Government Subsidizes And Bankrupt Companies

There are many forms of government subsidies. Ambitious politicians ingeniously design schemes to expand their power and repay their donor patrons. Opportunist corporate enterprises beg for favor to fund projects or guaranteed loans. The role of government venture capitalism has produced a much-sordid record for the taxpayer. The sheer concept of picking winners and losers is a pure political play that defies pragmatic prudence. In spite of this, actuality, the rush to squander public money is one of the few growth industries. The pitiful results of the predictable bankruptcy are the common fate of this flawed business model.

The latest outrage has Buyers Circle Around Ailing Fisker Automotive. Yet, some critics of this assessment would have you believe that Fisker Automotive is in a sharp contrast to competitor Tesla Motors.

“But the fact that potential buyers are from China is already raising alarms about Fisker, which raised $1.2 billion in venture capital and spent about $192 million in federal loans to build a factory. “Technology developed with American taxpayer subsidies should not be sold off to China,” Republican senator Charles Grassley told Bloomberg. He compared it to the acquisition of A123 Systems by China-based auto parts company Wanxiang Group.

By contrast, Tesla Motors, which also received a DOE loan to build its factory, is crossing into higher volume production. Yesterday, Tesla announced that it expects to be profitable this quarter and is making its Model S at a rate of 400 a month, which will allow it to hit its annual target and meet demand for the electric sedan. (See, Tesla’s Explosive Revenue Suggests a Bright Future.)

One crucial difference between Tesla and Fisker, which is well known for its bold designs, has been Tesla’s manufacturing expertise. Fisker may well still go public and be a successful EV supplier. But for energy-related startups to go the route of Tesla rather than Fisker, they’ll need innovative technology, access to capital, supportive policies, and great business execution.”

The Obama environmental cult would argue that it is largely appropriate to spend public resources to fund private technological businesses. Some will be successful while others will fail. However, the partnership role with government in this new state/capitalist prototype is necessary to achieve the greater good of a fossil free ecosystem. Expensive cars, not designed for the commuter, are now joint venture public finance missions, in order to curtail gas fumes.

Henry Ford is rolling in his grave and Enzo Ferrari is searching for the electric switch.

The notorious “Green” sector has vivid examples of bribery, theft, incompetence and high-priced inefficient technology. The Foundry publishes a most informative list ofPresident Obama’s Taxpayer-Backed Green Energy Failures. “So far, 34 companies that were offered federal support from taxpayers are faltering — either having gone bankrupt or laying off workers or heading for bankruptcy.” Examine the specific site links for expanded details.

 

1.    Evergreen Solar ($25 million)*	12.  Abound Solar ($400 million)*	23.  Thompson River Power ($6.5 million)*
2.   SpectraWatt ($500,000)*	13.  A123 Systems ($279 million)*	24.  Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*
3.    Solyndra ($535 million)*	14.  Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($700,981)*	25.  Azure Dynamics ($5.4 million)*
4.    Beacon Power ($43 million)*	15.  Johnson Controls ($299 million)	26. GreenVolts ($500,000)
5.    Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)	16.  Brightsource ($1.6 billion)	27.  Vestas ($50 million)
6.    SunPower ($1.2 billion)	17.  ECOtality ($126.2 million)	28.  LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($151 million)
7.    First Solar ($1.46 billion)	18.  Raser Technologies ($33 million)*	29.  Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*
8.    Babcock and Brown ($178 million)	19.  Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)	30.  Navistar ($39 million)
9.    EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*	20.  Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*	31.  Satcon ($3 million)*
10.  Amonix ($5.9 million)	21.  Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*	32.  Konarka Technologies Inc. ($20 million)*
11.  Fisker Automotive ($529 million)	22.  Range Fuels ($80 million)*	33.  Mascoma Corp. ($100 million)

 

Now expand the creativity of the subsidy culture to the bankruptcy constituency. The report, Union That Bankrupted Hostess to Receive Generous Government Subsidies, will push you over the edge.

“Last year, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union refused to accept concessions that would have kept Hostess in business. The company had tried to cut costs as it faced high labor expenses, rising ingredient costs, and decreasing sales. The Teamsters union accepted the concessions, but the Bakery union would not, choosing to strike. Unable to continue operating, Hostess filed for bankruptcy.

Now those who helped bring down an American icon will receive generous, taxpayer-funded benefits from the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program. These generous benefits come in addition to existing unemployment insurance, job placement, and job training programs. TAA benefits include:

• Up to two years of job training in an approved training program,

• Up to 52 weeks of Trade Readjustment Allowances for workers in job training,

• Job search and relocation allowances,

• A refundable “health care tax credit” that covers 65 percent of a worker’s health insurance premiums in qualifying health plans, and

• A two-year wage insurance program that partly replaces workers’ earnings if they accept lower-paying jobs.”

The civic grant philosophy is not just for corporatists. Union goons prefer that their rank in file lose their livelihood, so that they can enjoy the welfare stipends of the state-run insolvent society. The prospects of a Mandarin logo on a Fisker vehicle are hardly on the same scale of transferring innovative technology to Cantonese creditors. However, the common practice of squandering national treasure for dubious purposes seems to be the primary product of the political careerists.

Leave it to the progressives over at The American Prospect, for an unintended analogy, in the essay The Twinkie Defense - the unions made us do it. “Hostess Brands is classic case of private equity engineers and executives looting a viable company, loading it up with debt, and then asking the employees to make up the difference.”

Regretfully, but with no remorse; the political class plays the role of private equity engineers, as the government plunders our economy, through crony spending and swelling of the debt, while saddling the taxpayer with the bill.

Austerity USA Begins March 1st

U.S. politicians have cried wolf over austerity long enough for the public to ignore them. A perfect time, then, for politicians to actually unleash the wolves. Barring an unlikely last minute deal, here’s a short list of some of the massive, national bi-partisan-created austerity cuts, according to the New York Times

• 600,000 food stamp recipients will be cut from the program

• Massive education cuts. According to President Obama: Once these cuts take effect thousands of teachers and educators will be laid off and tens of thousands of parents will have to scramble to find child care for their kids. “

• $12 billion in Medicare cuts (more to come after 2013)

• Federal funds to state governments will be cut, creating even more deficits for states and municipalities, and thus more localized cuts (the states have already made austerity cuts of $337 billion!)

• Also, 700,000 jobs are expected to be loss, while 70,000 kids are also expected to be kicked off of Head Start

And this is just for 2013. The current plan for the austerity “sequester” cuts is $100 billion of federal cuts every year for ten years, equaling massive cuts to jobs, Medicare, education, and completely destroying federally funded social programs.

Will it actually happen this time? The New York Times reports:

In private, Capitol Hill staff members and members of Congress have admitted that there are no viable plans on the horizon to delay or offset the cuts.

The finger pointing in Washington, D.C. has already reached a crescendo, with the perverted logic being that, if both parties are to blame, it’s really no one’s fault. In reality Democrats and Republicans created these “sequester” cuts, and they can just as easily undo them with a snap of the finger.

Both parties are choosing not to delete the cuts. They just don’t want political responsibility for the fallout, which many economists have predicted will push the U.S. economy over the edge into official recession.  

Obama has predictably blamed the Republicans for this mess, even though he personally began this process by creating the “deficit reduction commission” that helped shape the cuts (keep in mind there is zero debt crisis that calls for such drastic measures).

Obama could also just as easily appeal to the American public — over the heads of congressmen — to demand that the cuts be shelved forever. Instead, he’s proposing a “grand bargain” deal that he knows the Republicans won’t go for.

What’s in Obama’s grand bargain deal? According to the White House website:

• $130 billion in “savings” [cuts] to Social Security, by implementing a “superlative CPI”

• $35 billion in “savings” [cuts] to the retirement of federal employees

• $400 billion in health care “savings” [cuts], much of it Medicare cuts.

Obama cynically fails to mention the words Social Security or Medicare in the above plan, choosing instead to write in code (“superlative Consumer Price Index”). Obama’s plan to avoid the March 1st cuts still assumes that $500 billion in cuts will be implemented over the next ten years, as opposed to $1trillion.

But his plan is just a distraction. Obama knows his plan has no chance of being passed by March 1st. He’s falsely portraying his plan as the only alternative to the March 1st cuts, even though a far better idea — the one preferred by a vast majority of Americans — is to simply to shelve the sequester cuts forever. To not put forth this option makes Obama complicit in the cuts.

Many pundits have speculated that Congress will allow the cuts to go into effect for three weeks, since March 27th marks a fiscal deadline that will pressure Congress to maneuver anew.  This might trigger a new round of haggling over a new “grand bargain” that again targets “entitlement programs” and re-packages the massive cuts into a prettier box. The party that does the most effective finger pointing after the March 1st cuts will be in the best position to dictate matters post-March 27th, so say the pundits.

Whatever the actual result, the Democrats and Republicans share similar enough visions that massive cuts to cherished social programs appear to be inevitable. Much of the made-for-TV bickering is pure political posturing, meant to fool the working people most affected by these cuts into believing it’s “the other party” that’s responsible.

Politicians have been able to get away with this disgusting behavior because there are very few independent voices telling the truth about what’s happening. Many labor and progressive groups are consciously lying about the dynamic, placing blame squarely on the Republicans, thus allowing the Democrats not to be held accountable for their pandering to the corporate elite’s demand to use austerity to attack the social safety net. In reality both parties are jointly attacking working and poor people via austerity, on a city, state, and national level.

If Labor and community groups united in a demand of ‘No Cuts, Tax the Rich’ and organized massive mobilizations, there would be a very different public debate happening right now. It’s not too late for these groups to tear themselves from the jaws of their attackers.

