Career Opportunities in the Torture State (UPDATE)

Astonished and terrified by an unexpected reversal of fortune, three thugs formerly employed by the Gotham City crime boss Gambol suddenly find themselves kneeling on the floor with guns pressed to their heads.


The lifeless body of their erstwhile employer is a bloody heap at the feet of his murderer, a leering, disfigured sliver of psychosis calling himself the Joker. Just minutes earlier, Joker had been the subject of murder contract issued by Gambol; now he was prepared to absorb the best and most ruthless elements of mobster's outfit into his own criminal enterprise.


"Our operation is small," Joker explains distractedly as he grabs a cue stick from a pool table and examines it. "There's a lot of potential for aggressive expansion. So, which of you fine gentlemen would like to join our team?"



"Oh -- and there's only one spot open right now," Joker continues, "so we're going to have ... tryouts."


With this, Joker breaks the pool cue over his knee, fashioning one half of it into a large, hardened wooden spike. Tossing the murder implement in front of the three kneeling, desperate henchmen, Joker indifferently instructs them: "Make it fast."



Joker's incentive structure isn't that different from the one employed by the Regime ruling us. There's great potential for expansion; positions are lucrative, but limited in number; the selection process favors those unhindered by moral compunctions about the criminal exercise of lethal violence, albeit generally directed against innocent strangers rather than former or present colleagues.


















The genial face of Fuhrerprinzip: The war criminal Jay Bybee, now a life-tenured federal judge, poses with his disarmingly cute family.


Eight years ago, three insignificant, position-seeking henchmen in the Bush administration were handed the equivalent of the Joker's improvised punji stick. The White House, at the initiative of Vice President Cheney, had secretly ordered the use of torture against suspected terrorists and other detainees, and it was prepared to reward Justice Department attorneys who could swaddle that criminal enterprise in a suitable cloak of pseudo-legal sophistry.



In this the Bush junta displayed a trait is shared with Josef Stalin's regime, which fastidiously preserved the pretense of legality even as it carried out torture and mass murder. It was the Bush administration's position that the Authorization for Use of Military Force, enacted by a panicked Congress immediately following 9-11, authorized the president to do pretty much whatever he wanted to anyone anywhere. But institutionalizing torture -- a policy that would involve serial violations of several laws (including federal statutes, military regulations, the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and various international accords) -- would require at least a pretense of legal justification.



In January 2002, Alberto Gonzalez, whose title was Attorney General but whose actual function was consigliere to the Bush-Cheney criminal syndicate, wrote a memo grandly proclaiming that the "new paradigm" of war renders "obsolete" and "quaint" previous legal restrictions on the abuse of detainees. Gonzalez then gave the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) the task of retrofitting a rationale into the existing policy.



As Judge Andrew Napolitano points out in his invaluable new book Lies The Government Told You, the OLC "operates as the `constitutional conscience' of the Justice Department. Its job is to exercise independent, objective judgment to make sure the president and the executive branch are working within the law.... OLC lawyers are not private attorneys who put forth their clients' best argument in an adversarial setting. No judge or jury reviews the OLC's opinions. Rather, the OLC is supposed to work as a check on the executive branch, representing a line of defense against unlawful executive activity."


This description assumes something that Judge Napolitano agrees isn't substantiated by the available evidence -- namely, that officials employed at the OLC would act on behalf of the Constitution, rather than in the interests of their own ambitions.



Jay Bybee, assistant attorney general for the OLC, had made it clear to Gonzalez that he wanted to be a federal judge. A Washington Post profile of Bybee notes that Gonzalez, who dangled before Bybee the prospect of an appointment to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, asked if he would "be willing to take a position at the OLC first" (emphasis added).


In light of what Bybee would later describe as severe pressure to produce a pro-torture brief for the White House, that reported conversation is compelling evidence of a corrupt quid-pro-quo. Gonzalez's meaning couldn't have been clearer if he had thrown Bybee a sharpened stake and told him to "make it quick."


John Yoo, the subordinate who did most of the scut work in composing the memoranda signed by Bybee, had his own ambitions. As Harper's legal analyst Scott Horton points out, Yoo "clearly aspired to become Bybee's successor."


The title of assistant attorney general, while all but unknown to the public, "is a marquee position usually opening doors to partnership at major law firms, judgeships, or still higher government offices," Horton writes. "Yoo was open about his goals, and he mobilized major resources to obtain them -- including his `clients,' [vice presidential chief of staff] David Addington and Dick Cheney."


