Table of Contents
Click on Chapter Names To Expand
Chapter 1. An Introduction to Political Economy: America and Its Global Role
1. America at the Center of the Global Political Economy
2. About Laws of Human Behavior
3. Becker’s Laws of Political Economy
Chapter 2. From Old World Colonialism to the Continental Empire: The Original “Manifest Destiny”
1. About Empire in General and European Ones in Particular
a. European Imperialism and the “Discovery of the New World”
2. America: The Crown Jewel of the British Empire in the New World
a. How the Mode of Settlement and Expansion Sowed the Seeds of Rebellion
b. Imperial Excess and Overstretch Lead to Insurgency
3. Establishing a Purely American Form of Government
a. The Articles of Confederation: Radical Democracy for a New Nation
b. A Different National Government Was Needed by Some as the Foundation for The American Empire
4. That Meant Westward, Ho! Forever: God’s Own Manifest Destiny
a. First the Native Americans and Then the Mexicans
b. It’s War, War, War Clear Out to the Pacific
Chapter 3. From Third Rate Empire to “Leader of the Free World”
1. Westward Ho!: Déjà vu All Over Again
a. Enter the Theory and Practice “Geopolitics”
b. American Geopolitics Meets the American Resistance
c. The Imperialists Win Again: “The War to Make the World Safe for Democracy”
d. The Return of American “Isolationism”
2. A Slightly New Geopolitics Changes America
a. The Rise of the First “Axis” of Evil
b. FDR Works His Magic: Ends Depression and Wakes Sleeping Giant
c. The Post World War II Geopolitical Landscape and New Architecture
Chapter 4. From the Cold War to the Big Chill: Creating the New World Disorder
1. To End an Endless Depression to an Endless War: Thank You USSR and CCP
a. Erecting the “Permanent War Economy” and Beyond
b. Containing China: Korea, The Northern Asian Anchor
c. Containing Russia: Iran: The Central Asian Anchor
d. Containing China: Vietnam: The South Asia Anchor
2. The Mind Boggling Costs of Geopolitics to the American People
a. The Capitalist Infrastructure is Crumbling
b. The Failure of American Public Education
c. The Dreadful State of American Health Care
d. The Loss of World Respect
3. The Neo-Conservative Gaffe: Securing the Central Asian Anchor Yet Again
a. The Acceleration of Imperial Blowback
b. The Clear and Present Danger of The NeoCon Grand Game
c. “The Heartland” Strikes Back to the Future
Chapter 5. Transnational Corporate Sovereignty: Toward the New World Disorder
1.The Corporation as Junior Partner in Traditional Western Empires
2. The Beginning of the Struggle Between American Corporatism and the American Democratic Spirit
3. The Early American Corporation
4. The Role of the Courts in the Rise of the American Corporation
5. The Civil War and Industrialization Turn the Tide, Helped by the Courts
6. The Great Depression Changes Everything—For a While
7. The Recent Political Victories of American Corporations Over American Government, or How Dr. Frankenstein Was Devoured by His Own Miscreant
8. The Emergence of Transnational Corporate Sovereignty: Strategy
9. The Emergence of Transnational Corporate Sovereignty: Tactics
10. The Institutions of the American led Global Corporate Oligarchy
a. The Bretton Woods Gang Rides Again!
b. So What About the UN and NATO?
11. The Growing Resistance to The New World Order + The American Empire In Many Forms and Places
a. Resistance to Neo-Con Economic Hegemony
b. Resistance to Feared Global Ecological Disaster
c. The Shanghai Cooperative Organization (SCO)
d. “The Pink Tide” Swamps “The Washington Consensus”
12. Central Planning + Ideological Blindness = Collapse of the Globalists’ Economic Model + The New World Disorder
a. The Self Evident Failures of The World System Mangers, Globalization and the Global Economy
b. The Imminent Demise of The American Empire, or Say Hello to Cold War II or World War III
Chapter 6. The Economic Dimension
1. To Avoid Confused Thinking and Talking Past One Another, You Must Understand What Economic and Political Concepts Actually Mean Toward “The Most Practicable Political Economy”
2. Individualism and Free Enterprise
a. Laissez Faire/Austrian School/Libertarian/Objectivist Philosophy
b. Adam Smith’s Capitalism and His Hostility to Mercantilism
c. Me, Me, Me: The Purely American Philosophy of Me-ism: Emerson, et al
3. The Devolution of Marxism and The Evolution of Modern Social Democracies
a. What Marx defined as “Socialism” and “Communism”: A Primer
b. 20th and 21st Century Marxism is Alive and Well and Spreading
c. The Western European Model of Social Democracy: How Being Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place Brought Some Comfort
4. Comparing The American “Mixed Economy” to European Style Social Democracy: From the New Deal to The Bad Deal to The Most Practicable Economy
a. The New Deal: The American Model of Mixed Economy
b. The New World Order Takes on Social Democracy, But With Little Success
c. The U.S. Health Care System as Poster Child for the Social Democratic Way
d. Privatization Works, but not as Advertised
e. It’s Not Just Social Stability, It’s What The People Think Is Fair, Just and Equitable
Chapter 7. The Political Dimension
1. Categorizing Governments: Classifying the Unclassifiable, Measuring The Immeasurable
a. Sparta: The Democratic, Timocratic, Monarchical Oligarchy
b. The Athenians to the Verbal Rescue: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle’s Republics
c. Understanding the Original, True Meanings of Democracy, Oligarchy and Tyranny
2. Alexis deTocqueville’s Amazing Insights into America’s “Aristocracy of Manufactures”
a. How They Came to Rule: Their Intellectual Allies Through History
3. “The Power Elite” and “The Ruling Class” in Iconic and Ironic American “Democracy”
a. C. Wright Mills’ Three Hierarchies /p>
b. “The Democratic Elite”: An Oxymoron, par excellence
c. Details on How the American Power Elite System Works Today: The Ruling Class in Motion
4. So What Kind of Polity Do We Really Have in America? Representative Democracy is Another Oxymoron
a. Proportional Representation is not Democracy: It is a More Efficient Oligarchy
b. Indirect Democracy is not a Synonym for Representative Democracy: The Referendum Process is Democracy by Indirect Means
c. Real Democracy at the Nation State Level: Switzerland
d. And America is ???
