U.S. Intelligence Apparatus: Wasteful, Unecessary, and Dangerous

After the terrible events of 9/11, in which over 3000 Americans perished in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, the federal government began to exploit the fear (sometimes irrational fear) many Americans had of terrorism and expand the power, size and influence of the National Security State. A result of this irrational fear of terrorism, the U.S. intelligence apparatus grew exponentially. In a Washington Post report entitled "Top Secret America" Dana Priest and William M. Arkin document the massive intelligence state that has emerged since 9/11.

Here are some of the findings from the report:

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.
[We] discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.
Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings—about 17 million square feet of space.
Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.
Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year—a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

This excerpt alone should alarm many Americans to the civil liberty crushing leviathan that has grown exponentially. As this excerpt shows, counter-terrorism, intelligence and "homeland security" may be just more wasteful rackets.

Historian and economist Robert Higgs further reports on this new racket:

According to retired admiral Dennis C. Blair, formerly the director of national intelligence, after 9/11 “the attitude was, if it’s worth doing, it’s probably worth overdoing.” I submit that this explanation does not cut to the heart of the matter. As it stands, it suggests a sort of mindless desire to pile mountains of money, technology, and personnel on top of an already enormous mountain of money, technology, and personnel for no reason other than the vague notion that more must be better. In my view, national politics does not work in that way.

As Priest and Arkin report, “The U.S. intelligence budget is vast, publicly announced last year as $75 billion, 2 ½ times the size it was on Sept. 10, 2001. But the figure doesn’t include many military activities or domestic counterterrorism programs.” Virtually everyone the reporters consulted told them in effect that “the Bush administration and Congress gave agencies more money than they were capable of responsibly spending.” To be sure, they received more than they could spend responsibly, but not more than they were eager to spend irresponsibly. After all, it’s not as if they were spending their own money.

Robert Higgs continues:

The announced goal is to identify terrorists and eliminate them or prevent them from carrying out their nefarious acts. This is simultaneously a small task and an impossible one. It is small because the number of persons seeking to carry out a terrorist act of substantial consequence against the United States and in a position to do so cannot be more than a handful. If the number were greater, we would have seen many more attacks or attempted attacks during the past decade—after all, the number of possible targets is virtually unlimited, and the attackers might cause some form of damage in countless ways. The most plausible reason why so few attacks or attempted attacks have occurred is that very few persons have been trying to carry them out. (I refer to genuine attempts, not to the phony-baloney schemes planted in the minds of simpletons by government undercover agents and then trumpeted to the heavens when the FBI “captures” the unfortunate victims of the government’s entrapment.)

So, the true dimension of the terrorism problem that forms the excuse for these hundreds of programs of official predation against the taxpayers is small—not even in the same class with, say, reducing automobile-accident or household-accident deaths by 20 percent. Yet, at the same time, the antiterrorism task is impossible because terrorism is a simple act available in some form to practically any determined adult with access to Americans and their property at home or abroad. It is simply not possible to stop all acts of terrorism if potential terrorists have been given a sufficient grievance to motivate their wreaking some form of havoc against Americans. However, it is silly to make the prevention of all terrorist acts the goal. What can’t be done won’t be done, regardless of how many people and how much money one devotes to doing it. We can, though, endure some losses from terrorism in the same way that we routinely endure some losses from accidents, diseases, and ordinary crime.

In another article, Robert Higgs explains why the federal government's efforts to "fight terrorism" are really efforts to monitor and spy on American citizens:

Moreover, the so-called intelligence gathering that the government bankrolls so lavishly is aimed in great part, not at Muslim madmen, but at you and me. The government's banks of super-computers and legions of apparatchiki are busily gleaning data on your telephone calls, Internet messages and Web searches, financial and other business transactions, and virtually everything else that touches your life in a way that can be snatched into data banks by soulless bureaucrats and techno-flunkies. Yet, while every nook and cranny of your privacy is being invaded, at your expense, you are being assured that these official crimes are all legitimate means of protecting you from grave, impending harm. Should we also believe in fairy tales and ghost stories?