At this point it's important to recall Judge Napolitano's point that the OLC is supposed to restrain executive power, rather than to facilitate corrupt exercise of the same. Yet Yoo -- as he has subsequently admitted -- composed legal briefs that served the interest of his superiors (and his own ambitions), rather than designed to state clearly what the law permitted them to do.


Three years later, as the Bush regime continued to refine its rationales for torture, the OLC was under the direction of Steven G. Bradbury, who was given the title of "acting" assistant attorney general. He wasn't formally confirmed to that position -- which was the object of Yoo's incontinent desires -- until July 2005. There is primary source evidence that his formal nomination was withheld as a way to extract a pro-torture brief the White House would find satisfactory.


An April 27, 2005 e-mail from deputy attorney general James Comey expressed concerns over drafts of memoranda dealing with "specific interrogation techniques," including some that involved "severe physical suffering."


"The AG [Attorney General] explained that he was under great pressure from the Vice President to complete both memos," wrote Comey, who observed in a parenthetical comment that "Steve [Bradbury] was getting similar pressure from Harriet Miers and David Addington to produce the opinions.... [I] have previously expressed my worry that having Steve as `Acting' -- and wanting the job -- would make him susceptible to just this kind of pressure...."(Emphasis added.)



Comey's concerns were justified, given that "almost immediately after Bradbury produced the [pro-torture] memo, the White House okayed his name going forward for the appointment as an assistant attorney general," writes Horton.



"The evidence therefore supports the case for a quid pro quo scheme in which Bybee, Yoo, and Bradbury were offered powerful government preferments (in Bybee's case, a life-time judgeship) in exchange for rendering the opinions," Horton continues.



Corruption of this kind has been prosecuted by the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section on numerous occasions. Despite the fact that Yoo never got the position he desired, both he and Bradbury could -- and probably should -- be prosecuted under bribery statutes. Furthermore, bribery is specifically listed in Article II, section 4 of the U.S. Constitution as an impeachable offense.



In crafting a legal framework to institutionalize torture, "the OLC under Jay Bybee took the advice of those who asked for its advice," Judge Napolitano summarizes. That is to say, Bybee and Yoo -- as Bradbury would later do -- ratified an illegal policy, thereby corruptly exercising public power in anticipation of personal benefit.


For the purpose of criminal prosecution it doesn't matter that Yoo's desires weren't consummated. Nor does it matter that the desired payoff for both Yoo consisted of a relatively obscure but powerful government job, rather than cash, sexual favors, or some other vulgar emolument.


Their willingness to prostitute themselves by institutionalizing torture brings to mind the disgusted astonishment exhibited by the dramatized Thomas More as he learns of the price Richard Rich placed on the perjury that eventually cost More his head: "Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the world -- but for Wales?"


The Obama administration, as the principled and vigilant Glenn Greenwald tirelessly documents, has distinguished itself by its lack of zeal to investigate Yoo, Bradbury, and others implicated in the Bush administration's war crimes. Although he's much more low-key in his approach, the urbane and erudite Obama is just as devoted to the advancement of Fuhrerprinzip (the Leader Principle) as was his crude and cretinous predecessor.


Bybee's new career as a life-tenured federal judge has already yielded a ruling that eviscerates what remained of the Fourth Amendment. Yoo has managed to parlay his crimes against the Constitution and human decency into something akin to celebrity status.


An "ungrateful Iraqi" experiences one application of post-Cheney conservatism at Abu Ghraib.


For the post-Cheney conservative movement, the practice of torture is the summum bonum of good government.

The distaff spawn of Cheney's loins is building a presidential campaign devoted to endless war, unlimited presidential power, and the detention and torture of anyone whom the "Commander-in-Chief" selects for such treatment.


The current campaign being waged by Cheney's front group, "Keep America Safe," suggests that attorneys who take their constitutional responsibilities seriously would make excellent candidates for indefinite detention and "enhanced interrogation."


Doubtless right now there are legal scholars and other potential office-seekers staying warm in think-tank warrens and media sinecures, eagerly awaiting the opportunities that would come should Cheneyite conservatism be re-enthroned in 2013 and the Torture State inaugurates another phase of aggressive expansion.

A Public Apology

I deeply and earnestly regret that it will not be possible for me to participate in the Liberty Forum, which is underway right now in Nashua, New Hampshire. This is the second time I have been honored by an invitation, and the second time circumstances have made it impossible for me to be there.