Notes

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/us/politics/hard-budget-realities-as-agencies-prepare-to-detail-reductions.html?hp&_r=0
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/obama-sequester-budget-cuts-slow-economy-eliminate-good-18574948
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=711
http://www.ibtimes.com/cost-sequestration-700000-jobs-may-be-lost-across-board-budget-cuts-through-2014-gdp-growth-may-slow
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/22/sequester-recession_n_2741558.html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/deficit_reduction_table_bucketed_r8.pdf
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21572190-ships-lie-uselessly-anchor-and-lay-offs-loom-deep-congress-imposed-spending-cuts-look

“Affirmative Action” Obama Not Being Held Responsible For Anything

It appears that “affirmative action” reached the White House in 2008 and continues in 2013.  Barack Obama, a freshman U.S. Senator from Illinois, with no expertise and no history of any accomplishment—scored an “affirmative action” victory that catapulted him into the highest job on this planet.  To be fair, he ran against another incompetent by the name of John McCain.

Obama reached the White House with a silvery tongue and no experience whatsoever for running the most advanced, complex and in-debt country on Earth.  At the time of his election victory in 2008, 36 million Americans subsisted on food stamps.  Another 14 million Americans stood in unemployment lines.  A full seven million suffered underemployment.   Two wars raged costing taxpayers $12 billion a month.  Illegal migration netted over 20 million border jumpers assisted housing, jobs, medical care for their babies, free schooling for their children and immunity from deportation.

The national debt in 2008 ran a mind-numbing $12 trillion.  State debts ran into the billions.  Consumer debt ran into the trillions.   Obama promised to reduce global climate destabilization.  At Obama’s inauguration, he promised jobs, reducing the debt, stopping the wars and restoring national pride.  He promised too many things to too many people with no idea or talent or experience for solving this nation’s predicaments.

All talk!

Several decades ago, our U.S. Congress created “affirmative action.”  A person without qualifications, without enough education or skills, would be given a job over more qualified persons—because of their color.  Millions of minority citizens grabbed jobs whether they qualified for those jobs or not.  Government forced employers into quotas.

When someone lacks qualifications, everyone else in the workplace must pick up the slack; do more work, while the unqualified person enjoys the same wages and benefits.  But no one can complain, gripe or show any distress for fear of being called names.

“I can’t do my job, if you don’t do yours. I also can’t do my job. Can you do mine, too?”  Jarod Kintz

Today, our “affirmative action” President Barack Obama failed in his first four years and he failed dramatically.

Our national debt skyrocketed from $12 trillion to $16 trillion—and it’s headed for $20 trillion within the next four years.  He lacks the personal dynamic and/or personal skills to stop it or hire someone who will stop it.

President John Adams said, “There are two ways to defeat a country: by the sword or by debt.”   Mr. Obama pushes us toward that deadly cliff faster and faster.

While he enjoyed an “affirmative action” Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing to stop our two wars in the first few months of his holding office, he allowed both wars to continue for most of his first four years.  He finally pulled out of Iraq in his fourth year, but he continues waging war in a goat herder, third world country called Afghanistan.  Ironically, more of our young kids have committed suicide in the U.S. military than have been killed in combat in Afghanistan.   War scrambles a young man’s mind, but Obama never served, so he wouldn’t understand.

When Obama reached the White House, 36 million jobless Americans subsisted on food stamps.  Today, in 2013, that number accelerated to 47.7 million Americans eating off the backs of the rest of us who still work jobs.   At the same time, we still suffer 14 million unemployed Americans and seven million underemployed.

Obama lacked skills or ability to stop endless importation of manufactured goods from China and other countries to the tune of $700 billion annual trade deficits.  Wouldn’t anyone with half a brain figure it out, “If I stop importing $700 billion in manufactured goods from China annually, I could transfer those jobs to Americans and create manufactured goods over here. I could lift up America’s minorities, of which, I am one of them, and move them into jobs so they could enjoy a living wage, housing and provide food for their families.  Additionally, with 68 percent of African-American children living with single mothers and 99 percent of them subsisting on welfare—perhaps my astute actions could provide jobs for those children’s fathers and bring families together.”

But instead, no one talks about this president’s total lack of skills or ability to make good on his promises.  Like all “affirmative action” job holders, he’s in over his head.  He’s incompetent, but no one dares speak a word about it.

With our 47.7 million food stamp receivers along with 14 million unemployed Americans, this president not only continues to import 100,000 legal immigrants every friggin’ 30 days—he’s about to present a gift of total amnesty to 12-20 million border hoppers, fence jumpers and cheats—called illegal alien migrants.  They already depress wages and steal over 8 million jobs from our working poor, but now, an amnesty will encourage millions more to cross our porous borders.

For the life of me, we voted Obama back into office without questioning his utter failure as a president.  We also voted the likes of other incompetent leaders like Senators Feinstein, Hatch, McCain, Udall, Bennet, Schumer, Levin and other congress-critters back into their positions of incompetence.    None of them serve the interests of the American people, but instead, cater to other countries and illegal migrants along with their corrupt employers.

In the meantime, our infrastructure rots, our schools fail, our environment degrades, our air pollution accelerates, our water depletes, our quality of life deteriorates and our standard of living drops like a brick in water.

“Every clique is a refuge for incompetence. It fosters corruption and disloyalty, it begets cowardice, and consequently is a burden upon and a drawback to the progress of the country. Its instincts and actions are those of the pack.” Chiang-Kai-Shek

Retail Apocalypse: Why Are Major Retail Chains All Over America Collapsing?

If the economy is improving, then why are many of the largest retail chains in America closing hundreds of stores?  When I was growing up, Sears, J.C. Penney, Best Buy and RadioShack were all considered to be unstoppable retail powerhouses.  But now it is being projected that all of them will close hundreds of stores before the end of 2013.  Even Wal-Mart is running into problems.  A recent internal Wal-Mart memo that was leaked to Bloombergdescribed February sales as a “total disaster”.  So why is this happening?  Why are major retail chains all over America collapsing?  Is the “retail apocalypse” upon us?  Well, the truth is that this is just another sign that the U.S. economy is falling apart right in front of our eyes.  Incomes are declining, taxes are going up, government dependence is at an all-time high, and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the percentage of the U.S. labor force that is employed has been steadily falling since 2006.  The top 10% of all income earners in the U.S. are still doing very well, but most U.S. consumers are either flat broke or are drowning in debt.  The large disposable incomes that the big retail chains have depended upon in the past simply are not there anymore.  So retail chains all over the United States are now closing up unprofitable stores.  This is especially true in low income areas.

When you step back and take a look at the bigger picture, the rapid decline of some of our largest retail chains really is stunning.

It is happening already in some areas, but soon half empty malls and boarded up storefronts will litter the landscapes of cities all over America.

Just check out some of these store closing numbers for 2013.  These numbers are from a recent Yahoo Finance article…

Best Buy

Forecast store closings: 200 to 250

Sears Holding Corp.

Forecast store closings: Kmart 175 to 225, Sears 100 to 125

J.C. Penney

Forecast store closings: 300 to 350

Office Depot

Forecast store closings: 125 to 150

Barnes & Noble

Forecast store closings: 190 to 240, per company comments

Gamestop

Forecast store closings: 500 to 600

OfficeMax

Forecast store closings: 150 to 175

RadioShack

Forecast store closings: 450 to 550

The RadioShack in a nearby town just closed up where I live.  This is all happening so fast that it is hard to believe.

But the truth is that those store closings are not the entire story.  When you dig deeper you find a lot more retailers that are in trouble.

For example, Blockbuster recently announced that this year they will be closing about 300 stores and eliminating about 3,000 jobs.

Toy manufacturer Hasbro recently announced that they will be reducing the size of their workforce by about 10 percent.

Even Wal-Mart is going through a tough stretch right now.  According to documents that were leaked to Bloomberg, Wal-Mart is having an absolutely disastrous February…

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. had the worst sales start to a month in seven years as payroll-tax increases hit shoppers already battling a slow economy, according to internal e-mails obtained by Bloomberg News.

“In case you haven’t seen a sales report these days, February MTD sales are a total disaster,” Jerry Murray, Wal- Mart’s vice president of finance and logistics, said in a Feb. 12 e-mail to other executives, referring to month-to-date sales. “The worst start to a month I have seen in my ~7 years with the company.”

So what in the world is going on here?

The mainstream media continues to proclaim that we are experiencing a robust “economic recovery”, but at the same time there are a whole host of indications that things are continually getting worse.

Even global cell phone sales actually declined slightly in 2012.  That was the first time that has happened since the last recession.

Perhaps it is time that we faced the truth.  The middle class is shrinking, incomes are declining and there are not nearly as many jobs as there used to be.

Mort Zuckerman pointed this out in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal…

The U.S. labor market, which peaked in November 2007 when there were 139,143,000 jobs, now encompasses only 132,705,000 workers, a drop of 6.4 million jobs from the peak. The only work that has increased is part-time, and that is because it allows employers to reduce costs through a diminished benefit package or none at all.

So how can the mainstream media be talking about how “good” things are if we still have 6.4 million fewer jobs than we had back in November 2007?

And sadly, things may soon be getting a lot worse.  If Congress does not do anything about the “sequester”, millions of federal workers may shortly be facing some very painful furloughs according to CNN…

Federal workers could start facing furloughs as early as April, according to federal agencies trying to prepare for the worst.

Unless Congress steps in, some $85 billion in massive spending reductions will hit the federal government, doling out furloughs to much of the nation’s 2.1 million federal workforce, experts say.

If you still live in an area of the country where the stores and the restaurants are booming, you should be very thankful because that is not the reality for most of the country.

I often write about the stunning economic decline of major cities such as Detroit, but there are huge sections of rural America that are in even worse shape than Detroit in many ways.

For example, many Indian reservations all over America have been shamefully neglected by the federal government and have become hotbeds for crime, drugs and poverty.

