The government should be for the benefit of the people, not for the benefit of the government (or their oil and arms buddies).
But what if the govenment, the elected officials, actually thinks that it is for the benefit of the people? Baron Max
Thats why there should be accountability. If you hire someone to do a job, do you pay him unless he does it reasonably well? Or if his work is below par, or if he uses it to make money for himself at your expense?
How about this, with a tighter connection to idiocy: The D.E.A. (Drug Enforcement Agency for you acronym-impaired foreigners) persecutes heroin dealers. As a result it's a high-risk business. The only people willing to take the job are criminals who are willing to take risks and are skilled in clandestine operations. Oh yeah, and they charge what they feel is a fair price for their product to be worth the risk they're taking. Multiply this by Europe and other places that have been browbeaten into joining my country's "War on Drugs," and heroin has become a $20 billion per year industry. (Heroin would sell for one-hundredth of its street price if it were made and sold by the pharmaceutical, alcohol, or tobacco companies who pay taxes, and everybody would come out ahead. No overdoses, no dealers shooting each other in the street either. But of course our government knows as much about economics as Joe Stalin.) Who's making all that money, you ask--the Mafia? Well yes, they make some of it, but most of it goes to the the people who control the supply of opium. You're starting to get nervous now. Where do all the poppies grow? I just read about it in the news yesterday--oh here it is. Good goddess, it's Afghanistan!!! Afghanistan is raking in about $15 billion a year for its opium crop. The government gets nothing since it's an illegal crop and nobody's paying taxes. The farmers get a nice income, of course, better than they could get by growing anything else. Nice enough that they harbor, protect, love, support and vote for the people they sell their poppies to. Now who would that be? What organization in Afghanistan has the scope, network, international connections, and other resources to manage a $15 billion business? The Taliban and Al Qaeda. It's quite likely that the global heroin market provides as much support to anti-American terrorists as the Saudi Arabians do. Nobody in Afghanistan is going to do anything to upset this because that money is about half of their GDP. (My figures may be off because it's been a few months since I read the info, but the percentages are right.) If you want to see American soldiers killed even faster, try sending them in to fight the Afhan heroin business! So, next time you see one of your favorite cop shows doing a big drug bust, which forces the drug industry underground, remember that's fifteen billion dollars a year going into terrorist training and weapons. I hope you really hate heroin users that badly. I sure don't.
Who's doing the "accounting"? Newscasters with a bias viewpoint? Reporters out to find a story, any story? The public ...with almost no power to do anything about it? A public that can't even agree about what to have on their pizza tonight? If I'm his supervisor, sure. But what if I'm the CEO and there's a gazillion workers ...do you expect me to watch each and every one of them myself? No, of course not. So I hire others that I trust to watch them all. But who watches the watchers? How can I know to trust them? Newscaster with a bias veiwpoint? Reporters out to find a story, any story? The public ...with almost no power to do anything about it? A public that can't even agree about what to have on their pizza tonight? It's not easy to run a country. And yet everyone here "knows" exactly how to do it and what to do when. Funny, ain't it? But have you noticed that none of the people here agree on anything either?? Oh, shit, now what??? Baron Max
NOT TRUE. No, the US government (and many people, including me, knew). The CIA’s funding is hidden in other bills so not normally known, but too many people knew of the funding for the “contras” which many disapproved of but Regan supported as anti left wing/ anti communistic effort. (Churches in the US were helping and sheltering 100s who fled for their lives, some after torture.) Many knew the horrors that were being done to suppress the left wing movements in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Eventually this CIA / Reagan effort was so much opposed that the Congress acted to specifically prohibit tax payers money from funding more of the killing and torture: “…Direct military aid was interrupted by the Boland Amendment, passed by the United States Congress in December 1982, and subsequently extended in October 1984 to forbid action by not only the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency but all US government agencies. …” From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras Less well know is the fact that the CIA supplied small planes (I forget the name of the charter company front the CIA used, but it was known.) to Manuel Noriega to fly the dope into the US. After Reagan’s alternative financing effort to keep the right wing in power failed, the CIA took its planes away and told Noriega to stop sending drugs into the US, but he now knew how, had the US connections with drug dealers etc. and found it so profitable that he did not. So the CIA (and as I recall some marines) captured him and brought him to Florida for a speedy trial. He was kept in a Florida jail for years (May still be there? But I seem to recall he was recently back in power in some central American country. - CIA probably found him useful again and got him out of jail.) More recently the CIA (a couple of years ago - just now coming to public information) has funded death squads in Columbia. At least two members of the Columbian legislature and one governor of a state have resigned (or been removed?) from office for their part in the extra judicial killing of dozens. I made a post about this a few months ago, but can’t find it now. BTW Chavez is very scared the CIA will kill him. His first “insurance policy” was to require Citco to sell home heating oil to the poor in US at a deep discount. His second “insurance policy” was to buy nearly 50,000 AK 47 and give them to the people (He is very popular with the masses.) Just yesterday, in a major speech to the masses, He took out a third “insurance policy” - He asked the masses to make sure that if he is killed, not “one drop” of oil is sent to the US. (Currently Venezuela sends 1.3 billion barrels each day - Now that the Mexican gulf field output is falling this would be a disaster for the US. - God help the US if the CIA is as stupid as it has often been and kills him.)
