Christina Johnson and so did Bush...in fact the bus he used was made by the same co. as President O's bus!!!!! So what is your point Joey?????
6 hours ago ·
Joey Broski Did Bush keep the bus?? Why does Obama need 3 more plus his entire motorcade..why couldn't he just use the one that the former president used? Hmm just a thought.. but will the Canadian Union that constructed his buses send a big campaign contribution? I find it ironic that Obama is talking about creating jobs while touring in brand new, million dollar busses, purchased with taxpayer dollars, that were made in CANADA. Maybe Obama means he is planning on creating more CANADIAN jobs.....
Jackie ...Shut up you Lemming...
6 hours ago ·
Jackie Millinor yeah, you're a right wingnut who's IQ matches his shoe size. Other than that you post nothing that borders on truth. There is at least one conservative who posts here, however, that brings intelligence to the table when posting. All you bring is that bag of rocks you got stuck on top of your shoulders.
6 hours ago ·
James Conley Bachmann's bus...same Canadian manufacturer. http://www.examiner.com/rving-in-national/bachmann-e mulates-palin-with-whistle -stop-bus-tour-to-canvass- voters
5 hours ago ·
Joey Broski All you bring is corny generic insults...Jackie I could insult you for hours..but it's pointless ...see the common denominator?
5 hours ago ·
Eddie Blake Joey, shut the fuck up. You're just as stupid and racist as Jeff Thomas.
5 hours ago via Facebook Mobile ·
Christina Reaves What about the nearly 100 million (tax payer dollars) spent on carting Reagan's dead ass all over the country for his farewell cross country memorial service?? Give me a break. hahaha
5 hours ago · · 2 people
James Conley It's funny how Republicans who made a free trade bed, now don't like to sleep on its coach.
5 hours ago · · 2 people
Joey Broski James ...Helloooo00 McFly ...She don't own the bus...and its an Alabama baised company thta leases the busses ///Unlike Obama who directly had these busses built to spec....
5 hours ago ·
Eddie Blake Who built Sarah Palin's bus? And who do you think paid for that?
Dumbass......
5 hours ago via Facebook Mobile ·
James Conley I didn't know Obama owned the busses. I think it was the Secret Service that purchased them.
5 hours ago · · 2 people
Eddie Blake Stop it, James. Poor Joey's brain will implode trying to digest that fact.
5 hours ago via Facebook Mobile · · 1 person
Christina Reaves I've found no proof anywhere that those buses were paid for with tax dollars.. been looking.. doing my homework as always. :P
5 hours ago ·
James Conley As for 'building to spec', I'm willing to bet that Obama didn't sit down and make the drafts. Some faceless bureaucrat who, I'm willing to bet, went through federal procurement rules did. Probably the same free trade procurement rules that southern pubbies b*tched about when the Air Force selected Boeing instead of EADS to manufacture the tankers. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/25/business/25tanker. html
5 hours ago ·
James Conley But Joe, I completely understand your antipathy toward these particular busses...what with your familiarity with shorter ones and all.
5 hours ago ·
Christina Reaves Building to specs.. probably means 2 inch thick bullet proof glass.. bullet proof tires.. :P Which I 100% endorse.
5 hours ago ·
Christina Reaves On the subject of bullet proof glass.. I do believe that if anything ever happened to our president.. this would bring riots in this country like we have never seen. London would look like freaking Romper Room.
5 hours ago · · 2 people
Brenda Harrison What do you want him to tour in Joey??He is the President afterall..Would a Ford escort suit you better?
5 hours ago · · 1 person
James Conley And one more thing...I'll take 1 President who rides around in Canadian busses...over the 11 Republican candidates, who'd throw the American worker under a bus...any...day...of...the...week.
5 hours ago · · 5 people
James Conley Brenda, I guess we should come down too hard on Joey. I sense a growing worry for the plight of the American worker from the Republican base...why, might I go so far as to say there is real...concern...for the fate of the UAW worker who would build said busses. What's that I hear in the distance from Joey? Could it be? Joey singing "look for the union label"? What's next, the internationale? nah...couldn't be.
5 hours ago · · 4 people
Brenda Harrison Couldn't be...I think you will hear more about throwing the unions under the bus from the right side..although I think made in the USA and union go hand in hand..
4 hours ago ·
Christina Johnson Hey Joey, I noticed Fox wasn't telling this story, but thought you might find it interesting, check out CNN's report on the busses. Saving $$$$ by buying 2,( and here the part you aren't going to like) the Republican candidate will get the 2nd one, then it will be the GOP's to use! I for 1 want my President in an armour bus, & the cadidate for that matter. President's have been using this mode of travel for as long as it has been an option, the whole subject is sooooo stupid!!!!!
4 hours ago · · 2 people
Benjamin Cyr I thought Bush used Air Force One for his means of travel during his campaign ...
2 hours ago ·
Benjamin Cyr He would give rides on Air Force One to people who donated on the campaign trail
2 hours ago ·
Soup McGee http://ampedstatus.org/download-free-pdf-kindle-word -doc-of-full-report-analys is-of-financial-terrorism- in-america/
Download Free PDF, Kindle, Word Doc of Full Report: ‘Analysis of Financial Terrorism in America’ | Aampedstatus.org
EXCLUSIVE: Analysis of Financial Terrorism in America: Over 1 Million Deaths Ann...See More
about an hour ago · ·
Soup McGee XI :: Modern Day Slavery
Another shocking example of how far we have descended into fascism is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which is a group of corporate executives who literally write government legislation. They have gone as far as setting up a system that imprisons the poor and then puts them to work, instead of paying living wages to non-imprisoned workers. Make no mistake, this is a modern day system of slavery unfolding before our eyes.
At the leadership of ALEC and various other Economic Elite organizations, poverty has essentially become a crime. To demonstrate these attacks against the poor, there was $17 billion cut from public housing programs, while there was an increase of $19 billion in programs for building prisons, “effectively making the construction of prisons the nation’s main housing program for the poor.” Before laws began to be rewritten in 1980, with direct input from ALEC, we had a prison population of 500,000 citizens. After laws were rewritten to target poor inner city citizens with much more severe penalties, the US prison population skyrocketed to 2.4 million people.
We now have the largest prison population in the world. With only 4% of the world’s population, we have 25% of the world’s prison population. As I reported previously, in a report entitled, “American Gulag: World’s Largest Prison Complex“:
“The US, by far, has more of its citizens in prison than any other nation on earth. China, with a billion citizens, doesn’t imprison as many people as the US, with only 308 million American citizens. The US per capita statistics are 700 per 100,000 citizens. In comparison, China has 110 per 100,000. In the Middle East, the repressive regime in Saudi Arabia imprisons 45 per 100,000. US per capita levels are equivalent to the darkest days of the Soviet Gulag.”
XII :: The Death Toll
The dramatic increase in poverty has obviously torn many families apart and caused a devastating psychological toll, but consider the increase in deaths as a result of poverty and severe wealth inequalities. This is a very difficult statistic to accurately measure, but Columbia University’s School of Public Health conducted an intensive examination of mortality and medical data and estimated that “875,000 deaths in the US in 2000 could be attributed to a cluster of social factors bound up with poverty and income inequality.”
As a report by Debra Watson sums up the study, “There is no reason to believe, after a decade that has seen sustained attacks on social programs and consistently high unemployment rates, that the social mortality rate has declined. On the contrary, it has likely risen.” Indeed, poverty and income inequality have skyrocketed since 2000.
Now, let’s consider the fact that, according to the Census Bureau, 31.1 million people lived in poverty in 2000, and according to Columbia’s study 875,000 deaths came as a result. This means that 1 out of every 35.5 people living in poverty die annually as a result of their impoverishment. If you extrapolate this data to the 2009 total of 52.8 million people living in poverty, you get an estimate of 1,486,338 deaths within that year. Even if you use the lower poverty totals from the Census Bureau, 43.6 million people, you get an estimate of 1,228,169 deaths in 2009.
XIII :: Deliberate Systemic Attacks
The dramatic increase in economic inequality and poverty, along with the unprecedented rise in wealth within the top one-tenth of one percent of the population has not happened by mistake. It is the designed result of deliberate governmental and economic policy. It is the result of the richest people in the world, and the “too big to fail” banks, using the campaign finance and lobbying system to buy off politicians who implement policies designed to exploit 99.9% of the population for their financial gain. To call what is happening a “financial terrorist attack” on the United States, is not using hyperbole, it is the technical term for what is currently occurring.
Compare the million people who die annually as a result of these economic attacks, to the 2,977 that died on 9/11. As someone who lived three blocks from the World Trade Center, as tragic as 9/11 was, these economic attacks are much more severe and damaging to us as a nation, albeit a much slower and unseen death toll. Nonetheless, the result is of genocidal proportions. One can statistically compare the economic attacks on the US to the invasion of Iraq, which some estimate as leading to one million deaths. Once again, many of those deaths came in brutal and spectacular fashion in bombing campaigns known as “shock and awe.” However, the death toll compares to the hidden brutality of a four-year campaign of economic “shock and awe.” Just as Iraq was invaded, the US has been invaded by a global banking cartel.
As shocking as that is to realize, consider that this is happening throughout the world. While the US poverty death rate is probably higher than in most European countries, the Federal Reserve’s economic policies — along with policies from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Bank of International Settlements — have caused rioting and uprisings over skyrocketing food prices and costs of living throughout the world. The fact of the matter, and very harsh and unfortunate reality of this crisis, is that the global economic central planners are deliberately carrying out genocidal economic policies.
As Che Guevara, a man who took on the global financial elite, once said, “The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this.”
When tens of trillions of dollars deliberately flow to the top economic one-tenth of one percent of the global population, while large percentages live in poverty, you have to conclude, in technical terms, that a Neo-Feudal-Fascist state is upon us. The rich have never been richer, while their paid off politicians make budget cuts for the poor and middle class, and cause the cost of basic necessities to skyrocket.
You can call me extreme, but the reality of this is extreme, these people, the global economic top one-tenth of one percent, are genocidal fascists carrying out a holocaust. Fascism has evolved. There is no need to get blood on your hands while rounding up people and putting them into concentration camps when you can do it through economic policy while sitting in a jacuzzi on a corporate jet, or in a three-piece custom-made Armani, completely detached and insulated from the world in which you plunder.
However, as what happens with all empires, greed and arrogance makes them overreach. The beaten down masses get to a point where they literally can’t live under these conditions. This desperation spreads throughout the population until it reaches a critical mass, then, suddenly, they rise up and the empire begins to collapse… Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Israel, (Northern Africa, the Middle East), Albania, Greece, Spain, Britain (Europe), Wisconsin…
The Economic Elite are overreaching and their empire is collapsing.
The decentralized global rebellion has begun…
Welcome to World War III.
Which side of history do you want to be on?
As a wise old friend once said,
“You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”
________________________________________
This report was written by David DeGraw, founder and editor of AmpedStatus.com. His long-awaited book, The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III, will finally be released on September 28th. He can be emailed at David@AmpedStatus.com. You can follow David’s reporting daily on his new personal website: DavidDeGraw.org .
________________________________________
~ AmpedStatus is 100% independent and reader supported. We do not accept any money from partisan political organizations. We are fighting for survival. If you appreciate our work, please get a $5 per month subscription to sustain our efforts:
http://ampedstatus.com/donation.php
________________________________________
about an hour ago · ·
Soup McGee Chapter 15: America’s Grace: How a Tolerant Nation Bridges its Religious
Divides
Ø How
can
America
be
both
devout
and
diverse
without
fracturing
along
religious
lines?
Ø Most
Americans
embrace
religious
diversity—including
those
who
are
highly
secular
and
those
who
are
highly
religious.
Many
Americans
experience
religious
diversity
on
a
personal
scale.
Americans
typically
have
friends
and
family
of
different
faiths,
creating
their
own
religiously
diverse
social
networks.
The
diversity
embodied
within
these
networks
enables
the
peaceful
coexistence
of
myriad
religions
in
contemporary
America.
American
Grace
9
Ø Americans
see
the
value
in
religious
diversity
for
its
own
sake.
When
asked
whether
“religious
diversity
has
been
good
for
America,”
84%
agree.
Those
with
the
highest
levels
of
religiosity,
still
endorse
religious
diversity
overwhelming:
74%.
Ø In
the
most
intimate
association
of
all—marriage—Americans
are
increasingly
comfortable
with
religious
diversity.
One-‐third
of
all
Americans
are
married
to
someone
of
a
different
religious
tradition,
and
one-‐half
are
married
to
someone
who
came
from
a
different
tradition
(the
difference
being
explained
by
spousal
conversions).
Ø Americans
live
in
religiously
diverse
neighborhoods:
only
7%
say
that
all
of
the
neighbors
share
the
same
religion;
nearly
a
third
report
than
none
do.
Ø Most
Americans
are
intimately
acquainted
with
people
of
other
faiths.
This
is
the
most
important
reason
that
Americans
can
combine
religious
devotion
and
diversity.
Having
a
religiously
diverse
social
network
leads
to
a
more
positive
assessment
of
specific
religious
groups.
Religious
diversity
within
social
networks—religious
bridging—fosters
greater
interreligious
acceptance.
(Gaining
an
evangelical
friend
means
a
more
positive
evaluation
of
evangelicals;
gaining
a
nonreligious
friends
means
warmer
regard
for
“people
who
are
not
religious.”
Ø Most
of
the
American
population—save
a
small
but
intensely
religious
segment—are
reluctant
to
give
a
unique
status
to
any
religion
as
“true,”
even
their
own.
A
majority
of
Americans
believe
that
members
of
other
faiths
can
go
to
heaven,
and
this
is
true
even
in
religions
that
explicitly
teach
that
salvation
is
reserved
for
their
own
adherents.
Across
a
range
of
Christian
denominations
we
see
a
disconnect
between
the
leaders
at
the
pulpits
and
the
people
in
the
pews.
Most
Christian
clergy
see
salvation
as
exclusively
Christian,
while
most
Christians
have
a
more—if
not
completely—inclusive
view
of
who
will
saved
in
the
hereafter.
Ø Americans’
expansive
view
of
heaven
results
from
their
personal
experience
with
people
with
different
religious
backgrounds,
including
their
close
friends
and
family.
Americans
manage
to
be
both
religiously
diverse
and
religious
devout
because
it
is
difficult
to
damn
those
you
know
and
love.
Ø A
small
minority
of
Americans
(10%)
are
true
believers
who
say
that
people
of
other
faiths
cannot
reach
heaven
and
“one
religion
is
true
and
others
are
not.”
First,
this
group
of
true
believers
is
more
intensely
religious.
They
are
absolutely
sure
about
God’s
existence.
Religion
is
fundamental
to
their
personal
identity
and
daily
life.
They
are
twice
as
likely
as
other
Americans
to
attend
church
every
week
(many
of
them
more
than
once).
And
because
they
are
passionate
about
their
faith,
they
are
much
more
active
in
personal
evangelism.
Second,
they
have
a
very
clear,
religiously
derived
sense
of
good
and
evil;
they
are
moral
absolutists.
Third,
they
are
deeply
conservative,
especially
on
moral
issues,
above
all
on
questions
of
sexual
morality.
Fourth,
they
are
somewhat
less
comfortable
with
religious
pluralism
and
with
the
idea
that
religion
and
morality
are
primarily
private
and
personal
matters.
They
are
less
convinced
that
religious
diversity
is
a
good
thing.
Finally,
they
live
in
more
religiously
monochromatic
social
environments.
Ø Interreligious
mixing,
mingling,
and
marrying
have
kept
America’s
religious
melting
pot
from
boiling
over.
about an hour ago ·
Soup McGee http://www.alternet.org/story/151999/meet_the_global _financial_elites_controll ing_%2446_trillion_in_weal th/?page=entire "Most people cannot even comprehend how much $1 trillion is, let alone $46 trillion. One trillion is equal to 1000 billion, or $1,000,000,000,000. To put it in perspective, last year the entire cost of feeding all 40 million Americans on food stamps was $65 billion.
