By Nikki Alexander
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
http://nikkialexander.wordpress.com
September 18, 2009
It’s all the rage these days to sell public assets to pay off government debt. We mustn’t default, after all. We just hate to see our national parks, public roads, energy grids, water, hospitals and schools being sold to robber barons. Do we have anything to sell that the majority of Americans wouldn’t mind parting with?
What about all that Pentagon real estate owned by US taxpayers? Over 1,000 military bases worldwide. That real estate must be worth a fortune. Given the worldwide inflation of real estate values, created by the central banks, it must be worth trillions. We could close our worldwide military bases and sell that real estate to the locals who would probably jump at the chance to get rid of a foreign occupying army. We could ask the buyers to pay for the land with worthless Federal Reserve notes. That would solve their problem of how to get rid of their worthless US dollars and simultaneously give Americans a sufficient amount of worthless dollars to pay back the Federal Reserve for the national debt they created with worthless Federal Reserve notes. Without those military bases we couldn’t have wars and we should be able to drastically reduce the Pentagon budget, saving even more money ~ and lives! Just think of it … close to one trillion dollars every year being sucked up by the Pentagon would be liberated for health care, education, infrastructure and a peacetime economy. We could even get rid of the Pentagon all together. After all, we lived quite comfortably without it for 170 years.
While we’re at it, we could sell off those secret CIA torture prisons; close all those military labs that make chemical and biological weapons and the pharmaceutical labs that create deadly vaccines. This would free up enough cash to save our hospitals, schools and national parks with money left over to clean up all the depleted uranium sites contaminating 39 of our states.
We could get rid of the domestic surveillance apparatus and stop outsourcing intelligence gathering to private “security” firms, cancel the contracts with mercenaries and assassins, stop funding military recruiters in our schools and stop paying for coups in countries where people would rather elect their own leaders. That would save a fortune. Selling off the whole covert operations apparatus would have the double advantage of fetching a good price and freeing other people to live their lives in peace.
If we wanted to permanently flourish we could get rid of the Federal Reserve and restore the function of money creation to the public ~ constitutional money backed by the full faith and credit of US citizens. A new monetary system owned and controlled by the public would ensure that credit is always available to cities and states, schools, hospitals, small businesses and homeowners. We wouldn’t have to sell off the public assets we value because we wouldn’t have any government debt. Problem solved.
The public has plenty of toxic assets to sell. Wall Street hasn’t cornered that market. I wonder why Obama hasn’t thought of this himself. Perhaps the $900,000 in “campaign contributions” from Goldman Sachs is clouding his vision or perhaps the advice he gets from the privately-owned Federal Reserve is self-serving; perhaps the corporate CEOs that rake in billions from public despair have his ear or perhaps the beneficiaries of Pentagon wars have convinced him that killing people in Afghanistan and Iraq will bring greater returns than selling off the toxic assets Americans really don’t want.
Paying off the national debt is a no brainer when you have a conscience.
see
Taking Down a Nation: Money, Murder and National Sovereignty by Nikki Alexander
Dandelion Salad 
We should get rid of the Federal Reserve Bank and give congress control over our money. The Federal Reserve Bank is a private company. The government has no real control over it, but it can abolish it. We get rid of the Federal Reserve, our debt is gone over night.
Sadly, those assets wouldn’t be worth much to others.
bah america and banks, this is balck magic:)
This is the logical answer to America’s debt problem and also to the suffering of so many people around the world who have seen their countries destroyed. Just get rid of the Pentagon and CIA. The United States already has enough nuclear bombs to destroy the world several times over. Who in the world would be crazy enough to start a major war against us? However, the television has done so much fear mongering on the American people that if one made this suggestion, they would react as if one were speaking Martian. It has long been realized that capitalism, without massive infusions of government money, would collapse of its own internal contradictions. According to Noam Chomsky, there was a debate after the Great Depression and World War 2 as to whether to spend the money constructively or put the country on a permanent war basis. The ruling class chose the latter because the former involved the people more in democratic processes and feelings of solidarity with other people. Also, of course, war is beneficial to capitalists in many other ways such as the extension of empire and exploitation of Third World people.
A better idea: Even with deregulation, much of what the banksters and Big Insurance have pulled on the public is still legally fraud. Pass legislation that convicted fraudsters may be subjected to the same type of civil assets forfeiture we now use against (non-CIA) drug dealers. Then charge and convict the banksters and Big Insurance. This should pay off the deficit _and_ fund Congress-level medical care through 2050.
All good suggestions. Since the money is owed to banks, and the banks have fattened at the public trough for decades, the government could simply refuse to pay and let the baks fail. Selling off toxic assets seems a good idea, but selling off roads, parks, et cetera is not nearly so appealing.