A Congress of Cowards

A Congress of Cowards Rob Kall OpEd News December 20, 2011 Congress is punting again, this time on the tax cut extension. This pattern, which has led to the lowest approval levels since measures of approval were taken, has become chronic. It’s really about the bulk of the members of congress being cowards who are intentionally destroying the balance of powers between legislative, Judiciary and Executive, so they can save their jobs.

Recent conversations with folks like Bruce Fein and Thom Hartmann have convinced me that the congress is staffed, predominantly by cowards who, in failing to make tough decisions, are destroying the three way balance between the executive, justice and legislative branches. Cowards who hand the decisions to the SCOTUS or the White House so they can save their jobs through the next congressional election cycle.

They avoid making tough economic decisions by creating bogus committees which also fail.

They defer on making hard votes on going to war, handing the power over to the White House.

They let the Supreme court ride roughshod over decisions made by elected officials. The despotic corporatists in the Supreme court were not elected. At least several are unethical and the congress does not impeach them. The congress could easily slap down the Supreme court and its excesses. It could even impeach those Justices who have sold out to corporations and foreign interests.

It is time to end the idea of serving in congress as a career. Members of congress should be elected for one

term and no more. Rotate the elections so all members, senators and House members have four year terms. Replace 25% each year. American can no longer afford waiting six years to replace a senate whore who sells his vote to corporations. American cannot allow an entire house to exist for a full two years before the legislators who manifest as whores or idiots are replaced. So we also need recall processes at a federal level.

Congress is profoundly broken. The people in it cannot fix the problem they are creating.

There are a few brave souls in congress who have attempted to retain the powers they were given– Sanders, Kucinich, Paul. But I say that we-the-people must take whatever steps are necessary to end the current life career system that congressional jobs are based on. It will probably take a revolution of some sort to do it. Let’s hope it’s more like what happened in Tunisia. The non-violent Occupy Movement could do it. We’ll see. But there’s no doubt in my mind that America needs big changes, much bigger than the gutless, corporate sell-outs in congress are willing or able to do.

Playing with fire: Obama's threat to China 1. Michael Klare Dec 10 2011

When it comes to China policy, is the Obama administration leaping from the frying pan directly into the fire? In an attempt to turn the page on two disastrous wars in the greater Middle East, it may have just launched a new Cold War in Asia - once again, viewing oil as the key to global supremacy.

The new policy was signalled by President Obama himself on November 17 in an 1. address to the Australian Parliament in which he laid out an audacious - and extremely dangerous - geopolitical vision. Instead of focusing on the greater Middle East, as has been the case for the last decade, the United States will now concentrate its power in Asia and the Pacific.

"My guidance is clear," he declared in Canberra. "As we plan and budget for the future, we will

allocate the resources necessary to maintain our strong military presence in this region."

While administration officials insist that this new policy is not aimed specifically at China, the implication is clear enough: from now on, the primary focus of US military strategy will not be counterterrorism, but the containment of that economically booming land - at whatever risk or cost.

The planet's new centre of gravity The new emphasis on Asia and the containment of China is necessary, top officials insist, because the Asia-Pacific region now constitutes the "centre of gravity" of world economic activity. While the United States was bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the argument goes, China had the leeway to expand its influence in the region.

For the first time since the end of World War II, Washington is no longer the dominant economic actor there. If the United States is to retain its title as the world's paramount power, it must, this thinking goes, restore its primacy in the region and roll back Chinese influence. In the coming decades, no foreign policy task will, it is claimed, be more important than this.

In line with its new strategy, the administration has undertaken a number of moves intended to bolster US power in Asia, and so put China on the defensive. These include a decision to deploy an initial 250 US Marines - someday to be upped to 2,500 - to an Australian air base in Darwin on that country's north coast, and the adoption on November 18 of "the Manila Declaration", a pledge of closer US military ties with the Philippines.

"An economically weakened United States can no longer hope to prevail in multiple regions simultaneously."

