The Same Old Garbage: Romney Does Florida

The Same Old Garbage

Romney Does Florida

by ALAN FARAGO

Mitt Romney ventured into Miami this week and at a campaign stop at Palacios de los Jugos, only a day after introducing his running mate Congressman Paul Ryan.

Romney, without Ryan, did not mention “Cuba”, once. It was a check-the-box visit to a key constituency in a swing state. That the venue was owned by a federally convicted coke smuggler (reported by Miami New Times) serves to remind that when considering Florida politics, Miami is ground zero. It is where the 2000 presidential election was stolen. It is where the housing boom materialized. It is the mortgage fraud capital of the United States. It is where backstories deserve attention.

Romney was introduced by Florida senator Marco Rubio, a political offspring of Castro hatred. Rubio has plenty of company; he is a West Dade boy through and through. The bona fides against Castro are so important in Miami politics that Rubio’s resume includes serious misrepresentations of his parents’ experiences prior to becoming exiles from Cuba.

On one level the primary purpose of anti-Castro fervor was used to enlist support in Congress for re-taking the island nation and then, to grind its economy to dirt. A more important purpose, though less recognized by the rest of the nation, was to organize control of Miami-Dade politics, including contracts flowing from its multi-billion dollar budget. Jorge Mas Canosa, the founder of the Cuban America National Foundation in Miami, became renown for the railing against the Castro regime, but he was wealthy through political connections at County Hall. There were two important purposes of that control: first, to influence infrastructure contracts and, second, to rezone farmland to development. Both cemented political alliances. Anti-Castro sentiment was easier to mine in the Mas generation because the wounds were so fresh. Over time, and after Miami-Dade politics was locked down by Cuban American campaign funders from the development community, the demographics began to change. Mas Canosa (and Miami’s) economic base was suburban sprawl, places like West Dade where Marco Rubio grew up. As suburbs moved further and further from real jobs at the airport or downtown, the new buyers in those former Everglades wetlands were less likely to be Cuban than flight capital from other parts of the Americas.

The person who most closely followed Mas’ leadership in the business community, at the intersection of local politics and zoning control, was a Cuban American developer, Sergio Pino. Pino and his allies exerted control through the Latin Builders Association and through support of Spanish AM radio personalities who specialized in riling up voting blocs with anti-Castro venom. In contrast to Mas, Pino was and is all business. And business is non-partisan (although in Miami it leans heavily GOP). Chris Korge — prominent Democratic fundraiser– and Rodney Barreto — Jeb Bush lieutenant — found wealth following in Pino’s “lobbyist, first, developer later” footsteps.

Two factors are in play, in the “post-ideology” Miami. First, demographics. Younger Cuban Americans are eager to help family left behind in Cuba and view the Miami-Dade political ladder with cynicism. It carries over to indifference and even animosity toward the embargo. The second is economics. The housing crash severely hobbled suburban sprawl in west Dade. Many of the principal actors — like Pino — have been pinned down by debt. The housing crash collapsed Miami businesses based on sprawl. Pino founded US Century Bank to compliment his production home building juggernaut, US Century Homes. The bank, during the boom boom years, grew quickly to over a billion dollars in deposits and a reputation as the insider piggy-bank, but now hobbles along — its Tier One Capital supported by the largest contribution of federal TARP money in the state of Florida.

In Miami New Times, the owner of Palacios de los Jugos Reinaldo Bermudez, who served three years in federal prison, observed, “Here in Miami there are a lot of people with money who have had problems with the law… Thankfully, we all have the opportunity in this country to re-enter society when we’ve done something wrong.”

But there are also a few people who organized vast economic wealth around local political levers that operated according to hatred of Castro which wasn’t illegal in the slightest. It is supported by US foreign policy. They, too, are looking for a way back in the game and in the way that agnostic application of politics most benefits: dropping the embargo against Cuba. There is no money to be made building suburbs in Miami. Havana? Not yet.

There are external factors at work. The collapse of real estate and banking in Spain has had an important effect on local Miami deal makers who successfully exported their business models to Spain, where US-style ghost suburbs now litter the landscape. There has been very little examination of this phenomenon through which a compelling argument can now be made, by Republicans, that lifting the embargo is needed to revive fortunes that were lost in the crash.

Who, exactly, gets to “control” access to Cuba from Miami is the question.

So long as the Cuban American developers were printing money by rezoning farmland to sprawl, the embargo served the purpose to organize Miami and Florida politics to their bidding. Now that sprawl is dead in the dust, the rationale for opposing trade with Cuba has vanished. It requires some leadership in the Cuban American community to reorganize the story line, in order to drop the embargo. The Romney agreement to deploy Marco Rubio, a surrogate for Jeb Bush, to deliver his introduction at the upcoming Republican National Convention applies. Rubio in the spotlight focuses on the electoral value of Florida. But that ignores the backstory. Behind the scenes, it sets the stage for a reversal of the embargo in a way that advantages the GOP if Romney wins.

