Idaho Governor Selling His State to the Chinese? | Print | E-mail Written by Joe Wolverton, II Thursday, 09 June 2011 10:52
In a letter proudly publicized on a state-sponsored website, Idaho Governor Butch Otter (left, a Republican) describes a program designed to “grow Idaho's Gross Domestic Product” by creating “quality jobs for all Idahoans by fostering systemic growth, recruiting new companies to Idaho, and selling Idaho's trade and investment opportunities to the world.” The following is from Governor Otter’s announcement of the plan known as Project 60.
Project 60 is just a name. But it stands for a goal, and a way of getting there.
It means more than some abstract concept for increasing our gross domestic product. It means jobs and opportunity, hope and independence for the people of Idaho. That’s what I want you to think about when you hear about Project 60. This is an initiative in which we all need to be involved, to build Idaho’s economy together in a way that strengthens our businesses, people and communities.
No state or local agency, no government of any kind can successfully tackle this kind of goal alone. Project 60 belongs to all of us and it needs all of us to be champions of this effort. Today, I invite you to be a Project 60 Partner. This Web site is built for you to participate in the process.
Consider this “home base” for Project 60. This is where you will have the chance to offer “Top-to-Top” help in our efforts to recruit new and expanding businesses to Idaho, the chance to tell us about networking opportunities with your vendors and customers in other states, and the chance to become an ambassador for Idaho’s future. I want you to tell us about your own success stories and offer us tips and advice about what it takes to thrive in business here.
That brief introduction should be memorized by students trying to learn the craft of political speechifying. There is in Governor Otter’s letter nothing of substance, plenty of weasel words, and an extraordinary display of misdirection all designed to lull the citizens of the sovereign state of Idaho into a stupor while their state is sold to the Chinese.
A recent article described the goal of Project 60 in slightly less rosy terms. “Idaho, under the stewardship of Governor Butch Otter, has opened the door for a Chinese invasion....”
The details of the scheme seem to support that analysis. In very unclear terms, one of the principal planks of the Project 60 platform is known as “Inward Foreign Direct Investment.” As laid out on the Project 60 website, this portion of the plan will increase Idaho’s role “in global business” by providing foreign industry with “a strong impetus to economic development.”
The “impetus” is a two-pronged attack on Idaho’s domestic workforce (read: the middle class). First, through Project 60, foreign business interest are encouraged to take advantage of favorable national immigration laws.
Specifically, “The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service administers an immigrant investor visa program called EB-5. The program grants foreigners permanent U.S. residency in exchange for helping create U.S. jobs.” This prong will facilitate the immigration of Chinese nationals into the United States for the purpose of establishing a Chinese industrial beachhead in Idaho, under the guise of creating U.S. jobs.
The second phase involves the granting of tax breaks to the foreign companies. In exchange for an investment of between $500,000 and $1 million (depending on whether the target zone is rural or urban, respectively), the foreign investor receives tax incentives.
A story published recently on cnsnews.com explains how Idaho’s plan dovetails perfectly into the overall scope of China’s economic policy vis a vis its holdings in the United States. As reported by cnsnews.com:
China has dropped 97 percent of its holdings in U.S. Treasury bills, decreasing its ownership of the short-term U.S. government securities from a peak of $210.4 billion in May 2009 to $5.69 billion in March 2011, the most recent month reported by the U.S. Treasury.
And:
Until October, the Chinese were generally making up for their decreasing holdings in Treasury bills by increasing their holdings of longer-term U.S. Treasury securities. Thus, until October, China’s overall holdings of U.S. debt continued to increase.
Since October, however, China has also started to divest from longer-term U.S. Treasury securities. Thus, as reported by the Treasury Department, China’s ownership of the U.S. national debt has decreased in each of the last five months on record, including November, December, January, February and March.
The Chinese, by wisely divesting itself of American treasury securities, can take advantage of our federal system (the co-existence of two equal sovereignties) and keep its fingers in American pies by establishing powerful outposts in the 50 states, thus by-passing the chokehold held over the national economy by the bust/boom cycle perpetuated by the Federal Reserve.
Put simply, Idaho (and reportedly other states, as well) are offering the Chinese a way to dump their useless treasury bonds without sacrificing the strength of their clamp on the economic pipeline of American industry.
The specifics of the wheeling and dealing between Idaho’s state government and their Chinese counterparts are unclear with a few exceptions. What is known is that “top Idaho officials have been traveling to China and entertaining the Chinese here, in order to help facilitate this.”
