Hustler Magazine Features

From HUSTLER MAGAZINE – April 2010

There’s only one way to eliminate the corruption that has cast its dark shadow over America’s political system: We must eliminate campaign contributions, which have turned our congressmen and senators into puppets of Big Business. That means the government, using taxpayer dollars, would finance each candidate’s campaign. Only then will we be able to return political power to the people. Until we remove the money of the rich and powerful from the electoral process, nothing good will come from our politicians.

- Larry Flynt

THE NEW SENATOR FROM MINNESOTA BRAZENLY QUESTIONS THE GOVERNMENT’S SURVEILLANCE SUBTERFUGE BUT CAVES AT CRUNCH TIME.

by Nat Hentoff
From HUSTLER MAGAZINE March 2010

I was not a fan of Al Franken’s comic turns, much preferring those instigators who went deeper into our hypocrisies, namely Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory and Richard Pryor. But Franken has suddenly begun his career in the U.S. Senate as a mentor on the Constitution’s rule of law—a dim memory, if that, for many of his colleagues.

To his surprise, and mine, Franken won a seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee even though he is not a lawyer. But unlike many lawyers in the Senate, Franken has deeply researched the largely un-American USA PATRIOT Act. Rushed into law soon after 9/11 before most members of Congress had a chance to even read it all, its draconian provisos remain almost entirely intact.

On September 29, 2009, David Kris—assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s National Security Division—appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Kris was pitching to renew a section of the PATRIOT Act that permits the FBI to obtain a warrant from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which does not allow appeals from us mere citizens, thus totally repealing the Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights.

These are “John Doe” warrants that do not denote the suspect’s name, nor the specific location of the phone, e-mail or any other device the suspect may use. It could also be a pay phone in any neighborhood.

If this unnamed suspect uses a phone in your office, a bar you frequent or a social club or nearby pay phone, the FBI tap on those phones will pick up all conversations, including yours. And these are national wiretaps; the FBI doesn’t have to get a warrant from any city or state jurisdiction. We’re all immediately covered. Neither President Obama nor his attorney general, Eric Holder, has expressed any objection to this torpedoing of the Fourth Amendment.

When the Justice Department’s David Kris was telling the Senate Judiciary Committee how vital these roving tools against terrorism are, Franken startled him and, I expect, most of the rest of the committee. The freshman senator announced that after taking his seat, he was given a copy of the Constitution—and by gum he actually read it!

Franken then read aloud the actual Fourth Amendment to the Justice Department official who had been extolling roving wiretaps: “No warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Looking at this representative of our Justice Department, Franken said, “That’s pretty explicit language.” So how can roving wiretaps be within the rule of law if they don’t particularly name the targeted suspect or the particular place to be tapped?

Assistant Attorney General David Kris fumbled and sputtered, “This is surreal.”

It sure is! How many times since the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791 has a member of Congress, an attorney general or a President asked a law-enforcement agent or a prosecutor to define any part of the Bill of Rights and then justify a law that turns the Founders’ language upside down?

Senator Franken’s target, the man from the National Security Division, finally said that the courts had ruled that even if the FBI didn’t name the suspect or the particular place for the wiretap, a description of the target would satisfy the Constitution.

Think about that. Just a description? How many people resemble you in a general way? Height, hair color, posture, gait, skin color, age as far as can be guessed, attire, facial characteristics?

Franken’s question that seemed so “surreal” to government lawyer Kris has deep roots in our history as a precipitating cause of the American Revolution. The Founding Fathers gave us the Fourth Amendment because King George III’s officers in the American colonies used what they called “a general search warrant” to invade homes and offices without going to any court. The British king’s men wrote those warrants themselves.

When Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty sent details of the brutal abuses of these “general warrants” around the colonies through the Committees of Correspondence (the Internet of the time), the cumulative outrage was a significant factor in igniting the American Revolution.

But little American history is now being taught in our schools, and there have been no rallies or marches in the streets by outraged citizens protesting roving wiretaps. Congress may eventually tweak roving wiretaps a trifle if a patriotic senator has taught American values to enough of his or her colleagues. But anyway, watch what you say on the phone or on the Internet.

But why doesn’t Washington’s elite press corps ask President Obama, who purportedly once taught Constitutional law, about using wiretaps and to define the stark differences between his disregard for the separation of powers, due process, torture practices, etc., and the commands of the Bill of Rights and the rest of the Constitution?

I’d suggest you write such questions directly to the President, but affixing your name to such critical messages comes with a caveat. You might well be put in a database the FBI employs to search for “patterns,” possibly making you a “person of interest” not only to the FBI but also to Homeland Security and state and local police. After all, we continue to live in an ever-expanding surveillance society.

But now, guess what? Al Franken finally voted to keep roving wiretaps unchanged in the PATRIOT Act bill that the Senate Judiciary Committee recently sent to the floor for further debate. So much for Franken’s Fourth Amendment principles! Whom can we believe these days?

——————————————

Nat Hentoff is a historian of the Constitution, a jazz critic and a columnist for the Village Voice and Free Inquiry. His incisive books include The First Freedom: The Tumultuous History of Free Speech in America ; Living the Bill of Rights ; and the forthcoming Is This America?

You may purchase the hard copy of the March 2010 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine (with free shipping) at HustlerMagazine.com. Comes with full length DVD and free shipping!

You may purchase a digital copy of the March 2010 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine at UnderCoverMags.com.

