The Limits of Power, by Andrew Bacevich

Book Review/comments:

(and an encomium to the 

Preamble to the

 US Constitution)

The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism

By Andrew Bacevich

This is the only recent book on government I've read that suggests that the Preamble to the US Constitution provides a pretty good guideline for how we should conduct our nation's business.

I've said before (and will say, again and again and again) that the Preamble--the first sentence, of only 52 words--to our Constitution is something every man, woman and child of speaking age should be able to recite. 

I've said before (and will say, again and again and again) that the occasion for such recitation should be:

• for every child of school age, once a day, in the morning, before classes start, recited as a group, and where they can view an enlarged version of the US Constitution;
  
• for every government office, once a day, in the morning, upon opening for business, recited as a group, and where they can view an enlarged version of the US Constitution;
  
• for every governmental gathering, once, before the commencement of business, recited as a group, and where they can view an enlarged version of the US Constitution.

I further see nothing remiss in suggesting that families or other groups who gather together for meals, recite the Preamble before beginning to eat, in conjunction with whatever pre-meal practices, if any there be, they currently practice. In my view, it is a perfectly appropriate "civil grace."

You've certainly seen pictures or  reproductions of the first sentence in the original, hand-written document:

Here is the text, with some attempt at keeping the original spelling and capitalization:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Here it is with numbering added, as a "mission statement with priorities":

We the People of the United States, in Order to:

1.) form a more perfect Union,              

2.) establish Justice,                                

3.) insure domestic Tranquility,            

4.) provide for the common defence,    

5.) promote the general Welfare, and  

6.) secure the Blessings of Liberty       

    to ourselves and our Posterity,     

do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I like to number these Constitutional priorities to point out that the US President for the past two terms has been consistently in error in claiming that "The first priority of the President of the United States is to protect the people — protect the lives of you, your wife and your children," he usually adds, when talking to an interviewer who doesn't dare suggest that the man resign or be impeached and run out of town on a rail. As anyone can tell who knows the Constitution, or can read it, as above, providing for the common defense is the FOURTH priority.

I would further assert that, in keeping with the overall brilliance of the Framers of Our Constitution, the ordering of these priorities is deliberate, has been well thought out, was no accident, that each priority is a condition precedent for the bringing into existence of the next priority.

My interpretation runs this way: The foundation of any attempt at self-government must be an agreement to unify under that concept of self-government; and agreement to form a more perfect union.

Without such a foundation, there is nothing to support the establishment of justice, nothing upon which justice can be established.

But with such basal agreement and a scheme of justice in place, then it is possible to countenance the existence of domestic tranquility. Without the underlying agreement to proceed and an establishment of "the rule of law, not of men," it would be impossible to assure the continuance of anything approaching a peaceful nation.

Finally, when such conditions are established, there is actually something in existence that can be defended, something those subscribing to this scheme would consider worth defending. I say "finally," because the attainment of conditions 1, 2 and 3, and the further defense of them, would be an uncommonly, unusually good condition for any society to attain.

Yet our Framers went two steps further, to add, upon a now-secure foundation of union, justice and tranquility, the goal of promoting the general welfare. Not corporate welfare. Not welfare for the impoverished. Not welfare for "the middle class."  The general welfare. 

Let's look at the verb, "promote," first. Starting with Latin, to move forward, further the progress of something, to support, to actively encourage. It does not say "provide for the general welfare." That was back in goal #4 and defense. Promote is more in the realm of cheer-leading, or establishing an appropriate context in which such a goal can be realized, attained.

And Welfare is about "getting on well," to be hale and hearty, to be of good health and good cheer, as a more perfect union of all its members. Not a bad goal, when you consider it. And, when you consider it, it is a goal we certainly have not attained in this nation. We have come closer to reaching it in some times and not in others. I doubt that the Framers considered this an easy goal to attain; yet I also don't think they considered that we would ever be so far from reaching it as we currently are.

Then, for pure frosting, gilding — perhaps even as a goad towards extraordinary achievement — the Framers added the sixth goal: "to secure the blessings of liberty" for us, for our children, for their children, all future generations, our families without end. Almost a benediction. As to what those "blessings of liberty" might be, the Declaration of Independence suggests some: "certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness," and, a paragraph later, "Safety and Happiness." 

And yet what are we to make of the word "secure"? To fasten down, affix, protect against attack, to cause something to be without care or worry?  Like "promote" in goal #5. Seems to me this is a "tie it all neatly in place, so no one or no thing can huff and puff and blow the house down. Once again, we're dealing with something in the nature of a protective context, a framework, a structure in which live citizens can pursue their aspirations.

As a last note, I think we should take note that the signatories of the Declaration of Independence were, very like the Constitutional Framers, loath to claim that any lists, any enumerations of rights were complete. 

In the Declaration, the authors noted that there are "certain unalienable rights," and that "among them" (i.e., what follows is not to be taken as a complete, exhaustive list of unalienable rights) are "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." In the Constitution's Ninth Amendment, the formulation is that "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the People," (i.e., what preceded is not to be taken as a complete, exhaustive list of all the rights retained by the people, or, reversed, the rights not delegated to the government).