Chapter 8. The Ultimate Masterpiece of the New American Aristocracy: The U.S. Constitution
1. The Post Revolutionary Political Economy: How Bad Was It For Whom?
a. For Most Life Was Local, Personal and at Subsistence Level
b. Others With Big Ideas Were Worried
2. Charles A. Beard and His Unique and Eternally Controversial Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution
3. The Ratification Wars: The Pro-Oligarchy Federalists vs. The Pro Democracy Anti-Feds
a. The Federalist Ideology and Its New Form of Government
b. The Other Founding Fathers: The Anti-Feds Create the Only Democracy in the United States Constitution
Chapter 9. Democratic Surges and Oligarchic Ebb Tides Throughout American History
1. Early Democratic Surges
2. Latter Day Surges of the American Democratic Spirit: But the System Remains the Same
a. The Populist and Progressive Eras
3. For Every Democratic Surge, There’s a Supreme Court Insurgency
4. The New Deal and Beyond: Yet Another Democratic Surge
a. Enter: The “Benevolent Wing of the American Oligarchy”
b. Great Social and Economic Progress, Little Democratic Advance
5. The “American Cultural Revolution”: Mid 1960s to Mid 1970s
a. The Revenge of the Federalists: The Rise of the Reaganites
b. Catastrophe Theory and Jung’s Collective Subconscious
Chapter 10. The Legal System: Always an Uneven Playing Field
1. The Supremes
a. “Conservative Activism” from Day One
b. Macro “Conservative Judicial Activism”: Creating the Power of Judicial Review
c. How the Exception Proves the Rule: The Short Shelf Life of "Liberal Activism"
d. The Same Is True for All Appellate Courts: Corporate Influence Is Exceptionaly Strong
2. Trial by Ordeal: The Two Tiered American System
a. Who Gets a Solid Defense in America’s Criminal Courts?
b. The Results is Sentencing Disparity and Racial Profiling
c. Who Else Wins Big Time
Chapter 11. Our Hidden Government and the Iron Pentagram Where Money Talks and the People are Silenced
1. Is America’s “Elected Oligarchy” Really a Secret Government?
2. Follow the Money: The Imperial Presidency + The Iron Triangle + The Fedeal Reserve = Government of, By, and For the .01%
a. Public Policy Made Here: Do Not Disturb
b. The Political Campaign Shell Game
c. A Few Choice Tidbits of How “Influence” and “Access = Bribery" and How YOU are Victimized
3. An American Central Bank and Currency: To Be or Not To Be, That Is the Question
a. The Constitutional Design and the Early History of U.S. Central Banking
b. A Popular Sentiment for a Government Controlled Central Bank Leads to Something Else
c. Here Comes the Fed: Not Exactly What the Populists had in Mind
d. The Fed and the Iron Pentagram: Fighting Inflation and Deflation With Smoke and Mirrors
e. OMG!! Why Does The Fed Have Such Low Interest Rates in 2009?
