Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Technological Elite

 David Rothkopf makes an interesting point in his 2008 book Superclass.  In Dwight Eisenhower's famous military-industrial-complex speech, he comments not only on the rise of the military-industrial complex but also on the rise of universities as centers of power.  This is what Eisenhower said in January 1961, 53 years ago:

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

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...

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades...

 Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. 

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

While, as Rothkopf points out in his 2008 book, the influence of the arms industry and the absolute size of the military have waned since the Cold War, the threat of terrorism poses a new complex that mingle military with civil power.  Also, both the 1960s complex and the 2010s complex have relied on finance, which as an institutionalized power center was old in Eisenhower's day but since 1971 has exponentially expanded in influence.

Universities are crucial to the new power complex, just as they were to the military-industrial complex,  not because universities' research is of crucial importance to technological progress--most important technological innovation comes from for-profit sources--but because university professors, who benefit from university endowments that special interests fund, lend an illusive patina of legitimacy and impartiality to federal policy.

Sadly, and this is the truly tragic development since Eisenhower's speech, the American public has shown itself to be incapable of the alertness to the global elite's acquisition of power that Eisenhower thought would be essential to maintain freedom.  The reasons include apathy and an unwillingness to, as Benjamin Franklin put it, question authority.   Another reason is the eagerness of Americans to conform to the norms that the mass media presents to them, and part of the reason is their indoctrination in elementary school, high school, and college.  Americans are increasingly unwilling to take risks and to think for themselves; the unwillingness is both a cause and effect of the increasing power of the nation's technological elite.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand Advocates the Sacrifce of Liberty for Security

James Rieker has forwarded an email about Kirsten Gillibrand's proposal for a law that would violently compel employers to give paid leave for family reasons.   The ones who  would pay were this proposal to pass would be the high school and college grads whose employment prospects will be diminished by higher costs and loss of flexibility. Monitoring of cheaters and conflict will raise costs; employees who otherwise would have avoided employment will seek jobs in order to file parental claims. That is not new; bank tellers have long sought employment right before or after pregnancy.  The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 has  prevented employers from discriminating against pregnant job seekers: They have to treat pregnancy like any other disability.  Gillibrand's proposed leave law takes the incentive to cheat employers one step further. A natural response for employers will be to hire the elderly, who cannot afford to retire because of America's mismanaged social security-and-pension system, and exclude younger job seekers. Discrimination in favor of those over 40 is legal under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. 

 

In any case, the chief people hurt by compulsory family leave are young job seekers.  Since they are Obama’s chief supporters, they will pay for their ideological choices.  Frequently, my students insist that access to public housing and welfare is more important to them than freedom.  As Franklin put it, “Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.”

 

Rieker writes:

 

Proposed on Jan 23, 2014 at a News Conference at a YMCA on long Island 3 months paid leave to all workers, The Kingston Freeman also carried it on page 5 Jan 24, 2014- Friday. The Conference was by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand stating that the Senator and other progressive democrats have a plan to expand Family Leave to All American Workers.

 

Currently the law offers 3 months unpaid leave to about half of all American Workers in a Family Emergency. Senator Gillibrand and other Social Democrats want 3 MONTHS PAID LEAVE FOR ALL UNITED STATES WORKERS. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand suggest that  the Average cost would amount to one cup of coffee a week!!

 

Once you offer paid leave it will cost more than a cup of Coffee a week as Gillibrand suggests.  I suppose they based it on the current usage of Unpaid  Family Leave,  But that usage will soon snowball when it becomes Paid Leave. I bet even Gillibrand will use it!! Everyone Will Abuse It!! and the plan is not written for just medical emergencies, but as a Family crisis, that takes a lot under its family abuse wing!

 

Senator why don't you have every worker contribute 2 cups of coffee money a week into a family leave emergency policy run by Social Security,  that pays interest on the money, and the worker can Get All His Money Back when he has an emergency, after all   Everyone is entitled to it and everyone should receive it.  I think up to half the workers will abuse the Senators Plan and will do it year in and year out!!  It will cause a new government freeloader class for three months out of every year.  The Cost will be staggering to the Nation in more ways than one.

 

We heard Kristen's Sob Story that all other industrial ( socialists) Nations have Paid Family Leave and alluded that we should too. It reminds me of a kid saying Andrew gets a $100 a week allowance and I should too.  NO Kristen you have to do chores around the house, then you can get an allowance!!

