US-historian and lawyer John Ryskamp talks about the various “power games” that are part of the current financial / economic crisis. He sees a liquidation of the whole system at work and states: “Liquidation is a Disney film—directed by Hitchcock!  Everyone is smiling and singing, and everyone is dead.”  He wrote The Eminent Domain Revolt (New York: Algora 2006), which discusses the movement toward new rights in the United States.  Ryskamp is also author of the "New Bill of Rights", which is mightily opposed by the power establishment of the United States.

By Lars Schall

John Ryskamp, born 1954, took his BA in US-history from the University of Michigan. He received a Masters degree in 1975 and earned a law degree at Golden Gate University in 1985. He is the author of the novel “Nature Studies” and of “The Eminent Domain Revolt: Changing Perceptions in a New Constitutional Epoch.” John Ryskamp lives most of his time since 1977 in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Mr. Ryskamp, recently you’ve published an article on the “German Greek Bailout legislation as an Enabling act.” How did you come up with the idea? And do you see yourself proven correct by the subsequent events?

I heard about it, and I had an instinct that it might be of the “enabling act” type, since Paulson’s proposal was also of an enabling act type.  Actually, although his proposal to eliminate judicial review was not accepted in either of our bailout bills, it is in fact the law, since the courts will basically not review what is decided.  Nor do I think German courts will review the bailout legislation.

In my view we’ve never had anything but health and welfare regimes, from the beginning, although they trade under different names.  Most of the power is always in the hands of the government, individually enforceable rights are very few.  And that’s always the source of the corruption.  But people are very “rights” averse.  They’d love to have power, knocking heads is their idea of solving problems, and they are suspicious of other people.  That’s very true even today.  Today’s people are not much different at all from people who have always lived.  The problem is that if you can’t conceive of a rights regime—as opposed to a health and welfare regime—it becomes impossible for you to understand that the source of your problems is lack of rights, and that rights are the source of the solution.

For example, from the very beginning of this round of crises I have advocated a complete, individually enforceable, permanent and absolute ban on housing evictions.  They are quite aware in Washington that housing policy is only subject to “minimum scrutiny” under Lindsey v. Normet, and they have been very careful—in any kind of “forbearance” legislation—to make it clear that they are NOT raising the level of scrutiny for housing policy.

If you know what is going on in the halls of power, you know that they are quite well aware that the health and welfare regime is in the crosshairs, and they see themselves as the idealistic defenders of this mighty tool for general welfare.  It’s very hard to convince people that the answer lies, not in the vote of the people, but rather in the careful exploration of the facts.  In short, they know exactly what I want—and they are dead set against it, and for now, they have our petit bourgeois, semi-fascist middle class on their side.  And actually, I think they will continue to have the middle class on their side—as long as there is a middle class.

There is a LONG institutional memory of the Depression, with Hoover appearing to sit there and do nothing with the Federal Government, and then Franklin Roosevelt sitting there and doing a great deal with the Federal Government.  Fantasy or not, it left the middle class in this country with the idea that the Federal Government has unlimited power to change situations.  They don’t really want it deprived of that power.  If YOU think there is something wrong with YOUR situation, don’t CLAIM a RIGHT—FIGHT for POWER.  You see the mentality.  A chimpanzee is more sophisticated.  But there they are—Americans.

Would you agree that these bailout activities are not that much about money than they are about power?

I think people will be very surprised—however many years it is from now when the papers come out of hiding—that people like Bernanke and Paulson and Geithner and Obama, really did see themselves as defending what most people wanted: a health and welfare regime.  Would you be surprised to learn that they couldn’t conceive of any other world?  No one can.  No one trusts rights.  Look at our health care debate.  It’s all about goblins—those mean people who will get “all the health care they want,” and “bankrupt the system.”  It’s a dialogue of the insane.  No mention of medical care as a fact of life, and how exactly that works out in life, no exploration of medical care as a FACT, rather than a POLICY or a GOAL.  No, instead, it is this glorious prize for which you basically have to compete, with some acts of generosity thrown in.

If anything truly dreadful happens to the American middle class (let’s say, unemployment of 60% among those who have a Bachelor’s degree), it will be because they see absolutely no distinction to be made between money and power.  The basic disposition here is to treat power as a very lovely thing to have, and people with money get power and so they are lovely.  Try explaining rights to a ninny like that.

And that may be when they grow up, because we’ve only gotten advances in individual rights in this country—and I think through every country—through horror stories.  You have to take people by the nose and say, “See?  This is what happens when you don’t have rights.”  They still don’t believe it, and when it is safe to do so, they will return to the “comfort” and “freedom” of a police state.  Nobody trusts rights.  They all want the option of reaching for the police state remedy.  It’s so convenient! so tempting! and so close at hand!

Should Europeans pay attention to the fact that by now the IMF does sit at their “debt table”?

They should be grateful, for a while.  America has adopted Europe, all its corruption, all its claptrap.  It’s ours now, we own it.  I see it as one currency, one fate. 

But does it really matter, with the world bankrupt?  How much longer will the charade go on?  Reality keeps poking its head in.  Also, I have no faith in protests.  Compared to what Europeans face, what have they really done?  Where are the tax strikes?  Where are the general strikes?  You have a very fat middle class which believes it can never really come to disaster.  And so we drift.

And of course, the shadow governments wait.

You believe there are “shadow governments”?

There are ALWAYS shadow governments, and many make no bones about it.  I particularly studied the right wing ones for my book, The Eminent Domain Revolt.  And you can see there what rascals these right-wing shadow governments really are.

In case you are not familiar with the case which was the focus of the book, Kelo v. New London was a straightforward power grab by government in conspiracy with Pfizer to seize land for a new facility.  There was housing on the land.  The Institute for Justice, a right wing “public interest” law firm, in cahoots with the several right wing foundations, including the notorious Scaife Foundation (I think Scaife—a Mellon scion—has had particularly kind words for Hitler), represented the homeowner and basically wrecked the case by not arguing that there should be an individually enforceable right to housing.  The U.S. Supreme Court co-conspired on this case, by giving a wink and a nod to the notion that there was an objective need for this taking.  In case you didn’t know it, our Supreme Court is a group of hustlers and hoods.  REAL scum.

Why didn’t the lawyers argue for a right to housing?  Because the right wing—as I’m sure you know from Germany’s charming experience—doesn’t believe in rights at all.  It believes in that tautology we know as “power.”  In short, they oppose eminent domain because they oppose government, period.  The case was a complete farce, as dreadful as the Dred Scott case—the most embarrassing human rights failure in the U.S. in a hundred years.  Disgusting.

Everyone knew that if the Court basically raised the level of policy scrutiny for housing in the context of eminent domain, then that would have been a major breach in the wall of the health and welfare regime.  And in fact the vote was 5-4 to uphold the taking—even some of the dogs on the Supreme Court demurred at this particular instance of American looting. 

And now Pfizer has abandoned the project!!  That often happens with eminent domain takings.  They are just scams, just like our bond market.  It’s all very secretive, all very worded in code words, but when the rest of the world finds out what a farce America is, they will keel over in horror.  We’re just a criminal mess.

In any event, I learned more than I wanted about the plans of our right-wing shadow governments.  They are just waiting in the wings.  Just like Hitler did, just like Lenin did.  There are always dictators-without-portfolio—they are the pneumonia of the body politic.  What do you expect in a world which believes in nothing but power?  Things have changed since Caesar?  Prove it.  Oh yes, thanks to Hegel we have the death penalty.  Thank you Hegel!  Have a pretzel.

I found left-wing shadow governments too.  And guess what?  They don’t support rights, either.  You see, it’s all about, “Give ME the power, and then I will do what is right.  But give me the power FIRST.”  It’s always about what power will do for people.  It’s never about rights—what people do WITH power.  Heavens no!  We all know people can’t be trusted.  America is the land of swinishness—but is Germany any better, with your Merkel?

What are these “shadow governments” up to?

They fund a lot of antics like this Kelo lawsuit.  They influence legislation.  They cheer each other up, and cheer each other on, and they wait.  What did Hitler do in 1928?  What did Lenin do in 1911?  You wait for things to fall apart.  You make what inroads you can.  You raise money.  It’s all depressingly familiar. 

My own feeling is that we could very well wind up with a general, a sort of Pinochet, in this country, depending on how bad it gets.  Of course, a lot of America runs on smiling fascism, so you don’t want that smile to turn to a frown.  Nothing would make it into a frown faster than the idea that there was some sort of coup in Washington.  So they tiptoe around that VERY carefully.  Generals are moved around, and so on.  But all hell will break loose, and all bets are off, if unemployment soars among the bourgeoisie.  We have done our forty-year social experiment on the underclass and lower middle class, and it is with relief that I announce that they don’t matter politically, so they can just starve to death—their misery will provoke no change one way or the other in the United States.  Only the upper middle class matters.  Which is why all the assistance currently goes to them.  But they’ll get theirs, too.  The swap cops have America in the crosshairs.  Our little reign of error is just about over.  We are an empty garbage can.

