Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It : Paul Craig Roberts
 

Good-Bye

Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.

Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.

Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded “anti-American,” “anti-semite” or “conspiracy theorist.”

Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.

Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.

Truth is inconvenient for ideologues.

Today many whose goal once was the discovery of truth are now paid handsomely to hide it. “Free market economists” are paid to sell offshoring to the American people. High-productivity, high value-added American jobs are denigrated as dirty, old industrial jobs. Relicts from long ago, we are best shed of them. Their place has been taken by “the New Economy,” a mythical economy that allegedly consists of high-tech white collar jobs in which Americans innovate and finance activities that occur offshore. All Americans need in order to participate in this “new economy” are finance degrees from Ivy League universities, and then they will work on Wall Street at million dollar jobs.

Economists who were once respectable took money to contribute to this myth of “the New Economy.”

And not only economists sell their souls for filthy lucre. Recently we have had reports of medical doctors who, for money, have published in peer-reviewed journals concocted “studies” that hype this or that new medicine produced by pharmaceutical companies that paid for the “studies.”

The Council of Europe is investigating the drug companies’ role in hyping a false swine flu pandemic in order to gain billions of dollars in sales of the vaccine.

The media helped the US military hype its recent Marja offensive in Afghanistan, describing Marja as a city of 80,000 under Taliban control. It turns out that Marja is not urban but a collection of village farms.

And there is the global warming scandal, in which NGOs. the UN, and the nuclear industry colluded in concocting a doomsday scenario in order to create profit in pollution.

Wherever one looks, truth has fallen to money.

Wherever money is insufficient to bury the truth, ignorance, propaganda, and short memories finish the job.

I remember when, following CIA director William Colby’s testimony before the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan issued executive orders preventing the CIA and U.S. black-op groups from assassinating foreign leaders. In 2010 the US Congress was told by Dennis Blair, head of national intelligence, that the US now assassinates its own citizens in addition to foreign leaders.

When Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that US citizens no longer needed to be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of a capital crime, just murdered on suspicion alone of being a “threat,” he wasn’t impeached. No investigation pursued. Nothing happened. There was no Church Committee. In the mid-1970s the CIA got into trouble for plots to kill Castro. Today it is American citizens who are on the hit list. Whatever objections there might be don’t carry any weight. No one in government is in any trouble over the assassination of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government.

As an economist, I am astonished that the American economics profession has no awareness whatsoever that the U.S. economy has been destroyed by the offshoring of U.S. GDP to overseas countries. U.S. corporations, in pursuit of absolute advantage or lowest labor costs and maximum CEO “performance bonuses,” have moved the production of goods and services marketed to Americans to China, India, and elsewhere abroad. When I read economists describe offshoring as free trade based on comparative advantage, I realize that there is no intelligence or integrity in the American economics profession.

Intelligence and integrity have been purchased by money. The transnational or global U.S. corporations pay multi-million dollar compensation packages to top managers, who achieve these “performance awards” by replacing U.S. labor with foreign labor. While Washington worries about “the Muslim threat,” Wall Street, U.S. corporations and “free market” shills destroy the U.S. economy and the prospects of tens of millions of Americans.

Americans, or most of them, have proved to be putty in the hands of the police state.

Americans have bought into the government’s claim that security requires the suspension of civil liberties and accountable government.

Astonishingly, Americans, or most of them, believe that civil liberties, such as habeas corpus and due process, protect “terrorists,” and not themselves. Many also believe that the Constitution is a tired old document that prevents government from exercising the kind of police state powers necessary to keep Americans safe and free.

Most Americans are unlikely to hear from anyone who would tell them any different.

I was associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. I was Business Week’s first outside columnist, a position I held for 15 years. I was columnist for a decade for Scripps Howard News Service, carried in 300 newspapers. I was a columnist for the Washington Times and for newspapers in France and Italy and for a magazine in Germany. I was a contributor to the New York Times and a regular feature in the Los Angeles Times. Today I cannot publish in, or appear on, the American “mainstream media.”

For the last six years I have been banned from the “mainstream media.” My last column in the New York Times appeared in January, 2004, coauthored with Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer representing New York. We addressed the offshoring of U.S. jobs. Our op-ed article produced a conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and live coverage by C-Span. A debate was launched. No such thing could happen today.

For years I was a mainstay at the Washington Times, producing credibility for the Moony newspaper as a Business Week columnist, former Wall Street Journal editor, and former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. But when I began criticizing Bush’s wars of aggression, the order came down to Mary Lou Forbes to cancel my column.

The American corporate media does not serve the truth. It serves the government and the interest groups that empower the government.
America’s fate was sealed when the public and the anti-war movement bought the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory. The government’s account of 9/11 is contradicted by much evidence. Nevertheless, this defining event of our time, which has launched the US on interminable wars of aggression and a domestic police state, is a taboo topic for investigation in the media. It is pointless to complain of war and a police state when one accepts the premise upon which they are based.

These trillion dollar wars have created financing problems for Washington’s deficits and threaten the U.S. dollar’s role as world reserve currency. The wars and the pressure that the budget deficits put on the dollar’s value have put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block. Former Goldman Sachs chairman and U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is after these protections for the elderly. Fed chairman Bernanke is also after them. The Republicans are after them as well. These protections are called “entitlements” as if they are some sort of welfare that people have not paid for in payroll taxes all their working lives.

With over 21 per cent unemployment as measured by the methodology of 1980, with American jobs, GDP, and technology having been given to China and India, with war being Washington’s greatest commitment, with the dollar over-burdened with debt, with civil liberty sacrificed to the “war on terror,” the liberty and prosperity of the American people have been thrown into the trash bin of history.

The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off.

Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts03242010.html

He paints a dark picture.

Its a wonder he is still alive what with all his truth telling and all....;)

Does anyone else find it ironic that one of the first lines of this rant is, "Today Americans are ruled by propaganda"?

I'm sure he keeps a sharp eye out for those black helicopters.

Not a big surprise. He should talk to Noam Chomsky.

Not sure what he means by this:

"When I read economists describe offshoring as free trade based on comparative advantage, I realize that there is no intelligence or integrity in the American economics profession."

Isn't that the standard believable rationale for offshoring? Why is it false? It may be very bad for a lot of Americans, but it still seems to be true.

I think it's in reference, specifically, to the "free trade" part. It's not like they just up and decided to go overseas due to reduced cost alone. Tax and regulation (government coercion) made it a necessity to keep the business afloat. In doing so, the producing class vanished to make way for the consuming class. And the tax code provides further incentive to conduct business as a foreign entity. If you read PCR regularly he delves more into the topic. BUT since "conspiracy" is another term for fairy tale it doesn't actually exist anyway. One guy makes the decision for an entire multinational, for absolutely no reason whatsoever, to move overseas.

I understand it quite well:

We've pretty much reached the offshore saturation point. It was good for a couple of decades and for short term profits. But now that many of our citizens have lost their jobs, and our manufacturing infrastructure has been gutted, there's little left to to recover our broken economy. A handful of people profited from the offshore gluttony, while the rest were left to pay the price of their corporate greed.

In other words, the off-shore gutting of American industry has caught up with us and we've got nothing to show for it except alot of unemployed Americans and the cheap consumer goods sold at Walmart made in China.

I agree with that completely but I don't see how that result is not exactly what the free trade globalizers argued for in the 90's. They claimed that the US advantage was in 'knowledge workers'. Export all the 'non-knowledge jobs' and the US will realize its comparative advantage. That's what happened. Now we're left with a huge class of people in low paying service jobs and a wealthy elite.

i was surprised to see this article posted here. i read it this morning as part of my daily perusal of the "counterpunch" site, but would never think to post such seemingly "left wing" ideas on this forum. i guess one needn't be a dirty bolshevik like me to appreciate it? anyway, thanks for sharing.

p.s. counterpunch has many contributors with many differing points of view, as the original poster already knows.

Those are the same people who made the millions and billions from their claims. How's that's worked out now that our country and economy are in shambles with little hope of ever recovering?

It takes alot more than 'knowledge workers' to have a healthy and viable economy. Some of the most 'non-knowledge" people I have known are also the most capable and intelligent people I've ever met. Just because one doesn't wear a suit and tie or have a degree to earn a living doesn't mean they aren't as intelligent as someone that does. Often exactly the opposite is truer.

Since he's an economist and a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, I'm sure he knows the meaning of comparative advantage. If you read the rest of the paragraph it's easy enough to see his intent.

Just tonight on Jim Cramer's stock-pumping show, he mentioned that usually when you see a company laying off workers, you want to buy the stock. The rising stock price is a short-term advantage to the corporation, but with long-term negative consequences for the economy: higher unemployment.

Roberts is pointing out the same with off-shoring. We are at the point where we are living with the long-term negative consequences. I think his problem with fellow economists, is their reluctance or refusal to admit this is the case.

I agree with that too. But I don't see why Roberts trashes economists for arguing that case. Economists aren't interested in advocating for the wealth and benefits of the working classes in any given country. The efficiency of the global economy can be really bad for the working classes. Nothing new there.

Those profitting from offshore moves still have their money. I'd say it worked out well for them. There are very few businesses that will choose patriotism over profits.

For once we're in full agreement.

But that's looking at the economy strictly from a national perspective. If US jobs are moved offshore to lower labor cost markets, and US workers lose their jobs, the reduction in prices and increase in profits for the company that does it is not viewed as a bad thing by global economists.
Wouldn't Indians look at this whole transition with an entirely different lens seeing it as good for Indian workers, even if bad for US workers. Economists take an international capitalist perspective, not a national or international workers perspective. Labor is strictly a cost to the global economist. The health and goodness of a nation are irrelevant to the capitalist economist.