Now consider, according to the latest IRS data, only 0.076 percent of the population, less than one-tenth of one percent, earned over $1 million in 2009."
www.alternet.org
The economic elite have at least $46 trillion in wealth – but who are they? We l...See More
about an hour ago · ·
Benjamin Cyr Relatively to the universe, our life here is short.
So live your life happily, but don’t impede others from doing the same.
about an hour ago ·
Soup McGee http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/next-30-days.htm l Rockwell's Next Thirty Days
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
DIGG THIS
Last time, I laid out my "Thirty Day Plan" for de-socializing America. But I didn't scrap all of big government; now it's time for more:
DAY ONE: Foreign junkets are outlawed. If anyone on the federal payroll wants to fly overseas, he has to buy his own ticket. The State Department, Congress, and White House go into hyperventilation.
DAY TWO: Medicare and Medicaid are abolished as illegitimate transfers of wealth that drive up the cost of care. HHS, whose insolent $30,000 clerks can't speak intelligible English, goes out of business.
DAY THREE: The Supreme Court reads the Constitution, and reverses every court decision of the last fifty years.
DAY FOUR: The doors of the Legal Services Corporation are nailed shut. The envious must now pay for their own anti-business lawsuits.
DAY FIVE: Marxist inheritance taxes are terminated as the moral equivalent of stealing pennies from a dead man's eyes.
DAY SIX: To help prevent the growth of a new welfare state, the franchise is restricted: no one on the dole, which includes government employees, may vote.
DAY SEVEN: Civil service is abolished, and the grand, old Jefferson-Jackson "spoils system" reintroduced. With "rotation in office," there is no permanent governing class of officials, and voters can actually change the government.
DAY EIGHT: Racial set-asides are repealed. The remaining government contractors are judged on ability.
DAY NINE: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is axed; 126 years after slavery, employers are freed. They can hire, fire, and promote on their property as they think best
DAY TEN: The Food and Drug Administration is killed. The First Amendment now applies to commercial speech, and producers and consumers decide the content of food labels. Patients and doctors determine what drugs to use, and a host of life-saving drugs and medical devices are developed.
DAY ELEVEN: National Public Radio is replaced by static, a big improvement. Taxpayers no longer subsidize hysterical left-wing broadcasts about the oppression (i.e., non-funding) of transvestite Kenyan obukano street musicians.
DAY TWELVE: The war on drugs is no more. Prices and therefore street crime plummet, and hoodlums no longer grow rich, thus restoring the natural socioeconomic hierarchy.
DAY THIRTEEN: Mother-Knows-Best government is gagged: no more hectoring about tobacco and alcohol.
DAY FOURTEEN: NASA is blasted. Private businesses and scientific organizations now launch satellites at their own expense. If Star Trek fans want space exploration, they are free to pay for it.
DAY FIFTEEN: The Old Executive Office Building next door to the White House becomes a museum of big government. Although now housing just part of the president's personal staff, it once held the entire departments of War, State, and Interior.
DAY SIXTEEN: Head Start, the beloved but incompetent children's welfare program, is abolished as a scam on the taxpayers and an unwarranted intrusion into families.
DAY SEVENTEEN: The Office of the United States Trade Representative is abolished, along with every tariff, quota, and "free trade" agreement. Businesses negotiate their own deals with foreign governments, at no cost to the taxpayer.
DAY EIGHTEEN: The Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corp are shut down. American corporations doing business overseas must now bear their own costs.
DAY NINETEEN: Sixty-eight federal commissions, boards, and committees are scrapped, including the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, and the Permanent Committee for the Oliver Wendell Holmes Device.
DAY TWENTY: Government and quasi-government museums like the Smithsonian are privatized, and soon discover that regular Americans won't pay to see left-wing, state-exalting, anti-American multicultural extravaganzas, or a mirror hanging on a wall and labeled: "Mirror."
DAY TWENTY-ONE: The Federal Emergency Management Administration is abolished. Disaster relief is left to private charities, which actually provide it, and there are no more FEMA schemes for "emergency" bureaucratic takeovers of the country.
DAY TWENTY-TWO: Any federal agency whose initials are incomprehensible to the average taxpayer is bumped off, including FHFB, FLRA, FMSHRC, and FRTIB.
DAY TWENTY-THREE: The Americans with Disabilities Act, which burdens businesses with new regulatory costs and shuts the most severely disabled people out of the work force, is killed.
DAY TWENTY-FOUR: The Seventeenth Amendment mandating direct election of U.S. senators is repealed, and state legislatures once again elect senators as their representatives, vastly strengthening the states as against the federal ex-leviathan.
DAY TWENTY-FIVE: Bankruptcy laws are repealed; debtors who refuse to pay their debts are treated as virtual thieves.
DAY TWENTY-SIX: The FHA, Ginnie Mae, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and all other agencies that subsidize housing are torn down. No longer is there malinvestment in this area.
DAY TWENTY-SEVEN: The U.S. Foreign Service, whose ambassadors live luxuriously in mansions with retinues of personal servants, is replaced with fax machines.
DAY TWENTY-EIGHT: To protect American sovereignty and independence, the U.S. left the U.N., the I.M.F., and the World Bank in my first 30 days. Now we leave 46 other globaloney outfits, including the International Labor Organization, the World Health Organization, and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission.
DAY TWENTY-NINE: We continue, junking the International Jute Organization, the International Criminal Police Organization, the International Office of Epizootics [horse fungus], the International Office of Vine and Wine, and the International Rubber Study Group.
DAY THIRTY: Finally, we dump the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants, the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Development Association, and the International Finance Corporation. Bankrupt foreign politicos must now apply to the Household Finance Corporation.
This article appeared in The Free Market for January 1992.
www.lewrockwell.com
Last time, I laid out my "Thirty Day Plan" for de-socializing America. But I didn't scrap all of big government; now it's time for more:
about an hour ago · ·
Soup McGee "Interestingly, the Norquist aim parallels the early Communist wish for “the withering away of the state.” Lenin wrote in 1918, “So long as the state exists there is no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state.”
about an hour ago ·
Soup McGee http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/7/25/73510/601 5/
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/07/26/School-boa rd-removes-2-books-from-sc hool/UPI-14161311710522/
http://news.google.com/news/more?q=Four+Republic+Sch ool+Board+members&oe=utf-8 &rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3 Aofficial&client=firefox-a &um=1&hl=en&bav=on.2%2Cor. r_gc.r_pw.&biw=1280&bih=80 7&ie=UTF-8&ncl=dGjRpaRuYkw b7wM-0y00e-wDVCtfM&ei=Gnkx TomoI-fKiAKUnqifBg&sa=X&oi =news_result&ct=more-resul ts&resnum=1&ved=0CC8QqgIwA A
http://www.missourinet.com/2011/07/26/vonnegut-novel -banned-by-republic-school s/
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/c464b0da83a44b 398767f248e7a47e0d/MO--Boo ks-Banned-Republic/
http://www.boarddocs.com/mo/republic/Board.nsf/ab6bd 8d56fbee98a8725731b0060c68 6/794cc122427e5cf28725770b 006bdc0a/$FILE/Public%20Co mplaint%20Response%20%28Sc roggins%29.pdf
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/20/young-adult -soft-porn_n_731744.html
www.talk2action.org
In other words, Breivik believes that "Political Correctness" should be exposed ...See More
about an hour ago · ·
Soup McGee starve the beast was designed to weaken states! Starting with "little churches everywhere" in CA, if you ask me, but I try not to personalize. Now ALEC can ask it's CORP board members to Bail Out (buy) America, if and when we default, seeing as 29 companies have enough to 'rescue' us. We'll be over a Barrel, and the Forbes 400 Family families will have all of the money in One bucket (congressional effect fund). Meanwhile...ALEC is a quasi-federation of States creating quasi-federal legislation....If Obama can be made to use the 14th amendment, the Supreme Court will overturn him, and the Right will declare he has "abandoned the original documents," or some such like as, leading to articles of Impeachment, which we should see any day now, just on the general craziness....This has been a message for the sane, from the front lines of the Cold Civil War (brought to you by Walmart! aaaaand Speedy, Oil Change and Tune-up, your oil-change and smog Experts!))....Soup. :-/
about an hour ago ·
Soup McGee Are states Already allowed to punish miscarriage as abortion, as a States Right not delegated to the Federal Gov.?
Are black (not-white) people marked by their skin as sinners? Some sects of your religion and others believe this.
Are you ashamed of your Parties silence, and thus acquiescence, towards Congressman Alan West, in light of his blatantly sexist, rude, and abusive remarks?
The strategy all along was to end the tyrannical government, no? http://www.rollcall.c/ om/issues/56_53/- 201050-1.html
What is that? -Seinfeld.
Should homosexual activity in public (or anywhere) be a "misdemeanor" or criminal issue under the tenth amendment?
Some people say they are Christians. How do I know You are?
Are people capable of effectively governing people? Or is the current Admin. 'Illegal' Under God?
If You are wrong about the debt ceiling and the consequence of Default, will you resign? Seriously, will you ?
How do we know Obama is #Capitalist? He kept selling R's enuf rope to hang themselves.
about an hour ago ·
Christina Johnson @Soup...ever read the book "Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Kline? If not, you should...in line with what you are posting.
about an hour ago · · 1 person
Soup McGee Americans for Tax Reform was founded by Grover Norquist at the specific request of Ronald Reagan; its main purpose is to commit legislators and candidates for office to a “Taxpayer Protection Pledge.” The pledge first appeared in 1986 and every winning Republican presidential candidate since has signed it. In all 50 states the group works to pressure candidates at the state level to sign the state taxpayer protection pledge, which reads as follows:
“ ‘I _____ pledge to the taxpayers of the __________ district, of the state of __________, and to all the people of this state, that I will oppose and vote against any and all efforts to increase taxes’” (“About”).
As of April 19, 2011 more than one thousand state legislators across the country have signed the pledge, a clear indication of the size and power this group wields. The power, if not the intention of the pledge signatory is to defund government entirely. -http://soupsauntieoxymoron.blogspot.com/2011/07/as-california-goes-so-goes-n ation.html
Soup's Auntie OxyMoron: As California Goes, So Goes the Nation: Grover Norquist, the Religious Rightsoupsauntieoxymoron.blogspot.com
“After 1985, the Republican Party adopted the idea that tax cuts can solve the ...See More
about an hour ago · ·
Soup McGee An interview with Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein offered a revealing look into the tax cut “theology” behind the pledge and the man who wrote it. Pressed for his opinion on what a fair tax rate would be, his honest answer is that “at the state level zero is a reasonable goal.” In response to a question about why government spending is always bad, Norquist digs, stating “all government spending requires the government to first take by force money from the people who earned it.” Probed for data to prove Republican style ‘supply-side’ economics works, his reply is only that “conservatives and Reagan Republicans argue that history demonstrates that liberty is not only the best politics, it is the best economic strategy. People should be secure in their persons and property, have the rule of law and low taxes” (“Grover”).
Grover Norquist builds conservative coalitions, the most vocal members of which are the Christian Right. Leave Us Alone, Norquist's book, is an attempt to reach out to the moderate and independent voter. He suggests a better understanding of the religious right in America can be had “by examining the life and work of Paul Weyrich” (page 15). Paul Weyrich, who coined the popular phrase “moral majority,” conceived in 1973 an organization that would promote a conservative social agenda. Weyrich was frustrated by 1960s liberalism and was in need of a tool to get controversial bills into the hands of state legislators outside of the public eye. Along with conservative activist Lou Barnett and former Illinois Route Republican Congressman Henry Hyde, they created that tool: ALEC, or the American Executive Legislative Council (American Association of Justice). “In each task force legislators welcome their private sector counterparts to the table as equals working in unison to solve the challenges facing our nation” (“Task Force”). “826 bills were introduced in the states in 2009 and 115 were enacted into law” (American Association of Justice). This is a preposterous success rate.
The coalition's call to cut taxes as a necessity so as to bring about an end to all government interference in the free market and in private enterprise is nearly identical to the pervasive theology of fast talking David Barton, an extremely popular Christian nationalist revisionist pastor. Barton is president and founder of WallBuilders, an organization whose mission statement is clear enough:
“WallBuilders is an organization dedicated to presenting America's forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation on which America was built-a foundation which, in recent years, has been seriously attacked and undermined. In accord with what was so accurately stated by George Washington, we believe that ‘the propitious [favorable] smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation which disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained’” (“About Us”).
about an hour ago ·
Soup McGee \Barton believes “money does not belong to the government. It belongs to individuals, and to steal money from individuals through whatever government spending program is taking private property, and we are not supposed to do that."He consistently asserts that Jesus has a teaching that opposes the minimum wage and that taxation of any kind is “inherently un-biblical and unfair” (People for the American Way).
It is apparent that David Barton holds an extremely radical view of the Constitution. He believes that the post-Civil War amendments have all been used to negatively and fundamentally alter the relationship between states and the national government. He holds a peculiar position in believing that the Constitution only applies to Congress and the federal government (Daily Show). Reconstructionist writers strive to apply biblical principles to civil government and “emphasize the importance of private property and free market capitalism for ensuring the freedom and responsibility of the individual before God [while at the same time rejecting] government price controls, welfare and other entitlement programs, and any kind of wealth redistribution. [In their view] taxation should only be as high as necessary for the maintenance of a libertarian state that allows individuals act freely, although in accordance with God's moral law” (“Tax Revolt”). This is eerily reminiscent of Norquist and his claim that government can only tax by force, and an illegitimate force at that.
Obviously, Barton and Norquist share a philosophy, motive, agenda, and itinerary in attempting to privatize government or at least eliminate state control and then replace it with a much more local and surely less expensive government that does not provide “services.” “Services” in particular have clearly rankled Norquist and his ilk.
There is damning evidence that David Barton and Grover Norquist have succeeded in influencing the same targeted pool of voters to make a morally justified ideologically driven political decision. This idea put forth by Barton, and by default, Norquist, is of a God-ordained biblical government in place of the current system. The current system is only able to operate because it taxes. People must only pay taxes willingly, because taxation is not biblical. In other words, taxation is thievery. David Barton spent more than 20 years helping to establish the standards of California social studies and history textbooks setting in motion what is a creeping revision of history; this has led to a new generation of taxpaying citizen believing that taxes are by nature evil, and so government by its taxation power is an illegitimate and unjust authority. Barton makes it clear that in his view the Constitution would allow either Christian or sharia law being instituted within a specific locality “as long as it wasn't coercive” (Daily Show). The Courts currently may not agree, says Barton, but it would be within the original intent./
about an hour ago ·
Soup McGee /heirs is a seductive argument. Taxes are an inconvenience and can never be fair; religion is a personal matter; government at its worst is a threat to liberty. Just one example would be the ex post facto laws that allow the punitive treatment as adults of juveniles adjudicated as minors. Taxpayer money putting children in jail for playing “show-me” games is wrong, clearly. Essentially, if Jesus truly is against taxes and Democrats are the party who will always raise taxes because they are the party of big government, then Jesus hates Democrats and Democrats hate Jesus and since America is a Christian nation, Democrats hate America. Don’t vote for a Democrat or any liberal, lest you be ostracized in the church and the community.
Norquist’s singular call of “never raise taxes” unifies the Evangelical Conservatives with the mainstream Fiscal Conservatives. This is evident in the realm of corporate America. Tim Phillips is president of Americans for Prosperity, which is the activist side of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. Americans for Prosperity was founded in 2004 by David Koch. Phillips is also cofounder of Century Strategies, a lobbying firm also held by Ralph Reed. Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed have been working together since the date days they were college Republicans recruiting voters in Ronald Reagan's first presidential run (Moyers).