Had I been wiser in assessing my situation I would not have accepted that invitation; this is one case in which I unwisely took counsel from my hopes, and as a result I have let down the organizers of that event as well as people who expected to hear my presentation tomorrow. I am profoundly sorry and ask their forgiveness.

As some of you know, my wife Korrin suffers from severe health problems that make it all but impossible for me to travel unless I take my entire family along. Several days ago I embarked with my family on what was to be a cross-country trek to New Hampshire, despite the fact that my oldest daughter, Katrina, came down with bronchitis literally hours before we were to leave. She got treatment but is still battling that infection. Our youngest, 13-month-old Justus, is showing symptoms as well. And Korrin has been having difficulty as well. Given all of this it just didn't seem wise to spend several days on the road.

I could have made arrangements to fly out to New Hampshire and back, but my brother -- who often covers for me at home on those occasions when I simply have to be somewhere -- has been hospitalized since December.

Once again, I should have been wiser in assessing my situation and declined the invitation earlier, rather than putting the organizers and attendees of the Liberty Forum through the difficulties I have now inflicted on them. This is entirely my fault, and I hope that in process of time they will forgive me.

Tune in to Pro Libertate Radio (6:00-7:00 Mountain Time) on the Liberty News Radio Network for your daily onslaught of unfiltered anti-government invective.

Dum spiro, pugno!

Animal Farm in Atlanta

(Photo used for illustrative purposes only.)













[Civilized peace among people requires] that each man shall do, towards every other, all that justice requires him to do: as, for example, that he shall pay his debts, that he shall return borrowed or stolen property to its owner, and that he shall make reparation for any injury he may have done to the person or property of another.


[Peace among human beings also requires] that each man shall abstain ... from committing theft, robbery, arson, murder, or any other crime against the person or property of another.


So long as these conditions are fulfilled, men are at peace.... But when either of these conditions is violated, men are at war. And they must necessarily remain at war until justice is re-established.


Lysander Spooner, Natural Law (1882)




A loud banging on the door pried Rob Rudnick from sleep's insistent embrace shortly before 7:00 the morning of March 10.


When he opened the door to the Carrollton, Georgia warehouse that serves as unofficial headquarters for Neal Horsley's gubernatorial campaign (and sleeping quarters for volunteers), "the first thing I saw was a SWAT shield and a bunch of machine guns pointing at me," Rudnick recalled to Pro Libertate.


Within minutes, Rudnick, Horsley, and campaign volunteer Esther O'Toole were lying handcuffed, face-down on the floor with machine guns pointed at their backs. Although Rudnick and Mrs. O'Toole were released, Horsley was dragged off to jail. Before the end of the day, he and Esther O'Tool'e husband Jonathan (who was arrested in the late afternoon) would be behind bars, charged with making "terroristic threats" against the life of "Sir" Elton John.


Neither Horsley nor O'Toole has ever met Elton John, or displayed any interest in trying to make his acquaintance. Neither has said or written a syllable indicating an intention to harm him in any way, and they haven't the means to do so even if that were their desire.


The flamboyant, superannuated British pop singer is immensely wealthy and constantly surrounded by a phalanx of security personnel. The little-known Horsley is a pugnacious and controversial Christian activist and provocateur (which is not to say that he's an agent provocateur) of severely limited resources.


Despite all of this, Horsley and O'Toole were targeted for a daybreak paramilitary raid conducted by what the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called "members of the Atlanta police fugitive squad and U.S. Marshal's office." Rudnick expanded that description by telling Pro Libertate that he saw "a couple of guys wearing FBI SWAT gear" as well.


By day's end the two were charged with making a "terroristic threat" against John, as well as "criminal defamation" and using the Internet to communicate a death threat. As Rudnick said, "This was all about Neal's recent videos about Elton John."

Lochinvar he ain't: "Sir" Elton, whose title proves that, as is the case with Nobel Peace Prizes, they're just giving knighthoods away these days.

In a recent Parade magazine interview, "Sir Elton" was quoted describing Jesus of Nazareth as "a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man."



He subsequently amended that comment by claiming that this was how he chooses to see Jesus, and blaming Parade's editorial staff for engendering controversy by presenting his remarks poorly.



It's reasonable to surmise that John's meaning was understood by tens of millions of Christians who were offended by the characterization.