Which role does the USA and the Federal Reserve play in that power game?

Exactly that—power.  When you don’t believe in the facts, you only have the concept of “power” left.  Bernanke—this shallow student of history—Geithner—this non-economist—Obama—this goombah—have any notion of standing back and thinking things through?  Never!  That’s the problem.  Everyone conceives of himself as a “player” in the “game.”  Even down to the tiniest poor person.  Very difficult to advocate rights through a mess like that. 

So certainly part of it is control over Europe.  This crisis has been seen by the powerful as a way to get more power.  How could you see it any other way if you’re a “player”?  If your position is stronger, it’s an opportunity to take over the power of those who are weaker.  Everyone talks about being starved for credit.  Who is starving them?  Those who want them to starve.  Consolidation has ramped up and will continue to ramp up.  Consolidation as a part of Mellonesque liquidation.  And Europe is part of that.  It’s been consolidated into the U.S.  “Officially,” if it wasn’t previously.  How low with the Euro go?  As low as Caterpillar and Deere want it to go, no lower.  But that won’t prevent a deluge, if the world economy is really going to collapse. 

I always see “shots across the bow” in what the U.S. government does.  Will there be debt restructuring?  Look at what the U.S. government did to the GM bondholders.  There’s your shot across the bow.  There’s your model.  Power will not hesitate to round on bondholders—their nominal allies—if bonds become a threat to power.  That’s what the GM situation tells you.  Just watch where Rahm Emanuel goes and what he does.  He’s the hatchet man.

One continuing problem is secrecy.  We’re not being told a fraction of the problems there are out there.  It’s all being held together with baling wire.  And of course, idiotic assumptions and bad political ideas shared by everyone from Obama down.  You can’t just blame the Fed and the Federal Government.  Blame the middle class.  They have truly dreadful political ideas.  Open up their minds—and vomit.  And what can you do about them?  Wait until they lose everything and so have no more power.  And believe me, people are waiting. 

Do you think that the only economic policy now is currency manipulation?

Yes, frankly.  Everyone is now looking like some nineteenth-century politican, like Napoleon III or something.  A health and welfare regime means neither health nor welfare: it means power.  Disguise it as you will, indulge in charity as you will.   It’s still power.  It’s a tautology you keep at bay.  And look how long they’ve kept it at bay!  But ultimately, it lashes out, because it’s irrational.  Then all the “mattresses” between power and the angry mob are removed, and your political tools are reduced.  And then there is fiddling around with currencies—these globs of metal and piece of paper and entries in accounts.

I think they’ve been reduced to the point where policy is speaking only through currency.  Very bad, very dangerous, and I really didn’t think it would happen so soon.  Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket!!

I keep waiting for the government to Federalize money market accounts.  You know, your money is in “jail.”  You still own it, you just can’t control it or withdraw it.

How do you relate current economic problems to current political systems?

After the War, in the U.S. at any rate, we chained our fate to building suburbia.  You just don’t have an American suburbia in Europe.  A land of free-standing, individually owned houses on quarter acre lots?  Not really.  That’s America.  And it was “fine” as long as it was being built.  But now it’s here.  Now how do you keep that ENORMOUS elephant fed?

It’s the question no one wants to approach—the idea of what it takes to maintain American suburbia, which sucks up resources like a vacuum cleaner.  As currency manipulation is coming more into focus, we are starting to understand something better which I have said for a while: it’s a mistake to think the American economy is “slow.”  It’s ferociously fast.  That is to say, a huge amount of money must circulate every single day just to keep this elephant standing.  There is no possibility of it slowing down.  Cash is part and parcel of a health and welfare regime, especially where “entitlements” are kept low.  Hypocrisy is high, cash is fast, illusions are monumental—that’s the “rules of the game.”  One by one, one dirty deal after another dirty deal, America has built up a society which is 100% corrupt.  There is not a single uncorrupt dollar.  You’ll see it as the states start to collapse.  All our muni bonds are corrupt.  And there are thousands of bond-issuing entities!  Every single one is a dirty deal, an agreement to keep power in a police state.  You call it “money for schools,” “money for infrastructure.”  Nonsense.  We live in America.  We know whose pockets are lined.  But what can you do?  Every dollar you have is tainted in this way. 