The Koch brothers are rabidly anti-government. David Koch ran as a far right alternative to Reagan; he received less than one per cent of the total vote. His campaign platform included the elimination of Social Security and other perennial targets of the libertarian movement. Research into their tax records show shows “that Koch-controlled foundations gave out $196 million from 1998 to 2008, much of it to conservative causes and institutions” (Mayer). That doesn't even include the $50 million in Koch Industries lobbying in nearly $5 million more in campaign contributions by its PAC’s. Tax law allows for personal anonymous donations to nonprofit political groups so these numbers may not even be scratching the surface. Together , Charles and David Koch are owners of Koch Industries, and are each valued at $21.5 billion (Rich).
Joel C. Anderson, a Republican assemblyman who is both a signatory of the Americans for Tax Reform pledge and a member of the Taxpayers Caucus in California, was the state chairman of ALEC in 2009. Mike Morgan of Koch Industries Incorporated sat on the ALEC private sector board in 2010. This draws a clear line from the ATR pledge to the Tea Party and ALEC and the Koch brothers in political activity as well political ideals. The people following and supporting this philosophy with their votes are either hoping for or are unaware of the stated goals of the Coalition Grover leads.
“It is downright ironic to call the taxpayer protection pledge the taxpayer protection pledge… Between the policies they have explicitly supported, and the policies they have pledged to support, the self-styled taxpayer protect orders have been instrumental in enacting policies that raise the long-term fiscal gap by upwards of 4% of GDP, or about $34 trillion. These burdens will have to be borne by future taxpayers who are likely to be markedly ‘unprotected’” (Brookings Institute). The idea that tax cuts for the wealthy will stimulate employment failed (Krugman). The current budget mess expresses that fact clearer than any graph could. Less revenue may mean less wasteful spending in the government, true, zero revenue for the government can only mean a struggle to survive and starvation for the poor and middle classes.
With no WIC, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security Insurance, Unemployment insurance, food stamps or other state services as a safety net, only free-market options will remain. This would be Liberty for those who have planted seed money and seek to profit from the long slow sink into the quicksand that is “corporatism. Those Californians, those Americans unable to afford these free-market options will have become a never ending supply of pagan wage slaves for the wealthiest of Americans, not allowed to unionize, collectively bargain about wages or working conditions, and all must attend church whether they believe or not to avoid the shame of being thought of as “other.”/
about an hour ago ·
Soup McGee Jesus/God, on the pro side of the “government has the authority to tax argument” was rather emphatically in favor of taxation. The Bible is far from silent on the subject. Some examples: God orders Moses to collect a tax for the tent-like sanctuary that the Israelites used for worship (Exodus 30); when asked by tax collectors how to live, Jesus only tells them to not collect more than they are required to (Luke 3); and Jesus says that people ought to give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's (Matthew 22).
Norquist and the coalition he represents stand for a principle that in its natural conclusion can only lead our state and federal governments to default on their debts. States across the country are in a similar position; however, no other state wields the same economic power as California. So, California needs additional revenue soon if it is to continue succeeding in providing the property rights protection it so ably does. Without sufficient revenue and taxes are where governments get their revenue, California will default. America will likely follow.
Norquist imagines America where taxes get lower and lower every year. Once they are zero… he does not address this. He wishes to be “free of federal and state labor laws” (xxi). What to do when faced with an abusive or exploitative employer is not addressed by the ideology. Instead, liberty with the help of Jesus will fix this problem. One problem the pledge cannot fix becomes apparent the longer one considers the impact and the goal: once all tax rates reach zero, a flat tax (as is commonly proposed in place of income, estate and other taxes by libertarians) would not- could not- be enacted, voted upon, or even proposed because that would be in violation of the pledge. California needs and deserves better than a soft dominionist-style theonomy.
“All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are rich and well born; the other, the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second; and as they cannot receive any advantage by change, they will therefore maintain good government.
Can a democratic assembly who annually [through annual elections] revolve in the mass of the people, be supposed steadily to pursue the public good? Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy. Their turbulent and changing disposition requires checks.” (Alexander Hamilton, 1787)
“Fascism should rightly be called corporatism as it is the merger of corporate and government power” Benito Mussolini //////
about an hour ago ·
Soup McGee The Biden 'terrorist' story: How it came together
Politico - 3 hours ago
Vice President Joe Biden's comparison of tea party negotiators to terrorists ... President Barack Obama on Monday stood by the vice president's denial, ...
7 related articles
Obama's Debate With Iowa Tea Partiers: What Democracy Looks Like
NPR (blog) - 651 related articles
►
1. Tea Party Activists Confront Obama About Biden 'Terrorist ...
www.theblaze.com/.../caught-on-video-tea-party-activ ists-confront-... - Cached
1 day ago – Gretawire: DECORAH, Iowa – President Obama got into a heated back and forth with a Tea Party activist who demanded to know at the end of a ...
2. Iowa Tea Party terrorist verbally attacks Obama | MadMikesAmerica
madmikesamerica.com/.../iowa-tea-party-terrorist-ver bally-attacks-o... - Cached
1 day ago – In a move that would thrill Obama Haters, a Tea Party terrorist went after the president following a town hall speech in Iowa.
3. Vice President Biden & Others Echo Obama's “New Tone”
capitolcommentary.com › Featured - Cached
Aug 2, 2011 – BREAKING: TEA PARTY ACTIVISTS CONFRONT OBAMA IN IOWA (Video) · Good Grief… .... One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter… ...
4. Sarah Palin - Tea Party Terrorist - Barack Obama | Mediaite
www.mediaite.com/.../sarah-palin-if-the-tea-party-we re-domestic-ter... - Cached
Aug 2, 2011 – After a lukewarm segment last night, Sarah Palin returned to Hannity tonight to defend the Tea Party from criticisms comparing them to ...
5. Obama clashes with Tea Party member
content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/.../obama.. .tea-party.../1 - Cached
President Obama came face-to-face with the Tea Party in Iowa. ... when "your vice president is calling people like me, a Tea Party member, a 'terrorist.'" ...
6. VIDEO: Tea Partier Confronts Obama Over “Terrorist” Comments « Fox ...
www.theblaze.com
Gretawire: DECORAH, Iowa – President Obama got into a heated back and forth with...See More
about an hour ago · ·
Soup McGee http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/obama-to- use-new-secret-service-bus -on-campaign-trail.php "As the Secret Service prepares for the 2012 campaign, they're purchasing two new buses, at least one of which will be used by President Barack Obama as he travels around the country, TPM has learned. The Secret Service says that while the armored vehicles will be used by Obama during the 2012 presidential campaign, they'll be a security asset for future presidents as well.
"We've never been fully comfortable with the security provided by a bus we lease and then try to retro-fit," Secret Service spokesman Jim Mackin told TPM.
"This would be just like other vehicles we're adding to our fleet," Mackin said. "We'd use them for the campaign, but they're not for campaign purposes. They would be part of our fleet -- just like our limos, just like our follow-ups, just like our emergency vehicles."
One of the buses will be available for use by the Republican presidential candidate as well. And they wouldn't only be used on the campaign trail -- the Secret Service said the multipurpose vehicles be useful whenever a protectee travels into rural areas.
"The reality is that we're overdue for having this type of protective asset in our fleet," Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan told TPM. "We've had protectees in buses since at least 1980, Ronald Reagan, Gov. Reagan, was in a bus during the campaign. It's overdue because designing our own vehicle really gave us a level of security which we don't get when we lease a bus."
In the past, the Secret Service has enhanced the security features of buses leased by presidential campaigns, and they say having their own secure buses that can be used during campaign trips just makes more sense."
tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com
As the Secret Service prepares for the 2012 campaign, they're purchasing two new...See More
about an hour ago · ·
Soup McGee https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=101502050 88029523&comments&set=t.10 0000073386342&type=1 who told you i'm some kinda theocrat?
about an hour ago · ·
Benjamin Cyr Get all your angst piled up and let it all out ... be happy ... quit blaming other people for your angst
about an hour ago ·
Soup McGee , so you know--- Hi! I'm Soup McGee, We're Related By Blood Through Union. You May Not Know Me, But…
I fight fascists
With facts and words
Like, …(…)…
Chin/Fists/
Mirrors/Drift/
You can choose to be ignorant, it’s true- that is-
Denial beats bliss.
I hope you Do
Bring your friends.
I got my own list.
My Mission: finding comprehension,
in this Newborn (aged now 24 or so)
American System
(retread)
(Having been sent to find and
Finding no belief in belief
Or belief of or by believers
Which
Belies faith,
Coerces #s’s
My head-
“We Agree! We are Even!” vs.
“No! God not civilization!”
Rock v. Hydra,
Physically, I must not, I myself Being Me,
I will not fight, just this Reading.
So, first, One Fist Must Necessarily Need Defending)
To with wisdom make shy
sure but forgive first
especially You who would hate me,
Call what I voted for-
Some bled for-
Died for, Are Born For-
All are Here
for “wasteful spending”-
There is only a perverted faith left for me,
in me,
when it comes to
This Wrongly American ‘Humanity’ the ALEC States Have intentionally -
re-branded Internationally. Rotting my "entitlements" and
Subsidizing their "Investments"-
This was no accident, no- This is
Allowed and brought by a willful, Planned
Perpetual dismantling- a sort of
"Quiverfulling" every shared 'sacred' institution
The result of which is to leave us slaves to government and angry about it too-
Leaving us hungry and cold so as to bring us to Jesus-
How Norquist-Abramhoff-Reed of You, Neighbors!
We are soon to be
governed by "God-not-Man-ners",
Ruled as We are
by the Not-so-Secret
Christian Elite...
Militarily, we are made to worship, the
Dismantling and Derision of Education and all labor;
Together, set against each-other,
We Daily Set out to
Use the Business Of Media in Classifying the Saved and the Unsavable.
Sold is our ability to 'as a people"
Govern Our Understanding of Religion and
the role proper of family and government.
Requiring an Impossible Mountain of Polarizing Dogma-
Requiring Action, even if Non-action-
Is War On All Even.
...us<(...)>them
^
(unseen)
Those sleeping in pre-fab deathtraps beside us,
The Norquislings that claim Jesus while with “No” votes slay 'sheeple'
They eagerly use positions of Power in City
and Local Governments to
Betray me by displaying me-
Attempting to write my destiny for me,
Deciding about you for me
Look at you, wanting to fight me-
Influenced but embarrassed by me-
And my influence on you-
Ashamed, but adoring me-
And so and so on-
Until the onion has fully, finally unraveled and
By your opinions but not alone,
Our Flag Flies tattered.
Hate rages cruel
Your ruins razed, ragged.
...(...)...
I repeat
By their own Golden Rule
As if the business itself not the person matters.
As from the beginning
I was born and adopted into a system that would
Had it believed in me, be therefore
Unnecessary, I do think I am trained
To see through a twisted, tangled
Famed Strange Mixture of Philosophy,
Ideology, and theological need, and may I add, I may,
To somehow remain Blind
and Ignore me,
the people.
This is a Cold Civil War
Against Theocracy.
Shame on You, Silent Christians
Ignoring starving bodies(...)
The America I know
Is thrown up on a pole
With pride in the Brightness of day
...(...)...
left out in the rain in the downfall amid mire.
Yet by Recognition was laid
the Foundation engraved
and those Dying for the Eternal Social Contract.
This Works! America Works! We have always been Our Own
Resolution-
Only We Will Ever Be our Own Solution!
This Freedom Must
Only Last!
Pass on Democracy
or Pass on Democracy!
I ask: Why Vote if you are not being taxed?
Now that the enemy has made himself mainstream-
We either use Non-violence as a rock,
Call ‘em out
Get ‘em hot-
On the record,
Against US, for God-
Call them Disqualified to serve Man
to Their Faces-
or we are even more fucked-
Not for the Divine and Enduring Glory of America
Not for the Mutual Destiny or
the Immortal Fate-
Vote, please, in 2012,
and not for Partisan Advantage
or through Perspective Distorted by Rank
-
End The Pledge-
Avoid The Theocracy.
Believe what you want, but
Please, sirs and madams-
Don’t Abort My Democracy.
about an hour ago ·
Benjamin Cyr TRY REALLY HARD TO BE HAPPY WITH YOUR LIFE >>> using all caps because that is what tea baggers and republican do when they are angry
about an hour ago ·
Soup McGee thinks you got me pegged wrong----try reading what I posted, I attacked no-one, just entered the way I always do, right JBA?
about an hour ago ·
Soup McGee likes being happy in a world where happiness isn't ignoring http://ampedstatus.org/download-free-pdf-kindle-word -doc-of-full-report-analys is-of-financial-terrorism- in-america/ for the sake of happiness...."i" follow a Rather logical trail of sourced info to make an informed and reasonable point----
Download Free PDF, Kindle, Word Doc of Full Report: ‘Analysis of Financial Terrorism in America’ | Aampedstatus.org
EXCLUSIVE: Analysis of Financial Terrorism in America: Over 1 Million Deaths Ann...See More
about an hour ago · ·
Soup McGee As the Secret Service prepares for the 2012 campaign, they're purchasing two new buses, at least one of which will be used by President Barack Obama as he travels around the country, TPM has learned. The Secret Service says that while the armored vehicles will be used by Obama during the 2012 presidential campaign, they'll be a security asset for future presidents as well.
"We've never been fully comfortable with the security provided by a bus we lease and then try to retro-fit," Secret Service spokesman Jim Mackin told TPM.
"This would be just like other vehicles we're adding to our fleet," Mackin said. "We'd use them for the campaign, but they're not for campaign purposes. They would be part of our fleet -- just like our limos, just like our follow-ups, just like our emergency vehicles."
One of the buses will be available for use by the Republican presidential candidate as well. And they wouldn't only be used on the campaign trail -- the Secret Service said the multipurpose vehicles be useful whenever a protectee travels into rural areas.
"The reality is that we're overdue for having this type of protective asset in our fleet," Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan told TPM. "We've had protectees in buses since at least 1980, Ronald Reagan, Gov. Reagan, was in a bus during the campaign. It's overdue because designing our own vehicle really gave us a level of security which we don't get when we lease a bus."
In the past, the Secret Service has enhanced the security features of buses leased by presidential campaigns, and they say having their own secure buses that can be used during campaign trips just makes more sense.---tpm
59 minutes ago ·
Benjamin Cyr Be miserable by yourself ... keep preaching doom and gloom and that is where you will eventually end up ... Do you have a woman in your life soup
58 minutes ago ·
Soup McGee wonders how you read my posts, and get "teabagger" or "republican" anything----you are a strange one....
57 minutes ago · · 1 person
Soup McGee Can Obama Debate? by Soup McGee on Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 11:48am
I can't wait/When they begin, Imma set a pot to boil, sit down and relax with a joint; chuckle and scratch and take notes and make phone calls. I'm gonna cirrusly enjoy watching baggers get destroyed with their own words having locked their own gate ideologically and logically. Squirmy lil nits. Dumbass Nativist Idiots. Reality will soon meet Republican theological hickhickhick, what’s that called? Ah, fact without precedent. Lies. Based on hate. Run now-text your prayers- your god is gone, he left; you pissed him off; it’s too late-:While you cower behind pulpits, in pews, in public, while you make your pleas that only more tax cuts are going to help the budget; while you lie to and in familiar societal and familial patterns through generations of misogyny and “justified violence” mislead your students into the supporting of class massacre. You disown the Republic, you wish to abort democracy- I call you choir-preachers-I call you religious intolerants-each of you who claim the Bible but support and vote for fascists, each of you who will not speak out against this domestic evil. You are disingenuous misanthropic false prophets. I will never be forced to admit I believe for the sake of not being shamed publicly…that’s how you operate. I’m onto you. And by the way…praying publicly? That’s nasty, heresy, anyways; in the very least hypocrisy. You may not be racist, ok. It will be hard during the debates to prove you are comfortable with your own skin, let alone his. Y'all are acting afraid of the big bad scary black man. You can't call him an American. My guess is that if you do you are afraid you will be admitting you are just like him, and then yer blasphemous Jesus won't love you/love you/love you..."
