves had legislated into existence. 

While all this was transpiring, however, wealthy AmeriCONs and their corporations, including the oil industry, could hardly contain their glee:  They are recording record profits, legally “sheltering” billions from taxes via “off shore” operations and banks, and saving billions more in labor costs by “outsourcing” American jobs to countries where such niceties as minimum wages, child labor laws, job safety, and environmental law are nonexistent. 

As a reward for all this, the Bush Administration rewarded these companies and their largest investors with unprecedented tax cuts!

It is abundantly clear from all this that a remarkable confluence of events had occurred in America.  It both encouraged and enabled certain financial interests to come together in a new way to successfully deregulate and globalize America’s assets to the detriment of the majority of the nation’s population.  Whether the issue is ports, highways, bridges, toll roads, utilities, communication infrastructure, sensitive military equipment manufacturing, air transportation, or American jobs – national interests must supersede corporate or foreign interests that seek deregulation and/or sale of American assets and jobs to benefit special interests.

AmeriCANs allowed this happen partially because they lacked foresight and understanding and trusted their leaders to do what was best for America.  Instead, their leaders, through outrageous ignorance combined with obvious connivance, disguised the highly negative impact unchecked deregulation and globalization was likely to have on AmeriCAN families. 

Flaws of human nature and succumbing to distractions such as the low cost goods and minor tax cuts led the AmeriCANs to be oblivious to the outrageous over-reaching that certain AmeriCONs have indulged in for the past two decades in America.  Their drive to bring about a form of unrestrained global capitalism has left the average U.S. citizen less secure and less affluent; the nation at greater peril than ever; foreign laborers indentured at slave wages; and AmeriCONs wealthier than ever, more powerful than ever, and less taxed.

Many of our National treasures and resources already have been sold, squandered, or traded off to foreign interests. News of the Dubai Affair literally shocked a sleeping Middle America to wakefulness. That it did so violently, was no less a shock, perhaps, to the AmeriCONS (for whom such deals had become common place)
than to the President, who actually claimed that he was “completely unaware of the transaction” until he “learned about it in the media”!
Control of six major sea ports being sold to foreign powers at what the President himself called “a time of war” and he is oblivious to it until he checks the “media’? Does he (or the American people) know, one wonders, that Communist China has had a significant ownership interest in Long Beach, California for a decade? Or that the list of foreign ownership of America’s public roads, bridges, and power assets is already staggering?

Contact the Author 

T. Kraus

Return to TOP