Chapter 12. The American and Global Mass Media: Where Power Talks Down and the People Are Hypnotized And Mobilized
1. The Official Ideology of the American “Free” Press as the Fourth Branch of Government: The “Watchdog” on government for the People
a. Not Always a Free Press in American History: The Early Times
b. Twentieth Century Repression of American Free Speech and Press
2. The Professional Purveyors of Objective Information and the Important “News” of Our Time
a. The Covert Agenda of America’s Mass Media
b. Controlling the Message and the Democratic Discourse
c. The One-Way, Downstream, Autocratic, Propaganda Model of Mordern Political Communications
d. Another Piece in the U.S. Propaganda Model
3. How the American System Compares With Some of the World’s Best and Worst and Why
a. The Social Democracies
b. The Overt Dictatorships (The Putin & Co, CCP News, The Mullah News Service)
4. The American Corporation System of “Stealth Censorship"
Chapter 13. The Return of the “Desperation Class”: The Intended And Unintended Consequences of “The Reagan Devolution"
1. Aristotle Was Right: The More Powerful the Oligarchy, the Worse It Is For the Masses
a. The Response to the Misery of Tyranny Depends on Many Things
b. In the USA, It’s the “Have Lots” vs. the “Have Nots”: The Winner’s “The System”
2. How to Impoverish the Working Class, Shrink the Middle Class, and Further Enrich the Rich: A Manual for Greedy Oligarchs
a. Changing the Structure of Personal Taxation
b. Unfair Tax Enforcement
c. The Disappearing Tax Burden on the Giant Corporations
3. What Reaganomics Has Done to America (and the World)
a. Constructing the Most Unequal Wealth Distribution in the Industrialized World
b. Bankrupting American Government, or “Starving the Beast”
c. The Final Solution to “The Labor Problem”: The Rise of “The American Coolie.”
d. America, The All Time Debtor Nation: Plan A
e. Selling Out America to Its Global “Pals”: Clever by Half
f. Is There a Plan B or Has Plan A Just Flunked Out?
4. The Final Act of “The Reagan Devolution”: Another “Mission Accomplished?”
5. The Election of Barack Obama and Its Immediate and Durable Consequences
a. The Final Rejection of Reaganomics By the American Electorate
b. Changing America’s Global Image Forever
c. Changing the Psyche of Black America Forever
d. President Obama: Deformer, Reformer or Agent of Transformation
Chapter 14. How a Transformed America Can Become a Leader in a Sustainable World Political Economy
1. Early Post Imperial Times as an Emergent World Order
a. The Unintended but Inevitable Consequences of a Global Central Plan
b. How the new Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) Have Become the Infrastructure of Early Post Imperial Times
c. Anti-American Imperialism Drives Early Post Imperial Times
d. First and Future Impacts on the United States' Political Economy
e. The Global Perils of Early Post Imperial Times
2. The Three Power Transformations: Preparing for Disaster and Healing the Future
a. Transformation Power: Renouncing Empire, Absorbing Blowback and the Value of Sincere Apologies
b. Transformation Power: Joining the New Global Order of Transnational Justice and Transnational Conflict Resolution
c. Transforming Power: Becoming Better Capitalists and More Democratic
d. Four Kinds of Changes in Political Economy
Chapter 15. How Capitalism and Democracy Compliment One Another: Restructuring America’s Hierarchical Economy
1. A Brief Review of the Fundamental Infrastructure of America’s Political Economy
a. Class Warfare is American as the U.S. Constitution
b. Voila! The Frenchman Got It Right
c. Violating the First Amendment Rights of Anti-Oligarchy Political Protest and Organization: As American as John Adams
2. The “Scientific” and Other “Management” of Workers
a. Slicing, Dicing, Pricing Down the American Workforce
b. Unions: Way Down, But Not Out
c. Unions on Corporate Boards
d. Employee Stock Options (ESOPs)
3. Workplace Power for the American Worker
a. Total Quality Management (TQM) and Worker Empowerment
b. Even Though It Works, They Still Don’t Want It
c. ESOP + TQM = The Foundation of a Dynamic and Prosperous Economy
4. Decent Capitalism Is Not An Oxymoron
a. The Grameen Model: Democratic Banking With the Poor
b. “Responsible Corporations”: Bankers and Industrialists Who Recognize Workers, Community and the Earth as Stakeholders
c. Co-Operatives (Co-ops): The Economic Mirror of Democracy
d. Individual Co-ops and Networks: Some Modest U.S. Examples
e. Co-op Banking
Chapter 16. Reforming and Transforming American Democracy in the 21st Century
1. Reform Is another Way to Say “I’m Sorry”, But It Is Not Change
a. One of the Least Democratic Nations in the Modern Industrialized World
b. Reform for the Sake of Reform: Citizen Perot and the “Contract with America”
c. Some Reforms That Would Actually Improve Voter Turnout and Broaden the Oligarchy
d. “Clean Election Laws”
e. Voting by Mail and Internet
2. Democratic Transformation of Representative Hierarchical Governance: The Global Direct Democracy Movement
a. Citizen Lawmaking at the National Level: I R + R
b. The Best Example of Democracy at the National Level in the World: Switzerland
c. 21st Century Randomly Selected Citizen Lawmakers: The British Columbia Citizens Assembly
d. Citizen Budgeting at the Local Level: The Porto Alegre Model
3. The Global Deliberative Democracy Movement
a. Deliberative Democracy is as American as Americana: The Earlier Years
b. The Chautauqua Movement
c. The Forum Movement and The Federal Forum Project
d. Many Modern Experiments, Projects and Networks in Deliberative Democracy
e. Face-to-Face (F2F) Stratified Samples: Citizen Juries, Planning Cells and Other Models
f. Using Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) In Deliberative Democracy Projects and Experiments
4. Who Should Control America’s Future Political Economy: The American Corporate Oligarchy or the American People?