It is anyone’s guess how Cuba will react to withdrawing the embargo under a Romney presidency. Insiders in Cuba have also benefited from the intractable status quo. But if Republicans vote to bring down the wall, deals will be made regarding access. The stakes are so high in Miami that Republican leaders may decide to sit on the issue until after the election. On the other hand, there is Paul Ryan who was sent to Iowa instead of appearing as expected with Romney in Miami. Delaying support for dropping the embargo could cost Romney the election. Why? Because Romney desperately needs Hispanic votes. Were he to signal support for his running mate’s opposition to the embargo, there would be a rainbow effect with Hispanic voters in western states. Is there a plan afoot to hold down Florida, by Rubio, while Romney ventures across the states?

Timing is everything. Were Romney to play the drop-the-embargo card and lose, it would give President Obama — in his second term — political cover to take down the wall. But the Republicans would not be in control. Democratic senator Bob Menendez (NJ), would. And because of that risk, Florida GOP leaders like Bush and Rubio may sit on their hands this cycle, stop Romney from talking about Cuba or only give him talking points that rehash the same old garbage and let him fight for the Hispanic vote on his own. So what?

Miami Republicans have waited fifty years for Cuba, deploying US foreign policy gridlock to mine political benefits like a Ditch Witch while extracting massive wealth from suburban sprawl. What’s another four more years?

ALAN FARAGO, conservation chair of Friends of the Everglades, lives in south Florida. He can be reached at: afarago@bellsouth.net

Fly me to the moon, and let me play among the stars

Exploiting the Moon and Beyond

Privatizing Space

by PHILIPPE RIVIERE

Elon Musk, who set up the online payment company PayPal, is one of a group of entrepreneurs who made their fortune in IT and then turned their attention to space travel. He is now boss of California-based SpaceX: “I think it would be cool to be born on Earth and die on Mars. Hopefully not at the point of impact.”

He has reason to celebrate. His space capsule Dragon returned safely to Earth on 31 May 2012 after a successful rendezvous with the International Space Station (ISS). “After Sputnik and the cold war space race, followed by the Shuttle era, the first successful launch of a privately developed rocket and capsule on a fee-paying mission is without doubt a major event,” wrote the magazine Flight International (1). SpaceX is contracted to carry out 12 resupply missions to the ISS, delivering 450kg of food and supplies and bringing back waste, at a cost of $1.6bn.

The competitor firm Orbital Sciences, based in Virginia, has a similar contract with Nasa. Obama’s administration told the space sector to seek external funding after the Shuttle’s costs became unsustainable and it had to be retired. While the eventual aim of the commercial companies is independent, manned, space flight, they could also help Nasa end the “embarrassing inability of the world’s largest space agency to launch its own astronauts into space” (2) — Nasa currently has to use Russian Soyuz rockets launched from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

A Shuttle resupply mission to ISS costs between $300m and $1bn, while launching a Falcon 9 rocket (SpaceX’s craft) only costs $60m. SpaceX, set up in 2002, employs 1,800 people and already has customers for its next 40 launches. “We’ll be doing every kind of space transport, except for suborbital [over 100km],” said Musk. “We’ll launch satellites of all shapes and sizes, servicing the space station with cargo and crew, and then the long term objective is to develop a space transport system that will enable humanity to become a multi-planet species” (3).

The entrepreneur Peter Diamandis (4) and Google launched the Lunar X competition — a $30m prize to the first privately funded team that can land a robot on the Moon, have it move 500m and send back pictures and data. Twenty-six companies have entered, and Nasa is already imploring them not to interfere with anything from the Apollo landing site.

“It’s like the advent of the internet in the mid-1990s, when commercial companies entered what was originally a government endeavour,” said Musk. “That move dramatically accelerated the pace of advancement and made the internet accessible to the mass market. I think we’re at a similar inflection point for space. I hope and I believe that this mission [to the ISS] will be historic in marking that turning point towards a rapid advancement in space transportation technology.”

Tourism to Pay

But how will it work economically? The cost of space travel is not a function of the distance but of the force required to escape Earth’s gravity. Services are organised into strata — orbits or particular stations between the Earth and the Moon — that the market could colonise successively.

The lowest stratum is suborbital flight. Richard Branson (eager for publicity for his Virgin airline), the more discreet but more advanced XCOR, and the mysterious Blue Origin, have their eye on this for manned space flight. Other companies such as Masten Space Systems and Armadillo Aerospace plan unmanned flights. Many tourists are prepared to pay $200,000 to look at the Earth from the stratosphere. The lack of friction means crafts can reach extreme speeds, and two-hour flights from New York to Tokyo are being considered in the not-too-distant future. Since gravity is lessened for a few minutes on these flights, physical, chemical and biological experiments could be carried out for companies in industries ranging from construction to pharmaceutical research.

The first ring of satellites is within the low Earth orbit, just above the atmosphere and up to an altitude of 2,000km. Within that, the ISS maintains an orbital altitude of 300-410km; it can be reached by commercial space stations such as those built by Bigelow Aerospace. Fuel tanks and zero-gravity factories could be stationed there, to carry out long-term experiments. Flights reaching these altitudes could supply the ISS, deliver fuel to satellites, repair them, or even bring them back to Earth.