The result of these junkets? American Falls, Idaho will soon be home to a Chinese-owned fertilizer plant. A significant swathe of land south of Boise (about thirty thousand acres) was bought by China, a purchase Idaho’s governor promises will “reinvigorate our American industrial base.”
Idaho may be leading the race to court China, but according to The New American’s own Bill Jasper, Idaho’s southern neighbor is running full speed toward that same goal. From Jasper’s article published last month:
Utah’s Governor Gary Herbert, who led an April 2011 trade delegation to Beijing and Shanghai, said he was amazed by the scale of Chinese development and construction and impressed by the business community’s “embracement of free market principles.” Utah will host Governors from China’s provinces at the U.S. National Governors Association in Salt Lake City this July.
Governor Herbert got considerable help with China connections from former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, who has served for the past couple of years as the Obama administration’s ambassador to China. Huntsman, the millionaire scion of the famous Huntsman chemical empire, is leaving the diplomatic corps to throw his hat in the GOP 2012 presidential sweepstakes. His ambassadorial slot is being filled by U.S. Commerce Secretary — and former Washington State Governor — Gary Locke, also an enthusiastic China booster.
When confronted directly by constituents with questions about the ethical, practical, and national security implications of questionable business deals with the communist-controlled “People’s Republic,” the usual response from the China boosters is a flippant remark along the lines of: “Heh, heh, don’t you know, China is Communist in name only; they’re more capitalist than we are.”
Constitutionalists of all states must voice their opposition to the wide avenues being paved for China into our state economies. These agreements may soon leave us without the the check on "all encroachments of the national government" our Founders intended the states to be.
Now I'm confused. According to Simon Black, the U.S. is planning to start a war with China in order to default on the enormous debt owed to the Chinese. Why then, would the U.S. encourage China's domestic investment?
Sovereign Man
Reporting From: New York City
For the last few days, we've been having an important discussion about the magnitude of the economic challenges in the west; if you didn't read yesterday's letter, I really encourage you to do so before proceeding because it's important to understand why the west has truly passed the point of no return.
Simply put, the United States and much of Europe are borrowing an extraordinary amount of money now just to pay interest on the money they've already borrowed. They cannot even self-fund their mandatory entitlement programs without going into the hole, and their options are limited:
Option 1: Continue borrowing, keep the party going.
As long as the government CAN do this, they WILL do this. Regardless of their intentions, though, more debt only worsens the situation, creating higher borrowing costs in the long run, and even more debt. As this happens, the pool of buyers begins to dry up, especially from overseas.
Option 2: Inflation
The more buyers stop purchasing Treasury securities, the more the Federal Reserve will mop up the excess liquidity. In doing so, the Fed essentially conjures up money and loans it to the government.
No matter what the government monkey statistics say, this is inflationary, plain and simple. The more money they print, the greater the level of inflation in the long-term. Meanwhile, as foreigners simultaneously reduce their US dollar holdings, this inflation will become more acutely felt in the US.
Option 3: Austerity
There's going to come a time when the US government is forced to face its economic reality and make some incredibly deep cuts that would be felt across society, from Wall Street and the military industrial complex to project housing on the other side of the tracks.
Option 4: Default
Eventually, the debt burden is simply going to be too much, and the most obvious solution will be to default. Politicians will make China out to be the enemy and they will probably invent a war just to have an excuse to default on Chinese owned debt. Americans will wave the flag and celebrate defaulting on their enemies.
Option 5: Economic Cannibalism
In the best traditions of Atlas Shrugged, the government will continue its persecution of the productive class-- professionals, investors, entrepreneurs, and skilled workers. Existing taxes will rise, new taxes will be created, trade barriers will be enacted, and a maze of cost prohibitive regulations will be passed.
The first option (keeping the party going) is what has been happening for years. Politicians make small concessions to show they're "serious" about fiscal discipline, cutting laughably small programs while dumping hundreds of billions of dollars into wars and entitlement programs.
The worse the debt situation becomes, though, the higher the borrowing costs become, and the worse the debt situation becomes. It's not an enviable position. Existing lenders will continue backing away from the US Treasury market, giving option 1 a half-life measured in months at best.
In the longer term, only options 2-5 remain: inflation, austerity, default, and cannibalism. Each of these remaining options will shake the financial system to its core. More importantly, each of these has the power to create widespread social upheaval.