56 minutes ago · · 1 person
Benjamin Cyr None of the videos you post are available ... maybe you should learn how to post
56 minutes ago · · 1 person
Soup McGee https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=101502050 88029523&comments&set=t.10 0000073386342&type=1 hello? ben? wowser, wow.
55 minutes ago · ·
Benjamin Cyr Maybe Facebook has an interest in elimination people who are threats ... take it for what it is and answer my question
53 minutes ago ·
Diana Albright Benjamin Cyr, what is your problem? I'm Soup's wife, so yes, he has a woman in his life. And really, how can you read anything he posts as him being a right-wing extremist?!! I am certain this means you are illiterate, since I listen to him for hours every day railing AGAINST tea baggin' right wing dominionst fascist assholes.
46 minutes ago ·
Benjamin Cyr You posted links to pay websites then websites that google decided were not appropriate ...
46 minutes ago ·
Benjamin Cyr And they didn't work, maybe the Facebook Police stopped them, so blame me
39 minutes ago ·
Diana Albright but you're so hell-bent on fighting with someone... ANYONE... that you don't bother to read. You just make accusations.
39 minutes ago ·
Soup McGee
tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com http://ampedstatus.org/dow nload-free-pdf-kindle-word -doc-of-full-report-analys is-of-financial-terrorism- in-america/ http://soupsauntieoxymoron .blogspot.com/2011/07/as-c alifornia-goes-so-goes-nat ion.html http://www.talk2action.org/s tory/2011/7/25/73510/6015/
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/07/26/School-boa rd-removes-2-books-from-sc hool/UPI-14161311710522/
http://news.google.com/news/more?q=Four+Republic+Sch ool+Board+members&oe=utf-8 &rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3 Aofficial&client=firefox-a &um=1&hl=en&bav=on.2%2Cor. r_gc.r_pw.&biw=1280&bih=80 7&ie=UTF-8&ncl=dGjRpaRuYkw b7wM-0y00e-wDVCtfM&ei=Gnkx TomoI-fKiAKUnqifBg&sa=X&oi =news_result&ct=more-resul ts&resnum=1&ved=0CC8QqgIwA A
http://www.missourinet.com/2011/07/26/vonnegut-novel -banned-by-republic-school s/
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/c464b0da83a44b 398767f248e7a47e0d/MO--Boo ks-Banned-Republic/
http://www.boarddocs.com/mo/republic/Board.nsf/ab6bd 8d56fbee98a8725731b0060c68 6/794cc122427e5cf28725770b 006bdc0a/$FILE/Public%20Co mplaint%20Response%20%28Sc roggins%29.pdf
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/20/young-adult -soft-porn_n_731744.html try again
Download Free PDF, Kindle, Word Doc of Full Report: ‘Analysis of Financial Terrorism in America’ | Aampedstatus.org
EXCLUSIVE: Analysis of Financial Terrorism in America: Over 1 Million Deaths Annually, 62 Million People With Zero Net Worth, As the Economic Elite Make Off With $46 Trillion
38 minutes ago · ·
Diana Albright they work for me. how about fixing it on your end. log out and then log back in instead of calling him a teabagging right wing extremist.
37 minutes ago ·
Benjamin Cyr Download Free PDF, Kindle, Word Doc of Full Report: ‘Analysis of Financial Terrorism in America’
I don't want to pay for your biased information sorry ...
36 minutes ago ·
Soup McGee
Analysis of Financial Terrorism in America
By David DeGraw, AmpedStatus Report
Email This
Editor’s Note: The following report includes adapted excerpts from David DeGraw’s book, “The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III.” Release Date: 9.28.11
Contents
Abstract :: Welcome to World War III
Introduction
Part One :: The Economic Devastation
I :: Poverty
II :: Food Insecurity
III :: Unemployment
IV :: Declining Income
Part Two :: The Economic Elite
V :: How Much Wealth Do The Economic Elite Have?
VI :: Who Rules America? Revealing The Economic Top 0.1%
VII :: Tax Breaks For The Rich, Budget Cuts For The Rest Of Us
Part Three :: The Perfect Storm Overhead
(Inequality = Debt = Austerity = Civil Unrest = Inflation + Deflation = Stagflation)
VIII :: Debt Slavery
IX :: Inflation
X :: The Beaten Masses
Part Four :: Fascism in America
XI :: Modern Day Slavery
XII :: The Death Toll
XIII :: Deliberate Systemic Attacks
________________________________________
Abstract :: Welcome to World War III
Despite increasing personal financial hardship, most Americans remain unaware of the economic world war currently unfolding. An all-pervasive corporate and government propaganda campaign has effectively obscured this blatant reality. After extensive analysis, it is evident that World War III is a war between the richest one-tenth of one percent of the global population and 99.9 percent of humanity. Or, as I have called it, The Economic Elite Vs. The People. This war has been a one-sided attack thus far. However, as we have seen throughout the world in recent months, the people are beginning to fight back. The following report is a statistical analysis of the systemic economic attacks against the American people.
Introduction
The American public has sustained intensive economic attacks across broad segments of the population. While the attacks have been increasingly severe in scale over the past four years, they have been implemented with technocratic precision. They have been incrementally applied thus far, successfully keeping the population passive and avoiding any large-scale civilian unrest, while effectively reducing living standards for the majority of the population. As you will see in this report, the 55 million Americans that have been hit the hardest have thus far acquiesced due to temporary financial assistance, such as food stamps and extended unemployment benefits.
The global Economic Elite have been much more strategic in handling the American public, as they are potentially the greatest threat to their continued consolidation of wealth, resources and power. National populations that are not as powerful, and on the periphery of the Economic Elite’s global empire, have been dealt with in much harsher fashion. In many smaller and less powerful countries the dramatic rise in food prices and costs of living have led to all-out revolt — Tunisia, Algeria, Albania and Egypt were among the first to rebel. While the contagion of rebellion has rapidly spread throughout Northern Africa and the Middle East, it is also spreading in a decentralized manner throughout most of the world, now threatening popular rebellion throughout Europe. Like the US population, the geographically clustered European nations represent a potentially powerful countervailing force to the Economic Elite’s continued domination.
Within the United States, the technocratic suppression of the population has been extensive. Increasingly severe economic and governmental policies have systematically eroded civilian wealth, power and rights. Intensive propaganda has effectively distracted, confused, isolated, marginalized and divided the US population. Despite the success of these efforts thus far, given the severe, prolonged, unsustainable and escalating level of economic suffering, outbreaks of civil unrest are inevitable. The US population, if a critical mass is reached, represents the greatest threat to the Economic Elite. In this regard, the American people are their primary adversary.
In writing this report, I will clearly demonstrate the severity and scale of the deliberate systemic economic attacks against the US population, in hope that we can urgently build a critical mass of aware and engaged citizens.
Part One :: The Economic Devastation
Snapshot: According to most recent Census Bureau data, from 2005 – 2009, average US household wealth declined by 28%. This represents a loss of $27,000 per household. Currently, at least 62 million Americans, 20% of US households, have zero or negative net worth.
The Census figures cited above are based on statistics that have been consistently proven to be lowball estimates. The government and corporate media spread propaganda on vital economic statistics that mask the severity of our economic crisis. Deceptive inflation, unemployment, poverty and GDP measures, which cast the illusion of recovery, are easily exposed with some research and a closer look at the data. Throughout this report, we will explore significant examples of government economic propaganda. In several cases, the government has been forced to revise their numbers due to proven inaccuracies. The government’s “revisions” are most always for the worse, and are usually just a footnote correction that the public is rarely ever aware of. All that being said, for many statistics we are forced to use government data, as there are not any other extensive data sets available from alternative sources.
I :: Record Breaking Poverty
The Census Bureau poverty rate is a horribly flawed measurement that uses outdated methodology. The Census measures poverty based on costs of living metrics established in 1955 – 56 years ago. They ignore many key factors, such as the increased costs of medical care, child care, education, transportation, and many other basic costs. They also don’t factor geographically-based costs of living. The National Academy of Science measure, which gets little if any corporate media coverage, gives a much more accurate account of poverty, as they factor in these vital cost of living variables.
The most current Census data revealed that 43.6 million Americans, 14.3% of the population, lived in poverty in 2009. While that is a staggering number that represents the highest number of American people to ever live in poverty, and a dramatic increase of four million people since 2008, it significantly under-counted the total. Last year, in my analysis, extrapolating data from 2008 National Academy of Science findings, I estimated that the number of Americans living in poverty in 2009 was at least 52 million. Recently, the National Academy of Science released their latest findings, backing up my claim by revealing that 52,765,000 Americans, 17.3% of the population, lived in poverty in 2009.
The poverty rate for children is even worse. According to Census data, a total of 15.5 million American children lived in poverty in 2009, which is 20% of all children. The number of children in poverty increased 28% since 2000, and jumped 10% from 2008 to 2009. Extrapolating data from the 2009 National Academy of Science poverty rate, in relation to the Census childhood poverty data, the number of American children living in poverty in 2009 is more accurately 18.8 million, which is 24%, or nearly one in four.
Other than this rapidly increasing number children who are in families that have recently fallen into poverty, “every day in America 2,573 babies are born into poverty.”
As the chart to the right shows, even with the lower Census numbers, nine major American cities have a poverty rate over 25%:
It is important to note, based on many key indicators, as you will see throughout this report, the overall poverty totals have increased since 2009. Also consider that the recent deficit reduction plan is going to cut “anti-poverty” programs that currently assist tens of millions of Americans. A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research estimates that “the poverty rate would double without these programs.” It is predicted that the new deficit deal will cut the funding for these programs in half, which, based on these estimates, would bring the total number of Americans living in poverty up to 80 million people, 26% of the population.
II :: Record Breaking Food Insecurity
For another revealing statistic, which has been quickly increasing, we can look at the number of Americans currently surviving off of food stamps. In 2005, 25.7 million Americans needed food stamps, currently 45.8 million people rely on them. As the chart to the right shows, the number of people in need of food stamps has been rapidly increasing year-over-year.
Meanwhile, Congress is cutting the funding for the food stamp program at a time when the Department of Agriculture estimates that an additional 22.5 million people will need them, bringing the total number of Americans in need of food assistance to a stunning 68.3 million people.
III :: Record Breaking Unemployment
While the “official” unemployment rate hovers around 9%, 14 million people, the government’s numbers are deceptively low once again. The only reason unemployment has stayed below 10% for the past few months is because millions of long-term unemployed, and part-time workers who are looking for full-time work, are not included in the baseline government unemployment rate. John Williams, from ShadowStats.com, has a consistently proven method of tracking unemployment that provides a much more accurate view of the overall situation. As shocking as it may sound, when you apply his SGS method, counting the total number people in need of employment, you get a current unemployment rate of 22.5%, which is an all-time record total of 34 million people currently in need of work. Here is how the SGS rate is calculated:
“The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.
The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.”
On top of these shocking figures, the labor force participation rate, which measures the percentage of the total population currently working, has fallen to a 27-year low of 63.9%.
Currently, an all-time record 6.3 million people have been unemployed for over six months. As the chart to the right shows, the average time it takes for a person to find a job has also just hit an all-time high of 40.4 weeks.
As companies continue to downsize and shift jobs overseas, unemployment is once again accelerating. Private-sector job cuts in July surged 60% to a 16-month high. When accounting for population growth within the total labor force, from December 2007 to present, we have lost 10.6 million jobs.
With the implementation of state and federal budget cuts, public-sector unemployment is accelerating as well. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, since August 2008, state and local governments have cut 577,000 jobs. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that cuts in the new deficit deal will lead to an additional 1.8 million job losses.
Of the new jobs that have been added in 2010, 60% of them are in low-wage fields. Since December 2007, the official unemployment rate has masked the fact that 2.8 million of the news jobs created have been part-time jobs. Breaking down the data, over the last 12 months, the National Employment Law Project found that well-paying jobs are rapidly decreasing, while low-paying jobs are helping to mask an increasingly dire employment crisis:
• Lower-wage industries constituted 23% of job loss, but fully 49% of recent growth
• Mid-wage industries constituted 36% of job loss, and 37% of recent growth
• Higher-wage industries constituted 40% of job loss, but only 14% of recent growth
IV :: Declining Income
While the cost of living from 1990 – 2010 increased by 67%, worker income has declined. According to the most recent available IRS data, covering the year of 2009, average income fell 6.1%, a loss of $3,516 per worker, that year alone. Average income has declined 13.7% from 2007 – 2009, representing a $8,588 loss per worker.
The decline in worker income is due to the dramatic increase in CEO pay. CEO pay has consistently increased year-over-year since the mid-1970s. From 1975 – 2010, worker productivity increased 80%. Over this time frame, CEO pay and the income of the economic top 0.1% (one-tenth of one percent) of the population quadrupled. The income of the top 0.01% (one-hundredth of one percent) quintupled.
To understand the affect CEO pay increases have had on workers’ declining share of income on an annual basis, after analyzing 2008 tax data, leading tax reporter David Cay Johnston summed up the situation with these revealing statistics:
“Had income growth from 1950 to 1980 continued at the same rate for the next 28 years, the average income of the bottom 90 percent in 2008 would have been 68 percent higher…. That would have meant an average income for the vast majority of $52,051, or $21,110 more than actual 2008 incomes. How different America would be today if the typical family had $406 more each week…”
As shocking as that is, over the last two years, workers have lost an even higher share of income to CEOs. In the last year alone, CEO pay skyrocketed by 28%. Looking at 2009, according to a recent Dollars & Sense report, workers lost nearly $2 trillion in wages that year alone:
“In 2009, stock owners, bankers, brokers, hedge-fund wizards, highly paid corporate executives, corporations, and mid-ranking managers pocketed—as either income, benefits, or perks such as corporate jets—an estimated $1.91 trillion that 40 years ago would have collectively gone to non-supervisory and production workers in the form of higher wages and benefits.”
As bad as these numbers are, consider that the attack on American workers has increased significantly since 2009. From 2009 to the fourth-quarter of 2010, 88% of income growth went to corporate profits (i.e. CEOs), while just 1% went to workers.
As the NY Times reported in an article entitled, “Our Banana Republic,” from 1980 – 2005, “more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.” Again, as bad as that was, since 2005 it has gotten even worse, as Zero Hedge recently reported, labor’s current “share of national income has fallen to its lowest level in modern history.” This chart shows how workers’ percentage of income has been rapidly declining:
The bottom line, as statistics clearly demonstrate, these trends are getting worse and the attacks against us, as severe as they have been over the past four years, are dramatically escalating.
Part Two :: The Economic Elite
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class,
the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
– Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway
V :: How Much Wealth Do The Economic Elite Have?
While 68.3 million Americans struggle to get enough food to eat and wages are declining for 90% of the population, US millionaire household wealth has reached an unprecedented level. According to an extensive study by auditing and financial advisory firm Deloitte, US millionaire households now have $38.6 trillion in wealth. On top of the $38.6 trillion that this study reveals, they have an estimated $6.3 trillion hidden in offshore accounts.
In total, US millionaire households have at least $45.9 trillion in wealth, the majority of this wealth is held within the upper one-tenth of one percent of the population.
If all this isn’t obscene enough, to further demonstrate how the global economy has now been completely rigged, Deloitte’s analysis predicated, based on current trends, that US millionaire households will see a 225% increase in wealth to $87.1 trillion by 2020. Accounting for wealth hidden in offshore accounts, they are projected to have over $100 trillion in total within the next decade.
Most people cannot even comprehend how much $1 trillion is, let alone $46 trillion. One trillion is equal to 1000 billion, or $1,000,000,000,000. To put it in perspective, last year the entire cost of feeding all 40 million Americans on food stamps was $65 billion.
Now consider, according to the latest IRS data, only 0.076% of the population, less than one-tenth of one percent, earned over $1 million in 2009.