Far beyond them at 20,000km, and requiring much more energy to reach, is the constellation of GPS (Global Positioning System) satellites, while “fixed” television and telecommunications satellites orbit within the geostationary Earth orbit at 35,800km. There are ideas for solar power systems that convert the sun’s energy into microwaves, and send it back to Earth or to other spacecraft. There is also a growth market in recovering the large number of broken or uncontrollable “zombie” satellites. Experts warn of overpopulated orbits, with a growing risk of collisions, and their knock-on effects, as each accident produces new debris (see Space junk graph). The “armament” of space, with orbital weapons and satellite killers is a threat to space exploration. “Tests of Chinese and US anti-satellite weapons in 2007 and 2008 have shown that space is already a theatre of conflict between powers,” wrote Brigadier General Yves Arnaud, head of the French Joint Space Command (5).

Reaching the Moon

The next stop in the sequence is Lagrange point number 1 of the Earth-Moon system (Earth-Moon L1), close to the Moon, which requires relatively little energy to reach from the geostationary orbit: an ideal location for stationing spacecraft. The Lagrange points, also called libration points, are where the gravitational pull of two massive bodies (the Earth and Moon) is balanced, allowing a smaller body to orbit without using much energy. There are no other natural bodies or any of the artificial debris that pollutes terrestrial orbits. Ken Murphy, president of the Moon Society in the US, explained in an article: “Activity is going to expand outward, and once activity has reached the neighbourhood of the Earth-Moon L1 point, [reaching] the Moon (and so much more) becomes a no-brainer” (6).

From L1, it does not take much energy to land on the Moon, or Mars, or travel in the direction of near-Earth objects, whose trajectory crosses the Earth’s orbit. It might be possible to use L1 as a launching point for free flyers, which would go into terrestrial orbits to collect satellites to repair or clean up debris and boomerang back. A service station could be set up there by installing tanks of hydrogen (from Earth) and oxygen (of terrestrial origin, or extracted from material on the Moon’s surface).

Mars remains expensive in terms of time. A manned mission would take several years. Nasa aims to do it in 2030, but private operators dream, and promise their investors, to reach it perhaps by 2025 (7). The space industry would like an infrastructure of cislunar services (between the Earth and Moon) as a platform for as yet unimagined enterprises, for example the surveillance and destruction of asteroids that threaten humanity — a private company is already thinking about this (8). The Moon’s reserves of metals, rare minerals and oxygen have already led to science fiction scenarios. The Moon is home to “20 times more titanium and platinum than anywhere on Earth, not to mention helium 3, a rare isotope that many feel could be the future of energy on Earth and in space,” says the billionaire Naveen Jain, formerly of Microsoft. “We want to solve the problem of energy on Earth by using the Moon as the eighth continent” (9). Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, fantasises about lassoing asteroids and bringing them into the Earth’s orbit to extract their minerals.

Philippe Rivière is a member of Le Monde diplomatique’s editorial team.

Notes.

(1) “Going boldly, for a fee”, Flightglobal.com, 28 May 2012.

(2) “Space: Britain’s New Infrastructure Frontier” (PDF), Institute of Directors, London, May 2012.

(3) Spaceflight Now, 18 May 2011;

(4) He co-founded the Singularity University. See Philippe Rivière, “And if you want to live forever”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, January 2010.

(5) “La reconquête de l’espace”, Géoéconomie, no 61, Paris, Spring 2012.

(6) Ken Murphy, “The cislunar econosphere”, 20 and 27 February 2012.

(7) See the Mars dossier.

(8) AFP, 28 June 2012.

(9) Jeremy Kaplan, “Meet the Man Who Wants to Mine the Moon”, Fox News, 18 October 2011.

This article appears in the excellent Le Monde Diplomatique, whose English language edition can be found at mondediplo.com. This full text appears by agreement with Le Monde Diplomatique. CounterPunch features two or three articles from LMD every month.

Paul Ryan's budget implies that after three decades the federal government will have no money to spend on health research, education, highways, airports, and other infrastructure, the Food and Drug Administration and most other activities that we associate with the federal government. His budget has money for Social Security, Medicare and other health programs and the Defense Department. That’s it.

Defunding the Federal Government

Does Paul Ryan Know What’s in His Budget?

by DEAN BAKER

If the news media had to work for a living, this is what they would all be asking right now. The reason is simple. The projections the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) made for Representative Ryan’s budget imply that he literally wants to shut down the federal government.

His budget implies that after three decades the federal government will have no money to spend on health research, education, highways, airports, and other infrastructure, the Food and Drug Administration and most other activities that we associate with the federal government. His budget has money for Social Security, Medicare and other health programs and the Defense Department. That’s it.

This is not a vicious anti-Ryan attack coming from hyper-partisan Democrats. This is what the analysis of his budget by the non-partisan CBO shows. It’s right there in the fifth row of Table 2.

The table shows that in 2040, Representative Ryan would allot an amount equal to 4.75 percent of GDP to all these other areas of government including defense spending. By 2050, Ryan’s allocation for these areas, including defense, falls to 3.75 percent of GDP.

The defense budget is currently a bit over 4.0 percent of GDP. Ryan has indicated that he would like to maintain or even increase this level of spending. The arithmetic is then straightforward. In 2040, Ryan would leave less than 0.75 percent of GDP for areas of spending that currently require more than five times this amount. In 2050, all these areas of spending would literally have to be zeroed out as defense spending will take up every cent and more that Ryan has left in his budget.