Business Insider recently profiled the Wind River Indian reservation in western Wyoming.  The following is a brief excerpt from thatoutstanding article…

The Wind River Indian Reservation is not an easy place to get to, but I had to see it for myself.

Thirty-five-hundred square miles of prairie and mountains in western Wyoming, the reservation is home to bitter ancestral enemies: the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes.

Even among reservations, it’s renowned for brutal crime, widespread drug use, and legal dumping of toxic waste.

You can see some amazing photos of the Wind River Indian reservationright here.

It is hard to believe that there are places like that in America, but the truth is that conditions like that are spreading to more U.S. communities with each passing day.

We are a nation that is in an advanced state of decline.  But as long as the financial markets are okay, our leaders don’t seem too concerned about the suffering that everyone else is going through.

In fact, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan essentially admitted as much during a recent interview with CNBC.  The following is how a Zero Hedge article summarized that interview…

Starting at around 1:50, Greenspan states the odds of sequester occurring are very high – in fact, the playdough-faced ex-Chair-head notes, “I find it very difficult to find a scenario in which [the sequester] doesn’t happen” But when asked how this will affect the economy, Awkward Alan is unusually clearly spoken - “the issue is how does it affect the stock market.”

While not so many of our leaders have taken the path to direct truthiness, Greenspan somewhat shocks a Botox’d and babbling Bartiromo when he admits “the stock market is the key player in the game of economic growth.”

Bartiromo shifts uncomfortably in her seat, strokes her imaginary beard and stares blankly as Greenspan explains that while the sequester will have a real effect on the real economy, “if the stock market can hold up through this, then the effect will be rather minor.”

Do you see?

As long as the stock market is moving higher they think that everything is just fine and dandy.

And the Obama administration?

They continue to pursue the same policies that got us into this mess.

Their idea of “economic reform” is to threaten to sue businessesthat do not hire ex-convicts.

And of course now that Obama has been re-elected he is putting a tremendous amount of effort into “stimulating the economy”.

For example, he spent this weekend golfing in Florida, and the Obamas recently spent about 20 million taxpayer dollars vacationing in Hawaii.

Meanwhile, the U.S. economy is getting worse with each passing day.

If you doubt that economic conditions are getting worse, please read this article: “Show This To Anyone That Believes That ‘Things Are Getting Better’ In America“.

When you look at the cold, hard numbers, it is undeniable what is happening to America.

And our leaders are not doing anything to fix our problems.  In fact, most of the time they are just making things worse.

So buckle up and get prepared.  We are in for very bumpy ride, and this is only just the beginning.

Source: The Economic Collapse

What the 1% Heard During Obama’s State of the Union Speech

When President Obama speaks, most Americans hear what he wants them to hear: lofty rhetoric and a “progressive” vision.   But just below the surface the president has a subtly-delivered message for the 1%, whose ears prick up when their buzzwords are mentioned. Obama’s state of the union address was such a speech – a pro-corporate agenda packaged with chocolate covered rhetoric for the masses; easy to swallow, but deadly poisonous.

Much of Obama’s speech was pleasant to the ears, but there were key moments where he was speaking exclusively to the 1%. Exposing these hidden agenda points in the speech requires that we ignore the fluff and use English the way the 1% does. Every time Obama says the words “reform” or “savings,” insert the word “cuts.”

Here are some of the more nefarious moments of Obama’s state for the union speech:

“And those of us who care deeply about programs like Medicare must embrace the need for modest reforms [cuts]…”

“On Medicare, I’m prepared to enact reforms [cuts] that will achieve the same amount of health care savings [cuts] by the beginning of the next decade as the reforms [cuts] proposed by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission.”

This ultra-vague sentence was meant exclusively for the 1%.   What are some of the recommendations from the right-wing Simpson-Bowles commission? Obama doesn’t say. Talking Points Memo explains: 

• Force more low-income individuals into Medicaid managed care.
• Increase Medicaid co-pays.
• Accelerate already-planned cuts to Medicare Advantage and home health care programs.
• Create a cap for Medicaid/Medicare growth that will force Congress and the president to increase premiums or co-pays or raise the Medicare eligibility age (among other options) if the system encounters cost overruns over the course of 5 years.

There were many other subtly-delivered attacks on Medicare in Obama’s speech, all ignored by most labor and progressive groups, who clung tightly to the “progressive” smoke Obama blew in their face.

Obama’s speech also included a frightening vision of a national privatization scheme to previously publicly owned resources. But it was phrased so inspirationally that only the 1% seemed to notice:

“I’m also proposing a Partnership to Rebuild America that attracts private capital [wealthy investors] to upgrade what our businesses need most: modern ports to move our goods; modern pipelines to withstand a storm; modern schools worthy of our children…we’ll reward schools that develop new partnerships with colleges and employers [corporations]…”

Obama’s proposal plans to “rebuild America” in the image of the wealthy and corporations, who only put forth their “private capital” when it results in a profitable investment; resources that previously functioned for the public good will now be channeled into the pockets of the rich, to the detriment of everyone else.

Allowing the rich to privatize and profit from public education and publicly owned infrastructure (ports and pipelines, etc.) has been a right-wing dream for years. This will result in massive user fees for the rest of us, while further dismembering public education, which Obama’s ill-named Race to the Top education reform is already successfully accomplishing.

Obama’s speech also put forth two massive pro-corporate international free trade deals, which would further drive down wages in the United States:

“We intend to complete negotiations on a Trans-Pacific Partnership [a massive free trade deal focused mainly on Asian nations]. And tonight, I am announcing that we will launch talks on a comprehensive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership [free trade deal] with the European Union – because trade that is free and fair across the Atlantic supports millions of good-paying American jobs.”

While praising free trade Obama disarmed labor and progressive groups by throwing in the meaningless word “fair.”

Lastly, Obama’s drone assassination policy was further enshrined in his speech. Drone assassinations are obvious war crimes — see the Geneva Convention — while also ignoring that pesky due process clause — innocent until proven guilty — of the constitution.

But Obama said that these programs will be “legal” and “transparent,” apparently good enough to keep most progressive groups quite on the issue.

There were plenty of other examples of sugar-coated poison in Obama’s speech. It outlined a thoroughly right-wing agenda with no plan to address the jobs crisis — sprinkled with pretty words and “inspiring” catchphrases.

Some labor leaders and “progressive” groups seem dazzled by the speech. President of the union federation, AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, praised Obama’s anti-worker speech:

“Tonight President Obama sent a clear message to the world that he will stand and fight for working America’s values and priorities. And with the foundation he laid, working families will fight by his side to build an economy that works for all.”

And here is the real problem; as President Obama follows in the footsteps of President Bush, labor and progressive groups have found their independent voice stifled. The close ties between these groups and the Democratic Party have become heavy chains for working people, who find themselves under assault with no leadership willing to educate them about the truth, let alone organize a national fightback to win a massive jobs-creation program, prevent cuts to social programs, and fully fund public education. Obama’s second term will teach millions these lessons via experience.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/us/politics/obamas-2013-state-of-the-union-address.html?_r=0

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/11/deficit-commission-co-chairs-simpson-and-bowles-release-eye-popping-recommendations.php

http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Political-Action-Legislation/Trumka-Reacts-to-the-2013-State-of-the-Union

Gun Rights: Are There Any Peaceful Solutions Left?

Throughout history, citizen disarmament generally leads to one of two inevitable outcomes:  Government tyranny and genocide, or, revolution and civil war.  Anti-gun statists would, of course, argue that countries like the UK and Australia have not suffered such a result.  My response would be – just give them time.   You may believe that gun control efforts are part and parcel of a totalitarian agenda (as they usually are), or, you may believe that gun registration and confiscation are a natural extension of the government’s concern for our “safety and well-being”.  Either way, the temptation of power that comes after a populace is made defenseless is almost always too great for any political entity to dismiss.  One way or another, for one reason or another, they WILL take advantage of the fact that the people have no leverage to determine their own cultural future beyond a twisted system of law and governance which is, in the end, easily corrupted.

The unawake and the unaware among us will also argue that revolution or extreme dissent against the establishment is not practical or necessary, because the government “is made of regular people like us, who can be elected or removed at any time”.

This is the way a Republic is supposed to function, yes.  However, the system we have today has strayed far from the methods of a Free Republic and towards the machinations of a single party system.  Our government does NOT represent the common American anymore.  It has become a centralized and Sovietized monstrosity.  A seething hydra with two poisonous heads; one Democrat in name, one Republican in name.  Both heads feed the same bottomless stomach; the predatory and cannibalistic pit of socialized oligarchy.

On the Republican side, we are offered Neo-Con sharks like George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, who argue for “conservative” policies such as limited government interference and reduced spending, all while introducing legislation which does the exact opposite.  The recent passage of the “Safe Act” in New York with extensive Republican support proves that Republicans cannot be counted on to defend true conservative values.

The Democrats get candidates like John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, who claim to be anti-war and against government abuse of civil liberties, and yet, these same “progressive and compassionate” politicians now froth at the mouth like rabid dogs sinking their teeth into the flesh of the citizenry, expanding on every tyrannical initiative the Republicans began, and are bombing more civilian targets in more foreign countries than anyone with a conscience should be able to bear.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; the government is not our buddy.  It is not our ally or friend.  It is not a “part of us”.  It is now a separate and dangerous entity.  A parasite feeding off the masses.  It has become a clear threat to the freedoms of average Americans.  It is time for the public to grow up, snap out of its childish delusions, and accept that there is no solace or justice to be found anymore in Washington D.C.

Once we understand this fact, a question then arises – What do we do about it?  If we cannot redress our grievances through the election process because both parties favor the same authoritarian direction, and if our street protests are utterly ignored by the mainstream media and the establishment, and if civil suits do nothing but drag on for years with little to no benefit, then what is left for us?  Is the way of the gun the only answer left for the American people at this crossroads?

I cannot deny that we are very close to such a conclusion.  Anyone who does deny it is living in a candy coated fantasy land.  However, there are still certain options that have not been exhausted, and we should utilize them if for no other reason than to maintain the moral high ground while the power elite continue to expose their own despotic innards.

State And County Nullification

The assertion of local authority in opposition to federal tyranny is already being applied across the country.  Multiple states, counties, and municipalities are issuing declarations of defiance and passing legislation which nullifies any future federal incursions against 2nd Amendment protections.  For instance, the Gilberton Borough Council in PA in conjunction with Police Chief Mark Kessler has recently adopted a resolution defending all 2nd Amendment rights within their municipal borders up to and including the denial of operations by federal officers:

http://oathkeepers.org/oath/2013/02/03/first-molon-labe-town-in-america/

Approximately 283 county Sheriffs and multiple police officers have taken a hard stand, stating that they will either not aid federal enforcement officials with gun control related activities, or, that they will not allow such activities within their county, period:

http://cspoa.org/sheriffs-gun-rights/

This trend of dissent amongst law enforcement officials debunks the nihilistic view promoted by disinformation agents that “no one in law enforcement will have the guts to stand up to the government no matter how sour it turns”.   It has also shaken the Obama Administration enough that the White House is struggling to counter it by wining and dining police unions and sheriffs departments in order to form their own “coalition of the willing”.  Obama seems to believe that holding press conferences using children or police as background props will somehow earn him political capital in the battle for gun rights, but I have my doubts:

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-asks-police-help-pass-183056466.html

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/55716645-90/com-congress-doing-enforcement.html.csp

Multiple states have legislation on the table to nullify as well, and it would seem that the violent push by the establishment to extinguish the 2nd Amendment has actually sharply rekindled the public’s interest in States Rights and the 10th Amendment.

This does not mean, though, that we should rely on nullification alone.  While the gun grabbers are stumbling into severe resistance at the national level, some representatives are attempting to supplant gun rights at the state level, including New York, California, Washington State, and Missouri.  The goal here is obvious; counter states rights arguments by using anti-gun legislators to impose federal controls through the back door of state legislation.

They will claim that if we support states rights, then we have to abide by the decisions of regions like New York when they ban and confiscate firearms.  It’s sad how gun grabbers lose track of reality.  Neither federal authority, nor state authority, supplants the legal barriers of the Constitution itself, meaning, no federal or local authority has the right or power to remove our freedom of speech, our freedom of assembly, our freedom of privacy, OR our freedom to own firearms (including firearms of military utility).  The Constitution and the Bill of Rights supersede all other legal and political entities (including treaties, as ruled by the Supreme Court).  At least, that’s what the Founding Fathers intended when they established this nation.  The point is, a state is well within its rights to defy the Federal Government if it is enacting unconstitutional abuses, and the people are well within their rights to defy a state when it does the same.

Economic Nullification

There is actually a fantastic economic opportunity to be had by states and counties that nullify gun control legislation.  Many gun manufacturers and retail businesses are facing financial oblivion if the establishment has its way, and moving operations outside the U.S. is not necessarily practical for most of them (gun manufacturing is one of the last business models we still do better than the rest of the world).  Municipalities could offer safe haven to these businesses, allowing them to continue producing firearms and high capacity magazines, fulfill expanding public demand, and create a surging cash flow into their area while at the same time giving the federal government the finger.

This strategy does not come without dangers, though.  Many states and counties are addicted to federal funding, and some would go bankrupt without it.  The obvious first response by the feds to protesting local governments will be to cut off the river of cash and starve them into subservience.

This brand of internal financial warfare can be countered by local governments by nullifying a few other unconstitutional regulations, including those issued by the EPA and the BLM.  States and counties could easily disable federal land development restrictions and begin using resource development as a means to generate supplemental income.  North Dakota is essentially doing this right now in the Bakken Oil Fields, becoming one of the few states in America that is actually creating legitimate high paying jobs (instead of part time wage slave jobs), and growing more prosperous every year.

This tactic is not limited to state governments either.  Counties also have the ability, with the right officials involved, to regain control of their economic destinies anytime they want.  All it takes is the courage to rock the establishment boat.

Refuse All Registration Schemes

National firearms registration and gun databases are almost always followed by full gun confiscation.  The process is usually done in a standardized manner:  First demand extensive registration and cataloging of gun owners.  Second, ban more effective styles of weaponry, including semi-automatics and high capacity rifles (Let the sport hunters keep their bolt actions for a time, and lure them onto your side with the promise that they will get to keep their .270 or their 30-06).  Then take all semi-auto handguns.  Then, ban high powered magnum style bolt actions by labeling them “sniper rifles”.  Then demand that the gun owners that still remain allow official “inspections” of their home by law enforcement to ensure that they are “storing their weapons properly”.  Then, force them to move those weapons to a designated “warehouse or range”, locked away for any use other than recreational shooting.  Then, when the public is thoroughly disconnected from their original right to bear arms, take everything that’s left.

Keep in mind that the federal government and certain state governments are acting as if they would like to skip ALL of the preliminary steps and go straight to full confiscation.  I am not discounting that possibility.  But, they may feign certain concessions in the near term in order to get the one thing they really want – full registration.

Registration must be the line in the sand for every single gun owner in this country, whether they own several semi-automatics, or one pump action shotgun.  Once you give in to being registered, fingerprinted, photographed, and tracked wherever you decide to live like a convicted sexual predator, you have shown that you have no will or spirit.  You have shown that you will submit to anything.

After a full registration has been enacted, every gun (and maybe every bullet) will be tracked.  If confiscation is utilized, they know exactly what you have and what you should not have, and exactly where you are.  Criminals will still acquire weapons illegally, as they always have.  The only people who will suffer are law abiding citizens. It’s a recipe for dictatorship and nothing more.

Gun Barter Networks

The retail firearms and ammo markets are Sahara dry right now, and will probably remain that way in the foreseeable future.  Anything that is available for purchase is usually twice the price it was last year.  Extremely high demand is removing retail from the picture before any legislation is even passed.  Enter barter…

Cash will remain a bargaining tool for as long as the dollar remains the world reserve currency and holds at least some semblance of value (this will end sooner than most people think).  That said, as gun items become scarce, the allure of cash may be supplanted.  The signs of this are already evident.

Gun owners are now looking more to trade firearms and accessories for OTHER firearms and accessories, because they know that once they sell an item, they may never see it again, and the usefulness of cash is fleeting.  Gun Barter is not only a way for firearms enthusiasts to get what they need, it is also a way for them to move around any future gun sale restrictions that may arise.  Private gun sales are legal in some states, but do not count on this to last.  Barter leaves no paper trail, and thus, no traceable evidence of transaction.  For those who fear this idea as “legally questionable”, all I can do is remind them that an unconstitutional law is no law at all.  If it does not adhere to the guidelines of our founding principles, our founding documents, and our natural rights, then it is just a bunch of meaningless words on a meaningless piece of paper signed by a meaningless political puppet.

3D Printing And Home Manufacturing

3D Printing is now available to the public and for those with the money, I recommend they invest quickly.  Unless the establishment wants to make the possession of these printers illegal, as well as shut down the internet, there will be no way to stop data streamers from supplying the software needed to make molds for every conceivable gun part, including high capacity mags.  This technology has been effectively promoted by the Wiki Weapons Project:

http://defensedistributed.com/

According to current ATF law, the home manufacture of gun parts is not technically illegal, as long as they are not being produced for sale.  But in a state or county where federal gun laws have been nullified, what the ATF says is irrelevant.

Home manufacturing of gun parts and ammo would be a highly lucrative business in such safe haven areas.  And, the ability to build one’s own self defense platform is a vital skill in a sparse market environment.  The ultimate freedom is being able to supply your own needs without having to ask for materials or permission from others.  It should be the goal of every pro-gun activist to reach this independence.

Force The Establishment To Show Its True Colors

While some in the general public may be incensed by the trampling of our freedoms by government, many (including myself) would view direct action and aimless French Revolution-style violence as distasteful and disastrous.  The moral high ground is all that any dissenting movement has.  It will be hard enough to keep this ground with the constant demonization of liberty minded people that is being espoused by propaganda peddlers like the SPLC and numerous media outlets.  We do not need to help them do their jobs.

Now, to be clear, I have NO illusions that the above strategies will defuse a confrontation between those who value freedom, and those who desire power.  The hope is that enough people within our population will refuse to comply, and that this will make any future despotism impossible to construct.  However, it is far more likely that these acts of defiance will elicit a brutal response from the government.  And in a way, that is exactly what we want…

The Founding Fathers went through steps very similar to those I listed above and more to counter the tightening grip of the British Empire during the first American Revolution.  The idea is simple:

Peacefully deny the corrupt system’s authority over your life by supplying your own needs and your own security, rather than lashing out blindly.  Force them to show their true colors.  Expose their dishonor and maliciousness.  Make them come after you like the predators they are, and then, once they can no longer play the role of the “defending hero” in the eyes of the public, use your right to self defense to send them a message they won’t forget.

Skeptics will claim that physical defense is useless against a technologically advanced enemy.  They will claim that we need a “majority” we do not have in order to prevail.  These are usually people who have never fought for anything in their lives.  They do not understand that the “odds” are unimportant.  They mean nothing.  No revolution for good ever begins with “majority support”.  Each is fought by a minority of strong willed and aware individuals.  When all other methods of protest have been dismantled, the system leaves us with only two options: stand and fight, or kneel and beg for mercy.  All you need to know is what YOU would do when faced with that choice.

There is no other culture on earth that has the capacity, like Americans currently do, to defeat centralists, defend individual liberty, and end the pursuit of total global power in this lifetime.  We are the first and last line.  If freedom is undone here, it is undone everywhere for generations to come.  This is our responsibility.  This is our providence.  There can be no complacency.  There can be no compromise.  There can be no fear.  It ends on this ground.  One way, or another.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

The Great Wealth Robbery

Two important events took place this week. One was President Obama’s call for a higher minimum wage, which got a lot of attention. The other was a new report which showed just how much of our nation’s wealth continues to be hijacked by the wealthiest among us.

That didn’t get much attention.

There’s a Great Robbery underway, although most of its perpetrators don’t see themselves as robbers. Instead they’re sustained by delusions that protect them from facing the consequences of their own actions.

Heads I Win …

An updated report from economist Emmanuel Saez details the loss of income suffered by 99 percent of Americans, and the parallel gains made by the wealthiest among us. Its most startling finding may be this: The top 1 percent has captured 121 percent of the increases in income since the worst of the financial crisis, while the rest of the country has continued to fall behind.

If you thought the rich recovered from the crisis just fine but everybody else got the short end of the stick, relax: You’re not crazy. And since the financial crisis was caused by members of the 1 percent – not all of them, of course, just the ones we spent so much to rescue – it’s understandable if the injustice still rankles you.

You rescued them. Now they’re drinking your milkshake.

Tails You Lose

But this wealth shift is not a new phenomenon. As Saez notes in his paper, “After decades of stability … the top decile share has increased dramatically over the last twenty-five years.” In fact, the top 10 percent’s share of our national income is higher than it’s been since 1917 - and maybe longer. (The figures don’t go back any farther than that.)

Although it began during the Reagan years, to a certain extent this wealth shift has been a bipartisan phenomenon. During the Clinton boom years (more of a bubble, actually; Dean Baker has the details) the top 1 percent saw their real income grow by 98.7 percent, while the other 99 saw a smaller increase of 20.3 percent. They lost more during the recession that followed – a little over 30 percent, as opposed to 6.5 percent for everyone else – but more than made up the difference again during the Bush years.

The same thing happened during the Great Recession: The top 1 percent lost more during the initial shock, but they’re rapidly making up the difference now. Government policy’s been designed to help them. (Meanwhile, underwater homeowners still don’t have the help they need.)

The disparities are even greater when you include capital gains. (Saez uses pre-tax income for his figures. Given the generous tax breaks for capital gains and the many loopholes used by the wealthy,the after-tax differences could be even greater.) There’s even economic injustice at the top. Gains for the one percent have far outstripped those of the top five and top ten percent.

As the old song says: Them that has, gets.

If you can remember the sixties you weren’t there … or can’t afford to remember

The minimum wage has been falling since 1968. As John Schmitt notes in his paper, “The Minimum Wage Is Too Damn Low,” “By all of the most commonly used benchmarks – inflation, average wages, and productivity – the minimum wage is now far below its historical level.”

It’s currently $7.25. What would it have been if it had been tied to a commonly-used benchmark? Schmitt ran the numbers:

Consumer Price Index (CPI-I): $10.52

Current CPI methodology (CPI-U-RS): $9.22

As a percentage of average production worker’s earnings: $10.01

And if it had been tied to productivity gains the minimum wage would be $21.72 today. But that cream was skimmed off at the top.

Magical Thinking

There’s a myth in this country that enormous wealth doesn’t come from anywhere or anyone, that it’s self-creating and self-sustaining, thriving on pure oxygen like an epiphyte or a garden fairy. In reality, highly concentrated wealth is caused by actions – human actions with human consequences.

Saez: “A number of factors may help explain this increase in inequality, not only underlying technological changes but also the retreat of institutions developed during the New Deal and World War II – such as progressive tax policies, powerful unions, corporate provision of health and retirement benefits, and changing social norms regarding pay inequality.”

Wealth inequity is created whenever an employer lowers his employees’ wages, replaces a full-time worker with several part-timers, busts a union, cuts corners on workplace safety, or pays a lobbyist to change the rules.

It’s created whenever a job is shipped overseas, and when investments are shifted from job-producing industries to the non-productive financial sector. It’s created when GE outsources its manufacturing operation and gets into the banking (read, “gambling with taxpayers’ money”) business. Or when AIG stops insuring risk and starts betting on it.

And the process isn’t slowing down. In fact, it seems to be accelerating.

As Saez says, “We need to decide as a society whether this increase in income inequality is efficient and acceptable and, if not, what mix of institutional and tax reforms should be developed to counter it.”

Up

President Obama’s proposal is modest, and there’s no reason not to enact it immediately. For those who believe that businesses “can’t afford” to pay higher wages, some key facts:

Most low-wage workers work for large corporations, not Mom-and-Pop businesses.

A Data Brief from the National Employment Law Project finds that 66 percent of low-wage employees work for companies with more than 100 employees. A handful of very large corporations collectively employ nearly 8 million low-wage employees.

There’s no evidence minimum wage increases mean fewer jobs.

Opponents say a higher minimum wage means fewer jobs. But the official U.S. unemployment rate in 1968, when the real minimum wage was highest, was 3.6 percent. Today it’s 7.8 percent – and the unofficial numbers are even worse. At the state level,  the Fiscal Policy Institute recently concluded that “states with minimum wages above the federal level have had faster small business and retail job growth.”

Ninety-two percent of the 50 largest low‐wage employers in the country were profitable last year.

As the NELP notes, big corporations more than recovered from the recession: 75 percent are collecting more revenue, 63 percent are earning higher profits, and 73 percent have higher cash holdings than they did before the crisis.

Bringing It All Back Home

The real “job creators” aren’t the ultra-wealthy. If they could create jobs with all their added wealth, they would have done it already. The real job creators are working people with jobs.

They don’t invest their money in hedge funds or stash it in offshore accounts. They spend it: on food, transportation, their kids’ education, maybe a night at the movies … And then other people get jobs making those things possible.

We have a working model to follow: The USA in the 35 years after World War II. As Paul Krugman says, “To the extent that people say the economics is confusing or uncertain, that’s overwhelmingly because people want it to be.” We know how to do this.

Raising the minimum wage is a start. A maximum wage would help, too, by reducing CEOs’ incentives to emphasize quarterly gains over long-term growth and leaving more to be shared with employees.

We also need a national strategy for regaining the more reasonable distribution of income this country had in the 1950s. We need to ensure that the door of opportunity, which is closing every day for millions of young people, is opened again. And we need to ask the wealthiest to really pay their fair share – at something closer to the top tax rates of the 1950’s or 1960’s. (Elvis Presley’s manager “Colonel” Tom Parker once said “I consider it my patriotic duty to keep Elvis in the ninety percent tax bracket.”)

Most of all, we need to educate those around us so they understand what’s happening. That includes the well-intentioned well-to-do, who might do more to end the problem if they knew it existed.  After all, you can’t stop a robbery until you know it’s happening.

Source:  Richard Eskow | Campaign for America’s Future

Americans Don’t Want Blanket Amnesty For Illegal Aliens

While Congress and Obama push for mass amnesty, the American people do not want to be flooded with 12 to 20 million more unskilled, uneducated people ushered into the United States.

The majority of law-abiding, taxpaying American citizens understand that legalizing 12 to 20 million illegal aliens will create a “Human Katrina Hurricane” flooding into the United States. Ironically, with 47 million Americans subsisting on food stamps and another 14 million unemployed Americans—it makes no sense to legalize a minimum of 12 million foreigners that will tap directly into America’s jobs, Social Security, health care, assisted housing, welfare and educational systems.

What irks me stems from the statement, “Our immigration laws are broken.”  Fact: our immigration laws have not been enforced for over 30 years. They crash our borders with impunity. They work illegally with immunity.  Illegal migrant employers like McDonald’s, Hormel, Tyson Chicken, Chipotle’s, Marriott Hotels, construction firms and more—get away with endless crime of forged Social Security cards, fraudulent cash payments and displacement of Americans citizens from jobs.

If Obama wins an amnesty, we all lose.  We lose because he won’t enforce any “new” immigration laws.  That will encourage millions of desperate people around the world to flood faster into the United States.  We are no longer a sovereign country, but a destination.

Not considered by Congress, that 12 to 20 million illegal migrants will be able to bring in at least 10 of their immediate family through “family reunification.” That will accelerate the flood of humanity into the tens of millions beyond the original amnesty.

The Center for Immigration Studies,  www.cis.org , announced the results of a national survey that found 52 percent of likely voters want illegal aliens to their home countries. Only 33 percent preferred they be given legal status. The results, which were published in a new CIS report, are based on polling conducted by Pulse Opinion Research.

“Poll wording matters. Most post-election polls on immigration policy have given the public the false choice of conditional legalization or mass deportations. This poll uses neutral wording that allows us to know the views of the American public,” said Dr. Steven Camarota, CIS’ Director of Research. “With border security and the enforcement of immigration laws being a key issue with legislators, the fact that 70 percent of those polled were not confident that immigration law would be enforced if there is legalization and 69 percent believed providing legal status to illegals would encourage more illegal immigration is a good indicator of public sentiment.”

Among the findings of the survey:

• Of those who want illegal immigrants to return home, 73 percent said that they felt “very strongly” about their view, while just 35 percent of those who support legalization said they felt very strongly about their view.

• One reason the public may prefer that illegal aliens go home is a strong belief that immigration laws have not been enforced — 64 percent said that enforcement of immigration laws has been “too little”, while just 10 percent said that it had been too much, and 15 percent said it was “just right”.

• When asked why there is a large illegal population, voters overwhelming (71 percent) thought it was because we had not made a real effort to enforce our immigration laws. Only 18 percent said it was because we didn’t allow in enough legal immigrants.

• About two-thirds of voters (69 percent) agreed with the statement that “giving legal status to illegal immigrants does not solve the problem because rewarding law breaking will only encourage more illegal immigration.” Just 26 percent disagreed.

• Only 27 percent of voters expressed confidence that immigration laws would be enforced in the event of a legalization, while 70 percent said they were not confident laws would be enforced.

