deficits

ONE POOR MAN’S VIEW OF DEFICIT SPENDING

In my last post I displayed part of a mass email sent to my inbox from Human Events, authored by Newt Gingrich; where I answered his questions and sent it back to him.

I now move on to deficit spending. I am no economist; but I think that’s somewhat in my favor in developing my analysis.

I view the deficit spending begun by Reagan as a ruthless plan to recolonize the US. Neither party was without guilt, as Democrats acquiesced to a legislative agenda of cutting tax on the on the wealthy, purposely shrinking government revenues and simultaneously rocketing military spending to the outer limits.

However smart Reagan was, and I believe he was a man who knew his own mind; the plan for the 80’s “revolution” was hatched by the billionaires who spotted him the cash needed to dominate the media, as never before…and has always been since.

Deficit spending is not the same as a household going in debt; yet corporation mass media uses that model ubiquitously. The debt of the US consists in issuing bonds instead of taxing those able to pay. The real cheating comes from the fact that all those bigshots who got a break on taxes, put their money in bonds; so instead of just paying less tax; they are earning a profit from the ones who do pay taxes.

If Nixon was paranoid, dark and brooding; Reagan raised hate mongering to an artful new plateau; using transparent code words to promulgate an anti-minority and anti-poor policy that has been copied with success by a number of lesser minions of the right; Gingrich, Graham, DeLay, Gov. Engler of Michigan, to name a few. They all paint the same picture, that the problems of the poor are due to their sorriness, and ridding the treasury of any social program burden would be the balast to set the economy high in the water; alas, tis not so.

While Bill Clinton was a talented executive; the compromises he made with the Repubican dominated Congress after the “Contract on America” swept so many neo-cons into office in 1994; on a tsunami of special interest money, and the proven formula of appealing to the basest impulses of voters, milking the resentment of wage earners striving inch by inch higher in the strata; seeking a milieau that is concrete proof of superiority; the easily seduced hatred, for all those without means receiving anything from the public weal. All the code: welfare queen; cycle of dependency; criminal element; the need for law and order…has enriched those who, straddled atop the corporate ziggurat, cannot be quenched by any amount of accumulation; whose greed is the ring of fire that presents us our ghastly current events and entertainments.

Do not believe for an instant Reagan was stacking the court to end abortion on demand; the whole abortion patronage paid for with mere words is more code from both directions. Reagan was in Hollywood long enough to know that clean abortions have been available for a price since the adolescence of the scientific method. He knew his Bible too: “There is nothing new under the sun…” –King Solomon, in the Book of Ecclesiastes. The “Kitchen Cabinet,” Reagan’s billionaire supporters (which featured that over-80 paragon of virtue, retailing mogul Sidney Blumenthal, who would die in the arms of a not much more than nubile prostitute) had measured the timing and range, like so many artillery spotters; to put on the high court just those who would render a decision that was an economic coup de’ tat to wit:

U.S. Supreme Court

CARGILL, INC. v. MONFORT OF COLORADO, INC., 479 U.S. 104 (1986)

479 U.S. 104

CARGILL, INC., ET AL. v. MONFORT OF COLORADO, INC. CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT No. 85-473. Argued October 6, 1986 Decided December 9, 1986

Held:

1. A private plaintiff seeking injunctive relief under 16 must show a threat of injury "of the type the antitrust laws were designed to prevent and that flows from that which makes defendants' acts unlawful." Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-Mat, Inc., 429 U.S. 477, 489 . Pp. 109-113.

2. The proposed merger does not constitute a threat of antitrust injury. A showing, as in this case, of loss or damage due merely to increased competition does not constitute such injury. And while predatory pricing is capable of inflicting antitrust injury, here respondent neither raised nor proved any claim of predatory pricing before the District Court, and thus the Court of Appeals erred in interpreting respondent's allegations as equivalent to allegations of injury from predatory conduct. Pp. 113-119.

3. This Court, however, will not adopt in effect a per se rule denying competitors standing to challenge acquisitions on the basis of [479 U.S. 104, 105] predatory-pricing theories. Nothing in the Clayton Act's language or legislative history suggests that Congress intended this Court to ignore injuries caused by such anticompetitive practices as predatory pricing. Pp. 120-122.

761 F.2d 570, reversed and remanded.

BRENNAN, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which REHNQUIST, C. J., and MARSHALL, POWELL, O'CONNOR, and SCALIA, JJ., joined. STEVENS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which WHITE, J., joined, post, p. 122. BLACKMUN, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

This case is obscure as hell; but has affected more Americans than Roe and Miranda combined. For it stood antitrust law on its head-and paved the way for the big-fish-eating-the-smaller-fish merger orgy that has sliced through the business community in the generation since it was handed down.

You can find the case on http://www.findlaw.com and read it free; I’ve included the citation, just click on the “for legal professionals” version (at the top of the page-you don’t want “for the public” that’s just lawyer ads) then search Supreme Court cases.

But you don’t have to be an MBA to get the jist only reading the holdings above.

More to come.

Then: