Author: Dave LIndorff

There is a massive deception campaign in the US, and in its global propaganda, which seeks to portray the United States as a poor set-upon nation that would like world peace but just has to keep a military stationed around the globe to “police” all the world’s “trouble spots.”

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

That truth is that the US is the biggest war-monger the world has ever known.

Defending US empire around the globe at a cost of $1.3 trillion a year

The United States never misses an opportunity to castigate other countries for “uncivilized” behavior, and certainly there is enough of that to go around almost anywhere you look in the world. But there’s plenty of it here in the U.S. too.

Just consider the case of Terry Williams.

Williams, a 47-year-old black man, has spent almost 30 years on Pennsylvania’s crowded death row while lawyers appealed his death penalty for two murders committed back when he was a 17 and 18-year old boy. Now he’s about to be killed by the state for those crimes.

At the time he was tried and convicted, although it was known to prosecutors that his two victims were adult men who had forcibly raped Williams when he was as young as 13, and that he had been a victim of sexual abuse since he was six, the jury was not informed about any of this. In recent years, a number of the 12 jurors who originally convicted him and sentenced the teenager to death have now said that had they known about the abuse he suffered — particularly at the hands of the two men he later killed — they would have decided the case differently, and certainly would not have voted for the death penalty. Even the wife of one of his victims has pleaded with the state to spare him.

Nevertheless, the state’s governor, Tom Corbett, a hard-on-crime Republican who, prior to being elected to the state’s top post, served as attorney general, making him the state’s top lawyer, had no hesitation in signing his death warrant earlier this month, with an Oct. 3 execution date.
Terry Williams as a young teen and as he looks now awaiting execution after 30 years on Pennsylvania's death row

The situation in the Middle East has reached a dangerous point, to be sure, but there are also signs that a sea change may be taking place here in the US which could herald a whole new relationship between the US, Israel and the rest of the Arab and Islamic world.

The problem is that so much is in flux at the moment, with a civil war building in Syria, a confrontation looming between Israel and Iran, and with hot-heads in many Islamic countries attacking US embassies in the region, that the deeper change is not easy to see. There are also many opportunities for things to blow up in the next few weeks or month.

One thing is clear though: Israel’s blow-hard right-wing prime minister, the US-raised zionist Benjamin Netanyahu, openly trying to topple Obama, has propelled Israel directly into US politics, and has also been trying to push the US into a war against Iran, and he’s been doing all this in a manner so clumsy and overt that he may have fundamentally undermined the long-standing “special relationship” between the US and Israel.

As the long-respected American newspaper of American Jewish opinion, the Jewish Daily Forward, editorialized a few days ago:

It’s difficult to recall a time when an Israeli prime minister has inserted himself into a presidential election campaign in the way that Benjamin Netanyahu has. It’s even harder to recall a time when a trusted ally openly urged the American president to undertake a questionable, unpopular and highly risky war. We sure hope Netanyahu knows what he’s doing, because the stakes for him — and for the two nations he professes to care about the most — could not be higher.
 

The editorial goes on to note:
 

He may be overplaying his hand. Americans are deeply wary of another military involvement in the Muslim world. Most Americans oppose a military strike against Iran. Most even oppose coming to Israel’s aid should it be attacked by Iran. A recent poll by the nonpartisan Chicago Council on Global Affairs posed this hypothetical situation: Israel attacks Iran, Iran retaliates and and the two nations go to war. Only “38 percent say the United States should bring its military forces into the war on the side of Israel. A majority (59%) says it should not,” the poll showed.

Israeli PM Netanyahu and US President Obama: not BFFs

Just because someone has the ability to do something, does not mean he or she should do it.

We have two examples of such a situation before us at the moment: President Barack Obama and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett.

Here in Pennsylvania, Terry Williams, a man who has been living on death row for three decades after being convicted murdering two men when he was only 17 and 18, is slated to be executed October 3. He has exhausted his appeals and his family, his attorney, and even the wife of one of the men he killed, are asking the state’s governor and former attorney general, Republican Tom Corbett, to grant him clemency. Why? Williams was repeatedly raped by his two victims, beginning when he was only a 13-year-old boy. It’s ironic that the same Gov. Corbett who turned a blind eye to Penn State serial boy rapist and football coach Jerry Sandusky is now, at least so far, allowing this obscene execution to go forward. Corbett signed the death warrant for Williams’ execution early this month.

Then we have President Obama. Last fall he signed into law the Constitution-shredding National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which includes a provision allowing the military, inside the United States, to arrest and detain indefinitely without trial American citizens. He initially assured the public that he would not use that tyrannical power as president. Not wanting to trust that all presidents would say the same thing, a group of journalists and other plaintiffs then filed suit in federal court, claiming the law was unconstitutional (the sixth amendment to the Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights, guarantees to all people — not just citizens — the right to a “speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury”). Two days ago, Federal District Judge Katherine Forrest (an Obama appointee to the bench) issued a permanent injunction in New York declaring that the provisions of the NDAA which allow for the kidnapping and indefinite detention without charge of American citizens were permanently enjoined because they were unconstitutional. That could have been the end of it, but late yesterday, after newspaper deadlines had passed and after the evening news programs had run, the White House appealed that ruling. The president who says he would never use this horrific law is fighting in court to overturn the decision declaring it unconstitutional!