• 53 percent said they would be more likely to support a political party that supports immigration law enforcement while 32 percent indicated that they would be more likely to support a party that supports legalization.

 

We Americans must ask ourselves if we want our country continuously flooded with an endless line of legal and illegal immigrants.   If we don’t we must take action.

You are not alone with your concern about America’s future. You can take action. Join www.CapsWeb.org ; www.CIS.org ; www.NumbersUSA.org ; www.Fairus.org

The U.S. Economy Is Now Dangerously Detached From Reality

Recently I was asked to give a presentation on the current state of the global economy to a local group of concerned citizens here in Northwest Montana.  I was happy to oblige but when composing my bullet points I realized that, in truth, there were no legitimate economic numbers to examine anymore.  You see, financial analysts have traditionally used multiple indicators of employment, profit, savings, credit, supply, and demand in their efforts to divine the often obscured facts of our financial system.  The problem is, nearly every index we used in the past, every measure of capital flow and industry, is absolutely useless today.

We now live in an entirely fabricated fiscal environment.  Every aspect of it is filtered, muddled, molded, and manipulated before our eyes ever get to study the stats.  The metaphor may be overused, but our economic system has become an absolute “matrix”.  All that we see and hear has been homogenized and all truth has been sterilized away.  There is nothing to investigate anymore.  It is like awaking in the middle of a vast and hallucinatory live action theater production, complete with performers, props, and sound effects, all designed to confuse us and do us harm.  In the end, trying to make sense of the illusion is a waste of time.  All we can do is look for the exits…

There is some tangible reality out there, but it is difficult to find, and there are few if any mainstream numbers to verify.  One has to remember always that the fundamental world of money and trade revolves around real people and real circumstances.  No matter how corrupt our economic system is, as long as there are human beings, there will always be supply and demand that cannot be hidden.  We have to look past the “official numbers” and look at the roots of trade.  Where has demand fallen?  Where has supply diminished?  Where are the tangible goods and needs and how have they changed?

Let’s first start with the mainstream version of our system, looking at each aspect of the economy that no longer represents the truth of our situation…

Employment, Savings, And Debt 

Much of this information is old news to those of us in the Liberty Movement, who tracked the progress of the global collapse long before the general public even knew of its existence.  However, it is useful to take a step back and look at the basic picture every once in a while.

According to numbers issued by the Department of Labor, weekly unemployment reports have dropped to a five year low, and the overall employment rate is holding at 7.9%.  This would seem to be a vast improvement over the dreadful bloodletting in the system only a few years ago.  Has the private Federal Reserve and the Obama Administration really done it?  Have they turned back the tide on the greatest fiscal crisis the U.S. has seen since the Depression?

No.  They haven’t.

They have only changed how the data is disseminated to the public. In order to understand how the employment statistics con is being engineered, it is important to understand the difference between “Adjusted” and “Unadjusted” numbers.

Labor Department data is “seasonally adjusted”, using a series of statistical assumptions including something called “Trend Cycle Analysis”.  Trend Cycle Analysis is, basically, a sham, but a sham put together in a very complex and confusing manner.  If you ask a mainstream economist what it is, you’ll likely get a three hour long dissertation filled with financial babble and very little concrete explanation.  So let me break it down as simply as I can…

Imagine that you are going to estimate how much profit you plan to make in a particular month, but you don’t just consider your current pay rate and pop it into a calculator; you also throw in the possibility of a few pay raises, an inheritance from a grandma who might kick the bucket, and, your exaggerated expectations of the entire year’s profit on top of that.  You may also take into account future bad weather, a mugging, a nuclear war….whatever.  All hypothetical situations not based in reality.  Basically, you decide that a particular trend in your income is inevitable, then, mold your statistical analysis around that assumption.

When your real profit numbers come in (the unadjusted numbers) and they do not meet your expectations, you simply change them according to what you believe SHOULD have happened.  If you insist that your profits are going to go up for the year, and they go down for a couple months instead, you change the variables you use to calculate the statistical average so that the results match your expectations, assuming that it will all balance out in the end.

Now, this sounds utterly insane for the common person out there trying to make a living.  If you ran your household this way, without accepting the cold hard unadjusted numbers in front of you, you’d find yourself broke and on the street in no time.  Unfortunately this is EXACTLY how our government handles most financial data; by coming to a final conclusion before hand, and then forcing the numbers to fit that conclusion.

This is why in February of 2013, “adjusted” first week unemployment rate was reported at 366,000 – a 5000 person drop from the week before.  A seeming improvement in the trend.  But, unadjusted numbers came in at 386,176 – a 16,000 person spike from the week before.  When one examines real unemployment numbers, he finds that the divergence between the adjusted and unadjusted statistics is growing larger with each passing quarter.  That is to say, the contradiction is becoming so blatant between the hard numbers and the Labor Department’s fantasy numbers that one must question whether or not the government is lying to us outright about the state of the economy (hint – they are lying).

These same methods are used by the government to calculate progress in the housing market, disposable income, etc.

The claim of “recovery” in the jobs market simply doesn’t jive with other indicators, like 2012 Christmas retail, which had the worst showing since the crash in 2008 (and these are still mainstream numbers!):

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/12/26/us-holiday-retail-sales-growth-weakest-since-2008/ 

Average household savings continue to scrape the bottom of the barrel, indicating that the public is not spending or withholding cash.  They are simply broke:

And the overall GDP of the U.S. contracted in the fourth quarter of 2012 for the first time in three years (again, according to official numbers, meaning the reality is much worse):

http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/30/news/economy/gdp-report/index.html

The downturn in consumption and industry also seems to be supported by the Baltic Dry Index, a measure of global shipping and rates.  The BDI has fallen to near historic lows THREE TIMES in the past year, which to my knowledge, has never happened before.  In the past, the BDI has been a strong prophetic indicator of future market volatility.  Usually, around a year after a severe decline in the index, a dangerous economic event takes place.  The BDI made its first sharp drop to all time lows at the end of January 2012, exactly a year ago.

U.S. household debt was recently reported to have fallen to a 29 year low, but the ratio used by the Federal Reserve applies a statistic for disposable income that is derived from the Trend Cycle boondoggle method.  While markets cheer, the truth is, the only reason household debt obligations have fallen at all is because bank lending and credit issuance remains frozen.  Consumer debt falls when there is no money to borrow.  In fact, the Federal Reserve actually pays large banks NOT to lend to the public; an activity which was exposed by Dennis Kucinich in 2009 on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.  An activity that continued through 2012:

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/31/the-fed-should-stop-paying-banks-not-to-lend/

Keep in mind, one of the primary arguments the Federal Reserve used when promoting the bailout concept was that it would “free up credit markets” so that lending could pick up again and fuel a recovery, and yet, at the same time, they were paying banks to NOT lend.

Meanwhile, the supposed job recovery has produced an astonishing increase in welfare recipients in the U.S., including a record 46 million Americans on foodstamps (approximately 15% of our population):

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/report-15-americans-food-stamps-980690

If we are to apply any “trend” to our calculations on overall economic health, then we should include the extreme level of government handouts, and poverty levels which are now at all time highs.  The facts are undeniable; the number of people who have much less than they did in 2008 has grown.  How then could the U.S. be considered “in recovery”?

National Debt And The Fiat Lie

With the Dow Index hovering near highs of 14,000 our system truly looks to be on a rocket ship to pre-2008 money market bliss.  In a mere five years we have returned to equity spikes that stagger the mind and the wallet.  At least, that’s how it all appears…

What needs to be taken into account, though, is the amount of fiat money being created by the Federal Reserve, and how much of that printed pixie dust currency is fueling our magical flight to Neverland.  Since 2008, our official national debt has increased from $10 trillion to $16.4 trillion, and some estimate $17 trillion to $18 trillion by the end of 2013 (unless, of course, a collapse occurs).  Which means our national debt, which took decades to reach the $10 trillion mark, will have nearly doubled in only six years!

So, what has a doubling of our national debt in such a short span of time bought us?  Well, credit markets remain frozen, property markets remain stagnant, poverty is at historic levels, welfare recipients are at epic highs, and consumer activity and GDP is back at 2008 lows.  Where did all that printed money go?  Where was it spent?  To answer that question, we only need to find what area of the economy has seen the most positive (or fantastical) activity.  What sector is seeing a massive boost while the rest tumbles?

I suggest that a large portion of QE1 through QE3 has gone to prop up the stock market, and nothing else.  I suggest that American taxpayers are fronting the bill for the equities bonanza we see today.  I suggest that the Dow is being used as a Red Herring to distract the populous for as long as possible while real assets are being snapped up and hoarded by international banks and foreign entities.  I suggest that we are being leached dry and that the parasites are almost ready to move on…

When will it all end?  Perhaps sooner than many people think.  The decision by D.C. to delay talks on the so-called “Fiscal Cliff” until March may not be coincidence.  Extensive cuts in federal spending are absolutely necessary and cannot be dismissed forever, but, because the last vestiges of our system that still operate do so through government money, such cuts will cause immediate damage to the economy, including possible default and dollar devaluation.  Refusal to make cuts will result in credit downgrades, currency inflation, and a loss of the greenback’s world reserve status.  There is no “right” way out of this quandary.

When this collapse is initiated, it would certainly behoove all parties involved, including central banks, international banks, and criminal politicians, to have a scapegoat handy for the citizenry to direct their rage at.

Event Horizon Economics 

An “Event Horizon” in physics is a moment or singularity in spacetime at which a gravitational pull becomes so great that there is no way to escape it.  It is a point of no return.  I believe America’s economy has reached its own Event Horizon.  Our system is now entirely fiat driven, with very little or no true economy left.  Without constant injections from the Fed, and perpetually low interest rates, the country would implode tomorrow.  This is not recovery.  Actually, I’m not sure what to call it.

