As we teased on CityBlog last month, Nov. 1 brings techno dance party “Fabulous” to the Orleans Arena. This is the first major (and legit) e-music festival for Las Vegas and it’s being produced by former Teatro promoter Pedi Amri. Making up an impressive bill are Armin Van Buuren, Bad Boy Bill, Deadmau5 (pictured), Robbie Rivera, MSTRKRFT and a live set by Crystal Castles, among other performers. Tickets for the 18-and-over event are $66-$150 at www.fabulousfest.com …

Have you heard of Black Label Bar & Lounge (3550 S. Decatur Blvd., 553-9128)? We hadn’t either until a few days ago, but since July it’s been open in the building that housed the Emergency Room. Sometimes they have DJs, sometimes it’s bands. As for a theme, it’s “anything that brings in customers” we were told by a man who answered the phone. Left Standing, Slow Children and Indulge take the stage at 10 p.m. Sept. 20 for a free, 21 and over show. … In related news, Jason Adams (formerly of Divided By Eli) is Indulge’s new bassist. …

Here’s another almost-off-our-radar show: Rule Of Thumb plays Sept. 20 at JJ’s Bar on Water Street in downtown Henderson. …

Island Records will release The Killers’ third album, Day & Age, Nov. 25. Former Madonna collaborator Stuart Price helms the project. …

The Higher is back the studio working on its third album, with On Fire producer Mike Green. The band’s next tour begins Oct. 11 with Just Surrender, White Tie Affair and The Morning Of. …

Fashion boutique Cloth and Canvas fetes its one year anniversary at 10 p.m. Sept. 18 in The Beatles Revolution Lounge with experimental funky-soul from Dopamine Flux, Melodi, and the Cloth and Canvas House Band. …

Last week signaled the end of the weekly “Revival” indie/Britpop party at Brass Lounge, but the name will be revived for special events. …

Sandra Collins and Vello Virkhaus guest Sept. 20 at “Perfecto” in Rain Nightclub; Oscar G spins Sept. 24 at Body English’s “Godskitchen” party.

Back in December, CityLife used our interview with former U.S. ambassador Dennis Ross (one of the most brilliant central planners this nation’s elite political class has produced in the last 25 years) to topple President George W. Bush’s assertions that he was serious about creating peace in the Middle East, or anywhere else for that matter.

It’s tough to sell the idea of peace to two historically warring Semitic tribes “when for six years we’ve appeared indifferent,” said Ross at the time.

Thus, despite all the hoopla surrounding “revelations” from Saturday’s piece in The New York Times that arms sales to Third World nations under the Bush administration have rocketed from $12 billion in 2005 to more than $32 billion this fiscal year, CityBlog was not surprised.

For decades, this nation’s central planners have talked mostly openly about how the best way to control a region is to increase arms shipments to its militaries. (Don’t believe us? Then read Memorandum for the Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, Study of U.S. Policy Toward Latin American Military Forces, Secretary of Defense, June 11, 1965 (only part of which can be seen here or, better yet, read Jan Knippers Black’s United States Penetration of Brazil.)

According to the latest press reports, we’re doing it in Iraq, too.

Time and time again, the same policies we’ve used for decades to tamp down dissent in Latin America have translated reasonably “well” when we shifted them toward Africa or Southwest Asia. Similar efforts in Southeast Asia, and in particular in Vietnam, did not go as smoothly, in large part because of the Vietnamese uprising, aka the Tet Offensive, which began, in 1968, to turn the corporate media against the war. Also contributing heavily were years of anti-war protests by you, the people, who called bullshit on the Vietnam debacle and so worried government leaders that they feared a domestic uprising. (Verify this last point on your own by reading The Pentagon Papers, specifically, Vol. IV, p. 541 of the Senator Gravel Edition.)

While American social spending overseas might engender good will toward this nation and thereby reduce the threat of Islamic militants, our nation’s overlords decided long ago that real control can only be secured by cultivating loyalty to the American elite among those in the various nations with the power to topple “unfriendly” regimes on our orders: namely, foreign militaries.