It is important to understand that CBO tried to accurately present the implications of the budget that Representative Ryan gave them. CBO works for Congress. These are career civil servants. They cannot be easily fired, but if CBO’s staff deliberately misrepresented a budget proposal from a powerful member of Congress like Paul Ryan, that is the sort of thing that could get them put out on the street.

The way CBO would typically analyze a proposal is that they would sit down with Representative Ryan and his staff and determine as closely as possible the outlines of the budget he is proposing. They would then produce projections which would be shown to Ryan and his staff to ensure that they had accurately represented his proposed budget. CBO would only publish a document with these projections after Representative Ryan and his staff had a chance to review them and agreed that they had accurately represented his proposal.

This means that there can be no accident here. CBO did not blindside Representative Ryan with a half-baked analysis they did in the middle of the night. We can safely assume that the projections from CBO do in fact represent the budget proposal as presented to them by Representative Ryan and his staff.

This leaves the obvious question. Is he serious? Does Representative Ryan really think it is a good idea to end the federal government’s role in building and maintaining infrastructure, in financing education, in funding basic research in health care and other areas, in maintaining our national parks, federal courts, the FBI? His budget says that this is what he thinks, since these services will not be provided for free (FBI agents expect to get paid), but it is difficult to believe that a politician running for national office would really want to eliminate most of the government.

Anyhow, this is the most basic question that reporters should be asking Representative Ryan now that Governor Romney has selected him as his vice presidential candidate. We know that they all have to run stories about his high school friends and his college courses, but the public has a right to know where he stands on the policy issues that he has put at the center of his political agenda.

If reporters do their job, they have a simple question to put to Mr. Ryan. “Your budget would put an end to everything the government does, except for Social Security, health care and defense. Is this really what you want to do?”

Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy and False Profits: Recoverying From the Bubble Economy.

This column originally appeared in Yahoo Finance.

In an era where just about every politician routinely breaks every promise, the Ecuadorian President keeps his to Assange, though doing so puts him in the crosshair of the most powerful empire, so a salute to Rafael Correa, also, for you show that it’s still possible to be a honorable statesman.

Imagine This...

Decent Men vs. Strutting Ogres

by LINH DINH

Bravo, Ecuador, for its noble, just and beautiful gesture in granting Julian Assange political asylum! In an era where just about every politician routinely breaks every promise, the Ecuadorian President keeps his to Assange, though doing so puts him in the crosshair of the most powerful empire, so a salute to Rafael Correa, also, for you show that it’s still possible to be a honorable statesman.

Just days after the London Olympics, where John Lennon’s “Imagine,” with its message of universal peace, justice and brotherhood was sang, the UK government revealed, once again, its vicious true face when it threatened to storm the Ecuadorian Embassy to arrest Assange, then refused to let him leave the UK after he was granted asylum. Like the US, Great Britain is a world power that’s acting like a street corner hoodlum, petty and vindictive, in contrast to tiny Ecuador, with its principled stance, so who’s really great here?

Going after its political enemies, America has often disgraced itself. In 1992, the US indicted Bobby Fischer for playing competitive chess in Yugoslavia, in violation of US sanctions against that country, but it wasn’t until 2004 when Fischer was arrested, by Japanese authorities under US order. In the intervening years, Fischer had amped up his incendiary attacks against the American ruling elite, and also Jews, though Fischer himself was a Jew. Free speech is free speech, but forget about its application here, since America was clearly infuriated at its loud critic, and an ex favorite son, no less, once credited for single-handedly embarrassing the Soviet Union, its arch enemy. Cornered by the empire, Fischer was offered asylum by tiny Iceland, and, unlike the Brits in the sordid Assange case, the Japanese decided to let him go. Once more, we saw a small nation acting big, while a much bigger one behaved ridiculously. In 2011, the UK also harassed Iceland to compensate British customers of a failed Icelandic bank, but Iceland, to its credit, refused. After all, have British (and American) banks compensated anybody for the enormous losses they’ve inflicted on the whole world?

Flaunting big sticks, big boys will strut, though contemptuous glances and thoughts are constantly cast in their direction. These ogres are also vain, however, as evidenced by their endless efforts to aggrandize themselves, as with the London Olympics. Somalia-born Mo Farah’s two gold medals were cheered as proof of Islamic integration and success in England, but what’s ignored is the UK’s more than a century-long history of colonizing, bombing, subversion and exploitation of numerous Islamic countries, with Iraq, Libya and Syria just the latest examples.

As for the United States, it is a tireless crafter of its own fun-loving and sexy image, to be exported worldwide into the most obscure teahouse, hut, yurt, igloo or cave of every last province of every country. American tanks, planes and bombs are painted with cartoon characters, and American pilots sing, “Bye, bye, Miss American pie,” as they zap your families from the sky. After foreigners are bombed as they listen to Lady Gaga or Britney Spears, the adult corpses can be wrapped in New York Yankees or Dallas Cowboys blankets, while their dead children can be interred in Mickey Mouse or SpongeBob SquarePants comforters. It’s all good.

Taking their cues from the American military, our mass murderers also dress up in fatigues to suddenly mow down unarmed civilians, for if a pilot strafing an Afghan wedding party is deemed a hero, why not some fool shooting up a movie theater? Having unleashed evil all over the globe, why should we be surprised to find it flaring up all over the States? Until we can refrain from massacring foreigners, we’ll shoot each other into an early grave.