Today, independent economic analysts cannot look to the numbers to determine future trends.  Most are fake, and the rest are ugly, and I’m not sure much else can be said in their regard.  Instead, we must now look to events, rather than statistics, because our country has been maneuvered into a position of utmost frailty.  Like an avalanche shelf waiting for that perfectly timed disturbance to trigger its roaring collapse.  All that is needed is a macro-crisis, and it is no great feat for such a thing to be created in our tension filled global environment.

War in Syria and Iran leading to a tripling of energy prices.  Sanctions and strife with North Korea leading to Chinese economic retribution.  Conflict between China and Japan, again leading to Chinese economic warfare and perhaps real warfare.  An opportune “cyber attack” which could be used as an excuse for a market crash and even an internet shutdown.  A “political impasse” between Reps and Dems which leads to a default of U.S. credit.  Any one of these catastrophes could easily occur (with a little nudge from some well placed people) and feed a wider global tragedy.  The important thing to remember is that while this event will be blamed for the breakdown, it was international banks, the Federal Reserve, and elements of our own government that made the domino effect possible.  They put the pieces in place.  The act that knocks them over is secondary.

I have spent the past seven years writing about “potential” threats to our overall system, but these dangers were always just beyond our sight.  Just around the corner.  Today, it is as if the journey is over, and all those threats have materialized right before my eyes as real, and imminent.  I am watching that which I warned of come to fruition, and this is certainly not a pleasant thing.  What is valuable, though, is what we have all done in the Liberty Movement with the time that we had.  From when I began writing for the movement until now, I have seen an overwhelming increase in public awareness.  It may not be obvious to newer activists, but it is there all the same.  While we still face disparaging odds, and millions upon millions of oblivious bystanders, there is, amidst these darker moments, a steadfast community of free men and women forming.  I have full faith in the future.  Much more so than I ever did before.  Our economy may be detached from reality, but our endeavors as individuals will not be.  Our resolve will be the great game changer.  Not fiscal calamity.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

More Austerity Cuts Coming To The States

The Great Recession has quietly devastated public services on a state-by-state basis, with Republican and Democratic governors taking turns leading the charge. Public education has been decimated, as well as health care, welfare, and the wages and benefits of public sector workers. The public sector itself is being smashed. Since the recession began, states have made combined austerity cuts of at least $337 billion, according to the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities

The 2012-2013 budget deficits for 34 states resulted in $55 billion in cuts, according to the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities. The coming budgets for 2013-2014 that begins on July 1st is becoming clear as well, and the deficits are rolling in by the billions: Connecticut, Minnesota, Maryland, New York, Oregon, Washington, and many others have large deficits projected.

You’d expect after years of austerity cuts to public services, state politicians would think of new ways to raise revenue from those who can afford it — the wealthy and corporations. Not so. The cuts that began as a consequence of the 2008 recession are set to continue; raising revenue from the wealthy is “off the table” for Republicans and Democrats alike.

The pattern of budget cuts has revealed that the age-old distinction between Republican and Democrat has evaporated on the state level. The state budget trends — what’s getting funded and what’s not — are similarly aligned across the country. Both parties have merged their state-level agendas into a singular focus on “economic growth,” a bi-partisan euphemism meaning “corporate profits.”

Below is the bi-partisan funding trends for the states that began with the 2008 recession and continue to this day:

1)  The Attack on Public Employees and Pension “Reform”

It wasn’t long ago that everyone understood that the states’ budget crises was caused in part by the recession, itself caused by the big banks and greedy corporations, and in part by the politicians continuing willingness to lower taxes on the rich. Now the corporate media and politicians have re-written history: suddenly it’s “greedy” public workers and their “lavish” pensions that are bankrupting the states. Two years ago it was the health care of public employees that was bankrupting the states, which resulted in large cuts to workers in many states.

The pre-recession pension system was working fine, but it, too, suffered under the bank-caused financial crisis; pension returns sank and right-wing economists projected ruin for the states in the future (they conveniently assumed that recession era rates would continue forever, thus under-funding the system).

Democratic governors are now as eager as their Republican counterparts to destroy the pensions of public employees. Democratic politicians in Oregon, Washington, California, New Jersey, Illinois, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maryland, Massachusetts, and several other states are leading the charge to erode the last bastion of retirement security for working people, while continuing to lay off public employees by the thousands. This national shrinkage of state governments is a long-standing right-wing dream: the smaller the state, the greater the “growth opportunities” for corporations that take over privatized public services and the lower their taxes since a smaller state requires less revenue for operating expenses.

2) Education Reform

The National Governors Association (NGA) spoke for both political parties when announcing a renewed focus on education funding for the states during the annual “state of the states” address. The funding is necessary because schools across the country are expecting an influx of students, while school districts everywhere have been starved funds by the ongoing austerity cuts; the system has been literally crumbling. But the new funding is to be used for the undermining and destruction of public education, since it is based on Obama’s pro-corporate Race to the Top education “reform” where charter schools replace public schools.

Democrats and Republicans are in complete agreement over Obama’s education policy, which closes “failing schools,” (those in poor neighborhoods), opens privately run, non-union charter schools, and fires “bad teachers,” (typically those who teach poor students). The whole system is based on standardized testing, which poorer students will spend most of their education preparing for, (those who don’t drop out from sheer boredom). Bi-partisan education reform targets teacher unions while privatizing education — the Democrats have adopted the ideas from the right-wing think tanks of the 1990′s.

3) Raising Revenue – But Not From the Wealthy or Corporations

Many states have implemented — or are planning to implement — a variety of taxes that disproportionally affect working and poor people, including increased sales taxes, alcohol, tobacco and other “sin” taxes, not to mention increases in different fees, from state parks to driver registration.

At the same time that these taxes have been upped, a consistent clamor has been raised by the media and politicians to lower the taxes for corporations, give them new subsidies or “freeze” their already-low taxes so that future tax increases will be impossible. In Oregon the Democratic governor declared a “special session” emergency in order to ensure that NIKE’s super low tax status would be frozen in place for decades, outside the reach of the public, which might want to raise corporate taxes to fund public services.

Democrat and Republican controlled states are equally competing for the adoration of corporations by lavishing a never-ending flow of taxpayer money on them, while “guaranteeing” them “investment security,” i.e., promising low taxes and an open spigot of taxpayer money. This is the basis for several states implementing “right to work” laws that target unions for destruction, while also attempting to “revamp the tax code,” which is a euphemism for lowering corporate taxes.

4) Welfare Reform: Attacking the Safety Net

Waging war against the safety net is like picking a fight with road kill — the states’ safety net is already disfigured beyond recognition, but the bi-partisan assault nevertheless continues. Bill Clinton started welfare “reform” as president, and the 2008 Great Recession accelerated the attack on those in poverty. The year 2011 was a devastating one for welfare, now called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

In 2011, states implemented some of the harshest cuts in recent history for many of the nation’s most vulnerable families with children who are receiving assistance through [TANF] … The cuts affect 700,000 low-income families that include 1.3 million children; these families represent over one-third of all low-income families receiving TANF nationwide.

But these TANF “reforms” continue, to the detriment of the neediest. Newly released budgets in several states — including California and Oregon — further tighten the program, a relentless boa-like constriction that’s already suffocated millions of the country’s poorest citizens. Typically TANF reform either lowers the monthly payment, shortens the time one can receive benefits, or raises the standards for staying in the program.

Before the giant TANF cuts in 2011, the program was already shrunken such that TANF only assisted 28 families for every 100 in poverty — the ludicrous definition of “poverty” being a family of four that makes only $22,000 or less.

There is a direct link between the assault on TANF and the rising poverty levels in the United States. Cutting TANF in a time of mass unemployment means consciously consigning millions of families to grinding poverty, hunger, homelessness, and the many other barbarisms associated with extreme poverty.

Conclusion:

It wasn’t long ago that the Democrats understood that the government can and should create jobs, especially during a recession. But now the Democratic Party has fully adopted the economics of Reaganism. As a result, the only “job creators” now recognized are the corporations. This bi-partisan agreement not to tax the rich and use the revenue for public spending to create jobs — hiring more teachers, firefighters, roads and parks workers, etc. — is unnecessarily prolonging the job crisis, ensuring more years of deficits and a deeper gouging of the public sector.

These cuts are having a devastating effect on public sector unions, the last bastion of union strength in the country. These unions are being weakened to such an extent that stripping them of their right to collectively bargain — the nail in the coffin — becomes a real possibility. No state is safe from this threat.

If unions don’t unite with community groups to demand that public services be fully funded by taxing the wealthy and corporations, the cuts will continue, communities will feel helpless, inequality will continue to spiral out of control, and working people will be further subjected to the policies of the 1%, now implemented in chorus by Republicans and Democrats alike. But, of course, this means that the unions will have to break with the suicidal strategy of relying on the Democrats for handouts. Time and again the Democrats have demonstrated their willingness to sacrifice the needs of working people in order to curry favor with the rich and corporations, their greatest benefactors when it comes to election campaign contributions.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=711

http://www.nga.org/cms/stateofthestates

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3498

Low Interest Rates Impoverish Savers

Even the most ardent optimist has to confront the consequences of low interest rates. The macro analysis of ivory tower academics seldom reflects the struggle of ordinary consumers or retirees. One such pinhead is Ben Bernanke. Back on October 1, 2012 at the Economic Club of Indiana, the Federal Reserve Chairman employs sophistry of a major order. Such confused and twisted logic defies common sense and real world finance. Robert Romano writes in the article, More monetary alchemy from Bernanke: Low interest rates help savers.

“Many savers are also homeowners,” said Bernanke, adding, “indeed, a family’s home may be its most important financial asset. Many savers are working, or would like to be. Some savers own businesses, and — through pension funds and 401(k) accounts — they often own stocks and other assets.”