 

Here are the fun examples of what can and probably will happen!

Mom is getting old and doesn't feel confortable driving since dad passed away. I plan to comfort her and drive her to her appointments.  {So Family Leave consists of  a Daughter helping in a Family Crisis.} The Crisis would be driving to the  Doctor and Dental appointments and going to the hair dresser and shopping with her mom this winter in Miami Beach. Mom always goes to Miami Beach every winter. As her daughter it is my duty to help her every year for the few remaining years my 62 year old mom has left. 

 

My mother is going through a Divorce and she is moving to Myrtle beach. I must offer my help, after my Family Leave expires please continue  my 5 weeks vacation time, as I plan on taking my vacation after this and the Bahamas are so close, so my mother and I will take a needed vacation, and do some dating!

 

My brother has extremely high blood pressure and uneven heart beat, he is taking pills for anxiety and I must spend time with him, to help him through this dangerous time. we will be meeting in Las Vegas. 

 

You will see Supervisors and Union officials disappear every year for three months on your dime. perhaps one third of the work force will disappear in the busy season on Paid Family Leave. employees are paid for family leave by the other two thirds who are still working,  I bet they will work much harder with a smaller work force during the busy time with happy faces!!  Oh yes!!

 

The government may have to hire new workers to replace those on Family Crisis leave, some Real businesses  will close, unable to operate on these uncertain terms, as some businesses  have trouble with just vacation and sick time now!

 

These Hair Brained Progressive Democratic Schemes always give to those who don't earn it .  When our Country borrows $40 for every $100 it spends .  Spending more money is Ludicrous. that is why we have T axed    E nough   A lready     party.                    

Andrew Cuomo's Totalitarianism

(H/t Carl Paladino.)  Establishing an ideological litmus test for citizenship is an element of totalitarianism, and New Yorkers might consider whether, under Cuomo, their form of government has deteriorated into a totalitarian form.  I have considered leaving the state all my life, and I chiefly remain here because of my late parents, my sister, and my wife's health problems.  Nevertheless, hearing an extremist remark like Cuomo's marks a new low.What is the difference between Cuomo and a dictator who tells the public which beliefs are acceptable?

Shining Light on the Shadows of Power: An Interview with James Perloff

I just submitted this piece to The Lincoln Eagle in Kingston, NY. 

Shining Light on the Shadows of Power: An Interview with James Perlofff

 Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.

James Perloff has written four books on the elite governing America, on Darwinism, and on the relationships among institutions that dominate American politics from behind the scenes. In The Shadows of Power Perloff traces the history of the Council on Foreign Relations. In his most recent book, Truth Is a Lonely Warrior, Perloff analyzes how history and current events are leading us toward a world government dictatorship. Perloff’s website is http://jamesperloff.com/. The Lincoln Eagle (TLE) interviewed Perloff by email.

TLE: In your work you refer to the Establishment. What does that mean? Who controls America?

Perloff: In America’s Sixty Families Ferdinand Lundberg wrote: “The United States is owned and dominated by a hierarchy of its sixty richest families…” He was talking about names like the Rockefellers, Morgans, Mellons, Vanderbilts, Du Ponts, Astors and Warburgs, and he showed their control was such that they preselected the presidential candidates before the nominating conventions took place. Things haven’t changed today. Voting gives us the illusion that power belongs to the people, but it really belongs to the rich and the few.

TLE: The media contributes to that process. Whose views does the media reflect?
 
Perloff: That of the media’s ownership. Lundberg documented in 1937 that a plutocracy owned nearly all of the major media organs. We have diverse outlets but not diverse ownership. Today, Time Warner owns CNN, AOL, Time magazine, People, Money, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, New Line Cinema – the list goes on and on. Similar with News Corp. You have maybe a dozen giant multinationals owning all the major media.

TLE: How can Americans obtain information about current events given that their media, such as ABC, MSNBC, The New York Times, and Time are controlled by banking-and-corporate interests?

Perloff: People should investigate alternative media: magazines like The New American, radio shows like Deanna Spingola’s, websites like henrymakow.com, and books like my own Truth Is a Lonely Warrior, published in Kindle and paperbound last year.

TLE: What is the biggest problem facing Americans today?