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Bad Money, by Kevin Phillips

Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism
By Kevin Phillips

It just gets worser 'n' worser.

From Phillips' Politics of Rich and Poor I learned that the US of A shifted from being a creditor nation (we loaned money to other nations) to being a debtor nation (we were passing out IOUs left and right, borrowing money from other nations). 

In 1984-5 or so. Under the reign of the profligate, fake-conservative president Reagan. (Why is it that the Republicrats keep saying that Reagan was a "conservative" when he pitched the nation into global debtor status, drove the national debt waaaaay higher than it had ever been, expanded the federal government to its greatest-ever size — and so hugely overspent the Russians in war materiel that we're not out of the ammo dumps yet?

 Are they just that stupid? Or is it that they think WE are that stupid, and if they keep talking about the Reagan's new clothes, we won't notice that Reagan padded around in his skivvies most of the time?  Which?  Or is it all of the above — self-delusion, self-deception, deceit and lies?

And we've gone deeper and deeper into debt every year since. Shrub, our ULIC (Unitary Liar-In-Chief), merely strapped a few dozen Apollo-class rockets onto the debt to send it into deep space. (If space is omni-dimensional, why do we say "deep space"? High space? Wide space? Thick space?

But Bad Money provides another little tidbit: The "financial sector" of our economy, without any really big parties or celebrations thrown by the sector greedmeisters to acknowledge their new status, surpassed manufacturing and became the largest sector of our economy somewhere between 1993 and 1996.

"Financial sector" means banks, "investment banks," brokers, insurers — folks who make NOTHING. Folks who merely push papers around, collect signatures on IOUs, folks who bundle all those IOUs into big heaps and slice and dice 'em into smaller heaps, which they then bundle with other slices, and so on.  And pass them off in exchange for some cash and more IOUs.  It's entranching. (And what is a tranche, you aske? Why, it's OF — Ye Olde Frenche — for "slice.")

Basically, the US has become one big gambling cesspool, its waves radiating outwards from Wall Street to Washington, to London, Paris, Gamla Stan, Visby, Helsinki, St. Peter's City, to Chicago, St. Francis-by-the-Bay, Tokyo, Beijing, Bombai and Bangalore …. (In other words, radiate me once, shame on you, radiate me — well, let's just say it's metastasized, gone global.)

And the casino operators claim to be making "products"— trying to cloak their legerdemain, prestidigitation, smoke, mirrors and fraud with the lexicon of real manufacturing activities. As if they made things you could touch —  hammer, nails, a car, sewing machine, thread, cloth, a house, factory, bridge. Useful things — shoes, clothes, food. 

When Wall Street gamblers talk about "investment vehicles," there's no vehicle, and there's no investment. There's just an IOU, a con man and a mark. The mark forks over some "money" to the con man (broker, banker, "wealth manager," whatever) and gets back an IOU — a promise to repay, with interest, the money the mark forked over.

Phillips writes about these things in rather harrowing terms.  Bottom line is that "the money changers" (who supposedly were and are anathema to Christians, Jews and Muslims) are running the world into the ground. Have run it into the ground.

The only thing that protects them from being found out is "our" government. 

And government protects them in order to stay in office, get their "cut" of the deals in the form of campaign contributions. Protection that takes the form of cooking the federal budget books, faking the "official statistics" to keep hidden from us "citizen marks" just how, and how badly, we're being fleeced.

Phillips points out, for example, that the "official" cost of living index is a running fraud, because the COLI (sounds like Dr. Escherich's pathogen, doesn't it?) does not count the cost of food and fuel (too "volatile"), and it has waved a wand over housing costs to conceal what housing actually costs.

There are two important reasons for hiding the true measures of such things as inflation and unemployment:

The first is that if the true measure of inflation were calculated, all federal programs (such as Social Security) that peg benefit increases to increases in the cost of living would have to pay more — a lot more — to keep beneficiaries up with the real increases they're experiencing. 

The second is that if the true measures were known, the "organizations" that declare whether the nation is in a recession or depression, based on measures of inflation, joblessness, etc., those august bodies would have had to declare that the US was in a recession, or depression, years ago. And that would not be good for political longevity.

Phillips figures that the government tricks to hide the real inflation numbers lop off more than 50% of what is real. In other words, if the government says inflation is running at 2.5%, it's actually running at 5% or more.

And when the corporate media say that government says that unemployment is running at 5.5% or so, it's running at 11% to 12%. (The press has been unable to find this link right here to report the "real estimated number" of unemployed persons.

 And please keep foremost in your mind that "our" government, as a regular, consistent practice, uses ordinary-sounding words and phrases in very particular, circumscribed ways. It is a trick, a propaganda practice, to lull (as in lullaby) the active brain into sleep, to short-circuit rational thought. (The other trick is euphemism, the use of nice-sounding words to perfume the stench of reality: "in harms' way" for mortal combat, "the ultimate sacrifice" for death, "collateral damage" for slaughter of civilians, "sanctions" for siege, blockade, mass starvation.)

