As the recession shook Americans’ confidence last year, new figures show that weddings for people 18 and older dropped to the lowest point in over a hundred years.
A broad array of new Census Bureau data released Tuesday documents the far-reaching impact of a business slump that experts say technically ended in June 2009: a surging demand for food stamps, considerably fewer homeowners and people doubling up in housing to save money.
The government revealed that the income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year by the largest margin ever, stark evidence of the impact the long recession starting in 2007 has had in upending lives and putting the young at greater risk.
The top-earning 20 percent of Americans — those making more than $100,000 each year — received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4 percent earned by the bottom 20 percent of wage-earners who fell below the poverty line, according to the newly released Census figures.
A different measure, the international Gini index, found U.S. income inequality at its highest level since the Census Bureau began tracking household income in 1967. The U.S. also has the greatest disparity among Western industrialized nations.
Three states — New York, Connecticut and Texas — and the District of Columbia had the largest gaps in rich and poor, disparities that exceeded the national average. Similar income gaps were evident in large cities such as New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Boston and Atlanta, home to both highly paid financial and high-tech jobs as well as clusters of poorer immigrant and minority residents. — AP
What makes individuals like Newt Gingrich and other GOP cronies so repellent is their use of fear to enrich themselves. According to them, the future is always filled with many all-powerful external threats. The collapse of the US economy, mass unemployment and the destruction of the Middle Class is of no concern.
In John Dean’s Broken Government book from a few years back (yes, John Dean, of all people), he names one of the central aims of GOP power: “Line your own pockets.”
Gingrich and others are featured prominently.
And today’s post, on a discussion of Gingrich’s new book, To Save America, you get the official DD laundry list of GOP predictions about external threats. And all of the industries involved in protecting from such potential threats are those discussed on this blog.
In Newt Gingrich’s latest book, To Save America, he reflects on the five potentially catastrophic threats to the United States. Gingrich lists the threats as “Terrorists with nuclear weapons, Electromagnetic pulse attack, Cyber warfare, Biological warfare, and the potential gap between Chinese and American capabilities.”
Or any noting of the unpleasant fact that the corporate interests in America seem not to have yet realized when you beggar your US shoppers by firing as many as possible, relentlessly compressing wages and removing all benefits, there is not even enough leftover anymore for anything but essentials. Chinese crap notwithstanding.
Nevertheless, it’s time to drop everything and worry about China’s military, or electromagnetic pulse doom, or the usual ant-like countries allegedly developing magical ways with biological weapons:
Frances Townsend, former Bush and Fox News flunky Homeland Security Advisor, felt that electromagnetic pulse weapons are “a big deal and we are solely unprepared for it. I think Gingrich is right.”
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Currently we can try to prevent this threat, but there is no way to defend against it because society is so interconnected, particularly in the delivery of food, water, and medicine. It appears that this is a threat that falls under the radar, with little time or energy spent on solutions. The death toll would climb in unexpected ways. Clare Lopez, a former CIA official who is currently a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, told of a scary scenario where people would “no longer be able to buy groceries or gasoline.
There is also concern — not that al-Qaeda terrorists will become biologists, but that the biologists of Iran, Syria, and Pakistan will become terrorists. These countries, as well as North Korea, are working on synthetic biological weapons.
Naturally, the only way to counter these threats is the standard mantra: A cooperative alliance between the national security industry and big government is always needed.
This almost sounds acceptable, until you’ve been around long enough to know what it really means. I’ll rely on another quote from Dean’s book, by way of a fellow named Alan Wolfe at the University of Pennsylvania:
[If] government cannot be made to disappear, at least it can be prevented from doing any good. [So one purpose] is to build a political machine in which business and the Republican Party can exchange mutual favors; business will lavish cash on politicians … while politicians will throw the cash back at business (called public policy).
The people who regularly tout this rubbish, and often noted here, are genuinely despicable. But in 2010, despicable is virtue.
At Steve Aftergood’s Secrecy blog, I point you to the publication of a transcript from the House Foreign Affairs committee in March. The hearing was on countering bioterrorism, complete with all the pro forma scripting on apocalyptic disaster.
The history of congressional discussion of the threat of bioterrorism has always been a bad business. When it’s time to discuss threats and risk management, the only people who get called are generally lobbyists for the bioterror defense business, people who can be counted on to immediately call for more bioterrorism funding, recite various frightful scenarios, and talk about how — under no circumstances — should the United States allow on-site verifications in the Biological Weapons Convention.