Done with making anything useful, the United States is the world’s leading producer of weapons and illusions, mostly of itself. Even as he shoots you up and steals your wallet, Uncle Sam pimps American porn, and by you, I also mean average Americans, not just foreigners. America’s obsessive crafting of its own image, all the while behaving atrociously and criminally, brings to mind the case of Joe Paterno. Erasing his players’ names from their jerseys, Joe kept his front and center, because Joe was all about Joe. No longer able to lead from the sideline, Paterno retreated to the press box and stayed coach in name, just so he could achieve the all-time win record. With so much at stake, and so much cash besides, Joe couldn’t let his legacy be derailed by the appalling fact that small boys were being raped under his watch. In fact, Joe and other top Penn State honchos allowed Jerry Sandusky to rape children for another decade! It is telling that, when everything fell apart, and Paterno was finally fired, he said, as quoted by journalist Joe Posnanski, “I have spent my whole life trying to make that name mean something. And now it’s gone.” Joe Pa didn’t weep for the raped children, but for the loss of his good name, fraudulently maintained all these years.

Quantifiable achievements, most this, most that, can be cheapened or even rendered null by an absence of virtues such as probity, character or courage, so a “great man” like Paterno has been reduced to nothing, while a lowly Army specialist like Bradley Manning became magnificent by doing what was right, though he did it without fanfare or considerations of personal gains. A small man, literally, Manning had the enormous courage to butt heads with the greatest empire, and it has retaliated by imprisoning him in humiliating conditions. In Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, the American military revealed its sexually sadistic impulses, and it has shown this perverted aspect again by forcing Manning to be naked for hours at a time. We’re not just cruel, we’re sick, but we don’t give a damn, because we’re number one!

Worshipping the relentless pumping actions of speed and aggression, the piston, the one-hundred-meter dash, the slam dunk multiplied by instant replays, we devalue simple decency, nuanced beauty or just subtlety of any kind. We ooh and ah, but don’t reflect, because the next spectacle is already on. It’s mostly bombast, most the time, with brief interludes of kistch. Most this, most that, but a big zero where it really matters, just like Paterno, and unlike Bradley Manning or Rafael Correa.

In his insatiable quest for self-aggrandizement and enrichment, Uncle Sam also doesn’t care about the many lives he has wrecked. He’s a Joe Paterno times a billion, at least, and he’s still basking in his own self-praise, even as the entire world looks on in disgust. To best admire himself, Uncle Sam has created an elaborate house of mirrors that reflects nothing but his own wrinkled, bulging or sagging vanity, carefully caked over with lots of makeup, but this glass house is showing serious cracks all over. Kicking in all directions, he risks being buried beneath its shards.

Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories, five of poems, and a novel, Love Like Hate. He’s tracking our deteriorating socialscape through his frequently updated photo blog, State of the Union.

Why should a tiny alpine nation nestled between the Swiss and Austrian Alps with a population of only 35,000 spread over 62 square miles, no airport, one hospital, 155 miles of paved roadway, and only irregular local train service be taken seriously by anyone? Because it has the highest gross domestic product per person in the world when adjusted by purchasing power parity (over $140,000 per capita), the world’s lowest external debt, and the second lowest unemployment rate in the world (recently as low as 1.5 percent). But the Principality of Liechtenstein happens to be just such a place.

A Model of Self-Determination in a World of Chaos

Learning From Liechtenstein

by THOMAS H. NAYLOR

Why should a tiny alpine nation nestled between the Swiss and Austrian Alps with a population of only 35,000 spread over 62 square miles, no airport, one hospital, 155 miles of paved roadway, and only irregular local train service be taken seriously by anyone? Because it has the highest gross domestic product per person in the world when adjusted by purchasing power parity (over $140,000 per capita), the world’s lowest external debt, and the second lowest unemployment rate in the world (recently as low as 1.5 percent). But the Principality of Liechtenstein happens to be just such a place.

Liechtenstein is a constitutional monarchy organized as a unitary parliamentary democracy with an enlightened Reigning Prince by the name of Hans-Adam II. Since the constitutional reform of 2003 was implemented by the Prince, the citizens of Liechtenstein actually have the right to abolish the monarchy altogether. Hans-Adam has a quite unique philosophy of government for a reigning monarch. In his view citizens should not be seen as servants of the state, but rather as customers of a benevolent service company, otherwise known as the state, whose aim is to serve its customers. If the customers don’t like the service, they can replace the service company, namely, the monarchy. “Ask not what a citizen can do for the state, but rather what the state can do better for the citizen than any other organization,” says the Prince.

Under the leadership of Hans-Adam Liechtenstein acceded to the United Nations in 1990 and the European Economic Area in 1995. It is neither a member of the European Union nor NATO.

Even though Liechtenstein remained neutral during both world wars, it was practically an economic basket case after World War II. Much of the credit for turning it around economically lies with the Prince. Liechtenstein is best known for its financial sector which is a tax haven and home to 73,700 corporations worldwide. It has 16 banks. However, its high-quality, high-tech industrial sector which manufactures a variety of products including machine tools and precision instruments accounts for 36 percent of GDP.