ASSHOLE OF THE MONTH
from HUSTLER February 2010

“You lie!”, shouted South Carolina’s Joe Wilson as President Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress. The liar, however, was Representative Wilson. As Obama had claimed seconds before being heckled by the GOP lawmaker, nothing in the healthcare-reform legislation suggests illegal immigrants would be eligible.

It takes colossal gall to insult a sitting President—in the halls of Congress, no less. But ya know what? We don’t give a rat’s ass about that. We just think it’s too bad the spineless Democrats didn’t treat George W. Bush with as much abject contempt as the Republicans treat Obama. Bush deserved such treatment.

What bothers us about Wilson’s outburst is its apparent underlying racism, especially since nothing like this ever happened before. Consider the following: Wilson is a member of Sons of Confederate Veterans, an organization said to be riddled with radical neo-Confederates who advocate secession and defend slavery.

Beyond that, Wilson served as an aide to Senator Strom Thurmond, a notorious segregationist and racist. In fact, Wilson was so enthralled with Thurmond’s ugly philosophy that he castigated Essie Mae Washington when she came forward to reveal she was Thurmond’s illegitimate biracial daughter. At first, Wilson said Washington was lying, but when Thurmond admitted to being the woman’s father, he called her remarks a “smear.” And, lest we forget, in 2000—as a state senator—Wilson was one of seven Republicans who voted to keep the Confederate flag flying over South Carolina’s State House. The measure was soundly defeated.

Even if Wilson were a staunch supporter of the NAACP and a member of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition and perhaps even black himself, he’d still be an Asshole. Eligible for military service during the Vietnam War, Wilson hid behind deferment after deferment. Then, after graduating from the University of South Carolina School of Law, he miraculously snagged a highly sought-after spot in the Army Reserve. No way was he going to risk his neck for his country. Since Wilson voted in support of the Iraq War, that makes him just another Republican chickenhawk.

Wilson’s hostile position toward the Obama healthcare-reform package probably has less to do with any true philosophical beliefs than it does with hard-nosed political pragmatism: The Congressman has received $414,000 from the health sector since taking his seat in 2001. That might also explain why Wilson voted against healthcare for veterans 11 times, including cuts to the Veterans Administration and TRICARE4. To an outsider looking in, it would appear that the healthcare industry owns Joe Wilson. Actually, if you think about it, that’s kinda like owning Baltimore Avenue when playing Monopoly.

Wilson’s hostility toward healthcare reform and Obama is so obsessive that he supported Bates Motel-crazy Glenn Beck’s 9/12 march on Washington. Remember, it was Beck who made the ludicrous charge that Obama is a “racist.” Wilson’s encounter with the President is not the first time he’s had such extreme outbursts.

According to the Washington Post, Wilson attacked Representative Bob Filner (DCalifornia) while appearing on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal. The reason? Filner had accurately stated that the United States once supplied Saddam Hussein with materials for nuclear and biological weapons. Once again we see that presenting Wilson with the facts does nothing but inflame him. He has contempt for the truth. By extension, it follows he has contempt for the American people. And why shouldn’t he? His distortions and lies have worked for him so far.

You must be contemptuous to say black is white, as it were. Or up is down. Or America has the best healthcare in the world. (We rank 37 in effective treatment and outcomes.) Even though he was demonstrably wrong in asserting that the President was lying, Wilson issued only a perfunctory apology before retreating to a pseudo-populist position by stating he would not “be muzzled.”

Then he started lying again: “Liberals who want to give healthcare to illegals are using my opposition as a distraction….They want to silence anyone who’s against [the government’s healthcare plan].” Just as aggravating, Wilson continues to call the plan “government run” when that’s patently untrue. Obama’s plan would only have the government as the payer—as opposed to the insurance companies— for those using the public option.

What’s really disturbing is that Wilson’s kids are poised to follow in Daddy’s footsteps. His oldest son, Alan McCrory Wilson—a lawyer—has his eye on the South Carolina state attorney general’s seat. Here’s what we can do to nip this nascent dipshit dynasty in the bud: Make a donation to Rob Miller, Joe Wilson’s Democratic opponent in the 2010 elections. (Miller’s Web site is RobMillerForCongress.com.)

Finally, there’s this: Joe Wilson is not really Joe Wilson. The Asshole’s legal name is Addison Graves Wilson Sr. Perhaps it’s a small point, but it does underscore the fact that it’s Wilson who is a liar.

—————————————–

You may purchase the hard copy of the February 2010 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine (with free shipping) at HustlerMagazine.com. Comes with full length DVD and free shipping!

You may purchase a digital copy of the February 2010 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine at UnderCoverMags.com.

ONCE WE WERE THE GOOD GUYS. WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED TO CHANGE THAT?

by Alex Bennett
From HUSTLER MAGAZINE February 2010

A few months back I was watching one of those contentious town hall meetings. I can’t remember the congressman who was holding it, but I can remember the endless parade of mindless assholes reciting what they had heard on right-wing radio and TV talk shows. All I could think was, Where is the exit to this country?

I grew up in the ’40s and ’50s. My life was that of a suburban kid with a mom and pop, a cat, a dog and a bike that wheeled me around my naive and cloistered world. America had just come out of the Great Depression, and that made the nation more conscious of another person’s plight. Americans had witnessed suffering every time they passed a bread line or saw a homeless person on the street. Most Americans of that era knew they were just a paycheck away from being in the same boat.