This transcript and its bag of bad-faith witnesses, with the sole exception of the Monterey Institute’s Jonathan Tucker, was no different. As usual, the process is almost entirely rigged, allowing for staged recitations and no critical questioning, only more raids on the taxpayer for the benefit of a security industry.
Rather than take it apart piece-by-piece, it’s more illuminating to contrast statements from the various witnesses and politicians with events happening right now in the real world.
“As I said, biological science has led to great advances in addressing our food shortages and [in the development of] famine resistant crops. However, the agriculture sector in our nation’s food supply can be a very enticing targets for acts of bioterrorism.
As our agriculture sector, as I mentioned, is known as the bread basket of the world, it is important to note that any attack on the food supply could have devastating effects for the rest of the world.” — David Scott, D. Georgia
A sudden outbreak of salmonella has prompted a third recall by some of the biggest egg producers in the country in only two weeks. The Food and Drug Administration (F.D.A.) has warned that hundreds of millions of eggs may be affected. Ironically, this latest food safety breakdown is happening only a few weeks after new guidelines for egg production were issued by the agency. Now federal health officials say that contamination with salmonella in eggs may be a more serious problem than they had anticipated at the time when the new rules were established …
Consumer advocates and animal rights activists have long pointed to industrialized farming facilities as potential breeding grounds for bacterial contamination of egg-laying hens … — a Seattle newspaper
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Democratic leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee want more information surrounding the recall of more than half a billion eggs potentially contaminated with salmonella.
In letters to Iowa’s Hillandale Farms and Wright County Egg, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the committee, and Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), who heads the committee’s oversight subpanel, requested a long list of details about the companies’ operations and a response to the contamination.
Among the requested data, the lawmakers want to see “a description of the identity and source of that contamination;” documents “sufficient to show all … internal protocols and standards for monitoring and analysis;” and “all documents relating to any allegation of violation of any health, safety, environmental, or animal cruelty laws.”
Waxman and Stupak have requested the information by Sept. 7.
Earlier this month, both companies launched voluntary recalls of eggs they discovered could be tainted with salmonella. The episode “is the largest egg recall that we’ve had in recent history,” Margaret Hamburg, head of the Food and Drug Administration, said Monday on NBC’s “Today Show.”
No one has died from the contamination, federal health officials have emphasized, but hundreds have fallen ill. — The Hill
”
Envision 10 terrorists spreading highly weaponized anthrax in ten cities around the world: Nairobi, Warsaw, Tokyo, Mexico City, etc. Assume not a single American is touched by any of these attacks, none of which happen on American soil. Would anyone suggest that we are unharmed?
“If instead, a smallpox pandemic is ignited , killing perhaps millions worldwide, if Americans are effectively immunized, does that mean that we are ok? …
“Finally, allow me to ask you all, what would Congress do in the wake of biocatastrophes that relegate every other policy priority to insignificance?” … — fearmonger Barry Kellman, International Security and Biopolicy Institute, a small lobbying group of lawyers with virtually no science background
After the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, which displaced 1 million people and came as the U.S. economy continued to crumble, the American Red Cross joined with U.S. cell phone carriers to give Americans the ability to donate a few dollars by sending a simple text message. The campaign raised $31 million within days, generating as much as $200,000 per hour, a relatively small piece of the $2.5 billion that relief groups would raise for Haiti by late March. Some aid groups warned that they were so awash in cash they were incapable of distributing it all.
In August 2010, a similar text message campaign was launched in response to the flooding in Pakistan, which has so far displaced 5 million people and put 13 million, particularly children, at risk of water-borne diseases such as cholera because they lack access to clean drinking water. The United Nations has declared the flooding, which is expected to worsen, already worse than the Haiti earthquake, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and the 2005 Kashmir earthquake combined. But the Red Cross’s recent text message effort yielded only $10,000, about 0.03 percent of what it earned for Haiti.
The disappointing campaign has been another in a series of alarming reports from aid groups and even the United Nations that they do not have enough money …
As many in the U.S. have pointed out, the flooding in Pakistan has received light and undramatic TV news coverage relative to Haiti and other humanitarian disasters. The New York Times’ Neil MacFarquhar described the floods as not being as sufficiently “dramatic, emotional, [or] telegenic” as the earthquakes and tsunamis that so opened American wallets. Others have described the floods as a “slow motion” disaster that cannot be effectively conveyed in a single photograph or piece of video — The Atlantic
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The worst floods in Pakistan’s history washed out independence day celebrations Saturday, as the U.N. confirmed the waterborne disease cholera has been found in the disaster zone.