At the same time, the White House announced the sale of 24 F-16 fighter jets to Indonesia and a visit by Hillary Clinton to isolated Burma, long a Chinese ally - the first there by a secretary of state in 56 years. Clinton has also spoken of increased diplomatic and military ties with Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam - all countries surrounding China or overlooking key trade routes that China relies on for importing raw materials and exporting manufactured goods.

As portrayed by administration officials, such moves are intended to maximise America's advantages in the diplomatic and military realm at a time when China dominates the economic realm regionally. In a recent article in Foreign Policy magazine, Clinton revealingly suggested that an economically weakened United States can no longer hope to prevail in multiple regions simultaneously. It must choose its battlefields carefully and deploy its limited assets - most of them of a military nature - to maximum advantage. Given Asia's strategic centrality to global power, this means concentrating resources there.

"Over the last ten years," she writes, "we have allocated immense resources to [Iraq and Afghanistan]. In the next ten years, we need to be smart and systematic about where we invest time and energy, so that we put ourselves in the best position to sustain our leadership [and] secure our interests ...

One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will therefore be to lock in a substantially increased investment diplomatic, economic, strategic and otherwise - in the Asia-Pacific region."

Such thinking, with its distinctly military focus, appears dangerously provocative. The steps announced entail an increased military presence in waters bordering China and enhanced military ties with that country's neighbours - moves certain to arouse alarm in Beijing and strengthen the hand of those in the ruling circle (especially in the Chinese military leadership) who favour a more activist, militarised response to US incursions.

Whatever forms that takes, one thing is certain: the leadership of the globe's number two economic power is not going to let itself appear weak and indecisive in the face of a US buildup on the periphery of its country. This, in turn, means that we may be sowing the seeds of a new Cold War in Asia in 2011.

The US military buildup and the potential for a powerful Chinese counter-thrust have already been the subject of discussion in the American and Asian press. But one crucial dimension of this incipient struggle has received no attention at all: the degree to which Washington's sudden moves have been dictated by a fresh analysis of the global energy equation, revealing (as the Obama administration sees it) increased vulnerabilities for the Chinese side and new advantages for Washington.

The new energy equation For decades, the United States has been heavily dependent on imported oil, much of it obtained from the Middle East and Africa, while China was largely self-sufficient in oil output. In 2001, the United States consumed 19.6 million barrels of oil per day, while producing only nine million barrels itself. The dependency on foreign suppliers for that 10.6 millionbarrel shortfall proved a source of enormous concern for Washington policymakers. They responded by forging ever closer, more militarised ties with Middle Eastern oil producers and going to war on occasion to

ensure the safety of US supply lines.In 2001, China, on the other hand, consumed only five million barrels per day and so, with a domestic output of 3.3 million barrels, needed to import only 1.7 million barrels. Those cold, hard numbers made its leadership far less concerned about the reliability of the country's major overseas providers - and so it did not need to duplicate the same sort of foreign policy entanglements that Washington had long been involved in.

Now, so the Obama administration has concluded, the tables are beginning to turn. As a result of China's booming economy and the emergence of a sizeable and growing middle class (many of whom have already bought their first cars), the country's oil consumption is exploding. Running at about 7.8 million barrels per day in 2008, it will, according to recent projections by the US Department of Energy, reach 13.6 million barrels in 2020, and 16.9 million in 2035.

Domestic oil production, on the other hand, is expected to grow from 4.0 million barrels per day in 2008 to 5.3 million in 2035. Not surprisingly, then, Chinese imports are expected to skyrocket from 3.8 million barrels per day in 2008 to a projected 11.6 million in 2035 - at which time they will exceed those of the United States.

"Thanks to increased production in 'tough oil' areas of the United States ... future imports are expected to decline, even as energy consumption rises."

The US, meanwhile, can look forward to an improved energy situation. Thanks to increased production in "tough oil" areas of the United States, including the Arctic seas off Alaska, the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico and shale formations in Montana, North Dakota and Texas, future imports are expected to decline, even as energy consumption rises.

