Exploring Peace Outside the Box

June 28, 2017

People are always saying to think outside the box. Well, if "E" is for effort, then John Rachel and his book The Peace Dividend: The Most Controversial Proposal in the History of the World get an "A" for action.

The box is the old way of thinking and acting. It is repeating the same old tired clichés. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting change. Change doesn't happen inside the box.

Obamacare was and is a fraud: an original Republican concoction implemented by the corrupt Democrats, far short of Medicare provisions, and leaving the door open for enormous abuses. Trumpcare is even worse, but it can't get much worse than that, because the criminals in power are courting an explosion and they sense it—at least some of them do. Hence all the vacillation with "Trumpcare."

Inside the box are politicians promising what they are going to do for us when they mean "to" us. Inside the box are politicians saying they feel our pain when they don't. It's them saying they are going to create jobs and instead they create "austerity". Their plan for saving Social Security and Medicare is to destroy it. Their tax breaks for the rich and polluters never trickle down. Deregulating consumer safety isn't safe. The F-35 won't fly right. For them disarmament is building fewer but bigger nukes. Supporting wars, coups, regime change, and rightwing dictators; threatening Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and Venezuela is not promoting world peace.

Staying inside the box is childhood poverty, families without healthcare and electing politicians who keep clawing back safety nets from people who need them and giving safety nets to billionaires who don't need them. Inside the box is dumbing down the public, historical amnesia, propaganda, false flags, and flag waving. Fear of terrorists, Islamophobia, and Russiaphobia are insane. One is much more likely to be killed by a falling coconut than by terrorists, Muslims, Kim Jong-un, Ali Khamenei, Xi Jinping, Raul Castro, or Putin.

John Rachel is a great explorer outside the box. He spent years outside the box working on his websites and his book The Peace Dividend: The Most Controversial Proposal in the History of the World. He is thoroughly dedicated to ending endless-war that is killing millions of people, destroying lives, turning once prosperous countries into rubble, and neglecting the citizens of the U.S.A. The Peace Dividend and the Candidate's Contract are ways of ending U.S. war for natural resources, exploitation, greed, power, hegemony and Empire.

John's book, The Peace Dividend opens with a great remembering of the unprecedented U.S. endless war and unlimited war spending of the 21^st century. From mission leap to mission creep, the U.S. Empire has caused a tremendous waste of human lives, plundering of the treasury and the rape of Mother Earth. The squander has defrauded U.S. citizen of the human progress and well-being that other highly-developed countries enjoy in the 21st century. America isn't great when it is number 19^th out of 20 in the United Nations Index of Human Development.

John is thoroughly serious about the government owing every citizen a refund for the defective, fraudulent, and dangerous war product that we have been purchasing. John has been working outside the box to starve the beastly military-industrial war machine before it kills more innocent lives.

The world desperately needs an end to U.S. wars, and we want our money back, and a written guarantee that in the future representatives will represent us, and not the profiteers, privateers, and mercenaries.

The Peace Dividend is karma-esque Reaganism in reverse. Ronald Reagan starved to death Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal social programs with tax-cuts for the wealthy, exorbitant military spending and Star Wars. Reagan turned the U.S. from a creditor nation into a debtor nation.

Staying inside the box is childhood poverty, families without healthcare and electing politicians who keep clawing back safety nets from people who need them and giving safety nets to billionaires who don't need them. Inside the box is dumbing down the public, historical amnesia, propaganda, false flags, and flag waving. Fear of terrorists, Islamophobia, and Russiaphobia are insane. One is much more likely to be killed by a falling coconut than by terrorists, Muslims, Kim Jong-un, Ali Khamenei, Xi Jinping, Raul Castro, or Putin.

So why is John's Peace Dividend met with skepticism? It is normal to expect a peace dividend after a major U.S. war. The department of war's budget in both inflation adjusted dollars and as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product has declined after every major war in our history, including World War Two, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, until the 21^st century's endless war.