Then came the Second World War. I remember seeing those Gold Stars in windows, signaling that the family had lost a son or daughter. People in the neighborhood would do what they could to honor and comfort them.We understood the need for individual sacrifice to protect the nation as a whole.

Even so, segregation prevailed beyond the walls of my pretty and neat world, and the House Un-American Activities Committee was taking aim at imaginary Communists.

I was luckier than most. My parents were very hip. Dad was a musician, and both he and Mom were bohemians. Some of the people who came into our home were the very people Congress wanted put away. My parents weren’t Communists, just real lefties. Yet the conservatives of that time would probably have called me a “Red Diaper Baby.”

I remember my father taking me down to City Hall when the House Un-American Activities Committee held hearings in San Francisco. We were standing out front with other good Americans to protest the idea of our country being overrun by jackbooted witchhunters. One time I snuck into the hearing and watched as one of my favorite radio personalities, a guy who told charming stories about San Francisco, had his life ruined with one simple question: “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” The next morning I turned on the radio, but he wasn’t there. I was 15, and it was indelibly etched in my brain forever: They took him off the air!

I think this is when we started to lose our cherry. We were becoming paranoid, looking for evildoers in every shadow.

The Korean War wasn’t exactly the most ignoble of conflicts, but by the time we got to Vietnam, our imperialist impulses were in full flower. The only saving grace: Some Americans were vehemently opposing the war. There was still hope that good would triumph as people used their voices and bodies to protest the conflict in Southeast Asia. Eventually they chased a President from office. Once again we could look at the world with a sense of pride.

But even as we were patting ourselves on the back, a former die-hard leftist—who was mobbed up, had cheated on his first wife, ratted on his friends and, worst of all, was an actor—became President of the United States. Ronald Reagan created a supreme culture of selfishness and nationalism masquerading as conservatism. Since then, it’s been all downhill. Even the Clinton years didn’t stop the greed and dirty tricks that gained even more momentum under the Bushies.

All of a sudden, America was believing the poison spewed by right-wing radio talk show hosts. The Big Lie became the Big Truth. America had dumbed down. Oh, I know what you’re saying: “We elected Obama, didn’t we?” Sure, we did, because we succumbed to another Big Lie. He was going to change things, right? So what, exactly, has changed? Each passing day he stabs us in the back.

Look at us. We have become a country of selfish people. People who couldn’t care less about their neighbors. People who have long forgotten what right and wrong are. We have become a nation hypnotized by the media to believe whatever they tell us.

Worst of all, we live under the mistaken impression that America is the greatest country in the world when in fact that ended years ago. Today we are falling apart at the seams. Capitalism is devouring itself and our humanity. Morality has vanished.

How can we put the brakes on this downward slide to oblivion? I don’t know. Back in the days of my youth we were the good guys. Am I being too old-fashioned to want that back?

——————————————

Alex Bennett is a longtime HUSTLER contributor. The two-time Emmy winner, who broke into broadcasting as a teenager, currently calls Sirius Left 146 his radio home.

You may purchase the hard copy of the February 2010 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine (with free shipping) at HustlerMagazine.com. Comes with full length DVD and free shipping!

You may purchase a digital copy of the February 2010 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine at UnderCoverMags.com.

From HUSTLER MAGAZINE – January 2010

Who are these nutjobs? I’m talking about those American citizens who have shown up at town hall meetings, including gatherings with the President of the United States in attendance, packing guns. And not just handguns—although that would be bad enough—but semiautomatic rifles as well.

We all agree that Americans should have free speech, due process and the right to bear arms. In fact, we demand it. But showing up at town hall meetings with weapons is equivalent to yelling fire in a crowded theater. These people, whoever they are, wherever they come from, embarrass us in front of the entire world. You don’t need guns to petition for redress.

Whether these loons come from the left or the right, they must all be repudiated—by the media, by our politicians and by the overwhelming majority of citizens. Let the world know not all of us are crazy.

- Larry Flynt

From HUSTLER MAGAZINE – February 2010

America is obsessed with heroes. The Old West had Bat Masterson and Wild Bill Hickok. Later came President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, General George S. Patton, President John F. Kennedy, astronaut Neil Armstrong and, most recently, airline pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger.

Heroes are resilient, unflappable and, most of all, masculine. If someone doesn’t appear to be strong, Americans will back away.We tend to dislike people who are weak. Barack Obama was elected President because he was seen as a hero. Now he has to build on that. If he can’t, he won’t win a second term.

-Larry Flynt

A NOTED COLUMNIST AND AUTHOR DETAILS HOW THE BANKS ARE TURNING YOU IN TO A DEBT SLAVE AND HOW THE AMERICAN PEOPLE CAN TAKE BACK THE POWER OF CREATING MONEY.

from THE Q & A with Ellen Brown interviewed by Mark Johnson
in HUSTLER Magazine – February 2010

In 1933, President Roosevelt summed up the truth about power in America: “A financial element in the large centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.” That financial element was—and still is—the banking system, headed by a private cartel known as the U.S. Federal Reserve. Over the years Roosevelt’s truth has been echoed many times by politicians and scholars trying to break the bankers’ stranglehold. Now, as the Obama Administration continues to bail out the banks, we may be facing the economic endgame. In her eye-opening new book The Web of Debt, attorney Ellen Brown zeros in on the fraudulent core of our imploding economy: Banks have been using accounting tricks to create money out of thin air, charging interest on it and siphoning off the profits. Brown stresses that the only feasible way to rein in the private banking cartel is to set up a competitive system of public banks, owned by the people, that act in the common interest. This would be the first step toward giving We the People back the power to create our own money.