The graph below, based on data from the Tax Policy Center, shows how much income is earned by a household at any given percentile in income distribution:
The highest bracket for annual income is $50 million or more. Only 74 Americans are in this elite group. The average income within this category was $91.2 million in 2008. As astonishing as that is, in 2009 they averaged $518.8 million each, or about $10 million per week. This means, in the depths of the recession, the richest 74 Americans increased their income by more than 5 times within this one year. These 74 people made more money than 19 million workers combined.
In context, overall, the richest 400 people in the US have as much wealth as 154 million Americans combined, that’s 50% of the entire country. The top economic 1% of the US population now has a record 40% of all wealth, and have more wealth than 90% of the population combined.
VI :: Who Rules America? Revealing The Economic Top 0.1%
Here is an analysis from an investment manager with mega-wealthy clients breaking down the economic top 0.5% of the population, recently published by William Domhoff, sociology professor and author of Who Rules America?:
“Unlike those in the lower half of the top 1%, those in the top half and, particularly, top 0.1%, can often borrow for almost nothing, keep profits and production overseas, hold personal assets in tax havens, ride out down markets and economies, and influence legislation in the US. They have access to the very best in accounting firms, tax and other attorneys, numerous consultants, private wealth managers, a network of other wealthy and powerful friends, lucrative business opportunities, and many other benefits.
Folks in the top 0.1% come from many backgrounds but it’s infrequent to meet one whose wealth wasn’t acquired through direct or indirect participation in the financial and banking industries…. Most of the serious economic damage the US is struggling with today was done by the top 0.1% and they benefited greatly from it…. For example, in Q1 of 2011, America’s top corporations reported 31% profit growth and a 31% reduction in taxes, the latter due to profit outsourcing to low tax rate countries…. The year 2010 was a record year for compensation on Wall Street, while corporate CEO compensation rose by over 30%.…
In 2010 a dozen major companies, including GE, Verizon, Boeing, Wells Fargo, and Fed Ex paid US tax rates between -0.7% and -9.2%. Production, employment, profits, and taxes have all been outsourced….
I could go on and on, but the bottom line is this: A highly complex and largely discrete set of laws and exemptions from laws has been put in place by those in the uppermost reaches of the US financial system. It allows them to protect and increase their wealth and significantly affect the US political and legislative processes.
They have real power and real wealth. Ordinary citizens in the bottom 99.9% are largely not aware of these systems, do not understand how they work, are unlikely to participate in them, and have little likelihood of entering the top 0.5%, much less the top 0.1%….
… the American dream of striking it rich is merely a well-marketed fantasy that keeps the bottom 99.5% hoping for better and prevents social and political instability. The odds of getting into that top 0.5% are very slim and the door is kept firmly shut by those within it.”
To get into the top economic 0.01% (one-hundredth of one percent) of the population, you have to have a household income of over $27 million per year.
If you look at some of the central players who caused this economic crisis, you will see that they are among this Economic Elite group.
Former Goldman Sachs CEO and Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson had already amassed at least $700 million prior to moving to the US Treasury in 2006. Current Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and a few other top executives at Goldman Sachs just received $111.3 million in bonuses. Blankfein just took home $24.3 million, as part of a $67.9 million bonus he was awarded. Goldman’s President Gary Cohn took home $24 million, as part of a $66.9 million bonus he was awarded. Goldman’s CFO David Viniar and former co-president Jon Winkelried both took home over $20 million in bonuses.
Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit just took home $80 million, in what may eventually total more than $200 million in compensation and bonuses. Coming in at the top of the list is JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who just took home $90 million.
If you think people in this income level don’t control the US political process, you are not paying attention. After they caused this economic crisis, they got the government to give them trillions of dollars in taxpayer support, and then, after taking our tax dollars, they gave themselves all-time record-breaking bonuses. 2009 was an all-time record-breaking year for Wall Street executives bringing in a total of $145 billion. And then, in 2010, they raised the bar even higher, breaking the all-time record set the year before by pulling in another $149 billion. The audacity of it all is stunning.
Finding people more grotesquely greedy than Wall Street executives would seem to be impossible. However, health insurance CEOs are giving them a run for their money. As the LA Times reported:
“Leaders of Cigna, Humana, UnitedHealth, WellPoint and Aetna received nearly $200 million in compensation in 2009, according to a report, while the companies sought rate increases as high as 39%….
H. Edward Hanway, former chief executive of Philadelphia-based Cigna, topped the list of high-paid executives, thanks to a retirement package worth $110.9 million. Cigna paid Hanway and his successor, David Cordani, a total of $136.3 million last year….
Ron Williams, the CEO of Hartford, Conn.-based Aetna Inc., earned nearly $18.2 million in total compensation, down from $24.4 million in 2008.”
Aetna CEO Ron Williams has recovered from his down year in 2009 by making $72 million in 2010.
Given this level of obscene profiteering within the health care industry, it is not surprising that Americans pay more for medical care than any other nation in the world. In fact, Americans are forced to pay twice as much as most nations, and get lower quality care in return. As health insurance companies admitted, they have been reaping windfall profits because people with health insurance plans still cannot afford to go to the doctors and have stopped going unless it is an absolute emergency. With well over 50 million people unable to afford health insurance and the skyrocketing costs, it is not surprising that over 60% of all personal bankruptcies are the result of medical bills. In fact, 75% of the medical bankruptcies filed are from people who have health insurance.
Within this Economic Elite group, you also have the war profiteering oil companies, which themselves are in large part owned by the big Wall Street banks. The biggest five oil companies, while gas prices have been skyrocketing, reaped $36 billion in profit last quarter. These companies also receive an average of $6 billion per year in tax subsidies.
VII :: Tax Breaks For The Rich, Budget Cuts For The Rest Of Us
To further demonstrate how the mega-wealthy have seized control our political process, consider that the richest 400 Americans paid 30% of their income in taxes in 1995, but they now pay only 18%.
In fact, 1,470 Americans earned over $1 million in 2009 and didn’t pay any taxes.
The average tax rate for millionaires was 22.4% in 2009, down from 30.4% in 1995. The average millionaire saves $136,000 a year due to reduced tax rates.
Looking at the tax rate from a long-term perspective, the amount of money the richest people and most profitable corporations pay in taxes has fallen dramatically since 1955. Corporate tax accounted for 27.3% of federal revenue in 1955. In 2010, corporate tax accounted for only 8.9% of federal revenue. Corporate taxes accounted for 4.3% of overall GDP in 1955, in 2010 they accounted for only 1.3%.
Part Three :: The Perfect Storm Overhead:
(Inequality = Debt = Austerity = Civil Unrest = Inflation + Deflation = Stagflation)
The cuts in taxes for the mega-wealthy have led to record wealth inequality and resulted in a record national deficit. Meanwhile, to make up for the deficit that the richest one-tenth of one percent of the population has created, Democrats and Republicans are committed to making draconian budget cuts to vital social services, which target the poor, middle class, elderly and sick, while handing out billions more in corporate welfare annually. (Inequality = Debt = Austerity)
Just as the government has done, to make up for tax revenue lost to the mega-wealthy, Americans have made up for the decline in income by taking on large amounts of debt as well. (Inequality = Debt)
In a severely unequal society, massive debt will always be created, thus forming a vicious cycle of increasing inequality and increasing debt, until the fragmentation of society reaches a breaking point when those in debt cannot afford to pay back their debts without starving to death. We are now reaching that breaking point. (Inequality = Debt = Austerity = Civil Unrest)
VIII :: Debt Slavery
The Indentured Servant Has Become The Indebted Citizen
As for statistics on Americans being buried in financial debt, the indentured servant has evolved into the indebted citizen. As mentioned before, from 1990 – 2010 costs of living have increased 67%, while wages have stagnated and declined. As the national debt has reached a record $14.6 trillion, total personal debt is now over $16 trillion. Consumer debt is $2.5 trillion. Credit card debt is $805 billion and student debt now exceeds $1 trillion.
Obviously, the more severe your debts are, the more you have to cut back in spending and the less money you have to buy new items. (Debt = Austerity)
Meanwhile, a perfect storm circles overhead as society breaks down and falls into an economic death spiral – health care, food and gas costs are skyrocketing, while income and home values are plummeting. (Inflation + Deflation = Stagflation)
Given these conditions, it is not surprising that over 250 million Americans, another record-breaking number, are currently living paycheck-to-paycheck struggling to make ends meet.
IX :: Inflation
The following charts, from Advisor Perspectives, show the increase in costs of living since 2000:
As you can see, the price of basic necessities are consistently increasing, only clothing (apparel) has declined. The second chart highlights the crucial skyrocketing cost of energy:
The third chart highlights the pernicious skyrocketing cost of education:
The cost of education essentially buries a young person in a debt that they will spend a significant portion of their life attempting to get out of. Given the increasing costs of living, and the decreasing ability to make an expected income from such an expensive level of education, this young demographic will most likely live an entire life locked into spiraling levels of debt that they will never be able to get out of.
Propaganda Inflation
When reporting on inflation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has twice, since 1980, revised their methodology to mask the severity of inflation, similar to how they mask the severity of unemployment. In their Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures inflation, they have heavily discounted the measurement weight of energy, food and education – three of the most significant costs for most American households.
To understand the significance in their revised methodology, current “official” CPI is at a 3.6% annual rate. However, if calculated the way it was before former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan altered it in 1980, it would be 11.1%, three times worse than officially stated.
So while the government and the Federal Reserve claim that inflation is low, at 3.6% over the past year, food prices have increased 39% and US gas prices have increased 34% over the same time frame. The increase in gas cost over the past one-year masks the severity of total gas price inflation, which is currently 125% more expensive since December 2008, increasing from $1.67 per gallon to $3.75.
The Hidden Tax
The Federal Reserve’s strategic policy known as Quantitative Easing (QE) has been a significant factor in the rising cost of basic necessities by deliberately stimulating inflation, while decreasing the value of the dollar. Looking at their recent QE2 program, the dollar lost 7.5% of its value from January 2010 through March 2010. From August 2010 through March 2010, the dollar lost 17% of its value. To understand how this acts as a hidden tax, consider if you had $10,000 in the bank, over this time frame you would have lost $1700 in purchasing power. So your $10,000 would now be worth $8300. At the same time, the cost of gas and food drastically increased.
The Phantom Recovery
By decreasing the value of the dollar, the Federal Reserve is also inflating the stock market by creating the impression that stock prices are rising, which, when measured in dollars, they have. However, in real terms, their overall value has decreased. To understand how deceptive this strategy has been in giving the appearance of a rising market, instead of measuring overall stock value in dollars, let’s look at their overall value when measured in terms of gold:
Dow/Gold Chart from January 1, 2003 – August 8, 2011
As investor Michael Krieger explains:
“You can see from the chart above the downtrend of stock prices in real terms is completely intact and they have now hit a new low, below the previous low point in March 2009. In fact, although stocks did temporarily rise in real terms from the low in 2009 for the year as a whole, they were still down 5% in real terms. Then last year, stocks were 14% lower in terms of gold. Finally, despite a brief rally early in 2011, stocks in terms of gold are down 23% year-to-date.”
Dollar Vs. Gold
When comparing the value of the dollar to the value of gold, the dollar has lost a stunning 84% of its value since 2000. In 2000, gold was worth $279 per ounce, as of August 8, 2011, gold is $1,725 per ounce. In fact, the dollar continues to fall in value while gold continues to rise.
Stagflation
All these factors together create a perfect storm of stagflation. As 90% of Americans experience income declines, and the value of the dollar declines, the price of necessities are rising, while the one major asset many Americans have, a house, is also declining in value. Already, thanks to declining home values, 28% of US homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their home is currently worth. With 10.4 million American families having lost their homes to foreclosure since 2007, Amherst Securities, a leading broker/dealer focused on mortgage-related investments, estimates that another 10.8 million homes are at risk of default over the next six years. This will obviously continue downward pressure on home values.
X :: The Beaten Masses
Confronted With Severe Financial Hardship, Why Do Americans Remain Passive?
With an unprecedented sum of wealth, tens of trillions of dollars, held within the top one-tenth of one percent of the US population, we now have the highest and most severe inequality of wealth in US history. Not even the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age were as greedy as the modern day Economic Elite.
As famed American philosopher John Dewey once said, “There is no such thing as the liberty or effective power of an individual, group, or class, except in relation to the liberties, the effective powers, of other individuals, groups or classes.”
In The Economic Elite Vs. The People, I reported on the strategic withholding of wealth from 99% of the US population over the past generation. Since the mid-1970s, worker production and wealth creation has exploded. As the statistics throughout this report prove, the dramatic increase in wealth has been almost entirely absorbed by the economic top one-tenth of one percent of the population, with most of it going to the top one-hundredth of one percent.
If you are wondering why a critical mass of people desperately struggling to make ends meet are still not fighting back with overwhelming force and running the mega-wealthy aristocrats out of town, let’s consider two significant factors:
1) People are so busy trying to maintain their current standard of living that their energies are consumed by holding on to the little that they have left.
2) People have very little understanding of how much wealth has been consolidated within the top economic one-tenth of one percent.
Considering the first factor, it is obvious that people have become beaten down psychologically and financially. A report in the Guardian entitled, “Anxiety keeps the super-rich safe from middle-class rage,” suggests that people are so desperate to hold on to what they have that they are too busy looking down to look up: “As psychologists will tell you, fear of loss is more powerful than the prospect of gain. The struggling middle classes look down more anxiously than they look up, particularly in recession and sluggish recovery.”
Considering the second factor, people do not understand how much wealth has been withheld from them. The average person has never personally experienced or seen the excessive wealth and luxury that the mega-rich live in. Wealth inequality has grown so extreme and the wealthy have become so far removed from average society, it is as if the rich exist in some outer stratosphere beyond the comprehension of the average person. As the Guardian report mentioned above also states:
“… having little daily contact with the rich and little knowledge of how they lived, they simply didn’t think about inequality much, or regard the wealthy as direct competitors for resources. As the sociologist Garry Runciman observed: ‘Envy is a difficult emotion to sustain across a broad social distance.’… Even now most underestimate the rewards of bankers and executives. Top pay has reached such levels that, rather like interstellar distances, what the figures mean is hard to grasp.”
In fact, the average American vastly underestimates the severe wealth disparity that we currently have. This survey, featured in the NY Times, reveals that Americans think our society is far more equal than it actually is:
“In a recent survey of Americans, my colleague Dan Ariely and I found that Americans drastically underestimated the level of wealth inequality in the United States. While recent data indicates that the richest 20 percent of Americans own 84 percent of all wealth, people estimated that this group owned just 59 percent – believing that total wealth in this country is far more evenly divided among poorer Americans.
What’s more, when we asked them how they thought wealth should be distributed, they told us they wanted an even more equitable distribution, with the richest 20 percent owning just 32 percent of the wealth. This was true of Democrats and Republicans, rich and poor – all groups we surveyed approved of some inequality, but their ideal was far more equal than the current level.”
Here is a chart showing the results from their survey:
The fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of US population is unaware of the vast wealth at hand. An entire generation of unprecedented wealth creation has been concealed from 99% of the population for over 35 years. Having never personally experienced or known of this wealth, the average American cannot comprehend what is possible if even a fraction of it was used for the betterment of society as a whole.
In fact, given modern technology and wealth, not a single American citizen should live in poverty. The statistics clearly demonstrate that we now live in a Neo-Feudal society. In comparison to the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent of the population, who are sitting on top of tens of trillions of dollars in wealth, we are modern day serfs, essentially propagandized peasants.
The fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are struggling to get by, while tens of trillions of dollars are consolidated within a small fraction of the population, is a crime against humanity.
The day the average American fully comprehends how much wealth is consolidated within just the top one-tenth of one percent of the population, there will be a massive uprising and all the paid off politicians will be run out of town.
The next time you are stressed out, struggling to make ends meet and pay off your debts, just think about the trillions of dollars sitting in the obscenely bloated pockets of one-tenth of one percent of the population. The first step in overcoming your peasant status is to understand that you are indeed a peasant. This is a bitter pill to swallow and most will prefer to, as they have been conditioned to do, continue on their path of media-induced delusion, denial, apathy and ignorance.
