From Sniping to Bushonomics
by Al Martin
(October 21) It has been reported that the Pentagon plans to use the ARL - Airborne Reconnaissance Low - aircraft to hunt for the so-called DC Sniper(s). The lawsuit filed by the ACLU, however, has delayed its use. It's probable that this suit will be dismissed under pressure from the Bush Administration. When it's announced, it will be a direct contravention of the Posse Comitatus Act (Title 18 Section 1385), which limits the use of the military in domestic law enforcement. The irony is that there is overwhelming public support for the use of the military aircraft. Ultimately lawsuits or not - the aircraft will be used - and in fact it's very likely that it probably has been used already. Using the 24/7 geo-synchronous satellites would also be abrogating the act because these are military satellites. When the sniper is caught, they'll claim that it's because of the use of this equipment, which will then garner further support for the overturning of Posse Comitatus, which will come at a time that the Bush Administration regains control of Congress.
Public opinion polls overwhelmingly support this. People don't care about Posse Comitatus. They say use the military equipment - if it will catch the sniper.
The DC Sniper then becomes just an intermediate step to overturning the Posse Comitatus Act. The Bush Regime knows this, since the polls show that the Republicans will regain control of the Senate. In anticipation of that, they want to reintroduce the bill to overturn Posse Comitatus, the bill for the final authorization of Homeland Security Act, and all the legislation they haven't passed yet. They will want to get all this legislation passed as quickly as possible through a Rubber Stamp Congress.
If they get public support, they can overturn Posse Comitatus -- and the Democrats will just fade out of the picture. Other legislation that was put on hold includes the National ID Card legislation, which was also quietly withdrawn. They will press for three bills - the National ID Card, the overturning the Posse Comitatus Act and the Homeland Security bill itself, which has still failed to pass. This will be the fulfilling of the Bush Agenda, which is to pass all the legislation, which has not been passed so far. The DC Sniper incident is an incident, which could aid in that effort - if it unfolds the correct way. If you want to know if the government is indeed controlling the situation, then in the end, when the sniper is caught, number one, he isn't going to live, and number two, they will say that he was caught due to the military's help. Mass terror has nothing to do with it. It's the political agenda.
There is more cheery news with respect to Bush economic policies, i.e. Bushonomics. The growing time bomb in our nation's economy includes the under-funded fixed pension schemes. Two weeks ago, the automotive companies publicly reported that their pension funds were enormously under-funded. The week before, the airline industry reported the same thing.
As of October 17, all of the nation's defense contractors are reporting that they have multi billion dollar under-funded pension schemes. In a statement released by the American insurance actuaries association, they pointed out what Al Martin Raw .com has been pointing out, to wit, that we are now facing a $1.5 trillion fixed pension scheme under-funding in the nation's state, county and municipal pension systems, at least $500 billion of under-funded pensions in our nation's corporations and an estimated $500 billion more in under-funded pension schemes in the nation's private businesses and industries.
This is as the association points out a multi-trillion dollar ticking time bomb, and it comes at a time when, over the next ten years, more citizens will be retiring and drawing on these pension funds than at any other time during the history of the nation.
And frankly, as the association rightly asked - where is the money going to come from?
Al Martin Raw .com has been consistently critical of the way the states and corporations fund their pension schemes, i.e. without making allowances for increases in health care costs.
The fact is that almost all fixed pension funds come with some inherent health care benefits, yet they are not funded to reflect the rapidly rising health care costs. This then is a double whammy to the pensions.
Not only are we under-funded in terms of the net payout of the pensions, but also the states and corporations are not making any separate accruals for increases in health care costs. They act as if health care costs will remain frozen forever, whereas we know that health care costs have been increasing at double-digit rates annually.
This will create a health care crisis because people will suddenly find that the health care benefits they anticipated receiving with their pensions simply aren't going to be there. People don't talk about this, but it's an enormous problem.
In other cheery news, it was reported that for the first time in six years, one of the most important economic statistics in the nation, which has really driven growth in the last six years, the Department of Labor's Worker Productivity Index has now begun to fall.
Its companion statistic Unit Labor Cost has consequently begun to increase. This is a very ominous sign for the economy. There has been no pricing power in our economy because of low inflation. There has been no ability for manufacturers to pass along increased cost to the end consumer. The only thing that has kept profit margins relatively high has been continuous increases in worker productivity and continued decreases in unit labor cost. The cost of manufacturing a widget has declined and you can sell that widget for 79 cents year after year. In an economy with no pricing power, when labor costs begin to rise, you still can't sell it for more than 79 cents, therefore you have ever shrinking corporate profit margins.