In addition, more oil is likely to be available from the Western Hemisphere rather than the Middle East or Africa. Again, this will be thanks to the exploitation of yet more "tough oil" areas, including the Athabasca tar sands of Canada, Brazilian oil fields in the deep Atlantic and increasingly pacified energy-rich regions of previously war-torn Colombia. According to the Department of Energy, combined production in the United States, Canada and Brazil is expected to climb by 10.6 million barrels per day between 2009 and 2035 - an enormous jump, considering that most areas of the world are expecting declining output.

Whose sea lanes are these anyway?

From a geopolitical perspective, all this seems to confer a genuine advantage on the United States, even as China becomes ever more vulnerable to the vagaries of events in, or along, the sea lanes to distant lands. It means Washington will be able to contemplate a gradual loosening of its military and political ties with the Middle Eastern oil states that have dominated its foreign policy for so long and have led to those costly, devastating wars.

Indeed, as President Obama said in Canberra, the US is now in a position to begin to refocus its

military capabilities elsewhere. "After a decade in which we fought two wars that cost us dearly," he declared, "the United States is turning our attention to the vast potential of the Asia-Pacific region."

For China, all this spells potential strategic impairment.

Although some of China's imported oil will travel overland through pipelines from Kazakhstan and Russia, the great majority of it will still come by tanker from the Middle East, Africa and Latin America over sea lanes policed by the US Navy. Indeed, almost every tanker bringing oil to China travels across the South China Sea, a body of water the Obama administration is now seeking to place under effective naval control.

By securing naval dominance of the South China Sea and adjacent waters, the Obama administration evidently aims to acquire the 21st century energy equivalent of 20th century nuclear blackmail. Push us too far, the policy implies, and we'll bring your economy to its knees by blocking your flow of vital energy supplies.

Of course, nothing like this will ever be said in public, but it is inconceivable that senior administration officials are not thinking along just these lines, and there is ample evidence that the Chinese are deeply worried about the risk - as indicated, for example, by their frantic efforts to build staggeringly expensive pipelines across the entire expanse of Asia to the Caspian Sea basin.

As the underlying nature of the new Obama strategic blueprint becomes clearer, there can be no question that the Chinese leadership will, in response, take steps to ensure the safety of China's energy lifelines. Some of these moves will undoubtedly be economic and diplomatic, including, for example, efforts to court regional players like Vietnam and Indonesia as well as major oil suppliers like Angola, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. Make no mistake, however: others will be of a military nature.

A significant buildup of the Chinese navy - still small and backward when compared to the fleets of the United States and its principal allies - would seem all but inevitable. Likewise, closer military ties between China and Russia, as well as with the Central Asian member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), are assured.

In addition, Washington could now be sparking the beginnings of a genuine Cold-War-style arms race in Asia, which neither country can, in the long run, afford. All of this is likely to lead to greater tension and a heightened risk of inadvertent escalation arising out of future incidents involving US, Chinese

and allied vessels - such as the one that occurred in March 2009 when a flotilla of Chinese naval vessels surrounded a US anti-submarine warfare surveillance ship, the Impeccable, and almost precipitated a shooting incident. As more warships circulate through these waters in an increasingly provocative fashion, the risk that such an incident will result in something far more explosive can only grow.

"Greater reliance on ... the 'dirtiest' of energies will result in increased greenhouse gas emissions and a multitude of other environmental hazards."

Nor will the potential risks and costs of such a military-first policy aimed at China be restricted to Asia. In the drive to promote greater US self-sufficiency in energy output, the Obama administration is giving its approval to production techniques - Arctic drilling, deep-offshore drilling and hydraulic fracturing - that are guaranteed to lead to further Deepwater Horizon-style environmental catastrophe at home.

Greater reliance on Canadian tar sands, the "dirtiest" of energies, will result in increased greenhouse gas emissions and a multitude of other environmental hazards, while deep Atlantic oil production off the Brazilian coast and elsewhere has its own set of grim dangers.

