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writing for godot

Lop-sided Authority in the Constitution as the Foundation for America's 21st Century 'Police State'

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Written by G. Ross Stephens   
Friday, 27 September 2013 18:33
We tend to forget that the authority given to our government in Washington, DC by the U.S. Constitution is decidedly lop-sided. The federal government has almost unlimited authority when it comes to national security, foreign relations, and war. Authority of our central government is much more limited when it comes to domestic services, but the Feds have found ways to get around these restrictions insofar as the police power is concerned.

Policing is not one of the delegated powers given to our national government by the Constitution. But our elected officials, our rulers (i.e., corporate elites), and bureaucrats have used the playing-out of events over the last two or three decades to skew national security/war/foreign relations authority to include the policing of domestic activity. The National Security Agency (NSA) is only the tip of the iceberg.

Policing authority expanded with a concern for homeland security, wars on drugs, crime, illegal immigrants, etc. It was amplified with the aid of hot and cold wars and terrorist activity – FBI, ATF, Secret Service, CIA, NSA, Border Patrol, hired mercenaries, U.S. Marshals, etc.

Including the military, at least 71 percent federal fulltime employees (FTE) are involved in national security; 76 percent or more when you include estimates of those employed on procurement contracts.

Only partially included are the specialized internal (sometimes external) law enforcement activities by federal agencies like the military departments (Defense, Army, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard), the Postal Service, and others.

It cost one million dollars a year to keep a soldier in Afghanistan. In Iraq and Afghanistan so-called ‘security forces’ (mercenaries) were hired to augment the regular military at three-times the cost of a regular soldier. During the height of these conflicts the Los Angeles Times reported there were more contractors in these countries than regular military personnel. That may still be true.

In addition to mercenaries, many government offices either have their own security personnel (police) or they hire security services from the private sector, though this is most common at the national level.

Nor does this listing include the 30,000 plus state and local police departments – municipalities, country sheriff’s departments, and town/township marshals – often supported with federal money. With federal funding, these police departments usually look to those doing the funding as to how they will operate (It’s called vertical-functional-autocracy!). No one knows how many of these state and local law enforcement agencies have created their very own swat teams to enhance their policing as they have become more militarized.

With the privatization of military and national security activities, the corporate sector has become heavily involved in this process by creating for-profit prisons throughout the nation – thus ratcheting-up political pressure for legislation that keeps these prisons full with strict enforcement and longer terms of incarceration. These contracts contain requirements for 80 to 100 percent occupancy rates, usually 90 percent, with payments for empty cells. In other words, the taxpayer, federal, and state governments are penalized if they fail to keep the prisons full. The United States has the highest number of prisoners and rate of incarceration of any nation in the world; far more than Russia, China, or any of the world’s dictatorships.

With the privatization of public services comes corruption and the difficulty of holding anyone responsible for what goes on. On September 10th, the day before 9/11, Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld stated the Department of Defense (DOD) could not account for $2.3 trillion in past department expenditures. Other estimates at that time placed this dereliction at closer to $4 trillion. Since that time additional $trillions have been thrown at national security activities.

Over 80 percent of the $500+ billion federal annual expenditures for procurement contracts has been for war/national security activities by DOD and the other eight major federal agencies involved (Consolidated Federal Funds Reports, 2005-2010). DOD’s outsourcing to private corporations is 50 to 60 percent of total outlay, for intelligence it’s 70 percent, for the Department of Energy it’s 75 to 85 percent (atomic weapons). During the last decade overall, 43 to 50 percent of the entire federal budget has gone for national security and war including servicing war-incurred debt. Increases in war/national security expenditures accounts for over 90 percent of the accumulated national debt over for last three decades.

The United States spends more for national security than any other nation; more than the combined expenditure of the next 16 nations. Why do we need with ten or eleven carrier task forces when China and Russia have only one or two? The U.S. has 53.5 percent of the world’s naval tonnage. Why do we pay the full cost of NATO? We maintain 1,000 overseas military bases and over 4,000 in the fifty states – bases and procurement contracts in every state and congressional district. Think ‘feedback-loop’ for political influence, campaign contributions, and tax relief for corporations.

The Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) in DOD has 11,000 employees. If even two-thirds of its employees are involved in auditing and managing contracts (unlikely), each must, on average, be responsible for 45 contracts worth $80 to $100 million – an impossible task.

For 2001 to 2003 as we were invading Afghanistan and preparing to go to war with Iraq, there was a corporate ‘feeding frenzy’ looking for government contracts. Paul Buchheit notes that the average American family now pays $6,000 per year in subsidies to big business (Common Dreams, 9/24/13).

It’s not Social Security and other domestic services that are driving federal deficits, it’s war and national security. We have been spending Social Security surpluses for war for decades while augmenting the police powers of the federal government along with a monumental windfall to private corporations. This is not capitalism; it’s corporate behemoths living on the public dole.

Privatization of public services makes it nearly impossible for anyone to be held accountable for the performance of whatever public services are involved. If I remember correctly, nearly a century ago, someone in Italy thought the fusing of the private corporation with the nation was a good idea. The result was a police state.

We have militarized the economy and created the foundation for a police state with the major portion being military and police activity outsourced to private corporations.

What would happen to this economy if suddenly we had a very real peace scare?

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