The truth of the matter is that you have a greater chance of dying on a government highway than dying as a result of terrorism. If the U.S. intelligence apparatus spending of over $40 billion before 9/11 failed, then it would be sheer folly to increase the funding of intelligence activities that have been proven a failure. Throwing more money at an already broken bureaucratic system will not solve our problems.

Perhaps the responsibility of intelligence gathering should be returned to the military, instead of residing in a intelligence bureaucracy that often has served as the President's personal army. This would immediately save the American taxpayers over $80 and more.

Another solution to this problem would be to recognize that terrorism is best combated by the civilian justice system, instead of the militaristic intelligence apparatus.

As Jacob Hornberger explains, "terrorism is a federal criminal offense. No one can deny that. It has long been listed in the U.S. Code as a crime. That's why terrorists are indicted in U.S. District Court and accorded all the rights and guarantees in the Bill of Rights, just like drug defendants. It's why such famous terrorists as Ramzi Yousef, Zacharias Moussaoui, Jose Padilla, and Timothy McVeigh, to name only a few, were indicted, tried, and convicted in federal court."

Since terrorism is a crime, rather than a "act of war", terrorism should be treated as a crime. The criminal justice system would be better at combating terrorism than executing a foreign policy that antagonizes people into committing acts of terrorism against Americans and having a wasteful intelligence bureaucracy that spies and keeps tabs on the American people.

Peter Schiff on the Debt Ceiling

Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, discusses the debt ceiling nonsense.

Shut Down the Post Office

The United States Postal Service, which is the federal agency that delivers our mail, has recently announced that it is shutting down around 3,700 across America, due primarily to the fact that the USPS is broke and has been in the red for quite some time.

The Postal Service, while being constitutional is nether the less a unnecessary, wasteful and monopolistic federal agency. The Postal Service does not allowing any private company to compete with it. As Jacob Hornberger describes,

What happens if a private-sector business tries to compete against this monopolist? Postal Service officials immediately run to their nearest U.S. Attorney’s office to complain. Some assistant U.S. Attorney then immediately runs to a federal judge, who immediately enters an injunction against the private-sector malefactor, requiring him to shut down his competitive effort.

A country that professes to believe in free market principles should not allow a monopoly such as the Postal Service to exist. Monopolies can only come about successfully by the power of government. A monopoly generated in a free market system is not only economically risky, but is also impossible to exist. This is because in a free market, monopolies will always be dismantled by competition. A free market monopoly cannot prevent new competition from entering the market.

Welfare-statists will argue that the solution is simply more funding for the Postal Service, despite the fact that it constantly loses money and is bankrupt. Instead of feeding this bloated and fat agency with more money from the taxpayers, why not just dismantle the Postal Service and allow private-sector companies to deliver the mail.

As Jacob Hornberger stated:

The free market produces the best of everything, while government enterprises and government-granted monopolies produce the worst of everything. In a free market, the consumer is king and competitors must constantly seek to serve him better in order to keep his business. With government businesses and monopolies, the provider doesn’t have to worry about losing anyone’s business to competitors.

Monopolies have no business in American life. Our heritage is economic liberty, private property, free markets, free enterprise, competition, and consumer sovereignty.

The Debt Crisis and the Future of American Liberty

In the early years of the Republic, Thomas Jefferson proclaim that "To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt." Jefferson's arch rival, Alexander Hamilton, had a different view and said that "A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a public blessing." Ultimately, Hamilton's ideas-which ran contrary to the principle of the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution-have prevailed.

Economist and historian Thomas DiLorenzo explains why Hamilton and his followers championed public debt:

Hamilton championed the creation of a large national debt for the sake of having a large national debt. The reason he gave for this was that the owners of the debt would be the more affluent people of the country, who would then be tied to the government and always be supportive of it, just as welfare recipients are today. They would be sure to support future tax increases, he reasoned, to ensure that they would not be shortchanged on their principal and interest.