All of this ensures that, environmentally, militarily and economically, we will find ourselves in a more, not less, perilous world.

The desire to turn away from disastrous land wars in the Greater Middle East to deal with key issues now simmering in Asia is understandable, but choosing a strategy that puts such an emphasis on military dominance and provocation is bound to provoke a response in kind. It is hardly a prudent path to head down, nor will it, in the long run, advance America's interests at a time when global economic cooperation is crucial.

Sacrificing the environment to achieve greater energy independence makes no more sense.

A new Cold War in Asia and a hemispheric energy policy that could endanger the planet: it's a fatal brew that should be reconsidered before the slide toward confrontation and environmental disaster becomes irreversible. You don't have to be a seer to know that this is not the definition of good statesmanship, but of the march of folly.

Michael Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet.

A version of this article was first published on Tom Dispatch.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Barack Obama’s big government vacation: the president adds nearly $4 million to the national debt with his lavish Hawaiian holiday By 1. Nile Gardiner December 19th, 2011 Around $4 million (£2.6 million) – the expected total cost to the US taxpayer of the Obama Christmas family vacation to Hawaii 1. according to the Hawaii Reporter (hat tip: Rob Bluey at The Foundry). This is an astonishing amount of public money to be spending in an age of austerity – when the president is supposed to be leading efforts to cut the US budget deficit, the largest since World War Two, and a towering $15 trillion national debt: Hawaii Reporter research shows the total cost for the President’s visit for taxpayers far exceeded $1.5 million in 2010 – but is even more costly this year because he extended his vacation by three days and the cost for Air Force One travel has jumped since last assessed in 2000. In addition, Hawaii Reporter was able to obtain more specifics about the executive expenditures.

The total cost (based on what is known) for the 17-day vacation roundtrip vacation to Hawaii for the President, his family and staff has climbed to more than $4 million.

This $4 million figure is nearly 100 times the average annual salary of an American worker, which currently stands at $41,673. The Hawaii Reporter calculates that travel costs alone for the president and his entourage via Air Force One (plus a separate trip for Michelle Obama who has traveled in advance), in addition to a United States Air Force C17 cargo aircraft to transport "the presidential limos, helicopters and other support equipment", amounts to a whopping $3,629,622. Housing for security staff costs an estimated $151,200, and luxurious hotel rooms for the president’s 24-strong staff a further $72,216. Based on these figures the total cost to the

federal US taxpayer (and the additional burden on the national debt) is a staggering $3,853,038. If you add in local taxpayer costs of $260,000 (including police overtime and city ambulances), the total public expense is $4,113,038.

The story has of course been ignored by the liberal-dominated mainstream media, which inevitably turns a blind eye to abuses of power by the Obama presidency. You can imagine the outrage that would have greeted George W Bush if had tried this kind of stunt during his time in office. He would probably have been burned at the stake on the pages of The New York Times and endlessly condemned on network television.

Like the vast majority of Americans, Barack Obama should be prepared to make sacrifices, not least when he’s spending other people’s money. Is it too much to ask the president to vacation at Camp David in Maryland instead of flying nearly 5,000 miles to Hawaii? Once again he is displaying a let-them-eat-cake attitude, at a time of mass unemployment, stagnant housing markets, and growing poverty.

For President Obama even his vacations have become a vulgar symbol of big government excess and over-spending – let’s also not forget his grand summer holiday at Martha’s Vineyard. While tens of millions of Americans struggle this Christmas to pay the mortgage and put food on the table for their families, the leader of the free world will be enjoying a fortnight of luxury – heavily subsidised at their expense. It is a further demonstration of an outof-touch presidency with an entitlement mentality, one that treats American taxpayers as a moneyprinting machine. It is little wonder that over 70 per cent of Americans believe their country is moving down the wrong track ( 1. according to RealClear Politics), presided over by a liberal elite that runs up mountains of debt for future generations to bear.