The Prince of Liechtenstein is not paid for his duties as head of state by either the state or the taxpayers. Unlike most other monarchies, the total cost of the Liechtenstein monarchy is covered by either the Prince’s or the so-called Princely House’s private funds. The country’s LGT Bank, for example, is owned by the royal family. The Prince’s personal fortune is thought to be in excess of $5 billion.

Not unlike Switzerland, Liechtenstein bankers have not escaped criticism from Wall Street and European bankers, the EU, and the U.S. Congress for the use of secret bank accounts which can be used to evade foreign taxes, dodge creditors, and defy court orders. In February 2008 the LGT Bank was implicated in a tax-fraud scandal in Germany which strained the monarchy’s relationship with the German government. International bankers don‘t like the fact that Swiss and Liechtenstein bankers don’t always play by their rules.

In an attempt to clean up its image abroad Liechtenstein has signed a number of treaties related to money laundering and fraud with the United States and the European Union including the Tax Information Exchange Agreement with the U.S. and the Anti-Fraud Agreement with the EU. On June 27, 2012 Liechtenstein and the U.S. signed an Agreement on Exchange Cooperation in Preventing and Combating Serious Crime.

Prince Hans-Adam has always maintained a strong interest in the right to self-determination, so much so that in 2000 he founded the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University. The Institute supports teaching, research, and publication about issues related to and emerging from self-determination, especially pertaining to the state, self-governance, sovereignty, security, and boundaries with particular consideration of socio-cultural, ethnic, and religious issues involving state and non-state actors.

On August 15, 2004 Prince Hans-Adam II appointed his elder son, Hereditary Prince Alois, his permanent deputy, in preparation for his succession to the throne. He now devotes more of his time to managing the assets of the Princely House, writing, and participating in international projects.

In 2009 Prince Hans-Adam II published an extremely interesting book entitled The State in the Third Millennium spelling out his unique and personal vision of the state at the beginning of the twenty-first century as well as strategies by which it might be achieved. His perspective as the reigning head of state of a monarchy which is also an oligarchy and a democracy, a direct democracy, is truly remarkable.

Although I do not agree with all of the Prince’s ideas, and indeed strongly disagree with some of them, I find most of them to be quite insightful. Unlike myself, Hans-Adam is very libertarian, very free-market oriented, and very Roman Catholic, but he is very smart.

His understanding of geopolitics and global economics is highly sophisticated, not to mention his psychological sophistication as well. He seems to know exactly who he is and what it means to be the reigning monarch of a tiny European country. His lack of hubris is indeed refreshing.

As a card-carrying libertarian, there are no big surprises in the Prince’s portfolio of economic policy prescriptions for his third millennium state. Essentially what he has in mind is a libertarian state, if that is not an oxymoron. He calls for the privatization of social welfare, the elimination of government subsidies, an educational voucher system, a value added tax, little or no national debt, private ownership of mineral rights, and a sophisticated precious metal based currency.

Since the constitutional reform of 2003, the Principality’s eleven municipalities have all had the right of self-determination. The Prince correctly points out that the 15 former republics of the Soviet Union also theoretically possessed that right, even though it was never exercised.

Hans-Adam’s book concludes with a draft constitution for a prototype third millennium state whether it be a monarchy (kingdom X) or a republic (republic Y). Although I have never been a great fan of monarchies, the thought has passed through my mind, “Is the difference between a republic and a monarchy as great as we try to make it appear to be?” Maybe. Maybe not.

The opening of the Liechtenstein Embassy in Washington, D.C. in 2002 is but one example of how Hans-Adam has attempted to foster closer ties with the United Sates. The Embassy website contains numerous photographs of Washington dignitaries such as the Obamas and Hillary Clinton appearing at the Embassy. In a 2010 interview Hans-Adam is reported to have said, “The Americans saved us during World War II and during the Cold War?” But does that, therefore, mean that Liechtenstein owes its soul to them? Apparently so.

But in a surprising turn of events for a country which disbanded its military in 1868 for financial reasons and is ruled by a live-and-let-live libertarian committed to the right of self-determination, Hans-Adam embraces the notion of the United States serving as the world’s global policeman. That is, if a particular country such as Iraq, Libya, North Korea, or Syria has an authoritarian regime which is not playing by the rules set forth by the United Sates, the U.S. would have the right to intervene in that country forcing it to agree to the establishment of a functioning democratic state. Although the Prince gives high marks to the U.S. for its 2003 invasion of Iraq, he would have the U.S. partner with the EU to rebuild a rogue state brought down by the Empire by establishing a functioning democratic constitutional state to replace the original one.

But isn’t this tantamount to getting in bed with the American Empire and supporting its imperialist foreign policy which is based on the concepts of full spectrum dominance, imperial overstretch, and might makes right. Would the Prince also endorse attacks by drones, Navy Seals, and Delta Force Death Squads aimed at those unfortunate enough to find themselves on the White House kill list? All of this from an enlightened, well-educated monarch who is a staunch defender of the right of self-determination. How can this be?

Of what is the Prince so afraid? Who would ever invade Liechtenstein? If so, what would they do with it?

Prince Hans-Adam II is uniquely qualified and extremely well positioned to be the foremost advocate for self-determination worldwide. Indeed the small nations of the world such as Bhutan, Costa Rica, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Senegal, Sweden, and Switzerland and the aspiring nations of the world such as the Basque Country, Kurdistan, Quebec, Scotland, South Ossetia, Tibet, Vermont, and Western Sahara desperately need his support to enable them to stand up to meganations such as the United States, China, Russia, India, Japan, and Brazil.

