We are All Terminated

Politics is all about networking. Who, then, isn’t related to Arnold? You’ll find it hard to believe, but from Sinatra to Johnny Depp, celebs are all just a movie away from Arnold.

But what does Arnold stand for? Physical fitness for sure, but what else, if anything? With his accent, he might be confusing that with Fiscal fitness.

On day one of the race, he’s promising that everyone in California with have a “great job.” Who is he thinking of? There are no new jobs, that’s what they call “productivity gains” these days.

I was actually going to write about how that “gain” really just means that people are working longer hours off the books, while still being counted by the Bureau of Labor Standards as putting in only a 40-hour week. But the governator (credit: The Mirror) doesn’t seem to get that it’s a jobless recovery. The productivity growth rate is actually higher than the job gain and economic growth rates. It will take a 5 percent growth rate, more or less, to overcome the working-longer-hours-for-the-same-dough, excuse me, productivity gains of the corporations

Bottom line: Can Arnold terminate the shellacking California citizens took from the Texas oil crowd and the folks at Enron? Will he stand tough against the Bush-Cheney big oil gutting of California’s economy?

Will he, in short, listen to his much more politically savvy wife even though he is running as a moderate Republican? After all, the Republicans may whine that Dean is taking the Dems too far to the Left, but the extreme right wing has driven old-fashioned conservative Republicans right out of the leadership of their party.

Which means, if Arnold is truly moderate, he might even end up governing as a moderate-conservative Democrat. Oh the irony, oh the farce! He might be a JFK Kennedy sort of Democrat.

And he owes nothing to no one, so he can do what he wants if he wins. He might turn out to be as good a Democrat as anyone the Democrats come up with to run against him. He might prove to be that rarest of politicians, one who is middle of the road…at least if he listens to Maria.
¶ 2:58 PM

  What “All-Volunteer” Really Means

Our move in Liberia starts with seven U.S. military personnel, and now we’re all worried that yet another front is going to open up that requires hundreds, or more likely, thousands of U.S. troops to go into harm’s way.

Not to panic. The all-volunteer army has a solution that won’t require that your sons and daughters don the gear and venture into bad neighborhoods. The draft is not going to happen again. After all, those are voters and their offspring you are getting killed out there! That is political suicide.

The solution to those pesky flare-ups we don't really want to deal with? Hiring mercenaries. That is, letting the invisible hand (or fist) of Mr. Market sort things out. And no reason to think the mercenary approach (aka outsourcing) will be limited to logistics. We've backed fighting mercs in the past.

So don't be surprised if and when you see the idea come directly from those dutiful employees of the new neo-trusts (see Richard N. Perle , the well known chicken-hawk) . You remember the approach: Where your ancestors had the right to build railroads and work in coal mines for less than they wound up owing the company store. And if they squawked, hired Pinkerton's agents shot them.

What am I taking about? Why what Bush, Sr., first referred to and now is seeing fronted for by his chicken hawk son. Right, The New Global Order—and more importantly military privatization.

Military privatization sounds like laissez-faire, but actual smells like using mercenaries. It’s already happening in Iraq, thanks to the impending use of DynCorp Rent-a-Cops.

Thing is, mercenaries are a truly disastrous idea. Troops answerable to those that pay them (the administration/government) will turn on citizens, or anyone else they’re pointed at. A troublesome thought for any democracy. Worse, they’ve a historic tendency to turn on those who hire them, too, by way of renegotiating their fees. They’re prone to sacking, pillaging and taking over countries by force. It’s in their nature, doncha know?

That’s why our founding fathers were against them. As they point out in the Declaration of Independence. “[King George] is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.” More to the point, the mercs did lose the American colonies for their masters, didn’t they?

The trend for the U.S. to use mercs is neither smalltime adventure nor new next thing, either. According to a Brookings report by Peter W. Singer, :

“privatized military industry is a surprisingly big business. It has several hundred companies, operating in over 100 countries on six continents, and over $100 billion in annual global revenue. In fact, with the recent purchase of MPRI (a Virginia-based military advisory company) by the Fortune 500 firm L-3, many Americans already own slices of the industry in their 401(k) s. In the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the industry was one of the few to rise in stock valuation rather than plummet. The reason is that the attacks essentially lodged a "security tax" on the economy, from which the private military industry stands to benefit.
The industry began its boom roughly a decade ago. The opening of a market for private military services was the result of a synergy between three powerful forces. The immediate catalyst was a massive disruption in the supply and demand of capable military forces since the end of the Cold War. Not only did global military downsizing create a new labor pool of over 6 million recently retired soldiers, but at the same time there was an increase in violent, but less strategically significant, conflicts around the world. With the great powers less willing to intervene or prop up local allies, the outcome was a gap in the market…”

And into that gap has now sprung…the free market. Investors like you and me. It’s important to note that should the Administration decide to send only mercs to Liberia, it will be a watershed event in some ways. It appears to be the first time that mercs without even a token moral umbrella of actual U.S. troops will be used (except for the pathetically unsuccessful drug war).

The test is needed because the military doesn’t like to buy anything that isn’t battle tested, so smallish wars are a good way to shake down strategies and hardware—and even force structures. So if mercs work in Liberia, look for it to become the new M.O. (modus operandi) of our military and foreign policy.