Speculation drives up food prices as bankers gamble on hunger 1. Frederick Kaufman Tuesday 20 December 2011 Bankers, hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds are gambling on hunger by speculating on food supply. Global regulators should step in to stop them

High-frequency traders and momentum-driven hedge funds made it their business to speculate on food in 2011. Photograph: Tim Wimborne/Reuters Last year, the price of global food floated high as ever. That's bad news for most of us, but not for those who trade commodities. In fact, 2011 was a great year for the traders, who thrive on bad news, currency woes, drought, flood, freeze, fire and all other manifestations of imminent apocalypse.

2011 was a wild ride. One spring morning, cocoa futures dropped 12% in less than a minute.

Corn ascended to all-time peaks and sugar fluctuated more in one day than it used to in a month.

Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, railed against speculators in coffee, while PepsiCo forecast its own medium-term commodity cost increases to exceed $1bn. All of which meant a bumper crop for the world's commodity exchanges – even those that used to be backwaters, like the Kansas City Board of Trade and the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, both of which recorded their highest electronic trading volumes in history.

It was a volatile year, and the volatility posed problems for the food industry. Faced with a highstakes game of price-shifting basic ingredients, the world's largest food processors and retailers put out the call for maths PhDs and economic modellers to theorise and implement ever-more

complex risk-management strategies just so they could keep up with the second-by-second spikes and dips of grain and livestock futures. In the meantime, high-frequency traders and momentum-driven hedge funds made it their business to speculate on food. There were plenty of ways to get in on the action, but as an increasingly complex amalgam of food-based commodity derivatives piled one on top of the other, the more difficult it became to perceive what it was that lay at the bottom of the speculative scrum.

What drove the global food market in 2011 – other than those old faithfuls, fear and greed? I put in a call to Professor Yaneer Bar-Yam, of the New England Complex Systems Institute (Necsi), to see if he might have an answer.

Necsi, based in Cambridge, draws on fields as various as maths, physics and computer science to provide new perspectives on – and perhaps even solve – pressing problems in economics, healthcare, international development, and military and ethnic violence. Last year, Bar-Yam and his colleagues published a paper called The Food Crises: A Quantitative Model of Food Prices Including Speculators and Ethanol Conversion, in which the Necsi crew mathematically isolated and quantified the effects of speculation as a driving force behind the bull market in global food derivatives.

"Prices have been way out of equilibrium in 2011," Bar-Yam told me. "The bubble has not burst yet."

According to Bar-Yam, the international thirst for biofuels has put a strain on arable land previously reserved for food production. At the same time as the rise of the biofuel mandate, the rise of investable commodity indexes and other electronically traded funds has offered investors of all stripes a chance to sink their cash in a sparkling new casino of derivative products. As a result, an ever-flowing spring of speculative capital sustains the status quo.

But just as food is no ordinary widget, speculation in commodity markets is not simply a matter of financial predation. "The high prices of food have resulted in accumulations of inventories at the same time as people can't afford food," said BarYam, who noted that the Arab spring was triggered by the food-price bubble. In fact, Necsi's quantitative model of speculation predicted the uprisings in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, and warned that if food prices

remain inflated, riots and revolutions will go global sometime between July 2012 and August 2013.

"We are at a critical point," said BarYam. "We don't have a stay-thecourse option right now."

He believes the time has come for global regulators to step in and manage the global market. Their first task would be to guarantee transparency and make public information previously shrouded in secrecy – such as who holds the biggest stakes in global commodities. Transparent accounting practices would have made the disappearance of $1.2bn worth of customer money from the books of MF Global less a matter of sleight of hand and more a matter of international crime.

The second part of the speculation solution hinges on a return to traditional position limits in commodities, limits enforced by international laws geared to stop bankers, hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds from going long on the world's food supply and, in effect, gambling on hunger.

Nothing influences financial regulators like equations, so the reforms we can look forward to in 2012 will ultimately depend on the numbers. Which is a mixed blessing. "One reason people don't want to understand the math is the deafness of those who are making the money," said Bar-Yam. "But the old mathematics is manifestly wrong."