Congressional lunatics on the march
Congressional lunatics on the march
Rand Paul: nobody read the $1.1 trillion bill before passing it
The House of Shadows
by Jon Rappoport
December 23, 2015
(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)
“Congressman, the American people are in an uproar. This is serious. I can’t begin to imagine what penalties you’re going to face. Possibly your ice cream after supper will be cancelled.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)
Congress just passed a $1.1 trillion budget bill. Here, from The Hill (“Paul: Nobody read the $1.1 trillion omnibus bill”), is what Senator Rand Paul has to say about it:
“It was over a trillion dollars, it [the bill] was all lumped together, 2,242 pages, nobody read it, so frankly my biggest complaint is that I have no idea what kind of things they stuck in the bill…We were given it yesterday or the day before the bill came forward, and so this is not a way to run government. It’s a part of the reason why government is broke.”
Paul went to say that no Democrat or Republican in the House or Senate read the bill before voting on it.
But of course the US federal government is not out of control. Perish the thought. The elected representatives are doing exactly what they’re supposed to do: spend money. It doesn’t matter where the money goes or how much of it there it is. These are minor points.
Borrow the money, tax the population in order to get it, invent it out of nothing—whatever it takes.
There is an obvious corollary here, which nobody talks about: if the crazed Congress can just flip a trillion bucks as if it were spare change, what guarantee is there that the money will go to the places where it’s designated?
You might recall that, in 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced the Pentagon was unable to account for $2.3 trillion of its budget:
“The technology revolution has transformed organizations across the private sector, but not ours, not fully, not yet. We are, as they say, tangled in our anchor chain. Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions. We cannot share information from floor to floor in this building because it’s stored on dozens of technological systems that are inaccessible or incompatible…”
Consider that possibly $2 trillion has been spent, since 1966, on the war on poverty. Much of this money was earmarked to improve the standard of living in inner cities. How does that appear to have worked out? I find no evidence that the federal government has ever done a comprehensive investigation of where the money actually went or how it was used.
But don’t worry. Things are under control.
Want to contemplate the enormous sums the government has forked out in foreign aid over the past 30 years? Care to look for a detailed report on where all that money actually went and how it was used? Want to factor in all wars the US has fought during that period, and try to track those funds? Good luck.
If you couldn’t quite balance your yearly books and ended up with a hundred dollars you couldn’t account for, nobody would be upset. But if in the course of the past 30 years, you couldn’t show where 10 or 15 trillion dollars went, I assure you people wouldn’t just suspect you of incompetence. No. They’d be smelling grand, grand theft. And RICO crimes. Why wouldn’t they?
How about the recent agreements at the international climate summit in Paris? Richer nations have pledged billions to poorer nations as a kind of reparation “for destroying their way of life.” We’ll leave the merit of that idea for another time and another discussion, but exactly where will all this money go? Into whose bank accounts, over the next 20 years? Who are the signatories on those accounts?
Remember the federal bailout of 2008, in the wake of the financial meltdown? Here is a quote from Forbes (“The Fed’s $16 Trillion Bailouts Under-Reported”, 9/20/11):
“The media’s inscrutable brush-off of the Government Accounting Office’s recently released [superficial] audit of the Federal Reserve has raised many questions about the Fed’s goings-on since the financial crisis began in 2008… The findings verify that over $16 trillion was allocated to corporations and banks internationally, purportedly for ‘financial assistance’ during and after the 2008 fiscal crisis… However, the audit’s findings were almost completely overlooked, even with a number as high as $16 trillion staring all of us in the face.”
Sixteen trillion dollars. No problem. Just another exercise in spending, and that’s what the government does.
Show me the full and final and very specific accounting of what those bailed-out banks and corporations did with the $16 trillion. Just joking.
When people talk about massive black-budget operations taking place out of public view, others “refute” the possibility by asserting that government funds are closely monitored. Sure they are. And ants are piloting space ships to the edge of the space-time continuum.
Money is actually funny money, at the level of government and the Federal Reserve. Numbers concocted out of the void. In Location A, twelve seconds ago, there was nothing. Now there are 100 billion dollars. Easy as pie. Stage magic.
The sheer fakery of US Senators and Representatives voting for a bill that spurts a trillion dollars out of a spigot is matched and exceeded by the fakery of inventing the 1 trillion.