U.N. officials confirmed the first case of cholera in Mingora, in the northwestern district of Swat. Other cases of the deadly disease are suspected and aid workers are treating thousands of cases of acute watery diarrhea. — Voice of America
“There was also great concern about [inspections resulting in false positives]; that unlike the nuclear area, unlike the chemical area, the things that biological weapons inspectors would be looking for — you know, an anthrax spore…
These things occur in nature. Highly enriched uranium does not occur in nature. If an inspector goes to a lab and finds highly enriched uranium, there is not a legitimate reason for that … In the biological area, when we are dealing with germs of one type or another, they could be man made or naturally occurring. So the fact that inspectors detect something really does not tell you much.” — Stephen Rademaker, a lawyer/lobbyist for the bioterrorism defense industry, in an argument for prohibiting any inspection regimes for biological weaponry
In December 2001, Fort Detrick was busily engaged in analyzing contaminated mail. And it was during this period that a number of anthrax contaminations occurred at the facility, surprisingly reported by Bruce Ivins. At the time, the contaminations were attributed to minor negligence and complacency.
However, only in hindsight do they apparently point to something greater and one can speculate that this is what contributed to the FBI suspecting Ivins.
An Army report on the contaminations said that Ivins had indeed discovered anthrax contaminations but had not reported them. And he had started doing the unauthorized samplings in December 2001 …
Ivins undertook the disinfection of contaminated surfaces with bleach. And he set about another round of unauthorized samplings, including his office, as late as April 15, 2002.
Col. David L. Hoover, the Army scientist who had prepared the report on contamination at Fort Detrick, could not determine where the anthrax came from …. The Army apparently asked Ivins to explain further unauthorized samplings in April of 2002 …
Of course, perhaps this is all circumstantial … Or maybe it pointed to someone attempting to feverishly cover their tracks. — me, at the Register
Good news, lads! Good news! The Tea Party does really bad hard rock, too.
I was gonna get into the genre of white folk music “Obama anthems” with Photoshopped Obama Hitlers and ObamaSatans but there were way too many. Your browsers would crash.
A brief but amusing article on Wall Street parasites hedge fund guys and advice dispensers deals with their brand of US catastrophism — as opposed to the flavor found lower down the ladder in the extreme right middle class.
It’s still all about defending against the ravening hordes, the poor — those with color or tastes not like yours, coming for your pile. Buy precious metals and secure your self-sufficient farm getaway deep in the countryside. Be ready to fire a “boom stick” at interlopers.
“While there is no lack of survivalists stockpiling cat food and rifles, some of the direst thinkers are now working on Wall Street, where a combination of fear and foresight has many of the country’s money men contemplating their escape routes,” writes a columnist at AOL’s Daily Finance.
Wall Street catastrophists, of course, don’t see themselves as the villains in this play. It’s a view which puts them on the opposite side of the coin of the middle class white catastrophists, who generally view Wall Street with the same fear and loathing saved for Democrats and anyone of color.
There is an industry to cater to both classes of catastrophist. For the white paupers, there are the advertisements on Fox News — seemingly one every fifteen minutes — for the buying of gold with Gordon Liddy as patron saint. For more plans and tips, there are websites galore selling relatively cheap advice and the usual survivalism samizdat literature which has embroidered the fringes of American society for decades.
For Wall Street, the advice is more costly but about the same in terms of practical value. The column tells us drily:
Post Peak Living and Transition United States have both used dark visions to build a compelling business model that can convince the gullible and frightened to fork over cash for useless advice.
And the best quote, by far: “A fan of dark humor, [one doom predicter] previously advised spending stimulus cash on ‘prostitutes and beer, as these are the only products still produced in the U.S.'”
Another big seminar at some allegedly important place, another batch of messaging on how doom is almost upon us.
This example, courtesy of the Aspen Institute, fond of importing journalists so opinion page readers of the country don’t miss the wisdom dispensed.
From the Aspen Times, a warning from some guy who sells “state of the art security systems”:
Emerging from the political dust plumes that still seem to be dissipating from the Sept. 11 attacks are a number of new, creative and, perhaps most importantly, cheap ways for terrorists to dismantle the way the United States operates, terrorism experts said Wednesday at The Aspen Institute’s Security Forum.
And many places that might be targeted in this country are not ready for them, they said.
“For the first time in history, small organizations have the power of destruction that once only lay in the hands of nations,??? said Mati Kochavi, the CEO for an international company that manufactures state-of-the-art security systems.
And from another guy — Jim Talent — long known for advocating more taxpayer money for the development of allegedly state of the art bioterror preventing security systems:
“This is not 15 years from now,??? he said, mentioning numbers in a recent study he conducted that placed a possible [bioterror] attack occurring in 2013.