Above all, and this is a big surprise, there is no political commitment to maintain what exists here—that’s the game.  We all have this illusion that if it goes to smash it goes to smash, and you must sit homeless in front of the housing unit in which you used to live.  Until you die?  Well, yes, if we have to “ration” resources in that way.   

“Rationing” is next, “austerity” is next, in the liquidationist scenario.  Liquidation is a Disney film—directed by Hitchcock!  Everyone is smiling and singing, and everyone is dead.  People will be very surprised at how Americans stand by and let the country collapse. 

So do we have an “economic” problem?  Not really.  We have a “political” problem—we have the same problem, under different circumstances, which we have always had: we have an individual rights problem.  Terrible how much suffering will have to be endured before we get the next set of rights—which I put in my book, The Eminent Domain Revolt—and the rights regime, the doctrine of which is that the law does one thing only: it maintains important facts.  You really wouldn’t believe the zombie mentality I face here in America trying just to make people aware of what role rights play.  Even lawyers stare at you: they have no idea what you are talking about.  To Americans, “rights”—if not pernicious—are glamorous movie stars who are not part of their lives.

Where do you see signs of fundamental change, particularly in the United States, which might not be evident to people who focus on economic issues?

People always struggle to survive, and the word for this struggle is, “rights.”  The important thing is to read discretion out of the political system and put decision-making exclusively on the basis of what, in view of important facts, is in FACT the better argument.  A pure rights regime is what I’m after.  It’s important to see that power in the political system is nothing more, less or other, than acquiescing in government having its way with respect to what is in FACT the worse argument—an argument, in short, which is not based on facts, an argument which is a prejudice.  Power is about letting government prevail in its prejudices.

And on the other hand, there is the struggle.  People are always vindicating their rights, they are always maintaining unchanging facts of human experience, what I call “important” facts, whether they know it or not  And they are always INVESTIGATING the facts to determine which facts are unchanging facts of human experience.  Rights are FACTS, not GOALS or IDEALS.  Currently, we know those facts as free speech, legal equality and so on—our pathetically inadequate grab bag of current rights.  Pitiful—and pitifully inadequate.  Disgusting.  But the point is, people were ACTING all the time as legally equal and they were speaking freely, all the time these things were “illegal.”  You want to inquire into which facts of human experience can you show, historically, are robust and resilient in the face of attempts on them.  Government is another important fact—it pops up again and again even though power would simply love to destroy it.  And this is a very big characteristic of shadow governments: they always claim they simply want to be the government.  They don’t—they want to eliminate government in favor of power.

If you look, today, you see facts being established as important facts, which decades of American legal propagandists have told you cannot be individual rights because courts would become legislatures if they tried to decide on such cases.  For example, no one was supposed to have an individually enforceable right to education—education was something for the political system to provide, not the individual to mandate.

But lo and behold! Now what are called “adequacy” cases (put this word and “education” and “right” in your search engine) are proliferating all over the U.S.  One was just filed in California.  These cases maintain that education is an unchanging FACT of human experience, history has shown it to be so, and so it is individually enforceable.  New Jersey (through the Abbott cases—also see online) has been litigating this for decades, and it has brought vast positive changes in the state.

If “adequacy” had been the standard for housing policy in the U.S., we would NEVER have had the mortgage crisis.  Think about it.

And for that matter, look at the way housing is being enforced as an individually enforceable right under the South African constitution.  By the way, during the “constitution decade” of the 1990s when, especially in eastern Europe, new constitutions were being written, Harvard sent a team of lawyers to these constitutional conventions to try to ensure that facts were not recognized as rights.  That’s how tenacious—and how madly foolish—the American power structure is. 

So the New Bill of Rights which I wrote is no surprise to anyone who actually follows the political dialogue: the facts have been leading to it for decades.  But you have to have your head screwed on straight in order to see where this is happening “under the radar”—and against the wishes of power—in this country.

Wait until Europeans wake up and realize that none of their entitlements are individually enforceable in the slightest degree. 

In an interview with me, US-historian Carolyn Baker mentioned an article of hers, that was published that week:

“’Your Disappointment In Obama Is Your Teaching Moment’, just after the U.S. Supreme Court had lifted all restrictions on campaign financing. While for the past 150 years in the U.S., it has always been true that corporations select Presidents, this ruling sets this reality in stone, and the United States is now irrevocably, in the words of Mussolini, a corporate state.”

Do you agree with Carolyn Baker?