HUSTLER: How is our money currently created?

ELLEN BROWN: All of our money is created as a debt to private banks. We have no actual money in our monetary system except for coins, which are created by the government. Coins compose a tiny fraction of the money supply. The rest is created by banks in the form of loans. That includes paper dollar bills or Federal Reserve Notes, which compose about 3% of the money supply. Federal Reserve Notes are created by the Federal Reserve, a privately owned banking corporation, and lent to the government and to other banks. But 97% of all money exists only in ledgers, not as actual circulating currency.

When I go into a bank and ask for $100,000 to buy a house, where does that money come from?

They will write your mortgage up on one side of their books as an asset to themselves because you will pay them money over time. Then they will write the same sum on the other side of their books as a liability because that amount becomes your account that you write checks on. This is called double-entry bookkeeping. They have created a plus $100,000 and a minus $100,000, which comes out to zero. They’ll say that their books balance. The bookkeeping entries on the liability side are what circulate in the economy as “money.” Money has actually been added to the money supply. And that money creation is at interest, so there is always more money owed back than is put out. The money that banks lend is not from preexisting deposits. It is new money that did not exist until it was lent.
But if I write a check to the mortgage company, someone is taking that out as cash somewhere along the line.

The bank can pay out money because it operates under what’s called a reserve requirement. Banks are supposed to keep 10% of their assets in the form of cash reserves. Let’s say they have $1 million in outstanding loans; they should have $100,000 in actual money that they could pay out immediately.

Long ago, when we were on the gold standard, it was discovered that people came for their gold only 10% of the time. Our reserve requirement still reflects the fact that 90% of the people won’t come for their money. The 10% kept in reserve comes from depositors. This money is not lent out. The banks use it to create loans under the system of “fractional reserve banking.”

Say they start with $10,000 in bank assets. They’re allowed to lend 90% of that, so they lend $9,000. It’ll go into another bank somewhere, and that bank is allowed to lend 90% on top of that and so on. The deposit keeps multiplying until the original $10,000 is turned into accountability and disclosure to the public.

The power to create money is given to Congress in the Constitution.

When does the Fed decide to print more money?

They print money when the banks need it to meet the banks’ cash reserve requirements. Most people think the government prints the money. The government owns the machinery that prints the dollars, but it’s the Federal Reserve that commissions them to print the dollars.

That’s where the deception is. The Fed tells our printers to print it, and the Fed pays the cost of printing. So they get it for pennies on the dollar, then lend it to us at full face value. The income tax was originally set up to pay the interest on the debt incurred to the Federal Reserve. Very little of the interest now actually goes to the Federal Reserve. But when it was first set up, that was the intent of the bankers that got the law passed. The government passed both laws the same year, 1913: the 16th Amendment for the income tax and the Federal Reserve Act.

The Federal Reserve Act initiated the current system of creating money?

That’s when it was formalized, but we’ve had banker-created money all of our formal existence. In 1791, Alexander Hamilton—our first Treasury Secretary—started the first U.S. bank. It was originally 80% privately owned, and then the government sold the other 20%, so it wound up being 100% privately owned. Thomas Jefferson was opposed to the idea. He considered Hamilton’s plan traitorous and unconstitutional. For a hundred years before that, Americans had money issued by the colonial governments. It worked really well. We flourished all through the colonial period at a time when the British were suffering from the ravages of the Industrial Revolution.

The bank of Pennsylvania—in Benjamin Franklin’s province—was the ideal colonial model. Franklin was considered the father of paper money. He raved about it and said it was responsible for the abundance in the colonies. The government would issue a certain amount of money and then lend it to the farmers at 5% interest.

The government would also issue a little extra and spend it on public works, like building roads. Then they had enough money in the system to cover principal and interest as the loan money went out and came back, without having to inflate the system. During that time the Pennsylvania colonists paid no taxes, had no government debt, and there was no price inflation—a brilliant, self-contained, sustainable system.

A major factor that led to the American Revolution was that King George told us we could no longer print new issues of our own money. The worst part was we had to pay our taxes in gold to England. That was why the colonists were so upset about the taxes. It wasn’t just that there was a tax on tea. It was that we had to pay this tax in gold, which we didn’t have. The farmers had to borrow it from the British bankers. The colonists wound up in foreclosure. They were losing their farms. So they just went back to printing their own money because they had to. They needed a money supply. It was an act of rebellion. Tom Paine called this government-issued paper money “a cornerstone of the Revolution.”

Was that money backed by gold or silver?

No. It was backed by the full faith and credit of the government. The system was started in 1691 when the governor of Massachusetts, who didn’t have gold or silver, gave out government receipts to his soldiers, saying, “Go and trade with this; it will be honored for your service to the community.” That worked. The colonies paid for the Revolutionary War with paper money. Unfortunately, it was easily counterfeited. The British were sitting in the harbor with printing presses on ships, madly running their presses.

After the war, even if the government had tried to issue paper dollars, nobody would have accepted them because they were so heavily devalued during the war. So Hamilton resorted to a ruse where he took the gold that the government had—which wasn’t that much—and put it in the bank and started issuing paper bank notes, saying that they were redeemable in gold. That was the so-called gold standard.