However, I still cling to the hope that once enough people become aware of this hidden and obscured fact, we can have the non-violent revolution we so urgently need. Until then, the rich get richer as a critical mass with increasingly dire economic prospects desperately struggles to make ends meet.
Part Four :: Fascism in America
Other than driving large segments of the American population into poverty, and pushing the majority into massive debt and a state of financial desperation, there is an ever darker side to what is unfolding today. The Economic Elite have turned America into a modern day fascist state.
Fascism is a very powerful word which evokes many strong feelings. People may think that the term cannot be applied to modern day America. However, as Benito Mussolini once summed it up: “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.” In the early 1900s, the Italians who invented the term fascism also described it as “estato corporativo,” meaning: the corporate state.
Very few Americans would argue the fact that corporations now control our government and have the dominant role in our society. Through a system of legalized bribery – campaign finance, lobbying and the revolving door between Washington and corporations – the most power global corporations dominant the legislative and political process like never before. Senator Huey Long had it right when he warned: “When fascism comes to America, it will come in the form of democracy.”
As President Franklin D. Roosevelt once described fascism: “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes strong than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
The most blatant modern example of this was the bailout of Wall Street, when the “too big to fail” banks got politicians to promptly hand out trillions of tax dollars in support and subsidies to the very people who caused the crisis, without any of them being held accountable.
XI :: Modern Day Slavery
Another shocking example of how far we have descended into fascism is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which is a group of corporate executives who literally write government legislation. They have gone as far as setting up a system that imprisons the poor and then puts them to work, instead of paying living wages to non-imprisoned workers. Make no mistake, this is a modern day system of slavery unfolding before our eyes.
At the leadership of ALEC and various other Economic Elite organizations, poverty has essentially become a crime. To demonstrate these attacks against the poor, there was $17 billion cut from public housing programs, while there was an increase of $19 billion in programs for building prisons, “effectively making the construction of prisons the nation’s main housing program for the poor.” Before laws began to be rewritten in 1980, with direct input from ALEC, we had a prison population of 500,000 citizens. After laws were rewritten to target poor inner city citizens with much more severe penalties, the US prison population skyrocketed to 2.4 million people.
We now have the largest prison population in the world. With only 4% of the world’s population, we have 25% of the world’s prison population. As I reported previously, in a report entitled, “American Gulag: World’s Largest Prison Complex“:
“The US, by far, has more of its citizens in prison than any other nation on earth. China, with a billion citizens, doesn’t imprison as many people as the US, with only 308 million American citizens. The US per capita statistics are 700 per 100,000 citizens. In comparison, China has 110 per 100,000. In the Middle East, the repressive regime in Saudi Arabia imprisons 45 per 100,000. US per capita levels are equivalent to the darkest days of the Soviet Gulag.”
XII :: The Death Toll
The dramatic increase in poverty has obviously torn many families apart and caused a devastating psychological toll, but consider the increase in deaths as a result of poverty and severe wealth inequalities. This is a very difficult statistic to accurately measure, but Columbia University’s School of Public Health conducted an intensive examination of mortality and medical data and estimated that “875,000 deaths in the US in 2000 could be attributed to a cluster of social factors bound up with poverty and income inequality.”
As a report by Debra Watson sums up the study, “There is no reason to believe, after a decade that has seen sustained attacks on social programs and consistently high unemployment rates, that the social mortality rate has declined. On the contrary, it has likely risen.” Indeed, poverty and income inequality have skyrocketed since 2000.
Now, let’s consider the fact that, according to the Census Bureau, 31.1 million people lived in poverty in 2000, and according to Columbia’s study 875,000 deaths came as a result. This means that 1 out of every 35.5 people living in poverty die annually as a result of their impoverishment. If you extrapolate this data to the 2009 total of 52.8 million people living in poverty, you get an estimate of 1,486,338 deaths within that year. Even if you use the lower poverty totals from the Census Bureau, 43.6 million people, you get an estimate of 1,228,169 deaths in 2009.
XIII :: Deliberate Systemic Attacks
The dramatic increase in economic inequality and poverty, along with the unprecedented rise in wealth within the top one-tenth of one percent of the population has not happened by mistake. It is the designed result of deliberate governmental and economic policy. It is the result of the richest people in the world, and the “too big to fail” banks, using the campaign finance and lobbying system to buy off politicians who implement policies designed to exploit 99.9% of the population for their financial gain. To call what is happening a “financial terrorist attack” on the United States, is not using hyperbole, it is the technical term for what is currently occurring.
Compare the million people who die annually as a result of these economic attacks, to the 2,977 that died on 9/11. As someone who lived three blocks from the World Trade Center, as tragic as 9/11 was, these economic attacks are much more severe and damaging to us as a nation, albeit a much slower and unseen death toll. Nonetheless, the result is of genocidal proportions. One can statistically compare the economic attacks on the US to the invasion of Iraq, which some estimate as leading to one million deaths. Once again, many of those deaths came in brutal and spectacular fashion in bombing campaigns known as “shock and awe.” However, the death toll compares to the hidden brutality of a four-year campaign of economic “shock and awe.” Just as Iraq was invaded, the US has been invaded by a global banking cartel.
As shocking as that is to realize, consider that this is happening throughout the world. While the US poverty death rate is probably higher than in most European countries, the Federal Reserve’s economic policies — along with policies from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Bank of International Settlements — have caused rioting and uprisings over skyrocketing food prices and costs of living throughout the world. The fact of the matter, and very harsh and unfortunate reality of this crisis, is that the global economic central planners are deliberately carrying out genocidal economic policies.
As Che Guevara, a man who took on the global financial elite, once said, “The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this.”
When tens of trillions of dollars deliberately flow to the top economic one-tenth of one percent of the global population, while large percentages live in poverty, you have to conclude, in technical terms, that a Neo-Feudal-Fascist state is upon us. The rich have never been richer, while their paid off politicians make budget cuts for the poor and middle class, and cause the cost of basic necessities to skyrocket.
You can call me extreme, but the reality of this is extreme, these people, the global economic top one-tenth of one percent, are genocidal fascists carrying out a holocaust. Fascism has evolved. There is no need to get blood on your hands while rounding up people and putting them into concentration camps when you can do it through economic policy while sitting in a jacuzzi on a corporate jet, or in a three-piece custom-made Armani, completely detached and insulated from the world in which you plunder.
However, as what happens with all empires, greed and arrogance makes them overreach. The beaten down masses get to a point where they literally can’t live under these conditions. This desperation spreads throughout the population until it reaches a critical mass, then, suddenly, they rise up and the empire begins to collapse… Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Israel, (Northern Africa, the Middle East), Albania, Greece, Spain, Britain (Europe), Wisconsin…
The Economic Elite are overreaching and their empire is collapsing.
The decentralized global rebellion has begun…
Welcome to World War III.
Which side of history do you want to be on?
As a wise old friend once said,
“You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”
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This report was written by David DeGraw, founder and editor of AmpedStatus.com. His long-awaited book, The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III, will finally be released on September 28th. He can be emailed at David@AmpedStatus.com. You can follow David’s reporting daily on his new personal website: DavidDeGraw.org .
________________________________________
~ AmpedStatus is 100% independent and reader supported. We do not accept any money from partisan political organizations. We are fighting for survival. If you appreciate our work, please get a $5 per month subscription to sustain our efforts:
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35 minutes ago · ·
Diana Albright OMG... you are a fucking retard, Ben Cyr. Johnboehners Alterego, this guy is flaming troll.
34 minutes ago · · 1 person
Soup McGee just wants someone to point out that he is wrong here, like I was about Martin Andrew. For which I am still sorry, btw. Geez, Benjamin, fight a fascist already. Right wing extremist? And I thought I was beyond being offended...
32 minutes ago ·
Diana Albright oh wow... and THEN when I click on "download PDF" it shows the whole article... with no demands for payment. Duh, winning!
28 minutes ago ·
Soup McGee
actual content again: Analysis of Financial Terrorism in America
By David DeGraw, AmpedStatus Report
Email This
Editor’s Note: The following report includes adapted excerpts from David DeGraw’s book, “The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III.” Release Date: 9.28.11
Contents
Abstract :: Welcome to World War III
Introduction
Part One :: The Economic Devastation
I :: Poverty
II :: Food Insecurity
III :: Unemployment
IV :: Declining Income
Part Two :: The Economic Elite
V :: How Much Wealth Do The Economic Elite Have?
VI :: Who Rules America? Revealing The Economic Top 0.1%
VII :: Tax Breaks For The Rich, Budget Cuts For The Rest Of Us
Part Three :: The Perfect Storm Overhead
(Inequality = Debt = Austerity = Civil Unrest = Inflation + Deflation = Stagflation)
VIII :: Debt Slavery
IX :: Inflation
X :: The Beaten Masses
Part Four :: Fascism in America
XI :: Modern Day Slavery
XII :: The Death Toll
XIII :: Deliberate Systemic Attacks
________________________________________
Abstract :: Welcome to World War III
Despite increasing personal financial hardship, most Americans remain unaware of the economic world war currently unfolding. An all-pervasive corporate and government propaganda campaign has effectively obscured this blatant reality. After extensive analysis, it is evident that World War III is a war between the richest one-tenth of one percent of the global population and 99.9 percent of humanity. Or, as I have called it, The Economic Elite Vs. The People. This war has been a one-sided attack thus far. However, as we have seen throughout the world in recent months, the people are beginning to fight back. The following report is a statistical analysis of the systemic economic attacks against the American people.
Introduction
The American public has sustained intensive economic attacks across broad segments of the population. While the attacks have been increasingly severe in scale over the past four years, they have been implemented with technocratic precision. They have been incrementally applied thus far, successfully keeping the population passive and avoiding any large-scale civilian unrest, while effectively reducing living standards for the majority of the population. As you will see in this report, the 55 million Americans that have been hit the hardest have thus far acquiesced due to temporary financial assistance, such as food stamps and extended unemployment benefits.
The global Economic Elite have been much more strategic in handling the American public, as they are potentially the greatest threat to their continued consolidation of wealth, resources and power. National populations that are not as powerful, and on the periphery of the Economic Elite’s global empire, have been dealt with in much harsher fashion. In many smaller and less powerful countries the dramatic rise in food prices and costs of living have led to all-out revolt — Tunisia, Algeria, Albania and Egypt were among the first to rebel. While the contagion of rebellion has rapidly spread throughout Northern Africa and the Middle East, it is also spreading in a decentralized manner throughout most of the world, now threatening popular rebellion throughout Europe. Like the US population, the geographically clustered European nations represent a potentially powerful countervailing force to the Economic Elite’s continued domination.
Within the United States, the technocratic suppression of the population has been extensive. Increasingly severe economic and governmental policies have systematically eroded civilian wealth, power and rights. Intensive propaganda has effectively distracted, confused, isolated, marginalized and divided the US population. Despite the success of these efforts thus far, given the severe, prolonged, unsustainable and escalating level of economic suffering, outbreaks of civil unrest are inevitable. The US population, if a critical mass is reached, represents the greatest threat to the Economic Elite. In this regard, the American people are their primary adversary.
In writing this report, I will clearly demonstrate the severity and scale of the deliberate systemic economic attacks against the US population, in hope that we can urgently build a critical mass of aware and engaged citizens.
Part One :: The Economic Devastation
Snapshot: According to most recent Census Bureau data, from 2005 – 2009, average US household wealth declined by 28%. This represents a loss of $27,000 per household. Currently, at least 62 million Americans, 20% of US households, have zero or negative net worth.
The Census figures cited above are based on statistics that have been consistently proven to be lowball estimates. The government and corporate media spread propaganda on vital economic statistics that mask the severity of our economic crisis. Deceptive inflation, unemployment, poverty and GDP measures, which cast the illusion of recovery, are easily exposed with some research and a closer look at the data. Throughout this report, we will explore significant examples of government economic propaganda. In several cases, the government has been forced to revise their numbers due to proven inaccuracies. The government’s “revisions” are most always for the worse, and are usually just a footnote correction that the public is rarely ever aware of. All that being said, for many statistics we are forced to use government data, as there are not any other extensive data sets available from alternative sources.
I :: Record Breaking Poverty
The Census Bureau poverty rate is a horribly flawed measurement that uses outdated methodology. The Census measures poverty based on costs of living metrics established in 1955 – 56 years ago. They ignore many key factors, such as the increased costs of medical care, child care, education, transportation, and many other basic costs. They also don’t factor geographically-based costs of living. The National Academy of Science measure, which gets little if any corporate media coverage, gives a much more accurate account of poverty, as they factor in these vital cost of living variables.
The most current Census data revealed that 43.6 million Americans, 14.3% of the population, lived in poverty in 2009. While that is a staggering number that represents the highest number of American people to ever live in poverty, and a dramatic increase of four million people since 2008, it significantly under-counted the total. Last year, in my analysis, extrapolating data from 2008 National Academy of Science findings, I estimated that the number of Americans living in poverty in 2009 was at least 52 million. Recently, the National Academy of Science released their latest findings, backing up my claim by revealing that 52,765,000 Americans, 17.3% of the population, lived in poverty in 2009.
The poverty rate for children is even worse. According to Census data, a total of 15.5 million American children lived in poverty in 2009, which is 20% of all children. The number of children in poverty increased 28% since 2000, and jumped 10% from 2008 to 2009. Extrapolating data from the 2009 National Academy of Science poverty rate, in relation to the Census childhood poverty data, the number of American children living in poverty in 2009 is more accurately 18.8 million, which is 24%, or nearly one in four.
Other than this rapidly increasing number children who are in families that have recently fallen into poverty, “every day in America 2,573 babies are born into poverty.”
As the chart to the right shows, even with the lower Census numbers, nine major American cities have a poverty rate over 25%:
It is important to note, based on many key indicators, as you will see throughout this report, the overall poverty totals have increased since 2009. Also consider that the recent deficit reduction plan is going to cut “anti-poverty” programs that currently assist tens of millions of Americans. A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research estimates that “the poverty rate would double without these programs.” It is predicted that the new deficit deal will cut the funding for these programs in half, which, based on these estimates, would bring the total number of Americans living in poverty up to 80 million people, 26% of the population.
II :: Record Breaking Food Insecurity
For another revealing statistic, which has been quickly increasing, we can look at the number of Americans currently surviving off of food stamps. In 2005, 25.7 million Americans needed food stamps, currently 45.8 million people rely on them. As the chart to the right shows, the number of people in need of food stamps has been rapidly increasing year-over-year.
Meanwhile, Congress is cutting the funding for the food stamp program at a time when the Department of Agriculture estimates that an additional 22.5 million people will need them, bringing the total number of Americans in need of food assistance to a stunning 68.3 million people.
III :: Record Breaking Unemployment
While the “official” unemployment rate hovers around 9%, 14 million people, the government’s numbers are deceptively low once again. The only reason unemployment has stayed below 10% for the past few months is because millions of long-term unemployed, and part-time workers who are looking for full-time work, are not included in the baseline government unemployment rate. John Williams, from ShadowStats.com, has a consistently proven method of tracking unemployment that provides a much more accurate view of the overall situation. As shocking as it may sound, when you apply his SGS method, counting the total number people in need of employment, you get a current unemployment rate of 22.5%, which is an all-time record total of 34 million people currently in need of work. Here is how the SGS rate is calculated:
“The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.
The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.”
On top of these shocking figures, the labor force participation rate, which measures the percentage of the total population currently working, has fallen to a 27-year low of 63.9%.
Currently, an all-time record 6.3 million people have been unemployed for over six months. As the chart to the right shows, the average time it takes for a person to find a job has also just hit an all-time high of 40.4 weeks.
As companies continue to downsize and shift jobs overseas, unemployment is once again accelerating. Private-sector job cuts in July surged 60% to a 16-month high. When accounting for population growth within the total labor force, from December 2007 to present, we have lost 10.6 million jobs.