When inflation eats away at a family's already meager standard of living, when austerity eliminates the benefits to which recipients have grown accustomed, when default vanquishes a retiree's savings, when high taxes make workers feel like they're just government serfs-- this is when the real turmoil will begin:
* Rising crime: devoid of a job or means to support their families, people will turn to crime out of desperation
* Class warfare: with dividing lines drawn between have's vs. have-not's, it will become unpopular and even dangerous to be successful
* Corruption: low-level public service officials will look to supplement their income through bribery and kickbacks
* Black economy: An underground, cash-only (probably gold or foreign currency) economy will emerge with people getting paid in envelopes
* Censorship: Of course they'll blame it on national security, but the idea will be to prevent public disparaging of government policy
* War: The government will need another major event to distract people from the real problems
* Protests/Riots: This is when things turn bloody
* Police state conditions: The government will close ranks and send the cops out to show all the little people who's really in charge
There are a number of other manifestations, and many are already showing signs of emergence. The US and European police states are alive and well. Crime is on the rise.
In Europe, cops are doing battle in the streets with their citizens. Think it can't happen in the US? Remember tanks in the streets during the LA riots? Remember New Orleans? Remember any number of G8/G20 protests?
Here's the bottom line: all you have to do is glance at the headlines to see what happens when you strip people of their livelihood, of their benefits, of their ability to put food on the table for their families.
The US has been able to kick the can down the road with the most blunt social implications simply because the country benefits so much from a US-oriented financial system. This is coming to an end very, very quickly.
As a rule of thumb, the greater the economic distortion, the harder the collapse. The US economy has been in a fantasy world for so long, and when its dominant primacy is yanked away, the collapse will be at freefall speed.
Listen... I'm not talking about the end of the world here, I'm talking about difficult times ahead, and the things that go beyond economics. It's time to face facts and look at how society will change (and has already changed).
Tomorrow, I'd like to write more about what we can do now. Meanwhile, please tell me what you think about this-- how do you see society changing from this reset of the financial system?
Simon Black
Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com
Two very different view points on the Chinese involvment. On one hand you have the states, knowing they don't have the capital to create jobs, asserting sates rights to establish trade with who they want. The idea being they raise capital and get someone else to foot the bill for infrastucture to support new jobs. This is a move of desperation and is a symptom of the plan outlined in the second article.
Simon Black is writing about the probabilities that exist on the timeline that the dark ones would like to keep us on. Some of those things may come to pass but I believe most of it will be mitigated by rising human consciousness and a shift to a different timeline.
Ascension is a process, not an event; so it is happening now. Every moment is a choice, "To Be or not To Be".
from an email from Sergio:
Dear Simon,
I agree with your likely doomsday scenarios, if we continue relinquishing our authority to issue legal tender to the Central Bankers.
Now, if we exercise our sovereignty and start issuing again US Notes, as Lincoln and JFK did, and we manage to keep alive our courageous leaders, then soon interest payments will become a source of revenue instead of the drain that you now describe.
Lets split this solution 49 times (Bank of ND is already doing it), and local banks will get their guarantees and backing from their own Publicly Owned State Banks, and each state will be able to keep their savings working at home instead of being wasted in the Wall Street casino.
The State Bank of North Dakota insures its own funds, therefore it does not need the FDIC and can ignore its draconian regulations. This means than in ND local banks still use old fashion character references to grant loans to their local businesses, more trust and less paperwork.
Surprise, old fashion banking works! Actually ND economy now is the envy of all other states, many of which are hurrying new laws to bring the winning formula home. You can appreciate more the force of this movement by visiting: http://www.publicbankinginstitute.org/
You can break it out further by counties and municipal banks all the way to mutual credit schemes organized in any community between people that know and trust each other and then you will see a very different panorama.
You are reporting from NYC on the the spasms of the old system, and you are correct from that point of view. Please consider to let it die on its own and focusing your attention on how to help the birth of the new truly sovereign initiatives sprouting everywhere.
The best part of doing this is that you will soon be surrounded with positive people, feeling great, smiling and rediscovering the Union that our forefathers envisioned for us.
Best thoughts, Sergio Lub
Isn't Sergio Lub the copper bracelet guy?
Sergio is the copper bracelet guy and he is also the originator of Friendly Favors ( http://www.favors.org/FF/ ). Fred introduced us and we've had an off and on correspondence ever since.