The bankers knew people would only come 10% of the time for their gold, so they could issue ten times as many notes as they had gold. Suddenly they had ten times more money. The problem was that the banknotes were lent to the government by private bankers, putting us into this whole debt syndrome we’re in now.

Lincoln also printed “greenbacks” to finance the Civil War. What happened to that idea?

Lincoln tapped into the same cornerstone that had gotten the impoverished colonists through the Revolution: He authorized the government to issue its own paper money. But private bankers sought to eliminate Lincoln’s “greenbacks” since they weren’t under their control. Lincoln was shot, and the bankers pressured Congress to pass the National Banking Act, which allowed them to replace the “greenbacks” with their own privately issued currency.

What would be the most workable reform of the banking system?

We need state-owned banks. With a public, state-owned bank, your profits go back to the community. You don’t have a parasite pulling profits out the way you do with private banks. The whole point of a corporation is to make money for the stockholders and management. If you’re a public entity, you don’t have to worry about profits to your shareholders, and your shareholders and customers don’t have to be nervous about losing their money because you’ve got a huge pool backed by the state. You can create many times your deposits in loans, to fund government projects, helping the community, and all the profits go back to the center—the state bank.

Any sort of public entity can own a bank. A university like UCLA could own a bank. They could take all their revenues, put them in their bank, create many times that sum in loans and build a stadium. The profits from the stadium would go back and pay off the loan.
They could do it interest-free.

Why don’t they?

I don’t think they know they can do it; we’ve been kept in ignorance for so long. In the 1890s, people actually knew the banks were $100,000 or more, distributed among several banks. It’s like a mirror trick. The problem is if you get rid of the first dollar, the whole mirror effect collapses.

Banks need to generate debt to create money?

Yes, essentially all of our money comes from loans. Our current private banking system is a pyramid scheme. Banks have to continually suck new borrowers in because they never put as much money out as they want back. They put out ten; they take back 11. They put out 11; they take back 121/2. So in order to create that extra money, you always have to find somebody else who will borrow. They’re scrambling to find debtors. This is the scheme they use for everything from mortgages to credit cards. Our central bank, the Federal Reserve, authorizes the activity of creating money out of nothing.

Is the Fed part of the private banking system?

The Federal Reserve is not actually federal. It is composed of 12 branches, which are private corporations owned by a consortium of banks. We, the public, do not own one share of stock in the Federal Reserve. Our President appoints the head of the Federal Reserve, but once appointed, he’s pretty much on his own.

The only leverage Congress really has is to modify or eliminate the Federal Reserve Act. The question is, can this secretive private cartel be trusted with so much unregulated power? It would be cheaper and safer to give the power to create dollars to Congress itself, with full creating money because there was no Federal Reserve. It was obvious that when you went to the bank, they were giving you a bank note supposedly backed by their own gold. You knew that it was privately issued money. Today we’ve been led to believe the government issues the money and that they’re the problem. We’ve been sucked into supporting the banking beast when we could walk away and form our own credit system.

Has this idea of public banking been tested?

It has. One state owns its own bank: North Dakota. It’s also one of only two states that are currently able to meet their budgets. The Bank of North Dakota was set up during a populist movement in 1919. By law, all of the state’s revenues go into its own state-owned bank. These then serve as the deposit base for many times that sum in loans, and the excess profits go back to the state.

They don’t publicly say they’re creating credit out of nothing on their books, but that’s how all banks work; many authorities have said so. North Dakota now has the lowest unemployment rate in the country, it has plenty of money for things like student loans and sustainable energy development, and it’s generally not feeling the pinch of the credit crisis at all.

What’s preventing a system like that from being instituted nationwide?

Corruption and multimillion-dollar salaries. You can’t change the system until it collapses. But that’s the point we’re at now. It has collapsed.

Would a public banking system still be competitive enough on an international scale?

A public banking system could be more competitive than private banks. Banks create credit on their books, and a government bank could do exactly the same thing—without all the toxic assets that are preventing the banks from making loans now, and without having all the profits going out to a parasitic banking elite.

You could set up a public banking system that could start fresh. You could still let the private banks operate. They do that in India. It used to be that the private Indian banks were preferred because they were profit-generating, but now suddenly everybody’s rushing to the public banks because they’re more secure.

Aren’t the people who are making money off the current private banking system going to fight a public system tooth and nail?

Sure, but what can they say if we’re playing by their rules? We just want to join in the game. We could just set up public banks to fund infrastructure, to fund the stimulus program. Let the private banking system alone. Don’t try to prop it up and don’t try to bring it down. Just see which one works better. I’ll place a wager that it’s going to be the public system and that everyone’s going to rush to the public system when they see how well it works.

——————————————

You may purchase the hard copy of the February 2010 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine (with free shipping) at HustlerMagazine.com. Comes with full length DVD and free shipping!

You may purchase a digital copy of the February 2010 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine at UnderCoverMags.com.

WILLIAM A NOTED REPORTER AND AUTHOR TELLS US HOW CORPORATIONS ARE DESTROYING THE AMERICAN ECONOMY AND WHAT WE CAN DO TO FIX IT.

from THE Q & A with William Greider interviewed by Mark Johnson
in HUSTLER Magazine – January 2010

William Greider is one of the experts who warned us ten years ago that our economy was headed into the shredder. A longtime observer of runaway capitalism, Greider has written several books and worked as a reporter for numerous newspapers and magazines, including the Washington Post and Rolling Stone. He is currently national affairs correspondent for The Nation.