Few took greater offense than Horsley, who is preparing a stunt campaign for the Georgia Governor's office on a platform calling for Christians to secede from the United States. Horsley produced two videos for distribution via his YouTube channel.


The first video documented a protest Horsley and O'Toole conducted outside John's Atlanta condominium in which they held signs proclaiming "Elton John Must Die," the fine print of which was the reference "Hebrews 9:27": "... it is appointed to men once to die, but after this the judgment."


Horsley and O'Toole did not intend to kill John, nor were they soliciting the services of someone else to accomplish that criminal deed, but rather a recognition of a biological reality from which John is not immune, coupled with a warning, rooted in biblical teachings, about a judgment to which he will be liable.


Horsley claims that his intention is "remind Elton John that he has to die" -- that's a statement of a biological reality, not a threat of incipient violence -- and that his desire is not see Elton John suffer, but rather to repent.

***


***

If Horsley, who appears quite sincere in his beliefs, were acting out of hatred toward Elton John, calling him to repentance wouldn't make much sense: After all, if he hated the singer and was convinced he was going to hell, wouldn't Horsley simply get out of his way?


That being said, this must be said as well:


Reasonable people -- including those who (like myself) are committed Christians -- can consider this to be tasteless and counter-productive. It takes a considerable gift for creative dishonesty coupled with something akin to clinical paranoia to treat it as a threat of any kind, however.



Reginald Dwight (aka Elton John), pre-knighthood and pre-Hair Club for Men (or its British equivalent).



The second video posted by Horsley (which has apparently been removed from YouTube) is unambiguously tasteless and offensive in an unqualified sense. It is a palimpsest of the hideous video record of Daniel Pearl's execution by a clique of Islamist terrorists.


In Horsley's rendering, the face of the murdered American reporter is altered with the insertion of Elton John-style star-shaped eyeglass lenses.


The caption points out that in the Islamic religion, Jesus of Nazareth -- while not worshiped as Lord and Savior -- is revered as a prophet second in stature to Mohammed. Indeed, it is common for devout Muslims to pronounce a ritual benediction ("peace be upon him") when making reference to Jesus, just as they do when mentioning Mohammed.


Horsley's point, which is made allusively, is that Muslim militants of the same kind who were so theatrically aggrieved by a Danish newspaper cartoon of Mohammed might well take offense over Elton John's characterization of Jesus Christ.


For the past several decades, Horsley has cultivated a reputation for high-profile, confrontational activism, much of it focused on abortion. He helped organize (but reportedly had no official position in) the group that created the "Nuremberg Files" website, which published information about abortionists and their associates "in anticipation that one day we may be able to hold them on trial for their crimes against humanity."


A federal court ruled in 2002 that the information on that website constituted "true threats" against the abortionists profiled therein and awarded Planned Parenthood -- which is already choking on taxpayer subsidies -- a huge civil judgment.



Horsley's activism has led to many collisions with law enforcement officials both locally and across the country. His history with the police includes an early-1970s drug conviction that led to a prison term, during which he became familiar with Chuck Colson's prison ministry and converted to Christianity.


Although there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of his pro-life beliefs (which included, to his credit, opposition to the Vietnam War long before he became concerned about abortion), many of Horsley's would-be allies are put off by what could be seen as an appetite for publicity and a juvenile penchant for vulgarity. The latter trait is perhaps best illustrated by his bizarre intimation that prior to becoming a Christian he engaged in bestiality.


That Horsley is an irritant to the local police is obvious (and, taken in and of itself, could be considered admirable). Rudnick told me that a few days prior to the raid, "we got a call from the Carrollton police asking Neal to go downtown and talk with them about the Elton John videos. He wasn't willing to go, and when they got insistent he said, `Well, you'll just have to arrest me.'"


That conversation illustrates quite convincingly that Horsley -- despite being a certifiable annoyance -- was not a threat of any kind. (It's worth considering, as well, that if Horsley were actually involved in terrorism of any sort, his bail would most likely have been set higher than $40,000.) Defying an invitation to talk to the police is not a criminal offense, nor does one commit a crime by daring the police to arrest him.


Clearly, somebody -- most likely employed by the federal government, given the admitted involvement of the Marshals Service and the reported involvement of the FBI -- is trying to make a point, and probably to create a despotic precedent. (In light of the fact that the abortion lobby decreed that March 10 would be commemorated as the "Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers," perhaps a functionary connected to that lobby ordered Horsley's arrest that morning as a celebration of sorts; stranger and more whimsical things have happened.)