A potential attack, he said, could be conducted in a large city during a parade by spreading pathogens from a float with a paint sprayer.
Electronic spies have already stolen tens of billions of pages of documents and penetrated strategic nodes of the global economy, from banks to power grids. They can turn off radars (as the Israelis did when they bombed Syria’s nuclear reactor in September 2007) or shut down Internet access (as Russia did when it invaded Georgia in August 2008). The future is now.
Did terrorists cause the Deepwater Horizon disaster? Did they perhaps inflitrate Wall Street and cause the economic meltdown?
Rhetorical questions, obviously. Mostly as a thought exercise, one asking readers to note Paul Reveres — patriots all — warning of approaching disasters, and the ease in which terrorists can cause them, never really mirror any of the real life catatrophes impacting the place.
National Georgraphic’s special on electromagnetic pulse doom was hijacked to the web just prior to the weekend.
Originally, it was briefly shamed by Jason at Armchair Generalist here where you could see the initial trailer.
However, publishing the entire thing to YouTube, where one assumes it will soon be yanked for copyright violation, allows the viewer to skip through segments without having to endure the entire thing.
And the immediately noticeable central feature is its total reliance on catastrophism. More specifically the potential imminent arrival of national doom.
What viewers of extended cable service wouldn’t notice is that the show was essentially the work of the small but fanatical special interest lobby — the Cult of EMP Crazy’s poor man’s Umbrella Corporation, so to speak, EMPAct America.
In essence, National Geographic Channel was captured — made into a zombie for the sake of EMPAct America’s end-of-the-nation script. One which will surely come true if we don’t listen to them.
EMPAct America is a reprehensible nuisance. Since catastophe is its only tool of messaging and so determined has it been to push it, this little lobby has actually contributed measurably to end-times hysteria in the US. The kind that’s now the special property of the extremist Republican party.
Here’s the final segment on YouTube, starring Forstchen — who’s usually heard but not seen on Coast to Coast radio — and his small town, persuaded to enact an exodus scene — the hungry and thirsty lost trudging along a rural road, passed by an occasional flivver, the only thing that can still run.
Watch Fox News without radiation shielding for too long and your intellect is shriveled.
Disappointingly, the rest of the mainstream media isn’t much better.
Readers recall a post on the Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy about ten days ago. One linking to a KPCC story on the marketing of a survival bunker complex in the Mojave.
That story was noticed by others. And it was exploited, in the process, losing all the sanity the original reporter at KPCC put into it.
Instead, it became a marketing vehicle for the guy selling doomsday bunkers, Robert Vicino and his Vivos firm, abetted by the news agencies.
Most notable is a Fox News segment.
“Something epic is about to happen,” explains the Vivos developer. This in an exchange on why people believe the worst and are lining up to buy time shares in his business.
Savor the hypocrisy of the Fox News host who tries to pin the developer with questions like this one:
“[Aren’t you] trying to profit off people’s fears?”
The Fox News host wants to consider “the ethics of that.”
It is the rankest stuff coming from a news network that makes the idea that the US is facing imminent collapse a part of its regular daily menu of programming.
While not as out there as Coast to Coast radio, which — after all — has done that beat for years, Fox News has probably done more to mainstream US extremism than any news outlet, ever
And with it has come the constant peddling of doomsday, from the disease that’s Glenn Beck, to sunspot causing “the end of life as we know it” to recent humoring of laughingstock Arthur Laffer, who’s shtick is predicting the total collapse of the US economy in January of next year.
“Is the World Broke?” reads a caption on the Fox News screen. It’s one the news organization seems to stick on a lot of its current material.
And it is the application of pure cynicism — existing only to titillate viewers while strengthening the impression the country is going down soon, with the Obama administration at the helm.
Paradoxically, one can make a rational argument that the US is heading into failure. But that the failure won’t be as envisioned by the catastrophists. It may instead be the continued descent into existence as the world’s most powerful banana republic, a hardscrabble place of very little charm, no middle class and no observable social generosity or commitment to quality in civil life.
But that’s not the story the news organizations which use catastrophists like to tell.
They prefer segments puffing investment in a multi-story survival condo envisioned for placement in an old missile silo in Kansas. Like here at ABC News.
Observe again, the standard grinning host. So funny and amusing it is to see more clips from “The Road” and another benighted white guy, tossing his money away while he shows off a pathetic tackle box he has in a closet. Because, ya know, the man and his kid are going to have to be able to catch fish — out in the Mojave Desert — after the end has arrived.