Once government refuses to live within its' means and pay off its' current debts, it is encouraged to take on more debt. Tom DiLorenzo, in his book Hamilton's Curse: How Jefferson's Arch Rival Betrayed the American Revolution and What it Means for Americans Today further elaborates:

Government debt is every politician's dream: it gives him the ability to buy votes by spending on government programs (with funds raised through borrowing) that will make him popular now, while putting the lion's share of the costs on future taxpayers, who must pay off the debt through taxes. It is the ultimate political something-for-nothing scheme. Furthermore, the costs of servicing the debt are so widely dispersed among the taxpayers that hardly anyone realizes that his taxes are higher because of the debt service.

Because Hamilton's views on public debt, along with his views on the role of government, have prevailed, the United States has become the greatest debtor nation in all of human history. In all of American history, the national debt has only been paid off once by the administration of President Andrew Jackson. The national debt has grown substantially more since then. But it did not happen over night.

And as the above quotes illustrate, the debt crisis is more than just an accounting problem. It is a philosophical problem as well, if not more so. Over the course of the history of the Republic, the American people's attitudes about the proper role of government in a free society has slowly move away from the vision of the Founding Fathers. Instead of embracing a limited, minimal constitutional republic, Americans have come to except an intrusive, destructive and liberty-smashing role for government, more specifically, the federal government.

As Laurence M. Vance notes: "Funding for things like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, farm subsidies, and foreign aid is certainly unconstitutional and needs to be eliminated. But ending these things in their entirety would have a miniscule effect on the federal budget. The problem is the welfare/warfare state."

A majority of Americans have fully embraced the welfare/warfare state. And because Americans have excepted a role for government which goes against the limitations on power set forth in the Constitution, the size, scope and power of government has increase, causing politicians to borrow money from future generations to pay for today's anti-liberty extravagance.

Laurence Vance writes the following:

According to the Heritage Foundation, figures from the Office of Management and Budget show that the greatest expenditures of the federal government in 2010, aside from interest paid on the national debt, are Social Security ($721 billion), national defense ($719 billion), Medicare ($457 billion), income security programs ($363 billion), Medicaid and SCHIP ($284 billion), and unemployment benefits ($194 billion).

Spending in these six categories comes to $2.738 trillion.

The Defense Department, Social Security, and Medicare, are considered to be "non-discretionary" items, meaning that spending on these items must not cease or be cut in large amounts, regardless of their wasteful nature, or their violation of the Constitution.

Social Security and Medicare, both of which are cornerstones of the welfare state, are unconstitutional programs which, in the future, need to be abolished, sooner rather than later. Social Security and Medicare are essentially bankrupt and will soon consume all government spending and the entire economy. What gives the government the right take money for citizen A and give it to citizen B? This is not charity; it is theft. If someone came to your door pointing a gun and demanded that you give him money so he can give it to charity, we would call it theft. Yet, amazingly, we allow the federal government to do just that.

Laurence Vance also notes that all these welfare state programs are "clearly unconstitutional and illegitimate functions of the federal government. It doesn’t matter how popular they are, how many people they have kept out of poverty, how much people have grown to depend on them, or what the alternatives are. They still are not authorized by the Constitution. They still reek of socialism. They still foster dependency. They still aggress against those Americans that object to paying for them. And they still are not part of the proper functions of government. "

Then there is the warfare state.

Since the advent of the Spanish-American War, World War 1, and World War 2, the United States has abandoned the original American foreign policy of noninterventionism and has embraced a foreign policy of empire, interventionism and war. As a result, the budget and the military's role has grown exponentially from merely defending United States territory from invasion by a foreign government, to expanding, patrolling and policing a U.S. global empire.