During his 40-year career he has crossed paths with the country’s most powerful people. He has examined in detail how and why America went from a thriving democracy to a nation run by bankers. In his latest book—Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country —Greider maintains that we are at an epic turning point in our history. It is time for people to step up and reclaim their role as true citizens.

HUSTLER: How did you recognize early on that our economy was in deep trouble?

WILLIAM GREIDER: Ten years ago I wrote in my book One World Ready or Not that our [economic] system, despite all of its creative energies, was veering off-balance. The United States was playing buyer of last resort for everybody else. We had our arms wide open and accepted imports from everywhere when no one else would. Our multinational corporations were going into poorer countries, developing production there and shipping parts back into the U.S.
We now import four or five times more than we export. Because our production and jobs have been moving offshore, we don’t have the money to pay for the imports. We borrow the money from the people who are selling us stuff. There’s surplus production every year all around the world. Most countries won’t take it, either because they can’t afford it or because they just won’t let it in. The U.S., because we’re the big-hearted Goliath, says,“We’re for free trade; keep it coming.” The long-term consequences are the U.S. gets deeper and deeper in debt, and American workers suffer stagnant or falling wages because they’re competing with foreign low-wage workers.

Has this policy been pushed by the multinational corporations?

Absolutely. Both Democrats and Republicans have supported this in the belief that if our U.S. multinationals do well in the world, we’ll be okay. But it doesn’t work that way. The multinationals (whether you’re talking about General Electric or Microsoft or whomever) can do very well and actually hurt the United States in the process. As long as it was just T-shirts and cheap shoes, you could say, “That’s not going to make much difference.”

The reality is, we’re now getting some of the most advanced products and technology in the world out of places like China.We’re losing what businesspeople call “value added production.” The process of making a product produces high value added [for the producing country]. Most countries understand that they’ve got to hang on to that really valuable production and the jobs that go with it to maintain a prosperous middle class. Otherwise you sink lower and lower. Twenty years ago I talked to working guys in auto plants, and they told me this was happening to them. Blue-collar people understand this way better than the people who run the country.

How do you bring production back to the United States?

It starts in politics. You get a government and a political party that stands up and says to the American people, “We’re in a deep hole, and it’s getting deeper, and we cannot go on like this.” First, we’ve got to change our approach to the U.S. multinationals. We’re going to say to them, “Look, we’re not handing out tax breaks and other subsidies any longer. You have some obligations to the home country. We want you to be profitable, but you have to include the national interest in your business strategies.” If they don’t, we will reform the corporate income tax so that the companies that do better at retaining the jobs and keeping value added gain in our own home country will get a lower tax rate than companies simply moving it out the door.

How likely is that to happen with Congress in the pocket of Big Business?

Politicians are in line with the most powerful companies and financiers because they support globalization. However, in Congress there’s a growing nucleus of representatives who are mad because their constituents are mad. It’s just a start, but it’s not hopeless. As candidate for President, Barack Obama said that we’re going to stop rewarding the companies that simply move production overseas and start rewarding companies that do the best job of keeping it here in the U.S. with a modest tax incentive.

His idea doesn’t go far enough, but I’m encouraged he’s starting down that road. People should be banging on him right now saying, “Hey, you said this during the campaign. What are you doing about it?” The other thing we’ve got to do is say to the rest of the world, “We’ve been generously supporting the development of the global economy for years, but the whole system is going to come crashing down if the United States taps out. We’re going to put a cap on our trade deficits and gradually reduce it so we can come closer to something like a balanced trading system.”

What’s wrong with trade tariffs?

Nothing. Every country in the world uses them. I’m for a trading system that functions for poor people as well as the wealthy. When I started writing about this 20-plus years ago, a lot of people dismissed me as a fearmonger and a protectionist. Now the facts are so devastating that a lot of people who used to be cheerleaders for free trade are not so anxious to be identified with it.

I would put Obama in that category. He’s willing to acknowledge things are not working in America’s self-interest. But he’s not yet ready to step up and really forcefully address it. [He and his advisers] are blinded by the ideology that the world works better if government gets out of the way and lets business do its thing. That’s not only nonsense, it’s morally wrong. These same businesses siphon off taxpayer money, and the things they promised do not happen. When you ask Americans how they feel about corporations, an overwhelming consensus says corporations have too much power, and the government should get some control over them.

Why doesn’t the government do that?

Because those same corporations are manipulating elected politicians and financing their campaigns. The American people have a deeper understanding of this reality than they’re given credit for. I’m optimistic this is going to change, but it’s got to be bloody. The usual interests will just try to either stomp on people or brush them aside. Somebody ought to stand up and say, “I am proposing an amendment to the Constitution that clarifies once and for all: Corporations do not have the rights of people.” It would give you a fight for people to organize around.

Is our technology going overseas along with our jobs?

