Here’s a totally useless question about our wonderful federal government…
I heard that all government power is wrapped up in two huge corporations, called “The United States” and “The United States of America”. Is this true? We know that major agencies are called “United States Treasury” or “United States Department of Cheese” but on the currency it is “The United States Of America” and the official title for Billary is “President Of The United States”.
are those two little words “of America” merely semantics or does it have some legal ramification??
I’ve cruised through a few web-sites operated by “patriot” groups, as well as “freemen” and “posse comitatus” types, and have seen the occasional discussion along these lines.
Short answer: it’s nonsense.
Medium length answer: it’s nonsense on stilts.
More detailed answer: it’s urban legends put out by people who deeply distrust government, always assume that what they’ve been told by “authorities” such as teachers, universities, and books, is designed to hide the real truth, and that by carefully parsing small details of word structure they can uncover the real truth as to who is really running the conspiracy.
If you want to see how the U.S. federal governemnt is organised and where it gets its authority, the U.S. Constitution is a nice starting point.
Now there’s one I hadn’t heard! Two giant corporations, eh?
It is my impression that ‘United States’ and ‘United States of America’ are pretty much interchangable terms meaning pretty much the same thing. As for Billary, well, he’s been referred to by a great many terms, many of which are not suitable for publication, and most of which have little or nothing to do with any corporation.
It IS true, however, that certain government entities have been initiated along corporate lines and others have been modified toward that appearance.
One early example that comes to mind is the Tennessee Valley Authority, one of FDR’s New Deal agencies, which was set up to ‘electrify’ the rural Southeast, specifically the Tennessee River valley. TVA was designed as a ‘federal corporation’ and was expected to turn a ‘profit,’ although, as with so many other terms, our government has a tendency to play fast and loose with the definition of ‘profit.’ TVA is, of course, still around; abolishing useless or outdated agencies is not a forte of Uncle Sam. After 2/3 of a century spent juggling its books and grossly exceeding its authority, TVA is still ‘showing a profit,’ mainly by selling the electricity it produces at prices that are significantly higher than those of its regional competitors.
The U.S. Postal Service was reformed – I think in the 70’s – and is also supposed to be ‘profitable.’ Others, like the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army’s Corps of Engineers, are guided by internal benefit/cost analyses. Even the USEPA is supposed to conduct B/C studies to justify its policies, but the methodology is far beyond the comprehension of normal (sane) folks.
In general, though, government is by nature and structure incapable of conducting its business in what we generally think of as a corporate manner.
I don’t know why fortune smiles on some and lets the rest go free…
Speaking of the USPS, aren’t they profitable? Or at least self-supporting? I can send a 7 page letter S.F. to N.Y.C. in, usually, 2-3 days for 32 cents. Not an outrageous cost to my mind. And Parcel Post is a good deal if you’re not in any real hurry.
Peace,
mangeorge
My understanding was that while the USPS is profitable (to the tune of someodd millions of dollars per year), it’s not supposed to be. Government agencies are supposed to operate at the line, not above it. This little discussion comes up every time the USPS decides to raise stamp prices when they’re already raking in the dough.
For the record, I have no idea if the profit goes to someone in particular, or a group of USPS people, the US government or is just buried in a big coffee can in the Post Master General’s back yard. I sort of hope it’s the 4th one - that’d be pretty cool.
“I guess one person can make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”
Ask the Airline Industry Lobby that one.
Any proposal for funding of improved Amtrack service is met with opposition by the airlines. Especially funding for high speed rail in either of the highly profitable coastal corridors. Or the L.A. to Las Vegas run.
Peace,
mangeorge
There may be definite truth to the high speed train bit - those have been immensely popular in Japan and in Europe. Regular old Amtrack though? They don’t need a conspiracy to keep them down. People just don’t like trains. There are few enough people who need to travel long distances and don’t own a car that its just not in high demand. Its only continuing market really is in commuting - the Chicago suburb to chicago amtrak line is quite well travelled.
This year, the USPS is profitable, I believe. They’ve been profitable for two or three years now (mostly through a series of budget cuts), and have staved off another postage hike that was originally (IIRC) expected in late 1998. The USPS budgets over four to five year intervals (approximately how long they’d like to go between rate hikes): they want to make a small profit in years one and two, break even for the next year or so, and then, once they start losing money, work on another rate hike. The point is to be 1) revenue neutral in the medium term and to 2) keep rates as stable as possible.
They don’t have shareholders to distribute the “profits” to, and I don’t believe the PMG (is it still Runyon? I’ve gotten a bit out of touch with postal issues) gets bonuses based on his budget. So the money just goes into the pot for the next year.
…but when you get blue, and you’ve lost all your dreams, there’s nothing like a campfire and a can of beans!
mangeorge, I’m afraid you’re a bit behind the times. Amtrak is debuting new high-speed service on the Northeast Corridor in the next month or so. It’s called Acela, IIRC, and they’ve been advertising it (at least in Penn Station, where I saw it) for a while. It was also a fairly well-covered news story when it was announced back in August or so. So I suppose the all powerful airlines have lost a round…
…but when you get blue, and you’ve lost all your dreams, there’s nothing like a campfire and a can of beans!
Didn’t we have a hike in late 1998? From 32¢ to 33¢? Not a huge hike, but the USPS certainly didn’t avoid one and before they raised the rates, I was hearing about how they were turning a profit so they couldn’t of been in the red before jacking prices up a penny.