With the implementation of state and federal budget cuts, public-sector unemployment is accelerating as well. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, since August 2008, state and local governments have cut 577,000 jobs. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that cuts in the new deficit deal will lead to an additional 1.8 million job losses.
Of the new jobs that have been added in 2010, 60% of them are in low-wage fields. Since December 2007, the official unemployment rate has masked the fact that 2.8 million of the news jobs created have been part-time jobs. Breaking down the data, over the last 12 months, the National Employment Law Project found that well-paying jobs are rapidly decreasing, while low-paying jobs are helping to mask an increasingly dire employment crisis:
• Lower-wage industries constituted 23% of job loss, but fully 49% of recent growth
• Mid-wage industries constituted 36% of job loss, and 37% of recent growth
• Higher-wage industries constituted 40% of job loss, but only 14% of recent growth
IV :: Declining Income
While the cost of living from 1990 – 2010 increased by 67%, worker income has declined. According to the most recent available IRS data, covering the year of 2009, average income fell 6.1%, a loss of $3,516 per worker, that year alone. Average income has declined 13.7% from 2007 – 2009, representing a $8,588 loss per worker.
The decline in worker income is due to the dramatic increase in CEO pay. CEO pay has consistently increased year-over-year since the mid-1970s. From 1975 – 2010, worker productivity increased 80%. Over this time frame, CEO pay and the income of the economic top 0.1% (one-tenth of one percent) of the population quadrupled. The income of the top 0.01% (one-hundredth of one percent) quintupled.
To understand the affect CEO pay increases have had on workers’ declining share of income on an annual basis, after analyzing 2008 tax data, leading tax reporter David Cay Johnston summed up the situation with these revealing statistics:
“Had income growth from 1950 to 1980 continued at the same rate for the next 28 years, the average income of the bottom 90 percent in 2008 would have been 68 percent higher…. That would have meant an average income for the vast majority of $52,051, or $21,110 more than actual 2008 incomes. How different America would be today if the typical family had $406 more each week…”
As shocking as that is, over the last two years, workers have lost an even higher share of income to CEOs. In the last year alone, CEO pay skyrocketed by 28%. Looking at 2009, according to a recent Dollars & Sense report, workers lost nearly $2 trillion in wages that year alone:
“In 2009, stock owners, bankers, brokers, hedge-fund wizards, highly paid corporate executives, corporations, and mid-ranking managers pocketed—as either income, benefits, or perks such as corporate jets—an estimated $1.91 trillion that 40 years ago would have collectively gone to non-supervisory and production workers in the form of higher wages and benefits.”
As bad as these numbers are, consider that the attack on American workers has increased significantly since 2009. From 2009 to the fourth-quarter of 2010, 88% of income growth went to corporate profits (i.e. CEOs), while just 1% went to workers.
As the NY Times reported in an article entitled, “Our Banana Republic,” from 1980 – 2005, “more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.” Again, as bad as that was, since 2005 it has gotten even worse, as Zero Hedge recently reported, labor’s current “share of national income has fallen to its lowest level in modern history.” This chart shows how workers’ percentage of income has been rapidly declining:
The bottom line, as statistics clearly demonstrate, these trends are getting worse and the attacks against us, as severe as they have been over the past four years, are dramatically escalating.
Part Two :: The Economic Elite
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class,
the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
– Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway
V :: How Much Wealth Do The Economic Elite Have?
While 68.3 million Americans struggle to get enough food to eat and wages are declining for 90% of the population, US millionaire household wealth has reached an unprecedented level. According to an extensive study by auditing and financial advisory firm Deloitte, US millionaire households now have $38.6 trillion in wealth. On top of the $38.6 trillion that this study reveals, they have an estimated $6.3 trillion hidden in offshore accounts.
In total, US millionaire households have at least $45.9 trillion in wealth, the majority of this wealth is held within the upper one-tenth of one percent of the population.
If all this isn’t obscene enough, to further demonstrate how the global economy has now been completely rigged, Deloitte’s analysis predicated, based on current trends, that US millionaire households will see a 225% increase in wealth to $87.1 trillion by 2020. Accounting for wealth hidden in offshore accounts, they are projected to have over $100 trillion in total within the next decade.
Most people cannot even comprehend how much $1 trillion is, let alone $46 trillion. One trillion is equal to 1000 billion, or $1,000,000,000,000. To put it in perspective, last year the entire cost of feeding all 40 million Americans on food stamps was $65 billion.
Now consider, according to the latest IRS data, only 0.076% of the population, less than one-tenth of one percent, earned over $1 million in 2009.
The graph below, based on data from the Tax Policy Center, shows how much income is earned by a household at any given percentile in income distribution:
The highest bracket for annual income is $50 million or more. Only 74 Americans are in this elite group. The average income within this category was $91.2 million in 2008. As astonishing as that is, in 2009 they averaged $518.8 million each, or about $10 million per week. This means, in the depths of the recession, the richest 74 Americans increased their income by more than 5 times within this one year. These 74 people made more money than 19 million workers combined.
In context, overall, the richest 400 people in the US have as much wealth as 154 million Americans combined, that’s 50% of the entire country. The top economic 1% of the US population now has a record 40% of all wealth, and have more wealth than 90% of the population combined.
VI :: Who Rules America? Revealing The Economic Top 0.1%
Here is an analysis from an investment manager with mega-wealthy clients breaking down the economic top 0.5% of the population, recently published by William Domhoff, sociology professor and author of Who Rules America?:
“Unlike those in the lower half of the top 1%, those in the top half and, particularly, top 0.1%, can often borrow for almost nothing, keep profits and production overseas, hold personal assets in tax havens, ride out down markets and economies, and influence legislation in the US. They have access to the very best in accounting firms, tax and other attorneys, numerous consultants, private wealth managers, a network of other wealthy and powerful friends, lucrative business opportunities, and many other benefits.
Folks in the top 0.1% come from many backgrounds but it’s infrequent to meet one whose wealth wasn’t acquired through direct or indirect participation in the financial and banking industries…. Most of the serious economic damage the US is struggling with today was done by the top 0.1% and they benefited greatly from it…. For example, in Q1 of 2011, America’s top corporations reported 31% profit growth and a 31% reduction in taxes, the latter due to profit outsourcing to low tax rate countries…. The year 2010 was a record year for compensation on Wall Street, while corporate CEO compensation rose by over 30%.…
In 2010 a dozen major companies, including GE, Verizon, Boeing, Wells Fargo, and Fed Ex paid US tax rates between -0.7% and -9.2%. Production, employment, profits, and taxes have all been outsourced….
I could go on and on, but the bottom line is this: A highly complex and largely discrete set of laws and exemptions from laws has been put in place by those in the uppermost reaches of the US financial system. It allows them to protect and increase their wealth and significantly affect the US political and legislative processes.
They have real power and real wealth. Ordinary citizens in the bottom 99.9% are largely not aware of these systems, do not understand how they work, are unlikely to participate in them, and have little likelihood of entering the top 0.5%, much less the top 0.1%….
… the American dream of striking it rich is merely a well-marketed fantasy that keeps the bottom 99.5% hoping for better and prevents social and political instability. The odds of getting into that top 0.5% are very slim and the door is kept firmly shut by those within it.”
To get into the top economic 0.01% (one-hundredth of one percent) of the population, you have to have a household income of over $27 million per year.
If you look at some of the central players who caused this economic crisis, you will see that they are among this Economic Elite group.
Former Goldman Sachs CEO and Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson had already amassed at least $700 million prior to moving to the US Treasury in 2006. Current Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and a few other top executives at Goldman Sachs just received $111.3 million in bonuses. Blankfein just took home $24.3 million, as part of a $67.9 million bonus he was awarded. Goldman’s President Gary Cohn took home $24 million, as part of a $66.9 million bonus he was awarded. Goldman’s CFO David Viniar and former co-president Jon Winkelried both took home over $20 million in bonuses.
Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit just took home $80 million, in what may eventually total more than $200 million in compensation and bonuses. Coming in at the top of the list is JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who just took home $90 million.
If you think people in this income level don’t control the US political process, you are not paying attention. After they caused this economic crisis, they got the government to give them trillions of dollars in taxpayer support, and then, after taking our tax dollars, they gave themselves all-time record-breaking bonuses. 2009 was an all-time record-breaking year for Wall Street executives bringing in a total of $145 billion. And then, in 2010, they raised the bar even higher, breaking the all-time record set the year before by pulling in another $149 billion. The audacity of it all is stunning.
Finding people more grotesquely greedy than Wall Street executives would seem to be impossible. However, health insurance CEOs are giving them a run for their money. As the LA Times reported:
“Leaders of Cigna, Humana, UnitedHealth, WellPoint and Aetna received nearly $200 million in compensation in 2009, according to a report, while the companies sought rate increases as high as 39%….
H. Edward Hanway, former chief executive of Philadelphia-based Cigna, topped the list of high-paid executives, thanks to a retirement package worth $110.9 million. Cigna paid Hanway and his successor, David Cordani, a total of $136.3 million last year….
Ron Williams, the CEO of Hartford, Conn.-based Aetna Inc., earned nearly $18.2 million in total compensation, down from $24.4 million in 2008.”
Aetna CEO Ron Williams has recovered from his down year in 2009 by making $72 million in 2010.
Given this level of obscene profiteering within the health care industry, it is not surprising that Americans pay more for medical care than any other nation in the world. In fact, Americans are forced to pay twice as much as most nations, and get lower quality care in return. As health insurance companies admitted, they have been reaping windfall profits because people with health insurance plans still cannot afford to go to the doctors and have stopped going unless it is an absolute emergency. With well over 50 million people unable to afford health insurance and the skyrocketing costs, it is not surprising that over 60% of all personal bankruptcies are the result of medical bills. In fact, 75% of the medical bankruptcies filed are from people who have health insurance.
Within this Economic Elite group, you also have the war profiteering oil companies, which themselves are in large part owned by the big Wall Street banks. The biggest five oil companies, while gas prices have been skyrocketing, reaped $36 billion in profit last quarter. These companies also receive an average of $6 billion per year in tax subsidies.
VII :: Tax Breaks For The Rich, Budget Cuts For The Rest Of Us
To further demonstrate how the mega-wealthy have seized control our political process, consider that the richest 400 Americans paid 30% of their income in taxes in 1995, but they now pay only 18%.
In fact, 1,470 Americans earned over $1 million in 2009 and didn’t pay any taxes.
The average tax rate for millionaires was 22.4% in 2009, down from 30.4% in 1995. The average millionaire saves $136,000 a year due to reduced tax rates.
Looking at the tax rate from a long-term perspective, the amount of money the richest people and most profitable corporations pay in taxes has fallen dramatically since 1955. Corporate tax accounted for 27.3% of federal revenue in 1955. In 2010, corporate tax accounted for only 8.9% of federal revenue. Corporate taxes accounted for 4.3% of overall GDP in 1955, in 2010 they accounted for only 1.3%.
Part Three :: The Perfect Storm Overhead:
(Inequality = Debt = Austerity = Civil Unrest = Inflation + Deflation = Stagflation)
The cuts in taxes for the mega-wealthy have led to record wealth inequality and resulted in a record national deficit. Meanwhile, to make up for the deficit that the richest one-tenth of one percent of the population has created, Democrats and Republicans are committed to making draconian budget cuts to vital social services, which target the poor, middle class, elderly and sick, while handing out billions more in corporate welfare annually. (Inequality = Debt = Austerity)
Just as the government has done, to make up for tax revenue lost to the mega-wealthy, Americans have made up for the decline in income by taking on large amounts of debt as well. (Inequality = Debt)
In a severely unequal society, massive debt will always be created, thus forming a vicious cycle of increasing inequality and increasing debt, until the fragmentation of society reaches a breaking point when those in debt cannot afford to pay back their debts without starving to death. We are now reaching that breaking point. (Inequality = Debt = Austerity = Civil Unrest)
VIII :: Debt Slavery
The Indentured Servant Has Become The Indebted Citizen
As for statistics on Americans being buried in financial debt, the indentured servant has evolved into the indebted citizen. As mentioned before, from 1990 – 2010 costs of living have increased 67%, while wages have stagnated and declined. As the national debt has reached a record $14.6 trillion, total personal debt is now over $16 trillion. Consumer debt is $2.5 trillion. Credit card debt is $805 billion and student debt now exceeds $1 trillion.
Obviously, the more severe your debts are, the more you have to cut back in spending and the less money you have to buy new items. (Debt = Austerity)
Meanwhile, a perfect storm circles overhead as society breaks down and falls into an economic death spiral – health care, food and gas costs are skyrocketing, while income and home values are plummeting. (Inflation + Deflation = Stagflation)
Given these conditions, it is not surprising that over 250 million Americans, another record-breaking number, are currently living paycheck-to-paycheck struggling to make ends meet.
IX :: Inflation
The following charts, from Advisor Perspectives, show the increase in costs of living since 2000:
As you can see, the price of basic necessities are consistently increasing, only clothing (apparel) has declined. The second chart highlights the crucial skyrocketing cost of energy:
The third chart highlights the pernicious skyrocketing cost of education:
The cost of education essentially buries a young person in a debt that they will spend a significant portion of their life attempting to get out of. Given the increasing costs of living, and the decreasing ability to make an expected income from such an expensive level of education, this young demographic will most likely live an entire life locked into spiraling levels of debt that they will never be able to get out of.
Propaganda Inflation
When reporting on inflation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has twice, since 1980, revised their methodology to mask the severity of inflation, similar to how they mask the severity of unemployment. In their Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures inflation, they have heavily discounted the measurement weight of energy, food and education – three of the most significant costs for most American households.
To understand the significance in their revised methodology, current “official” CPI is at a 3.6% annual rate. However, if calculated the way it was before former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan altered it in 1980, it would be 11.1%, three times worse than officially stated.
So while the government and the Federal Reserve claim that inflation is low, at 3.6% over the past year, food prices have increased 39% and US gas prices have increased 34% over the same time frame. The increase in gas cost over the past one-year masks the severity of total gas price inflation, which is currently 125% more expensive since December 2008, increasing from $1.67 per gallon to $3.75.
The Hidden Tax
The Federal Reserve’s strategic policy known as Quantitative Easing (QE) has been a significant factor in the rising cost of basic necessities by deliberately stimulating inflation, while decreasing the value of the dollar. Looking at their recent QE2 program, the dollar lost 7.5% of its value from January 2010 through March 2010. From August 2010 through March 2010, the dollar lost 17% of its value. To understand how this acts as a hidden tax, consider if you had $10,000 in the bank, over this time frame you would have lost $1700 in purchasing power. So your $10,000 would now be worth $8300. At the same time, the cost of gas and food drastically increased.
The Phantom Recovery
By decreasing the value of the dollar, the Federal Reserve is also inflating the stock market by creating the impression that stock prices are rising, which, when measured in dollars, they have. However, in real terms, their overall value has decreased. To understand how deceptive this strategy has been in giving the appearance of a rising market, instead of measuring overall stock value in dollars, let’s look at their overall value when measured in terms of gold:
Dow/Gold Chart from January 1, 2003 – August 8, 2011
As investor Michael Krieger explains:
“You can see from the chart above the downtrend of stock prices in real terms is completely intact and they have now hit a new low, below the previous low point in March 2009. In fact, although stocks did temporarily rise in real terms from the low in 2009 for the year as a whole, they were still down 5% in real terms. Then last year, stocks were 14% lower in terms of gold. Finally, despite a brief rally early in 2011, stocks in terms of gold are down 23% year-to-date.”
Dollar Vs. Gold
When comparing the value of the dollar to the value of gold, the dollar has lost a stunning 84% of its value since 2000. In 2000, gold was worth $279 per ounce, as of August 8, 2011, gold is $1,725 per ounce. In fact, the dollar continues to fall in value while gold continues to rise.
