From: bfrg9732@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Brian F. Redman)
Newsgroups: alt.activism
Subject: Bankruptcy 1995 (part 4)
Summary: The approaching fiscal Armageddon
Keywords: treachery trickery deceit deception
Date: 19 Nov 92 00:03:43 GMT
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana



   
Bankruptcy 1995: The Coming Collapse of America & How to Stop It.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

by Harry E. Figgie, Jr.
with Gerald J. Swanson, Ph.D.

About the authors:
-- Harry E. Figgie, Jr. is the CEO of Figgie International Inc., 
a diversified *Fortune 500* operating company. He was co-chairman 
of President Reagan's Private Sector Survey on Cost Control, also 
known as the Grace Commission.
-- Dr. Gerald J. Swanson is an Associate Professor of Economics 
at the University of Arizona.

"Any profits from this book have long since been assigned to 
charity. We make no profit whatsoever from it." (p. 25).

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
*                                                               *
* The United States has a problem that is easy to understand,   *
* but whose effects are difficult to comprehend. Its solution   *
* is simple to prescribe, but hard to implement. This problem   *
* is more insidious than drug addiction, more pressing than     *
* recession; it is crueler than poverty and illness and more    *
* hazardous than a hole in the ozone.                           *
*                                                               *
* This problem, which is of our own making, will precipitate    *
* an economic nightmare that will dwarf the Great Depression    *
* and turn the history of America into one of history's         *
* closed chapters. This problem has a name. It is *government   *
* debt.*                                                        *
*                                                               *
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

--------------------------- part 4 ------------------------------

"Most elected officials realize... that their reelection to 
office depends on their perpetuating a system that encourages 
waste and deficit spending. We, the American people, are to blame 
for this sorry situation. The sad truth is most of us don't even 
realize what has been done to our country in so short a time. 
[The media bears a big responsibility for the fact that we have 
been so ill-informed. B.R.] Consequently, we have sat back as a 
silent majority and let the special- and foreign-interest lobby 
groups destroy our country."

In February 1982, President Reagan inaugurated the Grace 
Commission whose purpose was to search for ways to eliminate 
waste in federal spending. The Grace Commission came up with 
2,478 cost-saving recommendations. But, "Instead of receiving 
support and leadership, the report was shelved."


Examples of waste detailed by the Grace Commission include the 
following:

--* A proposal to close a western army base that had been built 
in the 1800s for use as an outpost in the Indian wars.

--* A proposal to close hundreds of Defense Department storage 
depots which the report concluded were not significant or 
necessary.

--* The $436 hammer. Cost of hammer = $76 + $41 (to order hammer) 
+ $93 (to determine that the hammer works) + $102 ("manufacturing 
overhead") + $37 (to insure the availability of spare parts) + $3 
(to pack the hammer for shipping) + $90 (to pay a contractor's 
administrative costs) + $56 (finders fee) + $7 (the capital cost 
of money).

--* A study funded by the federal government to measure the 
average size of airline stewardesses' noses.

--* U.S. Forest Service expenditures of $487 billion "to lay and 
maintain roads on federal lands for private timber companies."


After the shelving of the Grace Commission recommendations, the 
next attempt at forcing fiscal responsibility on the government 
was the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act (GRH Act). In December 1985 the 
federal budget deficit was $212 billion. The GRH Act required that 
the deficit be lowered by $36 billion per year for the next five 
years. If this had been done, the deficit would have reached zero 
in 1991. But, as it turned out, "...all the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings 
legislation did was force Congress and the administration to find 
new ways of relabeling, reclassifying, and rescheduling, but not 
reducing, their spending."

		       -- Debtspeak --

In George Orwell's classic novel *1984*, a type of language 
called "Newspeak" was used. For example in "Newspeak," "yes" 
meant "no." In the deficit reduction language (i.e. "Debtspeak"), 
"reduction" has come to mean "increase."

One way in which "Debtspeak" is practiced by those in power is by 
first *projecting* what spending levels will be and then when 
actual expenditures are less than these *projected expenditures*, 
claiming that there has been a savings. For example, the amount 
that Congress budgeted for 1991 was 11.1 percent higher than its 
1990 budget. Yet Congress claimed that it would create a 
*savings* of 2.4 percent in 1991. Congressional budget writers 
explain this discrepancy by "...explaining that the spending 
levels budgeted for 1991... were lower than *earlier* 
projections... [my emphasis]"


Other deceptions practiced by Congress and the executive Office 
of Management and Budget include:

--* Shifting items from one place to another on the government's 
books.

--* Use of "off-budget" items. (i.e. items excluded from the 
budget totals, which nonetheless must be paid).

--* Shifting of military and government paydays forward into the 
next fiscal year. This creates a (temporary) illusion of reduced 
spending.

--* Because the numbers which appear in budgets are *estimated*, 
another way the president and Congress make a budget look better 
is to play with these estimates.

--* "The Social Security ruse" -- Social Security taxes were 
raised in 1983. "The idea then was to collect in current 
employment taxes the money that would be required to pay benefits 
to today's Baby Boomers later... because by 2010 the proportion 
of workers supporting retirees would have dropped from 20 to 1 to 
3 to 1.
    This caused a surplus in the Social Security trust fund. "But 
instead of leaving the money to accumulate in the trust fund... 
the government invests this money in its own securities -- in 
effect, lending the surplus to itself. Congress replaces the real 
dollars that people pay into the Social Security trust fund with 
specially created, nonmarketable Treasury bonds. These are the 
federal government's IOUs to itself."

--* "What the budget masters in Congress and the executive branch 
do to Social Security, they also do to other federal trust funds 
-- military, postal workers, railroad, and civil service 
retirement... [and more]."


"Voters have to realize that meaningful change requires some 
sacrifice by every American, and they must declare their 
willingness to accept their own share of the burden."

"Easy enough to say, critics counter. Tell that [i.e. sacrifice] 
to... all the interest groups who may have good cause to resist 
sacrificing their own benefits for the greater good."

The authors are convinced that it is possible to get people to 
"...accept the pain of making adjustments short-term, if they 
think they'll have some gain long-term... Voters who can't see 
any further than their own little slice of our shrinking pie will 
keep electing politicians who equivocate, mislead, pander, and 
lie. And that's a sure-fire recipe for our national demise within 
a very, very short time."


------------------------- end part 4 ----------------------------

You can do a lot of good by taking this article and posting it to 
other areas besides "alt.activism." You can also post this or 
upload it as a file to a local BBS. This would help give the 
people of this nation an alternative to the "fluff" and 
propaganda posturing as hard news which they are currently 
getting from the major networks.


Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman
"Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well."
End part 4
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