Yes. A good example is Boeing, which makes large-body commercial aircraft. They will contract out to scores of other countries: China, Indonesia, Europe, the Middle East, the whole list. They’ll say, “We want you to make the titanium alloy strut that holds up the engines on a 747, and we’ll show you how to make it. We’ll have guys in your plant, your foundry, monitoring you for quality because we can’t screw this up. This has got to work, because otherwise the plane will crash.” The Chinese will take instructions from the Americans, make that part, ship it to Seattle or Wichita, Kansas, where it is then installed in a Boeing assembly line and becomes part of the aircraft. They do that with hundreds of components. The most obvious reason is wages: It’s cheaper. But that’s not even the main motive for Boeing. Boeing wants to sell airplanes to those countries. China especially has a huge air-travel industry. So Boeing buys market share [meaning the ability to sell huge amounts of product in China] by trading away American jobs. I’ve had interviews with Boeing managers and strategists, and they’re pretty upfront about it. They say, “Look, if we don’t do this, they won’t buy our airplanes.”

The reason that we have to fight for both manufacturing and service jobs is because even the high-end technical, professional jobs are now being shipped overseas. Google and Microsoft are competing in China now. They’ve both opened big research centers there. The workers are cheaper, but they’re perfectly good engineers. Hundreds of big-name companies have traded technology to those developing countries in exchange for cheap labor and market access.

How did Singapore, a tiny city-state, get so good at making disc drives invented by IBM and other U.S. companies?

The answer is: IBM taught them, in return for tax subsidies and protection against wage increases [in Singapore].

How do we rein in the banks as well?

Obama should be using the government’s power to say, “Until we get out of this crisis, we’re in charge. We’re keeping you afloat with our loans. That gives us the power, and if we have to, we’ll pass a law to direct you and your behavior and cut out all the bullshit and get this credit system working again so that we can get a real economic recovery.” The banks are in trouble because they still have these huge portfolios of rotten assets. Nothing has happened to change that. The bankers know that if they do get back in trouble, the government has to come and save them again. It’s a one-way bet for them: Heads we win, and tails you lose.

How do you get out of this quickly rather than dragging it on for years?

You get these bad assets out of the banks so they can begin lending again. They didn’t do that because the bankers said, “Well, if the economy comes back, this stuff is going to be worth a lot of money again, and we don’t want to sell it cheap.” At that point, if the government had the balls, they would have grabbed these bankers by the collar and said, “You’re going to sell this stuff or we’re cutting off your water right now.” The government has them in a life-and-death situation, and Obama won’t use that.

How do we force politicians to keep their promises?

People have to create their own power and their own communication. That’s what the Internet is about. Ordinary Americans are learning to use these technologies for their own purposes. It means communicating with people they don’t even know, who may be on the other side of an issue, and spreading the word. Out of that can come organizations independent of both political parties. They have to be able to mobilize lots of people to do a jujitsu on the system. Jujitsu is when the little guy flips a big guy on his back. People can do that in the electoral arena if they’ve got the nerve.

The Democratic Party is supported by all kinds of groups—unions, environmentalists, consumer advocates, civil rights activists. But what these groups haven’t been able to do is punish the Democratic Party when it sells them out. They have to say, “You’re screwing us. We’re going to make a list of senators or House members [who are working against us].

Instead of handing over our money, we’re going to take some of it and run our own candidates against Democratic incumbents.” You can do that with a minor percentage of the vote if you’re willing to take on the big party and say we’ve had enough.

One guy I know is warning the Democrats that they’re going to have a political train wreck in the Congressional elections if they go ahead with the idea of taxing health benefits. One of the guys talking this up is Max Baucus, senator from Montana and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Must be a Republican, right? No, he’s a Democrat! His position goes against what Obama said during the campaign. It goes against basic fairness.

Anybody in a union knows they traded wage increases for better benefits. Along comes the government and pretends they’re getting this stuff for free.We have to say to the Democratic Party, “Don’t go down that road. If you do, you’re going to wind up where you did in 1994, when the Republicans took back the House of Representatives after 50 years.”

Ordinary people, both nonunion and union, can begin to provoke this. They can say to the unions [and other groups], “You come around and ask for money every year, but you won’t threaten the Democrats or members of Congress with retribution when they sell you out.” Nothing moves opinion in the Congress more reliably than members seeing a couple of their colleagues cut down out of the blue by something they didn’t take seriously.

People are always screaming about how influential the NRA [National Rifle Association] is. The NRA is influential because they play hardball. Every member of Congress, whether they’re far left or far right, understands that. The NRA will not forget when they’re crossed, and they’re effective. You don’t have to be a political party, you don’t have to be a labor union to play that kind of politics. I envision lots of what I call “independent formations.” Not political parties, not issue groups. They’re people together exercising their rights as citizens. It’s like guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare works not because the fighters are bigger or stronger, but because they pick their spots. They’re willing to shoot for the kneecaps.

What can the average person do in terms of forcing change?

Above all, trust your guts. Have faith in your basic convictions and tune out the propaganda that’s meant to manipulate your mind. I have a lot of faith in the capacity of Americans, regardless of their status, to think for themselves. They’ve been pushed around for so many years. Yes, they’re cynical; they don’t know who to trust; and so forth. The first step is for them to uncover that good stuff in themselves. As they do that, they don’t have to ask me or anyone else what to do. They’ll figure that out for themselves. I believe that deeply.
—————————————————

You may purchase the hard copy of the January 2010 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine (with free shipping) at HustlerMagazine.com.