Stagflation
All these factors together create a perfect storm of stagflation. As 90% of Americans experience income declines, and the value of the dollar declines, the price of necessities are rising, while the one major asset many Americans have, a house, is also declining in value. Already, thanks to declining home values, 28% of US homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their home is currently worth. With 10.4 million American families having lost their homes to foreclosure since 2007, Amherst Securities, a leading broker/dealer focused on mortgage-related investments, estimates that another 10.8 million homes are at risk of default over the next six years. This will obviously continue downward pressure on home values.
X :: The Beaten Masses
Confronted With Severe Financial Hardship, Why Do Americans Remain Passive?
With an unprecedented sum of wealth, tens of trillions of dollars, held within the top one-tenth of one percent of the US population, we now have the highest and most severe inequality of wealth in US history. Not even the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age were as greedy as the modern day Economic Elite.
As famed American philosopher John Dewey once said, “There is no such thing as the liberty or effective power of an individual, group, or class, except in relation to the liberties, the effective powers, of other individuals, groups or classes.”
In The Economic Elite Vs. The People, I reported on the strategic withholding of wealth from 99% of the US population over the past generation. Since the mid-1970s, worker production and wealth creation has exploded. As the statistics throughout this report prove, the dramatic increase in wealth has been almost entirely absorbed by the economic top one-tenth of one percent of the population, with most of it going to the top one-hundredth of one percent.
If you are wondering why a critical mass of people desperately struggling to make ends meet are still not fighting back with overwhelming force and running the mega-wealthy aristocrats out of town, let’s consider two significant factors:
1) People are so busy trying to maintain their current standard of living that their energies are consumed by holding on to the little that they have left.
2) People have very little understanding of how much wealth has been consolidated within the top economic one-tenth of one percent.
Considering the first factor, it is obvious that people have become beaten down psychologically and financially. A report in the Guardian entitled, “Anxiety keeps the super-rich safe from middle-class rage,” suggests that people are so desperate to hold on to what they have that they are too busy looking down to look up: “As psychologists will tell you, fear of loss is more powerful than the prospect of gain. The struggling middle classes look down more anxiously than they look up, particularly in recession and sluggish recovery.”
Considering the second factor, people do not understand how much wealth has been withheld from them. The average person has never personally experienced or seen the excessive wealth and luxury that the mega-rich live in. Wealth inequality has grown so extreme and the wealthy have become so far removed from average society, it is as if the rich exist in some outer stratosphere beyond the comprehension of the average person. As the Guardian report mentioned above also states:
“… having little daily contact with the rich and little knowledge of how they lived, they simply didn’t think about inequality much, or regard the wealthy as direct competitors for resources. As the sociologist Garry Runciman observed: ‘Envy is a difficult emotion to sustain across a broad social distance.’… Even now most underestimate the rewards of bankers and executives. Top pay has reached such levels that, rather like interstellar distances, what the figures mean is hard to grasp.”
In fact, the average American vastly underestimates the severe wealth disparity that we currently have. This survey, featured in the NY Times, reveals that Americans think our society is far more equal than it actually is:
“In a recent survey of Americans, my colleague Dan Ariely and I found that Americans drastically underestimated the level of wealth inequality in the United States. While recent data indicates that the richest 20 percent of Americans own 84 percent of all wealth, people estimated that this group owned just 59 percent – believing that total wealth in this country is far more evenly divided among poorer Americans.
What’s more, when we asked them how they thought wealth should be distributed, they told us they wanted an even more equitable distribution, with the richest 20 percent owning just 32 percent of the wealth. This was true of Democrats and Republicans, rich and poor – all groups we surveyed approved of some inequality, but their ideal was far more equal than the current level.”
Here is a chart showing the results from their survey:
The fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of US population is unaware of the vast wealth at hand. An entire generation of unprecedented wealth creation has been concealed from 99% of the population for over 35 years. Having never personally experienced or known of this wealth, the average American cannot comprehend what is possible if even a fraction of it was used for the betterment of society as a whole.
In fact, given modern technology and wealth, not a single American citizen should live in poverty. The statistics clearly demonstrate that we now live in a Neo-Feudal society. In comparison to the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent of the population, who are sitting on top of tens of trillions of dollars in wealth, we are modern day serfs, essentially propagandized peasants.
The fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are struggling to get by, while tens of trillions of dollars are consolidated within a small fraction of the population, is a crime against humanity.
The day the average American fully comprehends how much wealth is consolidated within just the top one-tenth of one percent of the population, there will be a massive uprising and all the paid off politicians will be run out of town.
The next time you are stressed out, struggling to make ends meet and pay off your debts, just think about the trillions of dollars sitting in the obscenely bloated pockets of one-tenth of one percent of the population. The first step in overcoming your peasant status is to understand that you are indeed a peasant. This is a bitter pill to swallow and most will prefer to, as they have been conditioned to do, continue on their path of media-induced delusion, denial, apathy and ignorance.
However, I still cling to the hope that once enough people become aware of this hidden and obscured fact, we can have the non-violent revolution we so urgently need. Until then, the rich get richer as a critical mass with increasingly dire economic prospects desperately struggles to make ends meet.
Part Four :: Fascism in America
Other than driving large segments of the American population into poverty, and pushing the majority into massive debt and a state of financial desperation, there is an ever darker side to what is unfolding today. The Economic Elite have turned America into a modern day fascist state.
Fascism is a very powerful word which evokes many strong feelings. People may think that the term cannot be applied to modern day America. However, as Benito Mussolini once summed it up: “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.” In the early 1900s, the Italians who invented the term fascism also described it as “estato corporativo,” meaning: the corporate state.
Very few Americans would argue the fact that corporations now control our government and have the dominant role in our society. Through a system of legalized bribery – campaign finance, lobbying and the revolving door between Washington and corporations – the most power global corporations dominant the legislative and political process like never before. Senator Huey Long had it right when he warned: “When fascism comes to America, it will come in the form of democracy.”
As President Franklin D. Roosevelt once described fascism: “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes strong than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
The most blatant modern example of this was the bailout of Wall Street, when the “too big to fail” banks got politicians to promptly hand out trillions of tax dollars in support and subsidies to the very people who caused the crisis, without any of them being held accountable.
XI :: Modern Day Slavery
Another shocking example of how far we have descended into fascism is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which is a group of corporate executives who literally write government legislation. They have gone as far as setting up a system that imprisons the poor and then puts them to work, instead of paying living wages to non-imprisoned workers. Make no mistake, this is a modern day system of slavery unfolding before our eyes.
At the leadership of ALEC and various other Economic Elite organizations, poverty has essentially become a crime. To demonstrate these attacks against the poor, there was $17 billion cut from public housing programs, while there was an increase of $19 billion in programs for building prisons, “effectively making the construction of prisons the nation’s main housing program for the poor.” Before laws began to be rewritten in 1980, with direct input from ALEC, we had a prison population of 500,000 citizens. After laws were rewritten to target poor inner city citizens with much more severe penalties, the US prison population skyrocketed to 2.4 million people.
We now have the largest prison population in the world. With only 4% of the world’s population, we have 25% of the world’s prison population. As I reported previously, in a report entitled, “American Gulag: World’s Largest Prison Complex“:
“The US, by far, has more of its citizens in prison than any other nation on earth. China, with a billion citizens, doesn’t imprison as many people as the US, with only 308 million American citizens. The US per capita statistics are 700 per 100,000 citizens. In comparison, China has 110 per 100,000. In the Middle East, the repressive regime in Saudi Arabia imprisons 45 per 100,000. US per capita levels are equivalent to the darkest days of the Soviet Gulag.”
XII :: The Death Toll
The dramatic increase in poverty has obviously torn many families apart and caused a devastating psychological toll, but consider the increase in deaths as a result of poverty and severe wealth inequalities. This is a very difficult statistic to accurately measure, but Columbia University’s School of Public Health conducted an intensive examination of mortality and medical data and estimated that “875,000 deaths in the US in 2000 could be attributed to a cluster of social factors bound up with poverty and income inequality.”
As a report by Debra Watson sums up the study, “There is no reason to believe, after a decade that has seen sustained attacks on social programs and consistently high unemployment rates, that the social mortality rate has declined. On the contrary, it has likely risen.” Indeed, poverty and income inequality have skyrocketed since 2000.
Now, let’s consider the fact that, according to the Census Bureau, 31.1 million people lived in poverty in 2000, and according to Columbia’s study 875,000 deaths came as a result. This means that 1 out of every 35.5 people living in poverty die annually as a result of their impoverishment. If you extrapolate this data to the 2009 total of 52.8 million people living in poverty, you get an estimate of 1,486,338 deaths within that year. Even if you use the lower poverty totals from the Census Bureau, 43.6 million people, you get an estimate of 1,228,169 deaths in 2009.
XIII :: Deliberate Systemic Attacks
The dramatic increase in economic inequality and poverty, along with the unprecedented rise in wealth within the top one-tenth of one percent of the population has not happened by mistake. It is the designed result of deliberate governmental and economic policy. It is the result of the richest people in the world, and the “too big to fail” banks, using the campaign finance and lobbying system to buy off politicians who implement policies designed to exploit 99.9% of the population for their financial gain. To call what is happening a “financial terrorist attack” on the United States, is not using hyperbole, it is the technical term for what is currently occurring.
Compare the million people who die annually as a result of these economic attacks, to the 2,977 that died on 9/11. As someone who lived three blocks from the World Trade Center, as tragic as 9/11 was, these economic attacks are much more severe and damaging to us as a nation, albeit a much slower and unseen death toll. Nonetheless, the result is of genocidal proportions. One can statistically compare the economic attacks on the US to the invasion of Iraq, which some estimate as leading to one million deaths. Once again, many of those deaths came in brutal and spectacular fashion in bombing campaigns known as “shock and awe.” However, the death toll compares to the hidden brutality of a four-year campaign of economic “shock and awe.” Just as Iraq was invaded, the US has been invaded by a global banking cartel.
As shocking as that is to realize, consider that this is happening throughout the world. While the US poverty death rate is probably higher than in most European countries, the Federal Reserve’s economic policies — along with policies from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Bank of International Settlements — have caused rioting and uprisings over skyrocketing food prices and costs of living throughout the world. The fact of the matter, and very harsh and unfortunate reality of this crisis, is that the global economic central planners are deliberately carrying out genocidal economic policies.
As Che Guevara, a man who took on the global financial elite, once said, “The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this.”
When tens of trillions of dollars deliberately flow to the top economic one-tenth of one percent of the global population, while large percentages live in poverty, you have to conclude, in technical terms, that a Neo-Feudal-Fascist state is upon us. The rich have never been richer, while their paid off politicians make budget cuts for the poor and middle class, and cause the cost of basic necessities to skyrocket.
You can call me extreme, but the reality of this is extreme, these people, the global economic top one-tenth of one percent, are genocidal fascists carrying out a holocaust. Fascism has evolved. There is no need to get blood on your hands while rounding up people and putting them into concentration camps when you can do it through economic policy while sitting in a jacuzzi on a corporate jet, or in a three-piece custom-made Armani, completely detached and insulated from the world in which you plunder.
However, as what happens with all empires, greed and arrogance makes them overreach. The beaten down masses get to a point where they literally can’t live under these conditions. This desperation spreads throughout the population until it reaches a critical mass, then, suddenly, they rise up and the empire begins to collapse… Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Israel, (Northern Africa, the Middle East), Albania, Greece, Spain, Britain (Europe), Wisconsin…
The Economic Elite are overreaching and their empire is collapsing.
The decentralized global rebellion has begun…
Welcome to World War III.
Which side of history do you want to be on?
As a wise old friend once said,
“You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”
________________________________________
This report was written by David DeGraw, founder and editor of AmpedStatus.com. His long-awaited book, The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III, will finally be released on September 28th. He can be emailed at David@AmpedStatus.com. You can follow David’s reporting daily on his new personal website: DavidDeGraw.org .
________________________________________
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28 minutes ago · ·
Soup McGee , hello? Notmary Elizabeth? Johnboehners Alterego? Guy Derrick? Gretchen Watkins Curtis? I'm calling in the dogs, brodie...
27 minutes ago ·
Benjamin Cyr Gosh both sides just cannot understand that you determine your life and display anger ... maybe I just want to be happy and try to relay that to other people in my life, I really don't give a crap about your article ....
25 minutes ago ·
Soup McGee is not advising you read anything- it obviously won't help- :-0 but calling me a right-wing extremist shows you are some kinda Dunce as far as your powers of interpretation go.
22 minutes ago ·
Gretchen Watkins Curtis LOL- Soup, a right wing extremist???? No, far from it. Also, I have no problem with his non-pay links.
21 minutes ago ·
Soup McGee and as far as being angry, hey if it makes you feel better to think I am some bitter angry person and not a full-time student-, Awesome. I only want your Happiness, Benjamin Cyr. Just don't be such an Idiot.
21 minutes ago ·
Gretchen Watkins Curtis Hey - Soup is extremely informed on extremist right wing activity. I get a LOT of information from him and whenever I see some kind of right wing religious fanaticism, I sent it to him because I know he archives this stuff.
18 minutes ago · · 2 people
Bill Healy Gee Benny you sound angry, don't you know we make our own happiness, you can't find it in discussing politics.
16 minutes ago · · 2 people
Diana Albright I also went to Catholic School nearly my entire life. Sorry, but "Dunce" is nowhere near the N-word.
14 minutes ago · · 1 person
Diana Albright Gretchen Watkins Curtis, he's my husband and everything to me, but when he starts up with this stuff at 6:00 in the morning, I often tune him out (LOL). It is nice to see that others find that Soup McGee is useful and full of useful info. ;)
11 minutes ago · · 2 people
Soup McGee Soup McGee
Add "grover norquist "treason"" section to my Google News homepage
Search Results
ha!
3 minutes ago ·
Soup McGee
2. Tea Party Terrorists
Cape Cod Today (blog) - Aug 8, 2011
An insurrectionary movement tending towards treason, but wanting an overt act; ... The leader of the movement, Grover Norquist of Americans for Limited ...
3. is the norquist tax pledge constituional?
dagblog (blog) - Oxy Mora - Aug 6, 2011
One definition of treason is "the betrayal of one's own country by waging ... It is absurd to me that Grover Norquist can hog tie Republicans to the extent ...
4. Daylight Robbery, Meet Nighttime Robbery
The Nation. - 1 day ago
He also managed to hatch clones of himself like Grover Norquist to continue the ... Read John Birch's None Dare Call it Treason and could not understand why ...
5. In Congress, lots of sniping, but little accomplished
The Seattle Times - Kyung M. Song - Jul 27, 2011
Lets take them and try them for treason hang em and start over. ... to anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist instead of to the American flag. ...
6. S&P: No Regrets on Downgrade
ABC News (blog) - Aug 8, 2011
Treason is what I am thinking, I would strip him of his American citizenship. Sabrina has a point.We could include a few more.For example,Grover Norquist ...
7. BLITZER'S BLOG: Horrendous day on wall street
CNN (blog) - Aug 8, 2011
There was absolutely no reason for it and treason is punishable by prison time ... bad Grover Norquist is more important than the credit stading of the USA. ...
Video: Democrats call credit rating drop a 'Tea Party downgrade'
YouTube AFP
Do Republicans hate government? The Mercury
The Stunning Demonization of Fiscal Responsibility Big Government
all 1323 news articles »
Moneycontrol.com
8. US in detox
The Virginian-Pilot - Jul 30, 2011
When did Grover Norquist get to be the single most important vote in the ... That my friends is treason and every single Republican that signed that ...
9. Monning Makes Progressive Pitch
Patch.com - Daniel Wootan - Aug 5, 2011
“I believe those [pledges] are acts of treason, but it has become a part of ... A woman in the audience singled out Grover Norquist, president of Americans ...
10. Devastating class warfare not good enough for House GOP
Salon - Andrew Leonard - Jul 26, 2011
... the country to serve their allegiance to the Tea Party and Grover Norquist. ... That's treason!! The Republicans no longer serve the American People and ...HA!
2 minutes ago ·
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
In Case Benjamin Cyr Missed It---
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