The stock market rally has been fueled in recent days by third quarter profits, which have been about 9% ahead of S&P guesstimates for third quarter profit growth. However when one picks apart these profit increases, the quality of these profit increases is very low. The profit increases are not coming from growth in core businesses. They are coming from continued cost cutting, reduced tax payments, accelerated depreciation, residual royalty and licensing fee payments, and so-called special one time non-recurring gains. That makes the continuation of said profit growth highly suspect because the profits are coming from peripheral items and not from core growth in business.
On the other hand, those corporations which have been able to show an increase in real sales of their core products there has been no consequential increase in profits through those sales because now costs are beginning to increase and those costs can not be passed along to consumers in this environment.
This is as we have said before a very ominous sign. It has been mostly anomalous factors, which have fueled increases in third quarter profit growth.
Also, don't be fooled by the record increase in housing starts as reported this month. These are becoming very volatile (three increases and three declines in the last six months). They are swinging wildly month after month. Since we are in a housing bubble this indicates that a top in the housing market is being formed.
As in the automobile industry, the reason that housing starts are remaining brisk is because there is discounting across the board by developers. The luxury market is already soft. The housing bubble still exists in median priced homes. It should be noted that commercial and industrial property prices have been dropping for six months.
Builders are doing what car manufacturers are doing - reducing prices and giving buyers easier terms. They are borrowing sales from the future in order to keep the bubble alive.
It should be remembered that a home is the average American family's largest asset. Increased real estate prices create a much larger wealth increase than increases in stock prices. When the housing bubble bursts and a negative wealth effect is generated concurrently with a negative wealth effect from stocks, this will wreak havoc on consumer confidence.
We recommend that people not refinance their homes and take a lot of cash out of their property. If people want to refinance at lower rates, they should do so classically - refinance existing mortgages to reduce to the monthly mortgage payments and not take a lot of cash out. Otherwise you could very easily find yourself in an upside -down position with no cash, being overextended credit-wise when the housing market breaks. It is a time when people should be hunkering down.
The weekly unemployment statistics were much higher than expected. The four-week moving average is the highest it has been since Bush was elected. The total number of people employed is also the lowest it's been since Bush was elected.
The fundamentals, which created the bear market, have not changed and they are gradually getting worse.
In a surprise announcement, the IRS has said that henceforth all citizens will be able to include the purchase of a paper shredder as an itemized tax deduction. The rationale is that the IRS apparently receives a lot of inquiries about this because so many people are buying paper shredders because of the sheer volume of the mail they get.
Everyone is concerned that their mail might refer to credit card numbers and a growing number of people are even beginning to shred junk mail, which may reveal personal information about themselves. So the IRS has stated that all citizens can take a deduction for a paper shredder -- but they didn't place any limit in it. This means that you can buy everything from the simple hundred-dollar desk paper shredder all the way to the industrial turbo shredder -- The George Bush Special Commemorative Model.
During the time when Bush I lost the election of 1992 to the time he left office in January, the Department of Justice was worried when they were ordered by the White House to begin shredding documents. This was also reported in a Mother Jones Magazine article called "Shredded Justice."
The DoJ only had regular paper shredders and they were becoming quickly overwhelmed. The Department of Justice was concerned because they had about six million documents they were instructed by the Bush I Administration to destroy. These included all their investigative files on Iran-Contra, Iraq Gate, BCCI, BNL, etc. and Attorney General Barr was very concerned. The Attorney General then was the infamous, sinister, and dreaded Billy "Never Saw a Document He Didn't Want to Shred" Barr (now incidentally the general counsel of Verizon).
So Barr called up the Department of Defense in late December 1992 and asked for an emergency loan of three of the DoD's big turbo shredders. These were delivered later that day under the cover of darkness in unmarked white panel vans. They were delivered to the rear entrance of the Justice Building on H Street, diagonally across from the White House behind the Plymouth Hotel. These three big gasoline turbine powered shredders had to be kept in the basement because they couldn't be lifted or gotten through any of the doors. You have to understand that these things are big enough to reduce an oak tree to pulp.
It wasn't until January 20 at 11:19 (that was 41 minutes before the Bush Administration was due to vacate office) that the Department of Justice completed the destruction of some 6.2 million documents.
At the time WMS (Waste Management Services) was a booming company and had gotten into the paper recycling business. If you look at the board of directors of WMS at the time, it was chockablock full of Republicans. Of course later WMS was discovered to be an enormous fraud. The Department of Justice actually had to ask its contractor WMS to remove shredded documents on additional trucks.
Later Billy Barr was awarded a Special Citation of Merit for having been able to shred all the documents in time. This was the special Bushonian White House citation medal for the "Freedom FROM Information" Award.