With admiration and respect, I urge him to reconsider his position. The future of the planet is at stake.

Thomas H. Naylor is Founder of the Second Vermont Republic and Professor Emeritus of Economics at Duke University; co-author of Affluenza, Downsizing the U.S.A., and The Search for Meaning.

Explaining paying lower taxes than your maid or gardner to the public is one thing. Explaining deliberately committing massive tax fraud is another

Is Romney Trying to Conceal a Massive Tax Fraud Scheme?

Mitt’s Big Secret

by DAVE LINDORFF

A lot of theories have been put forward to try and explain why Romney has allowed his campaign to become bedeviled by charges of tax dodging, but what if what he is hiding is felonious tax fraud?

Okay, so he’s taken the legal option of delaying filing his 2011 taxes, which every taxpayer is entitled to do without penalty and without having to give any explanation until October 15 this year (I agree it’s a little weird when a super-rich guy who pays accountants by the dozen does this, but hey). The nagging question though is why he hasn’t just responded to the demand that he release two years of tax returns like John McCain did in 2008 by simply releasing his 2009 tax filing, along with the 2010 return he already released?

The answer may well be that 2009 was the year that the Treasury Department decided to offer an amnesty from prosecution for tax fraud to any of the tens of thousands of millionaires who were known or suspected to have illegally hidden income abroad in the Cayman Islands or in Swiss banks — a felony, but one that people thought they’d never be caught at.

That year alone, some nearly 30,000 people, many of them no doubt prominent in society, politics and business, and customers of the finest accounting firms, reportedly voluntarily came forward to the IRS to admit that they had hidden some of the estimated $100 billion in income that crooked rich Americans have for years been secreting away in banks overseas. Under the terms of the program, they were able to just report their fraud, pay the taxes, penalties and interest on the money and then walk away scott free, with no charges and with their returns kept confidential by the agency.

That is, unless they decided to run for national office, where the expectation is that they have to release their income tax returns to the media for inspection.

As journalist Matthew Yglesias has written in Slate, “Romney might well have thought in 2007 and 2008 that there was nothing to fear about a non-disclosed offshore account he’d set up years earlier precisely because it wasn’t disclosed.”

But the scandal that exploded around Swiss megabank UBS, where a whistleblowing employee released some of the names of wealthy Americans who were being allowed to use the bank’s privacy protections to hide their income from the IRS, caused many of America’s super-rich, fearing the worst, to rush for an amnesty offered by the IRS, which was more interested in collecting the money than putting a lot of the country’s toniest people behind bars. The floodgates opened when the US sued UBS demanding the full list of tax criminals from the bank, and then offered an amnesty to those who came forward voluntarily, reported their fraud to the IRS, and paid the required interest and penalties.

Given Mitt Romney’s known predilection for avoiding taxes, it’s hard to imagine him not having taken advantage of the Swiss tax dodge, particularly when so many other people of his class were doing it. Hiding income overseas was, back in the early years of this gilded century, the thing to do–the stuff of mirthful asides over cognac at the Club after a bracing game of golf or polo.

But explaining paying lower taxes than your maid or gardner to the public is one thing. Explaining deliberately committing massive tax fraud is another. Plenty of Americans have gone to the slammer for years for defrauding the IRS of mere five-figure sums. Most live in a cultivated fear of the IRS, worrying that they made some mistake on a form or missed a filing deadline, and yet the wealthiest Americans, thanks to the 2009 and subsequent amnesties or partial amnesties, have gotten away with massive fraud, just having to pay penalties and interest, as if they had just inadvertently filed late or made a math error.

None of this is proof that Romney is guilty of felony tax fraud, of course. On the other hand, it is curious that John McCain would have gone for the loopy lady from Wassilla and rejected Romney as his running mate back in 2008. Mitt was seriously in the running as a candidate for the job of VP on the McCain ticket at one point, and the UBS scandal broke right when McCain was picking his running mate. It seems logical that McCain’s vetting team would have asked Romney if the scandal might touch him. Maybe they ruled him out of contention when they got the answer.

In any case, running for president is not for sissies, and there is no presumption of innocence in politics. If Romney did not commit tax fraud back in 2008 and earlier, and did not avail himself of the IRS’s 2009 tax amnesty program, he should have to prove it by releasing his 2007, 2008 and 2009 taxes, and, if the 2007 and 2008 filings turn out to have been belatedly corrected, he should have to show the original filings too.

No doubt the Obama campaign has figured all this out, which would explain why they are offering Mitt Romney a deal that says: “You release five years of your taxes, and we’ll shut up” about demanding even older ones.

It remains to be seen whether conservative and right-wing and libertarian Americans, famous for their loathing of taxes, will decide that Romney is simply doing what they’d all like to get away with doing, and give him a pass on all this tax dodging, or whether they will become so incensed at the idea of this richest of presidential candidates in history cheating on his taxes that they will demand that he prove he didn’t do it before he can have their vote.