What hope and change?

This article was first published on the website of PressTV

Just looking at the video images of the two conventions — the Republican one last week in Tampa, Florida, and this week’s Democratic convention in Charlotte, NC — one can see the fundamental contrast between the rank-and-file of the two parties.

They are really and truly different cohorts.

Scanning the Republican delegates and convention-goers in Tampa, one labors mightily to find even one black face, or even an obvious brown latino face or an asian face. It is a white, and predominantly male, crowd that one sees. It is also an angry crowd, cheering at the venom spewed against Democrats, welfare recipients, immigrants and others who are not part of the “real America,” of allegedly self-reliant white men.

The GOP is a party of white, angry, greedy people and leaders who egg them on. The Democratic party is a party of people who care for others, but its leaders mostly don’t.

This article originally ran as “Social Security: Key Piece of Your Clients’ Retirement Plans,” in the current issue of the magazine Bank Investment Consultant
 

Over the past 77 years since Social Security was passed into law, it has paid out more than $11 trillion in benefits to well over 100 million people— the elderly, the disabled and surviving children of deceased parents. And despite rumors of its demise, it will continue to be a portion of many people’s retirement income. And it’s not just for the 75% of the country that has less than $30,000 in retirement savings. It will be a factor for the middle class as well, as Social Security benefits could represent a retirement benefit of $20,000 to $30,000 a year (or double that for a professional couple).

Still, many financial advisors know precious little about the program and how it operates. Or how to maximize benefits for their clients. Many pay scant attention to Social Security in analyzing clients’ full financial pictures.

For the last four years, Rob Kron has been working to change that. Director of advisor and client education at investment manager BlackRock, Kron has been attending conferences of financial advisors where he offers presentations explaining Social Security’s ins and outs. He points out that there are features like “file and suspend,” that can allow people to improve their benefits at no cost.

Say a married couple, both 66, have a primary earner who doesn’t want to retire. That person has the option of filing for Social Security, but suspending collection of any benefits. If the person continues to work and starts collecting benefits at 70, he or she still gets the maximum benefit amount, just as if he or she had filed at age 70. However, because they filed at 66, the lower-earning spouse became eligible immediately to start collecting one-half of the benefit amount of the spouse who filed.

Part of the problem, for advisors and their clients, is that there is a lot of misinformation circulating about the national retirement program, particularly as many of its critics, including some politicians, have spread false information, say market observers.

Social Security recipients could get 76% more per month by waiting until 70 to collect, instead of taking checks at 62, as three-quarters of retirees currently do.

Police brutality is in the news, thanks to the widespread availability of amateur video and the omnipresence of security cameras.

We’ve seen scene after scene of police beating the crap out of, and even shooting and killing unarmed or minimally dangrous students, women, old men and crazy people, many of them after they have been handcuffed and checked for weapons.

The police brass, and leading politicians who oversee the departments involved, nearly always have the same answer: This is not the norm, these are isolated incidents, police violence is not on the rise. Rarely is an abusive or murderous officer punished or even administratively disciplined for documented crimes.

The thing is, of course, it is on the rise. Just as the exonerations of supposed murders and rapists are only those where there was DNA available to prove their innocence, while many more are also clearly wrongly facing death or long prison sentences, the scenes of brutality we’re seeing on the videos are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg too. What is different is that we’re seeing these things at all. It used to be that getting videos of police brutality was very rare — like the taping of the notorious police assault on the prone body of Rodney King by Los Angeles cops during a traffic stop. It just happened that someone with a video camera was at the scene when it occurred. Nowadays everyone with a cellphone is a potential videographer, so we’re seeing more of what really goes on when police make their arrests.

Just check out the latest video of LAPD officers body slamming a 5’4″ nurse (two times!) who had the audacity to get out of her car when they stopped her for talking on her cell phone while driving (this particular video was taken by a surveillance camera at a store focussed on the parking lot where police had followed the woman’s car). Note that one of the burly cops slamming this small handcuffed woman to the ground and later fist-bumping to celebrate with his younger partner holds the rank of commander — he’s a 20-year veteran of the LAPD.

Milton Hall, a homeless man killed July 1 by 46 bullets fired by six Saginaw cops, none of whom has been charged with wrongdoing.

Sometimes a journalist just has to go with the story, even if it’s going all wrong.

I had set out to stand up for the rights of hitchhikers everywhere, and against abusive policing, when I left the house yesterday afternoon and walked up the road to an intersection where I could stand on the grass and stick out my thumb and try to snag a ride to the supermarket four miles off.