The other charges against Horsley are just as facially absurd as the terrorism-related count. If, as any honest person would recognize, Horsley's protest falls within the legal category of "innocuous speech," then he can't be prosecuted for transmitting that speech over the internet.


Invoking Georgia's little-used and best-repealed "Criminal defamation" statute is a classic use of a "cover charge" by police to justify slapping the handcuffs on someone they consider obnoxious but whose behavior cannot honestly be described as criminal.


The relevant portion of that statute (section 6-11-40) declares: "A person commits the offense of criminal defamation when, without a privilege to do so and with intent to defame another, living or dead, he communicates false matter which tends to blacken the memory of one who is dead or which exposes one who is alive to hatred, contempt, or ridicule, and which tends to provoke a breach of the peace." (Emphases added.)


If Horsley's protest falls within that definition, Elton John's original statement should as well: His comments as published in Parade certainly have no basis in the extant records describing the individual known as Jesus of Nazareth -- whether one considers Him to be alive or dead, divine or merely a moral teacher.

Elton, who maintains his home in Atlanta with the man he calls his "husband," certainly knows enough to understand that characterizing Jesus as he did would inevitably "provoke a breach of the peace."


The provocation becomes even more acute in light of Elton's publicly expressed desire to abolish organized religion -- something that could only be accomplished through terroristic means.


Just as Horsley could be accused of using his rhetoric to foment violence against Elton John, "Sir" Elton's remarks about banning religion could be seen as enjoining anti-Christian violence from people with the means to imprison, kill, and otherwise persecute people who espouse that faith.


This being the case, why isn't Elton John also being investigated under the criminal defamation statute? John is at least as plausible a threat to Horsley as Horsley is to John -- which is to say that neither poses any material threat to the other. Both of them said things that can be regarded as hateful and offensive, but neither committed an offense against the person or property of the other -- and that is the threshold consideration when determining if an actual crime has taken place.


Yet one of them was thrown face-down to the floor with a gun barrel at his neck and thrown in jail because the subject of his intemperate -- but constitutionally protected -- speech is wealthy, politically well-connected, and a member of a specially protected class.



Be sure to get your daily dose of sedition each weeknight from 6:00-7:00 Mountain Time on Pro Libertate Radio -- courtesy of the Liberty News Radio Network.

Dum spiro, pugno!

Czars to Serfs: Pay Up and Shut Up

"A Peasant Leaving His Landlord on Yuri's Day," by Sergei V. Ivanov.



A wealth of unnecessary and petty [regulations] here engenders a whole army of clerks, each of whom carries out his task with a degree of pedantry and inflexibility, and a self-important air solely designed to add significance to the least significant employment. He refrains from speaking, but you can see him thinking, more or less: "Make way for me; I am a cog in the mighty machine of state."


-- Astolphe Louis Leonor, the Marquis de Custine, Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia
(1839)



“If I’m the bad guy to the average citizen … and their taxes have to go up to cover my raise, I’m very sorry about that, but I have to look out for myself and my membership," grunted Chris Mesley, president of the Albany, New York Police Officer's Union. "As the president of the `local,' I will not accept `zeroes' [no increase in salaries or benefits]. If that means ... ticking off some taxpayers, then so be it."


It would be difficult to find a more candid expression of the parasite class's predatory contempt for the productive than the words that departed Mesley's snout. The police union capo will occasionally remove that appendage from the public trough just long enough to spew demands for an ever-larger share of the wealth produced through the honest labor of others, or to justify some corrupt privilege he claims as a "cog in the mighty machine of state." In all of this he is entirely typical of the army of public employees pillaging what little remains of America's wealth.


A brave resident of Albany who identified himself as "Justin" pointed out in an admirably confrontational speech to that city's Common Council that the city's median annual household income in 2009 was about $33,000. In the same year, Mesley -- who was hired as a patrol officer in 1992 -- received a base salary of $70,289, while also scarfing down at least another $30,000 for serving as union president.


"Chris Mesley is making three times or more the median salary and is complaining that he might not get a raise," Justin observed. "The sense of entitlement of Chris Mesley and all those who think alike has led to the pilfering of state and city coffers. They are like leeches, sucking the taxpayers dry, and that's an insult to leeches. At least leeches know when to let go."