“I guess one person can make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”
As an agent of the evil Federal Empire… Oh, I’m sorry, I meant to say “As a Civil Servant…” I am here to tell you personally that there ain’t no conspiracy to take away anybody’s freedom for two reasons (presented David Letterman style):
**The #2 reason why the government is not out to take your freedoms away:**
Because Civil Servants like me are Americans too, and we love our Constitution just as much as you do. And you better believe that many of us would run to the press in a heartbeat if we believed that there was a serious attempt afoot to subvert the constitution, even if (and you gotta think paranoid here) our lives were at stake. I've had friends and neighbors who worked for the supposed security apparatus (CIA, FBI, etc.), and all of them loved their Constitution too.
AND… The #1 reason why the government is not out to take your freedoms away:
The government is so big, and so disorganized, that it couldn’t orchestrate a major mind control operation if it wanted to. Hell, we can’t figure out how much we spend in a year with any finer detail than a Billion dollars or so. Mind control of the masses? That would take major money and major manpower to pull off, and as anybody in the intelligence or police agencies will tell you, the more people involve, the greater risk you have of leaks. In short, not only are we too uncoordinated to pull it off, we couldn’t pull if off for very practical reasons. If you don’t have large numbers of people being “disappeared” to plug up the leaks, that’s the surest sign that there ain’t no grand plot going on.
And BTW, as a Liberal who’s proud of it, I still say the Bill Clinton is the best president we’ve had since FDR (another hero of mine), despite his moral flaws. Conservatives just want to hate him (and especially his wife). Besides, they’re also jealous that Billie boy got blow jobs from the office help…
There’s something I’ve always wondered about these government conspiracy theories.
According to people “in the know” this conspiracy is huge; it controls the nation’s police and military power; it controls the CIA, NSA, FBI, BATF, IRS, and for all I know the NFL; it controls all the media; it controls all the banks and corporations; it controls every elected politician from the President to traffic court judges; it controls the United Nations, the Trilateral Commision, the Illuminati and the Elders of Zion; it controls the aliens and all their advanced technology like orbiting mind-control lasers and cattle mutilating black helicopters; it controls all the food you eat, the water you drink, even the air you breathe.
So my question is; why are they hiding? When are they going to make their big move and openly declare themselves the Masters of the Universe? It’s obvious with their resources they could wipe out any remaining pockets of resistance in an afternoon. So when are we going to see the New World Order in action? What are they waiting for?
The short answer is that it’s all a bunch of bullshit that demonizes anybody that can have a label stuck on them, like a TLA (Three Letter Acronym) agency employee, or multi-national organizations (like the World bank) or religious groups (like the Jews), or whoever you don’t know much about but would be shocked to hear them doing evil things. It’s just demogoguery (sp?), and demogoguery is like racist jokes - all you have to do is fill in the labels to villify whoever you want. What that mindset ignores is the inconvenient fact that these agents of “world domination” are people, just plain folk, not the evil spawn of Satan. People leak secrets like a sieve, people have consciences, people do brave things in the face of great evil (read the Diary of Anne Frank or Schindler’s List for examples of that). Oh, I’m sorry, the publishers are also in on it, right?
I didn’t mean to imply that the reason for these corporations was to usurp civil liberties, launch the black helicopter patrol, change the velocity of Foucault’s Pendulum, or elevate the president to the level of 33rd degree mason. I was just curious since many businesses organize various holding companies for tax and organizational reasons.
As a side note, I was reviewing my auto policy, and part of it mentioned losses not being covered. One exclusion reads:
“We do not cover The United States of America or any of its agencies…”
and another one (for government employees (my policy is written by GEICO)) mentions vehicles owned or leased by The United States Government.
Legal language is very very precise, and the capitalization of those statements seem to suggest to me that they are indeed two separate legal entities.
Somewhere in the first one is a link to an account of a group of people who think that the Corporation of Coloradao has improperly usurped the powers of the State of Colorado, which echoes the OP - but it’s late and I couldn’t find it this evening.
I’m not venting at you, and I’m not even venting at jti, he just brought up a sore subject, and that is the whole militia thing that lead to the Oklahoma City bombing. I’ve gone throught President Raygun’s attempt to decimate the Civil Service (conservative rallying cry - the only good Civil Servant is one that’s standing in the unemployment line - except for DoD, intelligence and police agencies). I’ve gone through the shutdown of the government, where we were not even allowed to get temporary jobs flipping burgers at MacDonald’s, because the government has contracts with that company, and that could be construed as a conflict of interest (!!!). And I’ve gone through Oklahoma City, where I felt like that evil man accomplished what many conservatives secretly wished they could do – get rid of Civil Servants, permanently.
So when those 50mm machinegun-toting morons who want to overthrow my country make me out to be some evil monster bent on controlling their minds, I take it REAL personally. Not that you all could tell, I’m sure. Sorry to vent, it’s not aimed at anybody here, just a very sore subject.
I certainly appreciate that the type of people who post in the sites I mentioned are not a joke - in my opinion, they have a very warped and, as the Oklahoma tragedy shows, in some cases a very dangerous mindset. I was not joking when I referred to them as paranoid.
However, I am firmly of the view that it’s best to know as much as possible about them, and to spread the word amongst the reasonable Teeming Millions, who are dedicated to fighting ignorance. That was why I was looking at these sites in the first place, and why I’ve posted them.
I appreciate this is a very sore subject for you, and did not mean to offend you.
Sorry to vent, it’s not aimed at anybody here, just a very sore subject.