The location and the time — 6 pm — were both important. Three days before, I had tried the same thing at the same spot, same time. Every so often I like to do a local hitchhike, just to test the national zeitgeist and the level of empathy of my fellow Americans. Last winter I tried it, and after over a hundred cars had left me standing in a brutal cold wind, finally got a ride from an immigrant Indian couple and their teenage son. (My fellow Americans didn’t come off so well in that story.)

But three days ago, after nearly 60 cars had passed me — most often one or two men in a car who would look away from me in what appeared to be a kind of embarrassment — a black police SUV from the town of Horsham started pulling towards me through the parking lot of the local bank, on whose lawn I was standing. The cop in the vehicle was shaking his head at me with a stern, disapproving expression. He pulled to a stop, rolled down his window, and as I walked up to his car, said, “You can’t hitchhike. It’s illegal.”

“Illegal?” I said, “Where? I’m not standing on the road.”

The officer said, “It’s illegal in town, in the county, and all over Pennsylvania, on the road or not. If you hitchhike, I’ll have to lock you up.”

“Lock me up? For hitchhiking?” Now I was shocked. I have hitchhiked since I was 15, all over the US, up to Alaska when I was 16, several times across the country and back, and down to Florida, and while I had been ordered off of highway onramps, yelled at, and even taken for rides and dumped far away from the highway by cops who didn’t like long-haired hippie types back in the ‘60s, I had never been arrested. Hitchhiking is not a criminal offense as far as I know.

Hitchhiking, a remnant of freer times, is under attack in some states

GOP presumptive presidential candidate Mitt Romney, as noted in ThisCantBeHappening! yesterday, is probably stonewalling demands that he release his 2009 and earlier IRS filings because they could expose to the public that he availed himself of a 2009 IRS amnesty for those who admitted to earlier felonious hiding of income in Swiss and other foreign tax havens. Some 30,000 wealthy taxpayers did just that after a whistleblower broke the news that thousands of clients of Swiss Bank UBS were illegally hiding income at the bank, and the IRS sued for the names, while also offering the get-out-of-jail amnesty pass option.

But a reader, Phil Birkhahn, points out in his own blog called Romney the Tax Cheat that the slippery Harvard Law grad Romney may also have fraudulently ducked paying taxes in later — and earlier — years. Either that or he has to man-up and accept managerial responsibility for the obnoxious anti-worker and anti-America policies of his Bain Capital company during the 1999-2002 years, and in later years, during times when he asserting that he played none any but a passive investor role in the venture capital firm.

The problem for Romney is that the IRS taxes income significantly differently and allows far fewer deductions, especially for losses, for people who say they were only passive investors in a company than for those who say they were active in management.

Although Romney, whose whole basic argument to voters is that they should elect him because he is a great businessman who will run America “like a business,” also bizarrely at the same time claims that on “Feb. 1999 I left Bain Capital and all management responsibility,” and says “I had no ongoing activity or involvement,” meaning he was a passive investor in the firm, which he still owned 100% from that date until 2002, He is also listed as late as 2002 as one of the two managing members of Bain Capital in its annual report, and the company’s SEC filings list him as CEO, President and managing director as well as sole owner in 2000 and 2001. That would make him an active investor.

Mitt's got to level to Americans: Did he lie to the IRS or to them about whether he was actively running Bain?

If you want to know how moribund the Democratic Party is, how completely owned by Wall Street the president is, and how sick our national politics have become, just consider Social Security.

The president, earlier in his term, convened a “blue ribbon” panel, supposedly composed of a “broad spectrum” of opinions from liberal to conservative,” to come up with a plan to “reform” the system.

At issue: It is known that because of the huge number of Baby Boomers — people born between 1946 and 1964 — just starting to hit retirement age, and the general aging of the population, the Trust Fund composed of revenues paid into the system by working people will be depleted by about 2033. That would leave current worker taxes covering just 78% of the benefits promised to be paid out the same year, unless something is done sooner to increase revenues or decrease the rate of payouts of those benefits.

The commission, which proved to be a bust, was headed by co-chairs named by the president. For the Republicans, who since its inception have wanted to destroy this last vestige of the New Deal, it was former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, a cadaverous wretch of a man who promptly called the program a “milk cow with 300 million tits.” ‘Nuff said there. Nice pick Barack.

As for his Democratic co-chair, the president named Erskine Bowles. If you wanted to know the views of this former congressman and Clinton advisor on Social Security, you need only learn that in 2011 at a public event, he praised Rep. Paul Ryan, now Mitt Romney’s choice for VP, who has said he wants to privatize Social Security, and condemned the president’s last budget proposal as a joke. Barack sure knows how to pick ‘em. Bowles was clearly a Democratic mole for cutting benefits, raising taxes and raising the retirement age on that commission.

But then, that was the point. In classic Obama fashion, before the debate even began on what to do to fix Social Security’s coming fund shortfall, due in a bit over two decades, he telegraphed to the commission that he wanted “all options” on the table. If that sounds like how he talks about Iran, it’s because he was telling everyone he was ready for the nuclear option — cutting benefits, and perhaps even partial privatization.

President Roosevelt signes the Social Security Act into law in 1935. Republicans are still trying to kill it.