Historically U.S. wars were paid for by excise taxes, income taxes, estate taxes, and borrowing mostly from citizens. Now the rich have gone on a tax strike. Wars are financed out of so-called discretionary federal spending financed by middleclass income taxes and debt borrowed from foreigners. The rich no longer pay their fair share, the estate tax is being eliminated entirely, and the U.S. is borrowing 5 Trillion dollars from foreigners.

"What is good for General Motors is good for America", said former C.E.O. Charles E. Wilson in 1953 at his Senate confirmation hearings for Secretary of Defense. Five-star General Dwight D. Eisenhower (Ike) had just been inaugurated as president. Ike and Wilson cut defense spending dramatically from the World War Two and Korean War levels. General Motors thrived because people had the money to buy new cars. Our collective history is to oppose having a standing army, to disarm after wars and end wartime austerity. The people got a peace dividend in prosperity after past wars. It was expected that the next generation would have it better than their parents' generation.

Ike had run for president as a Republican on the platform of ending the Korean War and being less reactionary to the Soviets. Ike cut defense spending from $44 billion annually to $33 billion annually by 1956; that was a whopping "prosperity dividend" of 25%.

Dwight Eisenhower: Not exactly a saint in foreign policy, or the greatest statesman, but a damn sight better than the coarse sociopaths, hypocrites and outright international criminals we have today at the helm.

[dropcap]U[/dropcap]nder Ike and Wilson's prosperity dividend, the economy boomed like never before! Who could complain about that? The Pentagon and the Democrats, that's who:

"[Eisenhower] has failed to seek peace with determination, for his disarmament policy has failed to strike hard at the institution of war...budget balancing and tax reduction now come before the wants of our national security... Republicans have slashed our own armed strength, weakened our capacity to deal with military threats, stifled our air force, starved our army...We stand for strong defense forces so clearly superior in modern weapons." [Democratic Party Platform, August 13, 1956.]

For all his putative progressivism, JFK was a Cold War liberal who got us into the Vietnam swamp. LBJ deepened it. Both Democrats, of course. The 1960s set the pattern of unquestioned belligerence and arms competition with Russia, whether Moscow wanted that or not. (They didn't.)

When the Democrats gained in control of Congress in 1956, defense spending skyrocketed to $41 billion annually by 1958. When Ike left office in 1961, the Pentagon budget was $51 Billion. John F. Kennedy's 1962 presidential platform was to "close the missile gap" with the Soviet Union and increase defense spending.

"we must first restore our national strength-military, political, economic, and moral...our military position today is measured in terms of gaps--missile gap, space gap, limited-war gap...A first order of business of a Democratic Administration will be a complete re-examination of the organization of our armed forces….”  [Democratic Party Platform, July 11, 1960.]

By the end of the Vietnam War 1975 defense spending was at $90 billion annually. People were beginning to understand what Ike had warned us about in his 1961 farewell speech:

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist." [Which should be seen and heard in its entirety.]

President Jimmy Carter's 1977 defense budget gave America a smaller than promised and temporary peace dividend. Then in 1981 Ronald Reagan, a Republican, became president and he went on a military-industrial-complex spending binge, and he gave the rich massive tax-cuts in 1981 and then again in 1986. The top marginal tax rate was reduced from 70% on the rich to 30%. Reagan was willingly entranced by shaman chanting Voodoo Economics (a.k.a. supply-side economics). Reagan's mantra became "trickledown, trickledown, trickledown…

After the 9-11-2001 attacks, George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan less than one month later on October 7, 2001 and then Bush invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003. The U.S. has been in a never ending war for 16 years, at the cost of Trillions of dollars, and millions of people destroyed, mostly people of color.

Neither the Afghan Taliban nor Iraq's Saddam Hussein had anything to do with the attacks of 9-11, but they had oil, natural gas, pipeline routes, and strategic locations. Bush lied the country into war to get them, and he got nothing. But the military-industrial-complex got lucrative contracts, an estimated $5 Trillion and still counting the cost, as the wars go on, and on, and on! Just like Reagan, Bush believed in Voodoo Economics and trickledown theory. So on top of record costs for criminal wars of aggression, Bush gave the rich more tax cuts.