The more rational among us, such as U.S. Rep. Howard Berman, longtime California Democrat and chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said he supports many of these sales, but worried, according to that same Times article that “This could turn into a spiraling arms race that in the end could decrease stability.”

While Berman is right, he’s woefully behind the power curve. Peace long ago stopped being our primary foreign policy objective. Even this nation’s mainstream business press long ago – and openly – admitted as much, probably because so few of us bother to read it.

According to “From Cold War to Cold Peace,” Business Week, Feb. 12, 1949:
” … there’s a tremendous difference between welfare pump-priming and military pump-priming … As far as business is concerned, a munitions order from the government is much like an order from a private customer.  But the kind of welfare and public works spending that Truman plans does alter the economy.  It makes new channels of its own.  It creates new institutions.  It redistributes income.  It shifts demand from one industry to another.  It changes the whole economic pattern.”

In other words, social spending and the revenues that flow into domestic infrastructure firms are “bad” because they take money from the multinational arms corporations (who couldn’t survive without billions in taxpayer-funded research and development money – or the foreign-born profits those companies enjoy as a result of those years and decades of initial public investment) and put it in the hands of you and me.

Read that first sentence again. What it’s saying is that the economy doesn’t care whether it’s stimulated by domestic (or, for that matter, foreign) socially responsible revenue or by massive domestic and foreign-born outlays for stealth aircraft and Predator drones. The American economy is stimulated either way.

But in order to ensure the health of war profiteers’ balance sheets while at the same time accomplishing their objective of building order out of the chaos that their business activities and morally bankrupt plans create both at home (through panic and fear of imagined enemies) and abroad (through the threat of American controlled muscle), military spending is normally preferred.

Down here on Main Street, the cynical among us might call that two for the price of one.

Each time I blog about how sending U.S Sen. John McCain and Alaska Gov. Sarah “Moose” Palin to the White House will flush the United States farther down the swirling, oily hell of a corporately controlled sewer, I swear it will be my last attempt at reaching Nevada’s swing voters.

And then I pick up the morning papers or, silly me, critically analyze the lies and pablum that pass for Palin and McCain’s policies, and the fire in my belly threatens to consume me. I have to spread the word.

The latest clarion call of rational argument? This from the Tax Policy Center, aka the economic gurus upon whom even the Wall Street Journal relies for independent economic policy analysis.

According to the center’s analysis, neither McCain nor U.S. Sen. Barack Obama has substantively addressed real tax reform (nor is either likely to do so), but some stark differences remain.

Say the big brains at the center:

“Under Senator McCain’s proposed policies, the top marginal rates (35 percent on individual income and 25 percent on corporate income) would be significantly lower than under Senator Obama’s plan (39.6 and 35 percent, respectively). McCain’s reduced individual and corporate rates could improve economic efficiency and increase domestic investment, but the larger future deficits would reduce and might completely negate any positive effect.”

Obama’s tax policies, the center found, “… could encourage desirable behavior, particularly if the childless EITC and payroll tax rebate encourage additional labor supply among childless low-income individuals. However, he would also direct new subsidies at an already favored group - seniors — and an already favored activity-homeownership-which could probably be better directed elsewhere.”

Still, here’s the fiduciary money quote:

“Against current policy, Senator Obama’s proposals would raise $600 billion, and Senator McCain’s proposals lose a similar amount.”

Catch that? Compared to tax policy baselines, Obama’s tax policies would raise $600 billion. McCain’s would lose about $600 billion.

But don’t take our word for it, or even the word of the analysts at the Tax Policy Center.

Check out what Alan Greenspan, the most recent former head of the Federal Reserve, had to say about the impact of McCain’s tax cuts

Hmmm. A gain versus a loss. Isn’t that just simple economics and good common sense?

By the way, anybody else notice McCain’s shift in tone once the economic shit began to hit the fan on Monday? At an event in Jacksonville yesterday, McCain said the fundamentals of our economy were still strong. A little more than an hour - and 140 miles or so - later at a speech in Orlando, McCain had changed his tune.
(H/t to Ralph Waldo Emerson for the quote)