Perloff: Of course the problems are innumerable: political, economic, and social. If they were boiled down to one, I would say it is a self-serving shadow government that runs the country from behind the scenes of our democratic trappings.

TLE: A related issue is that of education, which works in tandem with the media to indoctrinate rather than inform or educate. How can parents eliminate indoctrination from their children’s education?

Perloff: The best alternative is home schooling; if not home schooling, private religious schooling; where these alternatives are not possible, give them information resources as an antidote to media indoctrination. Truth is more powerful than lies.

TLE: Why is there a trend toward increasing centralization and government authority?

Perloff: That is a means of consolidating power. The Founding Fathers understood that centralized power leads to tyranny, which is why they gave us limited government with numerous checks and balances.

TLE: What is the link between the Federal Reserve Bank and the money center banking interests, the Rockefellers, Morgans, and Warburgs, and more recently Henry Paulson, Goldman Sachs, George Soros, and other bailout beneficiaries?

Perloff: The Rockefeller, Morgan and Warburg interests were all represented at the secret 1910 meeting on Jekyll Island where the Fed was planned. Paul Warburg was the Fed’s first vice chairman. Henry Paulson was CEO of Goldman Sachs immediately before he became treasury secretary and then oversaw, with Bernanke, the 2008 $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, which included billions for Goldman Sachs. The Fed is a golden goose for the private banks.

TLE: What has been the role of the Council on Foreign Relations with respect to the relationships in the prior question?

Perloff: The role of the Council is to formulate foreign policy, but that policy is cohesive with the wishes of bankers and the Fed. The Council was founded by the very same people who founded the Fed; the Council’s first president was J. P. Morgan’s personal attorney; David Rockefeller was the Council’s chairman for many years.

TLE: What has been the link between the Council and the presidents?

Perloff: The Council dominates the cabinets of presidents whether Democratic or Republican. When my book went to press last year, the count was 21 Secretaries of Defense, 19 Treasury Secretaries, 18 Secretaries of State, and 16 CIA directors have been members of the Council. This is why foreign policy changes very little, if at all, from one president to the next. In the meantime, how many Americans have even heard of the Council?

TLE: Do the Council and the Establishment favor one-world government? Why?

Perloff: The Council on Foreign Relations was founded in 1921 for the express purpose of creating a one-world government. In the immediate context, it was founded as a reaction to the U.S. Senate’s rejection of the 1919 Versailles Treaty, which would have entangled us with the League of Nations. The plans for the UN were drawn up by Council members. The EU and NAFTA are regional stepping stones. World government would be the consolidation of all power on the planet and thus invoke tyranny on a global scale. This is predicted in the Bible, by the way, in the book of Revelation.

TLE: What is the link, if any, among Agenda 21 and the trends that you describe in your books?

Perloff: Environmentalism, as expressed in Agenda 21 and other programs, is a pretext for controlling people. Up until the 1960s, war was considered the best means of controlling populations, but with the advent of nuclear weapons, the Establishment was concerned that war might no longer be a viable option, so the environment was chosen to succeed war as the new primary threat to survival. Global warming and other false scares have been dreamed up and promoted in order give government the excuse to micro-regulate our lives. Now they’re even talking about giving the government remote control of home thermostats. 

TLE: What has been the role of the US government in financing its own enemies, including Stalin, Mao, al Qaeda, and the Ayatollah Khomeini?

Perloff: It is well documented that Stalin’s predecessors, Lenin and Trotsky, were financed by the Rothschilds and US banking firms like Kuhn, Loeb. During World War II, When Stalin was threatened with destruction by the Axis powers, he was rescued with billions of dollars’ worth of American Lend-Lease. Mao would not have risen to power without the help of the U.S. State Department: Google my article “China Betrayed.” Regarding the Ayatollah, google my article “Iran and the Shah: What Really Happened.” Of course, there’s quite a bit on the Internet on al Qaeda being a creation of Western intelligence services.

TLE: Will the future bring a one-world government with a violent dictator at its head?

Perloff: From the Bible, from Orwell, from the trend of events and from the internal documents of the plutocracy we are talking about, that appears to be the case, but for the sake of righteousness, which is obedience to God, we should resolutely oppose it.

Thank you, Mr. Perloff. I hope that readers will buy your books and wean themselves from the mass media.