That’s an important line to cross. It heralds the beginning of true imperialism and the final capitulation to a might-over-right diplomatic strategy. It also is a profound betrayal of the core of democracy—that citizens wage only wars they are willing to fight themselves. It’s an important trigger point. Every good “Yankee trader” wants to make a buck off the rest of the world. That’s capitalism and that’s a good thing—or certainly less bad than any of the more unsavory alternatives to the natural give and take of nations (tribute, conquest, etc.).

But having to fight the wars yourself, so to speak, makes voters and free citizens just that extra bit more thoughtful in their jingoism. And that’s good; it tempers greed and arrogance, stopping it just short of those dreams of Empire that transmute national ambitions through the use of impersonal force. And Empire turns quickly into brutality abroad and the source of anti-imperial violence, such as we now face. ¶ 11:27 AM

  Loving the Bomb for Fun and Mushrooming Profit

As America continues to fulfill its manifest destiny, today brings another typically gloomy New York Times piece, courtesy William J. Broad.

He begins by alerting us to the DOD’s interest in developing small, low-yield nukes to bust bunkers—suggesting that somehow, this months-old interest was quietly snuck past an indifferent U.S. public. The nut graph shows the spin as clearly as a mushroom cloud against a dawn sky, “ ‘With an effective earth penetrator, many buried targets could be attacked,’ the administration said in its Nuclear Posture Review, which it sent to Congress last year.
“Welcome to the second nuclear age and the Bush administration's quiet responses to the age's perceived dangers.”

Who was unaware of reporting, even as we “shocked and awed” Iraqi’s with our 2000-pounders, that we needed something tougher to crack their European-designed bunkers?

Let’s face it: The nuclear genie is out anyway, and we all know it. Pakistan and India are there; North Korea and even the nuke-averse Japanese are champing at the bit. Israel, however on the down-low it may be, is probably in the top 4. Soon everyone will be partying the night away past the velvet ropes of the big-bang club.

For a laugh about the value of international diplomacy on this subject, check out the signatories of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Might as well call it the list of those who want them, if they don’t already gottem.

But it’s not all bad, bucko, so cheer up! The inevitable future use of nuclear weapons by or against us won’t necessarily spell total disaster.

However, you’ll have to step up to the plate and take responsibility for your own “homeland defense.” It’s not enough to settle for duck tape and plastic sheets, though. That’s so down-market anyway. You’ll be glad to know that fortunately, for all of us and for the economy in general, ever-resourceful Americans are already seeing the financial potential in a world that’s going nuclear.

Home building has been the bedrock of this economy. Now, thanks to the DOD’s interest in a new generation of nukes, there are countless new, exciting opportunities to create real added value to your home. And entrepreneurs are all over it.

One can only hope that Martha Stewart will get involved, the better to bring a little class to the regrettably “survivalist/trailer” sensibility of what’s available now. I like the practical, utilitarian look—up to a point. But the marketplace is all about choice and I look forward to a designer boom in alternative looks for that must-have home improvement. That’s right. The growth industry is no longer putting pools into folks’ back yards. In a blast of fresh air blended with a surefire return to nostalgia: Say hello to your brand new Fallout shelter.

Even in those markets where everyone rents, like New York, there are plenty of trendy accessorizing opportunities to let everyone know you’re an aficionuko. Plus, it fairly screams, “I buy the latest gadget.” Photo cell phones are so yesterday compared to a radiation monitor.

Besides helping the economy to mushroom by taking that second mortgage out to put up (down?) that shelter or pick up a monitor, you can also download key info onto the PDA or laptop by visiting the Web. Try stashing invaluable locations of prime U.S. targets to help you plan that perfect quick egress from town.

And never fear. Should you be one of those lazy-bones who puts it all off to the last minute, even with out any advance preparations, you can still make it (at least if you’re at the country house; in town it won’t really matter one way or the other, will it?) You can quickly slap together some protection, if you just follow the suggestions for hiding under a pile of books, furniture, dirt, etc. in the corner of your basement, as cheerfully outlined by the pros.

And for the luxury real estate market, after the stables, pools and tennis courts, there are always the ultimate shelters to consider. No one does it better than the U.S. government, when it comes to the best in underground accommodations. Consider what was built for senators , just in cast that declaration of war turned bad on them.

Beyond the public’s obvious interest in seeing a return to the shelter-building boom of the 1950s, there’s also the obvious stimulus to the economy that a new round of nuclear weapon building would bring about. Why else would there be so much interest in it?

True, a House appropriations subcommittee trimmed Bush’s 2004 budget request for these new arms. They cited “organizational disarray,” according to the Times’ well-connected Broad, “among the nation's bomb makers,” and said OKing the deal would be "premature." In non-pol speak that means they haven’t heard how the pie will be cut up yet.

Soon they will. Later this week, 150 folks meet at an Offut AFB shindig hosted by Strategic Command. They represent the government weapons labs, DOD, DOE, State, and the White House. So be on the lookout for bipartisan support of this new massively expensive weapons program soon.

All this will lead, surely, to an economic boom just in time for the 2004 elections. Reminds me of the phrase "military-industrial complex" coined by Ike in his farewell address.

He was the last General we had as President and is a guy who looks better and better in hindsight. Of course, the old soldier knew well the military-money minuet. He chose his farewell to fire a final round across the the bow of the ship of state; the better to draw our attention to the matter.

And he was not serving up his "complex" idea as a recipe either for economic or national security success. He was sending us a warning.
¶ 12:24 PM