The implacability of Mesley's union is made vivid in the fact that its recently expired contract granted "retroactive raises" of four percent for both 2008 and 2009 -- years during which private sector employment declined and raises were scarce, at best, for those in the productive class.


Special exemption from parking tickets -- one of the myriad ways sheep are fleeced on behalf of the lupine law enforcement caste -- is another of the perquisites and emoluments demanded by Mesley and his comrades.

Unalloyed porcine arrogance: Chris Mesley, president of the Albany Police Officer's Union.

An investigative report compiled by Albany's City Common Council documented the existence of a secret "VIP list" maintained by Mesley's union containing the names of police officers and others who would be given "ghost tickets" -- citations they didn't have to pay -- when parked in ways that would result in fines or towing in cases involving mere Mundanes. Those on the list could be recognized by the presence of a union-created bull's-eye bumper decal.


Mesley insists that he is immune to a Common Council subpoena to testify regarding the "ghost ticket" scandal, and he quite predictably declined to offer testimony when the demand was softened to an invitation.


On the one occasion he deigned to cooperate in the inquiry, Mesley insisted that he wasn't obligated to answer questions dealing with his conduct as president of the local Police Union. Since his "official" duties didn't include traffic enforcement, Mesley simply refused to answer questions about his union's "ghost ticket" racket.


Were a common citizen to display similar non-cooperation, a bench warrant would likely result.


Several years ago, Mesley displayed an atypical investigative zeal as he and his police union comrades, seeking to identify the "mole" responsible for leaking a piece of corrupt police business to the press, illegally obtained information about a private citizen's e-mail account.


Robert W. Berry, a pastor from Boca Raton who until recently lived in Albany, had learned that Mesley's union had intervened with Chief James Turley to reduce the disciplinary suspension of an officer who had turned away a criminal suspect trying to turn himself in. That officer, who was occupied surfing the Web for porn or conducting some other important business, told the suspect to come back later.


Originally given a 30-day paid vacation by way of punishment, the officer -- thanks to Mesley's intervention -- saw that suspension reduced to a single week by Chief Turley.


When Berry learned of this -- most likely from one of the decent and conscientious Albany police officers he counted among his friends -- he fired off an e-mail to the local media. In contrast to the torpid reaction displayed toward the bank robber, the department -- led by Mesley's union -- focused with laser-like intensity on the task of identifying the "mole." After all, it simply wouldn't do for the tax-victim public to know how little service they were getting in exchange for the salaries paid to their purported protectors.


Through means they refused to disclose, and without either a warrant or a subpoena, Mesley and his colleagues were able to obtain Berry's confidential information.


Both Berry and Albany County District Attorney David Soares were infuriated by this Stasi-style violation of privacy. But this is simply the order of things as understood by Mesley and his porcine ilk: He belongs to a class the law doesn't restrain, and Mundanes such as Berry belong to a class the law doesn't protect.


While Mesley has distinguished himself through public displays of abrasive arrogance, his overdeveloped sense of entitlement and reflexive contempt for tax victims are typical of the mentality displayed by statist cogs found all across late imperial America. The machinery of government regimentation and redistribution continues to grow and consume an ever-greater share of our country's ever-depleting wealth.


Forbes magazine reports that the five wealthiest counties in the United States (in terms of per-capita income) can be found in orbit of the Imperial Capital City and Wall Street, which constitute the binary system around which revolve all of the institutions of our imperial system of corporate socialism.


Imagine, if you can stand to, a binary system composed of two omnivorous black holes devouring everything within their joint event horizon, and you'll have a pretty good understanding of how America's welfare-warfare economy operates.


America probably crossed the economic event horizon during the October Revolution of 2008, which saw Congress ratify the creation of a corporatist economic dictatorship within the Treasury Department.



Just as it's impossible for light to escape the gravity well of a black hole, it is impossible to penetrate to the inner workings of the engine of plunder created through the TARP legislation. However, just as we can learn about the conditions that create black holes by examining gamma-ray outbursts, the supernova of corruption that created the TARP singularity resulted in some revealing after-effects.


"To be honest with you, I really hope it blows up," exclaimed an employee of AIG, the worthless insurance and investment conglomerate that was bought with taxpayer money in September 2008. "I think the U.S. taxpayer deserves to lose a trillion dollars over this thing for the way they have behaved."


This outburst took place during a March 2009 conference call between Gerry Pasciucco, the official hired to unwind AIG's financial services portfolio, and employees in the conglomerate's offices in London, Paris, and Hong Kong.