For this reason, and in the service of honesty, I recommend that some Senator or Representative stand up on the floor of his august chamber and say the following:
“Look, we don’t even know what the federal debt is. Face it. It could be anymore between 13 trillion and 210 trillion. Let’s admit we don’t care. Nor do we care how big a budget we vote for every year. And I think you’ll all agree, because the evidence is clear, we don’t care where we allocate the money. Goodness knows, nobody reads the budget bills. Are you catching my drift? Why do we spend time and energy arguing over the budget? Because we want to impart the impression that there’s a significant difference between our two political parties. However, there are easy and effortless ways to achieve this. For one week, every year, we could designate a time and place for budget debate. Three or four brain-addled representatives from each party would read opposing scripted arguments. And then we’re done. We all convene and vote in favor of the budget bill, as we always do. And we go home early for vacation. No fuss, no muss. Do you think anyone would object or take notice? I don’t…”
Oh wait. This is pretty much what’s happening now.
Given the predominance of funny money, in the not-too-distant future you’re going to be hearing serious people making serious arguments for basic government “citizen-control.”
The story-line will go something like this:
“If people want to keep receiving federal money, they have to conform to certain standards of behavior, speech, and thought. It’s a simple give and take.”
New sets of rules and regulations will apply to the population, in return for what is granted to them.
“Citizen Jones, I have your behavioral dossier in front of me. I want to discuss it with you. You’ve made a number of statements and committed a number of actions which could result in expulsion from the federal universal welfare plan. Do you realize what we’re giving you every month? Do you really think it’s wise to bite the hand that feeds you?”
“What are you talking about? That time I rode my Department of Commerce bike without a helmet?”
“No. I’m talking about the time you uttered a forbidden slur while you were watching a rerun of Friends.”
There is a principle that applies to funny money. It flows like water and it eventually finds its way into all the cracks. It’s used to promote compliance and obedience.
And then it stops being funny.
If you think this is an exaggeration, read up on the recent Australian law that makes childhood vaccinations mandatory. Families who refuse to have their children jabbed will be cut off from certain federal welfare programs. No jab, no funny money.
“Mr. Daddy and Mrs. Mommy, we invented a pile of money to help you survive. Did you think we’d never ask for a piece of your body, mind, and soul in return? That day has come. We’re here to collect. We own you. That was always the idea. Get it?”
How about banks who suddenly foreclose on homeowners who didn’t have a magnifying glass big enough to read the fine print in their mortgage contracts?
“Mr. and Mrs. Smith, we invented money so we could give you a home. Now we’re back to shut you down. Nothing’s forever. Get used to it.”
Consider thousands of colleges that exist on federal funds. Some professor at one of these “higher institutions” suddenly gets it in his head to make a corrosive and devastating critique of the government. Do you suppose the higher-ups at the college start quaking in their boots, as they envision possible consequences?
“Find a way to close out that crazy professor. Right away. What kind of racket does he think we’re running here? One of those ‘free-speech’ campuses? Show him we mean business. His salary is being paid with government funny money. Educate him. Make him see the light. Or toss him out on the street.”
Possibly you’ve heard of something called the military industrial complex. Government does some serious money-out-of-thin-air inventing to keep those defense corporations going. How can this Niagara of cash be justified without wars to fight?
“Of course we’re going to attack…what’s the name of that country again? Doesn’t matter. Get planes in the air. Put boots on the ground. How would it look if we kept doling out trillions of dollars for peace? Are you kidding?”
This is the sort of thing that’s happening whenever our august federal legislators get together and rubber-stamp a budget bill. They’re as dumb as wood, as corrupt as bankers, as venal as the mafia, as crazy as naked drunks running down the street in the rain.
The 1976 film, All the President’s Men, invoked the phrase, “Follow the money.” Thereafter, it became a popular guideline for investigative reporters. On one level it works, yes. But when you can’t follow the money, when nobody can, when you’re looking at governments who are inventing money all the time making deals with each other based on loans, debts, interest, default, and refinance, then you know you’re in The Deep. This is cosmic money. It begins as a blip in darkness, rises to a blinding glare, explodes, dies out, and then appears again in another quadrant of space. It makes quantum leaps and it entangles untold trillions and septillions and vigintillions.
It’s whatever-money. Whatever you need, however you need it, however you want to hide it.
Historically, bankers figured out the game. They didn’t have to be very smart. They just had to keep abstracting the idea of money, until it became a shadow.
Then they took up residence in the shadows.
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
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