From the Al Martin Raw.com Financial Commentary (available to all online readers for a nominal subscription fee): Because of the market action, there was a tremendous short selling opportunity on October 16. You can tell how the longs are manipulating the market to make sure that the key market indicators the Dow Jones, NASDAQ and the S&P 500 keep closing just above technical resistance points to draw in more technical buying and more short covering.
The S&P 500 closed above the 50 day moving average, which was 870, and it also broke all long term down lines when it closed above 880.
You could see how they rallied the market on purpose in the last few seconds on light buy order volume, just to make sure the S&P 500 closed just above the longterm trend lines. They knew that this would engender foreign buying; it would look good to the foreign markets overnight. Then right from the get go, you would have short buy stops activated. And the longs are going to run them because the shorts are going to be nervous and they're all looking to get short at these levels. If this market starts to fall below 880 and the shorts are going to smell that there's blood in the water, they will jump on it. This is what we predicted last week because there has been an awful lot of retail buying in the last three days propelling this rally. Frankly the mutual funds, being so short of cash already, have expended a lot of ammunition to push this market higher and to push out the shorts. But everyone forgets that the fundamentals have not changed and the shorts still control the market.
(The above is a sample of the quality of information that the Al Martin Raw.com proprietary Daily Financial News and Analysis Market Commentary will reveal, included in the very affordable monthly subscription price. Disclaimer: Al Martin Raw.com is not a registered securities dealer and does not offer investment advice and does not provide money management services. We do not recommend any specific broker dealers.)
In other news, a joint study release by the American Business Council and the American Psychiatric Association concluded that falling worker productivity is very anomalous and it has never occurred before.
The reason we are having falling productivity is because of the inordinate number of sick days and personal days that American workers are taking, which has reached all time record highs. The study concludes that 63% of American workers are taking all of their sick days and personal days.
The American Business Council found this so odd that they brought in the American Psychiatric Association to try to determine why. They did a poll of workers and they found out that workers across the nation are taking time off because they're so depressed that their retirements have been wiped out in their IRA/401(k)'s since the election of George Bush. Consequently they are under such psychological and emotional distress that they feel that they need to take this time off simply to cope with it emotionally.
The APA believes that this could be a growing problem for business down the line-the growing number of workers who feel that everything is falling apart as long as a Bush remains in office.
This poll concentrated on 50 to 60 year old workers. The APA also reported that health insurance costs are being pressed because of the large number of workers, who are taking anti-depressants, which the companies pay for under their health coverage. The study pointed out that 42% of workers aged 50 to 60 are in a state of clinical depression.
When questioned, people say that they feel that they've played according to the rules, and then the rules are all thrown out the window. People stated that they paid into their pensions and 401(K) accounts, they say they've paid their bills and they've always voted Republican. The APA points out that this is a growing societal problem, that directly relates to the dramatic increase (over a one third increase) since the election of George Bush in the use of prescription anti-depressants, principally Prozac and Xanax.
People in this age group simply don't know how to react. They've done what they were told all their lives and now it's all out the window.
Interestingly enough they've specifically said that we paid into our IRA and 401(k)'s; we educated our kids; we paid our mortgage; we always voted Republican (there's the key -- always voted Republican) and now look what's happened. The Great Republican Lie is beginning to fall apart.
Contrary to Republican Mythology, all of the great bear markets since the founding of the Republican Party have occurred or begun during Republican Administrations. For more information on the shattering of the myths see the September October Issue of the Whistleblower Gazette Newsletter (For more subscription information, see Whistleblower Gazette)
And speaking of drugs, Florida Governor Jeb Bush's daughter Noelle Bush got sent to jail for ten days for violating her drug rehab. This was the same day her uncle George Bush landed in Florida for a fundraising tour at an airport just three miles from where she was being sentenced at the same time.
There was talk of a jailhouse interview in which she'll say how she was treated unfairly because this whole thing started over a Xanax prescription -- while the rest of her family takes Prozac and drinks Jack Daniels.
Pressured by her father, the doctor wouldn't give her a prescription to Xanax. Why do you have to be different? Her father asked. All the other Bushes take Prozac. Why do you have to take Xanax?
According to an unattributed remark from the Tampa Tribune, Noelle Bush called the Bush Family the "First Family of Fraud." No wonder her uncle didn't help her out. She's been a black sheep all her life. She's also mentioned how her father and uncle all smoked dope and took drugs when they were young. Public Bush bashing within the Bush Family is not allowed. See what happens. Even if you're in the Bush Family, you'll go to jail.
So if Noelle's brothers (the other two children their grandfather George Bush Sr. publicly called "The Little Brown Ones") should be reading this, take heed and stay with in the time honored Bush Family tradition. Do not deviate from the norm. You must drink Jack and take Prozac - or face the consequences.
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