President Barack Obama became president in 2009 on the promise of change. Instead he intensified the criminal Bush wars, drone assassinations, torture, and political prisoners. Obama embraced Voodoo Economics by bailing out the banks, austerity for the middle class and poor, and extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich in 2010. Trickledown economics is a zombie that just won't die, but it keeps killing the host.

In 2010 Obama used smoke and mirrors to give the illusion of cuts in defense spending. It was sleight of hand of delayed spending, not real cuts. Then in 2013 the sequester rules cut spending across the board by $1.2 trillion to be spread over nine years.

President Donald Trump does not believe in climate change which has been proven, but he believes in Voodoo Economics which has been a fraud. Trump wants to cut taxes again for the rich and eliminate the estate tax completely. Trump wants to exempt the military from the sequester rules, too. How much of our blood will ever satisfy this vampire?

According to an article by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Patricia Cohen in the New York Times, the Trump tax plan would "shift Trillions from U.S. coffers to the richest". Why should the rich be concerned about wars? They are not! They get "war dividends", extravagant luxuries and their children will never have to fight and die in war.

Supply-side economic theory, neoliberalism, and trickle-down economics are all Voodoo Economics. Like Reagan's ghost it wanders the White House and the Halls of Congress...trickledown, trickledown, trickledown. The only thing that trickles down is the sewage of wars and austerity for the middle class and the poor. America's investment in human resources and human development has been stunted. Health, education, a living wage, and equality are treated like an orphan, while the rich get richer.

Every measurement of the middle class family and the poor since the 1970's, shows a steady decline in their well-being. The Peace Dividend would be a good start to bailing out the middle class and the poor that have been the victims of boom and bust Voodoo Economics.

Unless something creative is done, like John's Peace Dividend and the Candidate Contract, controversial though they are, then nothing can be expected to change. Lives and the national treasury will continue to be squandered on endless wars, death, and destruction. Continuing to let the rich go without paying their fair share of taxes will continued to cause austerity, a decline in the nation's well-being, no universal healthcare, no living wage, and massive student loans that mortgages the next generation's future. Unless the direction we are heading in is changed it will lead to catastrophic disaster from wars, climate change and national financial ruin.

So let's turn the table around. The Peace Dividend will make wars unaffordable by putting the war chest into kid's college savings accounts and into families' healthcare IRA's. Development requires investment in human resources. That means investing in healthcare, education, a living wage, and economic security for the disabled and the elderly.

John's Peace Dividend is more than fair. His plan reimburses all citizens. No class warfare, everybody gets the same dividend, even though it is the middle class and poor that has mostly been the victims.

By John's calculation taxpayers have been cheated out of $4.82 Trillion. We deserve a refund: "The Peace Dividend refund would put a Peace Dividend check into every citizen's pocket of $14,952. The Treasury would have to borrow the money since it is already broke. The debt from the Peace Dividend would hinder the U.S. from being financially solvent enough to borrow more money for wars. Citizens would be free to spend the Peace Dividend however they wish and the world would be freed from U.S. bombs and drones.

It is too good of a bargain when one considers that the fraudulent Iraq War Crime and tax-cuts for the rich has cheated Americans out of double that amount. But if we are going to prevent the next war that will kill millions of people, maybe even destroy civilization, it is not now time to quibble. The first priority is to starve the war beast so it cannot keep killing.

John's book is full of ideas, data, and sources, and out of the box ideas that he is working hard on. The least one can do is not criticizing John until they have read his book, The Peace Dividend: The Most Controversial Proposal in the History of the World. Join his Peace Dividend project. Visit his blogspot. Get all the answers to the questions and criticism you have not even thought about yet. Get the facts. Everything and much more than I have said here is 100% backed up by John's indisputable sources. Stop the yakety yak. Get out of the box.

Investing in human resources is in the U.S. Constitution, that one of the purposes of government is to "promote the general Welfare." Every reliable public opinion poll (see John's latest video) confirms that citizens want the government to invest in human resources. And one way to get that investment is to demand it in writing. If politicians won't sign up, then tell them that John says, "No Candidate Contract No Vote".

Support the Peace Dividend and the Candidate Contract as if our lives depend on them. They do.