This American Empire (i.e, warfare state) has made America less safe, less prosperous and less free. Doug Bandow has correctly noted that "many foreigners enjoy being protected at U. S. expense. Alas, Washington's desire to garrison most of the earth's surface helps explain why Uncle Sam is effectively bankrupt. In fact, it's hard to keep track of America's many overseas military installations. By one Pentagon count there are 865 foreign facilities. But that doesn't count bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, which probably pushes the total past 1000."

Why does the United States need to maintain an overseas military empire comprised of over 1000 military installations in order to protect the United States? Why can't the military be brought back to it's proper and constitutional role of defending the United States from invasion by a foreign government? Many Americans will contend that if we dismantle our U.S. global empire, then America will be constantly attacked, invaded, or bullied by other countries or terrorists. This is the typical refrain of "Fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here!" But by maintaining such a military presence around the entire globe, the United States is weaker because military and economic resources are wasted in money and blood losing wars that do not enhance America's defenses.

Jacob Hornberger points out that

Every competent military analyst would tell us that the threat of a foreign invasion and conquest of America is nonexistent. No nation has the military capability of invading and conquering the United States. Not China, not Russia, not Iran, not North Korea, not Syria. Not anyone. To invade the United States with sufficient forces to conquer and “pacify” the entire nation would take millions of foreign troops and tens of thousands of ships and planes to transport them across the Atlantic or Pacific ocean. No foreign nation has such resources or military capabilities and no nation will have them for the foreseeable future.

Therefore, the United States does not need to have a vast military empire or a bloated military budget to defend the United States. We do not need a $1 trillion defense budget to defend America. As Ivan Eland has pointed out numerous times, the United States has a nuclear arsenal that is more than enough for deterring other countries from attacking the United States.

Conclusion

In order for America to solve this debt crisis, Americans must once again embrace the liberties that made this country great and the proper role of government in a free society, which is to protect and promote our God-given natural rights. As Thomas Jefferson observed, "That government is best which governs least."

Here are some quick solutions to America's debt crisis:

1. The federal government must not be allowed to raise the debt ceiling. If this were to occur, this will only encourage more government borrowing, and consequently, more government spending. In fact, as Mark Thornton noted, the debt ceiling needs to be lowered.

2. The federal government must not be allowed to raise taxes. Raising taxes will only slow down economic growth by taking away capital from entrepreneurs who can put these resources to better use than the government. If taxes are to be lowered, these tax cuts must be accompanied by tremendous spending cuts, otherwise, the federal government will be encouraged to borrow more money, which crowds out private borrowing. In fact, the income tax needs to be abolish, along with most other federal taxes. The 16th Amendment needs to be repealed.

3. The federal government must cut spending. This does not mean slowing the rate of growth. Such "spending cuts" are fake. All the nondiscretionary items need to be substantially cut. This includes defense, Social Security and Medicare. Most discretionary spending can be eliminated because most programs in this category are unconstitutional anyway (this is not to say that Social Security and Medicare are constitutional; both Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional). A repeal of the federal welfare/warfare state needs to be a reality sooner rather than later.

4. The Federal Reserve must be prohibited from monetizing the debt. This is a process by which the central bank (i.e., the Federal Reserve) prints more money, then buys Treasury bonds and adds them to the Fed's balance sheet. As a result of this process. the dollar is further devalued, while the federal government is given money to spend on their extravagance. The Fed needs to eventually be audited then abolished.

5. The federal government must protect and respect our natural rights. This means that the federal government must cease all programs that violate our natural rights, especially those protected by the Bill of Rights.

These simple solutions are necessary if America is to avoid fiscal armageddon and reclaim our liberties and our lives from leviathan.

Robert P. Murphy on the Debt Ceiling

 In the following video, Austrian economist Robert P. Murphy discusses the debt ceiling.