You may purchase a digital copy of the January 2010 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine at UnderCoverMags.com.

from HUSTLER Magazine – March 2010

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is the onetime Wall Street insider responsible for handing over $700 billion in bailout money to his pals in the banking industry, with no requirement to pay it back or prove how it is being spent. Under Geithner’s “financial stability” plan, rich investors are getting government subsidies to scoop up so-called toxic assets at a discount. They pocket the potential profits, and we the taxpayers shoulder the risk. A win-win for them; a lose-lose for us. Talk about a fox in the henhouse. Geithner is the same guy who spends the bulk of his time on the phone with his buddies at Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street wheeler-dealers instead of fixing America’s economy. For these reasons and others, each month we will put another piece of shit on Geithner’s head until he resigns or is shitcanned.

——————————————

You may purchase the hard copy of the March 2010 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine (with free shipping) at HustlerMagazine.com. Comes with full length DVD and free shipping!

You may purchase a digital copy of the March 2010 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine at UnderCoverMags.com.

WALL STREET’S MOST INFLUENTIAL CEOs HAVE OBAMA’S TREASURY SECRETARY ON SPEED DIAL, AND IT PAYS.

by ROBERT SCHEER
from HUSTLER Magazine – January 2010

Then Timothy Geithner headed the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, he was very good at mealtime, particularly with the Wall Street fat cats he was supposed to be governing. The details of his endless private dining with the likes of Sanford Weill, Robert Rubin and other big bankers responsible for the economic meltdown only came out after President Obama named him Treasury Secretary—and in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit.

“An examination of Mr. Geithner’s five years as president of the New York Fed, an era of unbridled and ultimately disastrous risk-taking by the financial industry, shows that he forged unusually close relationships with executives of Wall Street’s giant financial institutions,” the New York Times reported. “His actions, as a regulator and later a bailout king, often aligned with the industry’s interests and desires, according to interviews with financiers, regulators and analysts and a review of Federal Reserve records.”

You would have thought that the embarrassing disclosures of how tight this guy was with the banking bandits would have led him to change his social habits—and it has: Instead of private dining encounters, he now schmoozes the bankers during incessant phone calls. Of course, we only learned this when the Wall Street Journal and other news organizations forced the information public through another FOIA lawsuit.

Under the headline “Wall Street on Geithner’s Speed Dial,” the WSJ reported that “Geithner has kept frequent contact with an exclusive group of Wall Street executives since taking the helm at Treasury, speaking most often with top officials from Goldman Sachs Group Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase Co., CitiGroup Inc. and BlackRock Inc.” And, in fact, he logged far more time talking with Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Sachs, than he did with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, the two leaders of Congress to whom he was supposed to be reporting.

The bigger concern is not the frequency of Geithner’s calls, however, but which end of the call is setting the tone. Representative Brad Sherman (D-California), who has been pushing for tougher regulation of financial institutions, complained: “I don’t mind that he’s talking to Wall Street. The problem is that he appears to be listening.”

Blankfein’s Goldman Sachs bears as much responsibility for the banking meltdown as any other firm and was one of the main beneficiaries of the government’s subsequent heaving of trillions into the gullets of culpable financial institutions that had gambled themselves to the brink of bankruptcy.

Remember, it was former Goldman head Robert Rubin who, as treasury secretary in the Clinton Administration, had pushed through the radical deregulation that allowed Wall Street to spin out of control. And it was another Goldman honcho, Henry Paulson, who served as treasury secretary to George W. Bush and ignored the ballooning problem, then led the government bailout that saved the very companies, like Goldman, that deserved to fail.

Thanks to Paulson, Goldman was allowed to reconstitute itself as a commercial bank and therefore became eligible for $10 billion in TARP bailout funds, as well as massive additional support from the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve. But the daisy chain doesn’t end there.

After leaving the government, Rubin became a top leader of Citigroup, a company allowed to grow too big to fail by the deregulation he had pushed through. He made over $100 million looking the other way while Citigroup sank close to the point of oblivion. It was prevented from total collapse when Geithner, a Rubin protégé in the Treasury Department who had become New York Fed chairman thanks to Rubin’s influence—joined Paulson in bailing out Citigroup. The bank was given $45 billion outright and a federal guarantee for $300 billion of its toxic assets.

Treasury Secretary Geithner, who took office in January 2009, had frequent phone conversations with the leaders of Citigroup, which might be acceptable if he had gained some concessions on its part. Instead, Citigroup was actively lobbying against any serious efforts to rein in this and other highflying banks. Even though we taxpayers are supposed to own 34% of Citigroup, there is no evidence that this has translated into making the bank’s policies more transparent or accountable.

In contrast, Geithner did not care to hear from the executives of the auto companies that were being saved, at far lower cost, from disaster. As the Wall Street Journal reported, “Mr. Geithner appears to have had no contact with officials at General Motors Co. and just one call with a Chrysler Group LLC official.” Apparently the grittier types in Detroit don’t rate solicitous calls from Wall Street CEOs’ obedient lackey, Obama appointee Timothy Geithner.

——————————————

Before serving 30 years as a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, Robert Scheer spent the late 1960s as Vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor in chief of Ramparts magazine. Now editor of TruthDig.com, Scheer has written such hard-hitting books as The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America and his latest, The Great American Stick-Up: Greedy Bankers and the Politicians Who Love Them.

———————————–

You may purchase the hard copy of the January 2010 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine (with free shipping) at HustlerMagazine.com for $15.99 and free shipping. Comes with free full length DVD!

You may purchase a digital copy of the January 2010 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine at UnderCoverMags.com.