Addicted

No surprise that the United States is charging Edward Snowden under the old Espionage Act. Figured that was coming. Now my government will pressure the authorities in Hong Kong to arrest Snowden and turn him over for the full American legal treatment. Snowden is ruined. The heavy book of punishment is sailing at his head.

The annual budget of the NSA is classified, of course, but I read somewhere that it must be in the cul de sac of eight or ten billion dollars. Here’s the ironic thing about that: the American taxpayers pay the NSA to spy on them. We pay the tab for the NSA’s toys, personnel, private contractors, everything. Jesus.

Spying is very useful for the government and corporations; the government gets tons of information it uses to track people it thinks might pose a threat to the republic, like rabid environmentalists and political dissenters, and the corporations make pots of money.

Some of the NSA’s budget is justified – it is a dangerous world populated with numerous crazies – even a die-hard liberal like me can see that, but a lot of the budget is clearly overkill and overreach. Would those excess billions be used for education and healthcare and infrastructure projects in our cities, for investment in people and creating a real economy of work and wages! Too bad it won’t happen. Proponents of a real economy cannot afford high-priced lobbyists, and they don’t typically have the jack to make huge campaign contributions; in other words, they can’t play the Washington game of give and get, pay and play.

I wonder, sitting here in the California sunshine on a June day, if what is now happening in Brazil will eventually happen here. The poor and middle class in Brazil have signaled, by pouring into the streets by the thousands, that they are sick and tired of being treated like chumps by the elite. Brazil is that interesting unequal society where a wood and aluminum slum sits next to a luxury high-rise protected by private security forces. The poor depend on public services, but find those services meager, and the fact that the government and the elite are spending billions to host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics pisses them off.

The rich do what they want, the poor suck it up until they can’t take anymore of the rigged game.

As Hunter S. Thompson used to say, Selah. The rich and powerful never learn the value of moderation; power is the most addictive drug of all, and once you taste it and get hooked, there’s no going back to coach class.