Ron Paul to America: The "Cut, Cap, and Balance" Fraud

Congressman Ron Paul has come out against the "Cut, Cap, and Balance Act", his reasons are reprinted below. I will give a more detailed analysis of America's debt crisis soon:

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak against HR 2560, the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act. This bill only serves to sanction the status quo by putting forth a $1 trillion budget deficit and authorizing a $2.4 trillion increase in the debt limit.

When I say this bill sanctions the status quo, I mean it quite literally.
First, it purports to eventually balance the budget without cutting military spending, Social Security, or Medicare. This is impossible. These three budget items already cost nearly $1 trillion apiece annually. This means we can cut every other area of federal spending to zero and still have a $3 trillion budget. Since annual federal tax revenues almost certainly will not exceed $2.5 trillion for several years, this Act cannot balance the budget under any plausible scenario.

Second, it further entrenches the ludicrous beltway concept of discretionary vs. nondiscretionary spending. America faces a fiscal crisis, and we must seize the opportunity once and for all to slay Washington's sacred cows – including defense contractors and entitlements. All spending must be deemed discretionary and reexamined by Congress each year. To allow otherwise is pure cowardice.

Third, the Act applies the nonsensical narrative about a "Global War on Terror" to justify exceptions to its spending caps. Since this war is undeclared, has no definite enemies, no clear objectives, and no metric to determine victory, it is by definition endless. Congress will never balance the budget until we reject the concept of endless wars.

Finally, and most egregiously, this Act ignores the real issue: total spending by government. As Milton Friedman famously argued, what we really need is a constitutional amendment to limit taxes and spending, not simply to balance the budget. What we need is a dramatically smaller federal government; if we achieve this a balanced budget will take care of itself.

We do need to cut spending, and by a significant amount. Going back to 2008 levels of spending is not enough. We need to cut back at least to where spending was a decade ago. A recent news article stated that we pay 35 percent more for our military today than we did 10 years ago, for the exact same capabilities. The same could be said for the rest of the government. Why has our budget doubled in 10 years? This country doesn't have double the population, or double the land area, or double anything that would require the federal government to grow by such an obscene amount.

We need to cap spending, and then continue decreasing that cap so that the federal government grows smaller and smaller. Allowing government to spend up to a certain percentage of GDP is insufficient. It doesn't matter that the recent historical average of government outlays is 18 percent of GDP, because in recent history the government has way overstepped its constitutional mandates. All we need to know about spending caps is that they need to decrease year after year.

We need to balance the budget, but a balanced budget amendment by itself will not do the trick. A $4 trillion balanced budget is most certainly worse than a $2 trillion unbalanced budget. Again, we should focus on the total size of the budget more than outlays vs. revenues.

What we have been asked to do here is support a budget that only cuts relative to the President's proposed budget. It still maintains a $1 trillion budget deficit for FY 2012, and spends even more money over the next 10 years than the Paul Ryan budget which already passed the House.

By capping spending at a certain constant percentage of GDP, it allows for federal spending to continue to grow. Tying spending to GDP creates an incentive to manipulate the GDP figure, especially since the bill delegates the calculation of this figure to the Office of Management and Budget, an agency which is responsible to the President and not to Congress. In the worst case, it would even reward further inflation of the money supply, as increases in nominal GDP through pure inflation would allow for larger federal budgets.

Finally, this bill authorizes a $2.4 trillion rise in the debt limit. I have never voted for a debt ceiling increase and I never will. Increasing the debt ceiling is an endorsement of business as usual in Washington. It delays the inevitable, the day that one day will come when we cannot continue to run up enormous deficits and will be forced to pay our bills.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, while I sympathize with the aims of this bill's sponsors, I must vote against HR 2560. It is my hope, however, that the looming debt ceiling deadline and the discussion surrounding the budget will further motivate us to consider legislation in the near future that will make meaningful cuts and long-lasting reforms

Ron Paul vs Ben Bernanke: Is Gold Money?

In the following video, Congressman Ron Paul once again challenges and smacks down Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke about whether or not gold is money.