But I digress from Phillips and economics.  For example, when someone says s/he is "employed," do you think that means "they have a job that provides enough income to provide food, clothing and shelter and transportation to and from that job"? 

Well, it does not mean that at all to the government. "Employed" in the Bureau of Labor Statistics lexicon, means 

Employed persons (Current Population Survey)

Persons 16 years and over in the civilian non-institutional population who, during the reference week, (a) did any work at all (at least 1 hour) as paid employees; worked in their own business, profession, or on their own farm, or worked 15 hours or more as unpaid workers in an enterprise operated by a member of the family; and (b) all those who were not working but who had jobs or businesses from which they were temporarily absent because of vacation, illness, bad weather, childcare problems, maternity or paternity leave, labor-management dispute, job training, or other family or personal reasons, whether or not they were paid for the time off or were seeking other jobs. Each employed person is counted only once, even if he or she holds more than one job. Excluded are persons whose only activity consisted of work around their own house (painting, repairing, or own home housework) or volunteer work for religious, charitable, and other organizations.

"Employee" is not defined in this BLS glossary

.

And when the unregulated "Federal Reserve System" decides it will no longer tell the public just exactly how much "money" it has put into circulation (the so-called "M3" figures), that is a pretty certain sign that the "official" inflation figures are a lie. 

It's a pretty straight-forward matter: If the government says inflation is running at 2.5% over a year, say, but the additional amount of "money" the "fed" has put into circulation over that same year is 6% over the year before, it allows the public to notice that the two measures don't square. So the unregulated, private "Fed" (over-fed with the fruits of our labor, actually) removes one of the two measures, so no comparison can be made.

Quick analogy: You've got two sticks. One's a yardstick, with inches marked off. The other's just a stick, about 27 inches long, but with no markings. It's obvious that the unmarked stick is shorter than the yardstick when you put them together. But take away the yardstick, and how can you say with any precision what the length of that stick is? If the government claims that stick is 36 inches long, what do you do if you don't have a yardstick to compare it with or some kind of inch-calibrated ruler?

You DO have your own experience, of course. At some time in your adult life you might have measured the spread of your hand, the distance from the tip of your thumb to the tip of your little finger--a span--and you remember that the distance was about nine inches. So you measure the unmarked stick in spans, and you find that it's three spans long--27 inches-ish. Definitely not the four spans it would be if it were indeed a yard long--36 inches. 

Just as you can definitely tell that your wallet is empty by the middle of the week instead of on Friday night or Saturday morning. Your income is "shorter" than it used to be--and won't even carry you to the end of the week.  But unless you take the extra time — maybe an hour or two a week? — to keep track of your expenses over time, you can't provide your own span, cubit, foot, or "yardstick."

I keep all my own receipts, and stuff them into an annual receipts folder, but I'm not entering them all into a spreadsheet or keeping a running tally w/ paper and pencil. I did notice this month that the 2# brick of "Seriously Sharp" Cabot cheddar cheese I indulge myself with every two weeks (two pounds of cheese and two pounds of whole-grain saltines keeps me from withering away) was $6.99 on the first of the month, $7.99 two weeks later, and $8.99 two weeks after that. A mere 22% increase in 30 days. But I haven't tracked the changes in my gasoline expenses to the percentage point. Or that of milk, tomatoes, baked beans, celery, etc.

What Phillips does make painfully clear is that the government is lying; has been consistently lying about the very "what's so" about our economy. That our formerly useful Fourth Estate--the "media"--merely repeat [sic--using the "British plural" as in, "the media … they," "the government … they," or "the company … they"] the lies without any independent analysis--and without even saying, "folks, this is what the government says, and we're not going to make even the slightest effort to try to find a "second source" to validate these figures. It's every man, woman and child for himself in this country, and we're the media, and you're not." The Bureau of Labor Statistics does provide a nice glossary, if you're interested.

Phillips also notes the remarkable job this now-dominant financial sector, when coupled with the money-grubbing administration and Congress, has done in "privatizing profit and socializing risk." Bear-Stearns executives don't have to disgorge all of their ill-gotten gains from selling fraudulent "products" and "vehicles" and "tranches" of bad debt--that the ratings agencies labeled AAA, etc. But our Treasury folks, and the "fed"-- which puts "money" into circulation only after it gets the same amount of federal IOUs (Treasury bills)--that is, taxpayer IOUs--are bailing them out. 

Oh, and by the way: Something Phillips does not really point out is how the language used by government, "the financial sector," and "the media" in describing these is rotten to the pit.

If we were being  candid, we would label the so-called "stock exchanges" gambling dens, or casinos. We would label the so-called "investors," gamblers; the so-called "hedge fund operators," high-rolling gamblers or crap-shooters; the so-called "bankers, investment bankers, administration and congressional folks and members of the 'fed'," con men, con-artists, ponzi-schemers, charlatans, crooks and thieves. 

Reminds me of the lines in the Woody Guthrie song: "some rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen." (And the very interesting final line: "...But I've never seen an outlaw/Drive a family from its home."

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