Well, Mussolini simply dispensed with opposition, he didn’t bother drowning it in money.  Corporate state means something other than corporations get to spend all they want on campaigns and political issues.  Let’s just say, how does money maintain important facts?  Because that is really the law.  However, if you read the case at issue, you realize how little BOTH sides in the dispute, understand about the important facts as rights.  The situation is such a mess that there is hardly anything to say about it, except that the case is simply another expression of how messy American political thinking is, and how dreadfully badly its Constitution is understood.  The arguments on both sides are simply two sets of chimps screaming at each other.  Both sides are the enemy.  Facts as rights—that is the only real ally.  Don’t read the case as either good or bad—examine it as a piece of reasoning.  It is pure mush.  We have complete idiots on the Court today.  Harry Blackmun flat out called Sandra O’Connor an “idiot,” Alan Dershowitz said Clinton “reached down” to pick Ruth Ginsburg.  These Justices are simply dogs.

May I ask you for your reading of the Constitution? Is there actually still a Constitution or is my impression totally out of whack with reality that some of its basic elements were wiped out with Patriot Act 1 – 3?

They were wiped out long before the Patriot Acts.  I think it is very bourgeois and shallow to throw up ones hands in horror at the Patriot Act.  An informed person will tell you it’s just one more step after the many which have already been taken. 

I see a big problem as the unwillingness of people to grant that power-mad types are so screwed up that they do no research and do not think.  That’s not the case at all.  They have a huge network, with a lot of support.  Don’t you think they study instances of right-wing gambits which FAILED, to see how they might be successful next time?  Supposedly its only left-wingers who do little experiments on society.  Right wing types stick pins in society all the time.  Don’t you think the provisions of the Patriot Acts were in the minds of right-wingers for decades before the legislation was actually introduced?  That legislation has been waiting in the wings for a long time.

The Constitution is a highly problematic document.  Remember that originally it made provisions for slavery.  No one who is informed would say that the Constitution or the Federal Government are synonymous with government as an individually enforceable right.  We’ve lost that sense of a distance between government and the Constitution.  We should restore it.  Everyone used to be quite well aware of it.  Lincoln was particularly aware of it—because when he was alive, government meant slavery!!

In addition, we have a very poor understanding of important facts, so we can’t distinguish them very well.  When the Constitution says “speech,” we have no idea whether that word is used as a FACT or as a POLICY.  Isn’t it idiotic?  If you read my book, you will find, to your amazement, that we have no idea whether eminent domain—which is provided for in the Fifth Amendment—is a fact or a policy.  That is, is it something which is done, or is it something which should be done?  Can you believe it? that we are still THAT stupid?  But power power power, and our grasping smallmindedness, has repeatedly swiped our attention away from such inquiries.  That’s the source of our current “economic” problems.

What do you say to those who predict a major war as the outcome of this crisis?

The only thing I would say about predicting war as the outcome of a liquidationist gambit, is, look to see what are the specific indicia of such a situation.  Liquidation itself may be one, but many other factors have to come into play.  I can think of several:

1.  an arrangement of diplomatic and treaty obligations which exacerbates international tensions

2.  mixed signals (VERY difficult to see at the time, or certainly, in advance)

3.  arousing nationalist/racist sentiments

4.  dissolving of domestic political constraints--specifically, removing procedural hurdles within specific national political processes

5.  leaving international organizations (EU) or breaking bilateral or mulilateral treaties.

6.  altered political rhetoric, to a more militant, confrontational and simplistic mode.

There have been lots of liquidationist gambits, but they do not ALL mean war.  In addition, you have the complications of the UN being in place as a forum/mediator, and the presence of nuclear weapons.

So it is unclear who would be fighting who.  On the other hand, it is not impossible that the "powers" would let a "regional" conflict go forward.  They have in the past, they are doing so now.  But France versus Germany?  Hmmm.  US might put its foot down there.  On the other hand, our politicians are such slippery operators, you never know.

Also, it's hard to tell if wars occur during liquidationist epochs, or during growth epochs.  Germany's economy was growing like mad during the late 1930s--inflation 17%.  Sure it was military based, but it was growth.  Did it inevitably mean war?  So was it growth or the depression which caused Germany's aggressiveness? 

One thing, I think, would contribute mightily to another widespread war: people not paying attention to these factors.  If you are not monitoring for war, as you would monitor symptoms of an illness, its liable to spring on you and you have no idea how it happened.

Stopping things along the way might help: new rights would help a lot, because the middle class is very anxious now, very uncertain of the important facts of its life.  More and more, they are on a hair trigger.  As things get worse, it takes less and less to set off our middle class hyenas.