Meanwhile, if Romney did commit tax fraud courtesy of a Swiss bank arrangement, and he stonewalls it through the campaign weeks ahead, he runs a huge risk that someone will leak the information. After all, federal employees have to realize that four years of a Romney/Ryan administration will be brutal on their job security, benefits and working conditions. And right now Obama is the boss of the federal government, with his own appointees at Treasury and the IRS.

Stay tuned.

Dave Lindorff is a founder of This Can’t Be Happening and a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He lives in Philadelphia.

A rarity in a world where no one remembers yesterday’s news: This aggressive outburst by Britain against Latin America made in the long shadow of the Falklands invasion was immediately labeled as colonialism

A View From a Former Political Prisoner

The Meaning of Assange’s Asylum

by SILVIA ARANA

Quito, Ecuador.

The impact of Ecuador’s decision to grant political asylum to Julian Assange is still quite tangible internationally, a rarity in a world where no one remembers yesterday’s news.

Even hours before it was announced, Ecuador’s decision to grant asylum to Assange because of the lack of international guarantees of due process of law for the founder of Wikileaks, had the effect of generating an overreaction by the government of Great Britain, which bypassed diplomatic law and threatened to storm the embassy of Ecuador in London to arrest Assange. This aggressive outburst by Britain against Latin America made in the long shadow of the Falklands invasion was immediately labeled as colonialism. It has been a catalyst to unite all countries of the region around Ecuador.

The government of President Rafael Correa has received the backing of the two most powerful Latin American organizations, ALBA and UNASUR. In at least one of these institutions are Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, as well as other countries in the region. In advance of scheduled meetings of both organizations this weekend in Guayaquil to generate a statement of solidarity with Ecuador, several foreign ministers in Latin America have already expressed their opposition to Britain’s threat to enter the embassy of Ecuador by force.

The U.S. State Department said that the United States “does not recognize the concept of asylum as part of international law” because the U.S. not a signatory to the Convention on Diplomatic Asylum of 1954. They added that this is not a matter that should involve the OAS, although almost all of the other OAS member countries think otherwise and voted to convene an emergency session.

The US stated yet again that it will not intervene in the case of Julian Assange. Yet, the US government’s repetition of “we are not involved” fails to convince. Too many statements by U.S. lawmakers and officials denouncing WikiLeaks and threatening Assange with imprisonment for life and even the death penalty have been widely disseminated in the world press. The fundamental reason that attorneys for Julian Assange believe their client cannot accept extradition to Sweden is because from there Assange will be almost certainly delivered to the U.S. That the U.S. has initiated a secret grand jury proceeding to indict Assange for crimes including espionage and treason is not mere speculation.

According to Assange’s lawyer, Michael Ratner, President Emeritus of the internationally recognized Center for Constitutional Rights, a secret grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, was convened to investigate violations of the Espionage Act, where the grand jury received testimony including Twitter messages related to Assange and WikiLeaks. An FBI agent who was a witness in the case of detained soldier Bradley Manning has stated that the “founders, owners and managers” WikiLeaks were under investigation. Ratner also noted that the FBI has compiled a dossier of 42,135 pages pertaining to Assange.

In this context, Assange’s fears of being extradited, imprisoned and deprived of any right to a fair defense in the U.S. should be considered well-founded and reasonable. And in the same way, the decision to grant asylum by Ecuador should be considered a humanitarian decision viewed within the legal framework of international law governed by the Vienna Convention.

From this context, there arises a unique situation in which a Latin American country now stands as a defender of the human rights of an individual against the will of two European countries, Britain and Sweden, who refuse to give assurances that Assange will not be extradited to the United States. What irony that a small nation which until recently was considered a mere “banana republic” today openly protects a major world icon of freedom of expression from persecution by United States and its allies.

Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa’s grant of political asylum to Assange has opened an international front opposing the ethical/moral paradigm of Britain and the United States. His decision has created some startling opposition in the north. Many still do not believe what they have heard.

Similarly Correa’s domestic opposition has yet to assimilate this sovereign declaration which stands in opposition to the largest trading partner of Ecuador, the United States. Businessmen and some former foreign ministers and other figures have made the usual statements to The Guardian, The Economist, and Ecuador’s El Comercio, warning of risks to Ecuador for opposing the designs of Europe and America.

So far more than two days after the asylum announcement, these views have been overshadowed by the support generated for the decision and in protest of Britain’s extreme reaction. This was demonstrated in the special session of the Ecuadorian National Assembly. With 73 votes in favor, 7 abstentions and no votes against, Ecuador’s Parliament overwhelmingly endorsed the decision of the President to grant asylum to the creator of WikiLeaks and strongly denounced the British threat to forcibly enter the embassy as a violation of Ecuador’s sovereignty.

On the streets of Quito, the common denominator has been the proverbial caution. At first sight, neither enthusiasm for or opposition to the grant of asylum to Assange could be perceived. However, everyone seems to be carefully following reports of international reaction. On the radio, on television and in print, there are detailed reports of the reactions of every international government and political institution. People listen attentively, as though it is hard for them to believe that their government has created such an international stir. And that this was not caused by the price of oil or bananas or drug trafficking in neighboring Colombia. Some have abandoned their reserve and openly demonstrate their pride as citizens of a sovereign nation. Others still remain cautiously silent.

Silvia Arana is a former Argentine political prisoner,

activist and writer now living in Ecuador.