As of May 2009, AIG's financial services sector consisted of "44,000 often complex, long-dated derivatives with a notional value of $2 trillion," according to the Newark Star-Ledger. The key to that description, of course, is the cute little modifier "notional," a word that serves as a three-syllable license to lie. Using exactly the same approach I could claim that my "notional" assets are valued somewhere in the high seven figures, irrespective of the dismal reality reflected in my actual bank balance.


Prior to September 2008, AIG was involved in "insuring" -- by way of credit default swaps -- Goldman Sachs' immensely lucrative and entirely corrupt traffic in sewer-grade mortgage-backed securities. After the bubble burst, AIG was left owing huge sums to its "counter-parties," including Goldman. The federal buyout of AIG was actually a payoff to the insolvent company's counter-parties, beginning with Goldman.


If the insurance company had gone bankrupt, it would have been required to make an equitable distribution of whatever assets it had (which could be rounded up to nothing) among its creditors; this meant that Goldman would have eaten a huge loss. Instead, thanks to the nationalization of the AIG under comrade Bush, 100 percent of Goldman's potential losses were subsidized by the taxpayers.


This represented an interesting update on Marx's famous formula: The Feds had the ability to extract wealth from the taxpayers, and Goldman had the need. AIG provided a convenient conduit for this act of redistribution, and its corporate cadres were just the right kind of public-spirited people to accept huge salaries and bonuses in exchange for rendering such a service.


Oddly enough, those compelled to surrender our wealth weren't terribly as enamored of this arrangement. Some of us loudly expressed that displeasure. According to a transcription of the March 2009 AIG conference call, which was published a few days ago in the Washington Post, AIG's financial services drones are mortified by the uncivilized attitudes and behavior of the firm's critics.



Corporate socialist: AIG financial services director Gerry Pasciucco is the tool second from the right wearing a sportcoat over a Che Guevera t-shirt.



The supposedly unconscionable behavior denounced by unnamed AIG functionary quoted above consisted of public outrage over $100 million in "retention bonuses" -- all of it coming out of the earnings of tax victims -- paid to the firm's employees.


It wasn't enough for the Regime to plunder what wealth remains in the hands of private households -- many of which were once middle class, and are now teetering on the precipice of absolute destitution -- on behalf of Wall Street kleptocrats. The necromancers at AIG who helped transmute bad debts into corporate profits apparently believe that the public should be grateful for the privilege of being expropriated, and that any complaints are acts of aberrant persecution.


One AIG staffer referred to critics of firm as "a bunch of immoral bigots." Another excoriated politicians who had condemned the subsidized bonuses as hypocrites who really ought to dispense with the pretense of public-spiritedness and revel unabashedly in the vulgar rewards of statist opportunism: "They only care about the next election, just like we only care about the next bonus. Well, none of them cares about the country, [just as] none of us cares about the institution. They really don't care, and I really don't care. And frankly, if a trillion dollars gets lost, fine."


AIG's behavior is typical of the new, federally supported Wall Street nomenklatura.


Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, who deserves a Pulitzer for his work but is more likely to be fed a Lubyanka Breakfast, points out that the nation's six largest banks -- all of them on the federal dole -- "set aside a whopping $140 billion for executive compensation last year, a sum only slightly less than the $164 billion they paid themselves in the pre-crash year of 2007." At Goldman Sachs, the de facto shadow Treasury Department, average take-home per-employee compensation was $498,246, "a number roughly commensurate with what they received during the bubble years."


"In an economy as horrible as ours, with every factory town between New York and Los Angeles looking like those hollowed-out ghost ships we see on History Channel documentaries like Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes, where in the hell did Wall Street's eye-popping profits come from, exactly?" Taibbi writes. "A year and a half after they were minutes away from bankruptcy, how are these [emunctory apertures] not only back on their feet again, but hauling in bonuses at the same rate they were during the bubble?"



The answer, of course, is that rather than creating wealth, Wall Street's kleptocrats are carrying out exactly the same fraudulent schemes they pursued before the bubble collapsed; this time, however, they had "the full financial support of the U.S. government" -- which means, of course, official promises to extract as much wealth as possible until the economy is a dessicated, lifeless husk.


It's tempting to refer to our present condition as "serfdom," but that term is a poor fit. Serfs, after all, enjoyed greater economic mobility than we do.



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Dum spiro, pugno!