Bernanke explained, “Only a strong economy can create higher asset values and sustainably good returns for savers… [and] [t]he way for the Fed to support a return to a strong economy is by maintaining monetary accommodation, which requires low interest rates for a time.”

He said home values would collapse without Fed support, unemployment would rise, and asset values would plummet and “[s]uch outcomes would ultimately not be good for savers or anyone else.”

So, admittedly, the Fed’s easy money policies do not in actuality directly help savers. But they will increase home values, asset prices, and create jobs for savers, Bernanke claimed. Okay, but is that even true?”

Such deceptive dishonesty that the Fed fosters beneficial monetary measures, which encourage job growth and a vigorous housing market, defies evidence. The saver watches the evaporation of their money, while prices jump at rates far in excess of the official CPI. This is a fact. This construct is the legacy of the intentional 2007 Wall Street meltdown.

The inability of distinguishing between illiquid assets and the need to pay for cost of living expenses must be a trait that only financially – cash flow secure – magicians master. The perception that the masses benefit from central banking driving down and suppressing interest rates to negative levels is patently absurd. Negative Interest Rates and the Impoverishing of America by Michael R. Winther sums up the self-evident.

“Don’t forget that consumers pay income tax on interest earned regardless of whether real interest rates are positive or negative. The result is that many Americans are paying income tax on a negative real interest rate! This discourages savings and investment, but even worse, it steals from our citizens.

Negative real interest rates hurt all savers, but these rates are especially damaging to the elderly and those on fixed incomes. It is no longer possible for senior citizens to live on the interest of their savings and investments. In fact, our negative interest rates result in a situation in which our seniors must rely on the depletion of their principle for all of their living expenses.”

The net effects of an inflationary depression require that privately saved capital must be used to pay for the continued increases in basic costs. It is not just the retired person that is shafted from zeroing out the money market. Anyone who attempts to devise a budget that sets aside a portion of cash flow understands that there is no return on banking funds.

How long will people accept this thief? The options to parking cash in hand with a FDIC insured institution seems worth an examination. However, few alternatives for working class savers exist. Surely, this occurrence is intentional because the real objective of the “New Normal” is to bankrupt Middle America. What other conclusion makes sense?

Designed lowering of our standard of living is visible at every turn. The money-centered banks recapitalized their balance sheets at the expense of the passbook accounts customers.

The recent implementation of approving an extra fee to credit card purchases is outrageous. The NY Daily News reports the example of allowing “MasterCard and Visa credit card users might see a surcharge of up to 4 percent on their receipts. Merchants are allowed to add an extra fee to credit card purchases starting Jan. 27.”

The besieged consumer gets another whammy from a banking system that thrives on charging usurious fees, while paying you near zero on your saving accounts. With the execution of the Bernanke rescue strategy, the prospects of personal or consumer loans are virtually non-existent. In Helicopter Ben speak; “maintaining monetary accommodation” just does not filter down to the common- man.

While the concept of interest often confuses some Christians, Gary North offers a scriptural analysis in Usury, Interest, and Loans: A Brief Summary of Biblical Teaching, which asks:

“If charging interest were not legitimate, why would Jesus have used the example of money-lending as a legitimate way to increase capital? Why would He have attributed to God such words of condemnation for not having lent at interest?”

The tangible injustice is that the saver is especially screwed by the moneychanger system.

When you strip away the banking veil of trickery, what remains is a stash of greed, built on a hoard of distrust and deception. Few financial policies have been more destructive for the depositor than low interest rates. Siphoning off purchasing power is a perfect method to impart a fiscal squeeze, hard to rebound for any depositor. Everyday your cash lingers in money interest limbo is another diminution in your net wealth.

How can a society encourage saving under these circumstances? Apparently, the plan for depleting the economic assets of workers or investors is well underway. The notion that investing is feasible in this environment borders on delusional.

The submissive banking customer needs to take a hard look on continuing their depositing relationship with the commercial saving establishment. The endless gimmicks and get rich schemes that proliferate might seem attractive to desperate people. Yet, when you operate on parallel tracts, separated by a wide gulf of moneymaking returns, the definitive result is that treasure ends up in the accounts of the banksters and favored insiders.

Immigration Reform Places Interests of Illegal Aliens Ahead of Americans

You must understand the duplicity of our U.S. Congress and President Obama.  They place the interests of illegal aliens and businesses who hire them over and above American citizens.  The White House and Congress place illegality of businesses who hire illegal aliens and the illegality of the alien migrants—over and above 47 million Americans who cannot secure jobs, but must live on taxpayer funded food stamps.

Ironically, Obama and Congress import 100,000 legal immigrants every 30 days in light of the fact that we suffer 14 million unemployed Americans.  They import green card holding Somalian, Congolese, Sudanese and Indian immigrants who displace and take jobs from our own minority working poor.  When those immigrants can’t find jobs, they apply for and receive welfare in free food, housing, medical and allowances.  It costs you billions of dollars as a taxpaying American.  With 100,000 added every 30 days, there is not letup.

Yet, Congress and Obama want to legalize 20 million illegal aliens to give them access to our Social Security, housing, food stamps, medical and schools.   In a swoop of the pen, our financially broken and $16 trillion in-debt country will take on 20 million dish washers, nannies, gardeners and unskilled and uneducated poor.  It defies anyone’s imagination.

They won’t enforce the laws on the books, but they want to legalize illegality.  They won’t enforce any new laws either, thus, millions more can be expected to pour into America like a Human Katrina.

“Most Western elites continue urging the wealthy West not to stem the migrant tide [that adds 80 million net gain annually to the planet], but to absorb our global brothers and sisters until their horrid ordeal has been endured and shared by all—ten billion humans packed onto an ecologically devastated planet.” Dr. Otis Graham, Unguarded Gates
Dan Stein, president of The Federation for American Immigration Reform, www.FAIRUS.org talk about what we face this week.

“President Obama’s outline for overhauling the nation’s immigration policy places the interests of illegal aliens above the vital interests of American workers and taxpayers,” said Stein.  “The president’s speech in Las Vegas sketched out a reform plan designed to aid and abet those who broke our immigration laws, increase competition for American workers, and pander to those who politically profit from illegal immigration, rather than truly fix a system that has been broken for decades.

“President Obama’s plan offers nothing to American workers except the certainty of even greater competition for scarce jobs and further suppression of their wages. It offers nothing to American taxpayers except assurance they will pay ever increasing costs as millions of low-skilled illegal immigrants move through the amnesty process and become eligible for government assistance programs.

“President Obama’s immigration reform plan is sadly premised on the notion that it is the illegal immigrants who are the victims of our nation’s dysfunctional immigration policies, and our policies must be changed to address their grievances.  In fact, it is the American people who are the true victims of our dysfunctional immigration policies, and especially this president’s defiant refusal to enforce laws meant to protect them.”

“Immigration “reform,” as outlined by the president, would not only leave our failed policy of family chain migration in place, but would actually speed up admissions of extended relatives who enter the country irrespective of their job skills and education. The plan also calls for increases in employment-based immigration, even as we are still grappling with historically high levels of unemployment affecting workers in virtually all segments of our labor market.”

While promising amnesty and increased legal immigration, President Obama offered nothing regarding enforcement of the law, except maintaining the same non-enforcement policies he has implemented during his first term.

“Given President Obama’s record on immigration enforcement, his promises to secure the border and enforce federal law are simply worthless,” responded Stein. “For one thing the GAO recently chastised the administration for its claims that our borders are under control by noting that the administration does not even have a ‘yardstick’ for measuring operational control of our borders.

“Second, President Obama has asserted virtually unlimited discretion to ignore the immigration laws. He has also demonstrated a willingness to grant blanket work authorization to entire classes of illegal aliens. Much like REAL ID, it could be years, even a decade or more, before the mandate for universal E-Verify is carried out. In the meantime, countless millions of new illegal immigrants are likely to show up with the assurance that as long as they do not commit a violent crime, there will be no consequence for violating our immigration laws.

“President Obama’s actions during his first administration made it clear that his immigration policies are geared toward satisfying the economic and political interests of illegal aliens and their supporters. The legislative plan he outlined today confirms that the interests of the American people are not part of his vision of immigration reform.”

Contact Dan Stein at www.FAIRUS.org . Better yet, join FAIR and bring your individual power to collective power with over 250,000 members.

What Americans Can Expect From Forthcoming Immigration Amnesty

The American people rejected a full-out amnesty in 2007.  Eight U.S. Senators conspired in secret meetings in the last week to bring back the exact same amnesty for an estimated 20 million illegal aliens now working and living in the United States.

What does it mean?  How will it affect America’s poor and the taxpayer?  What will be the final outcome?

First of all, we already import 100,000 legal, green card holding immigrants every 30 days. At the same time, we suffer 47.7 million Americans that cannot secure jobs while subsisting on food stamps.  Another 14 million Americans cannot secure a job while seven million suffer 20 hours a week jobs at low wages.

While Congress refuses to enforce immigration job laws on the books today, it pretends that it will enforce them after the new immigration law passes.  Congress will not enforce those laws because it won’t enforce the present laws.

Eight senators expected to endorse the new principles Monday are Democrats Charles Schumer of New York, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Michael Bennet of Colorado; and Republicans John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Marco Rubio of Florida and Jeff Flake of Arizona.

According to documents obtained by The Associated Press, the senators will call for accomplishing four goals:

1—Creating a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already here, contingent upon securing the border and better tracking of people here on visas.

2—Reforming the legal immigration system, including awarding green cards to immigrants who obtain advanced degrees in science, math, technology or engineering from an American university.

3—Creating an effective employment verification system to ensure that employers do not hire illegal immigrants.

4—Allowing more low-skill workers into the country and allowing employers to hire immigrants if they can demonstrate they couldn’t recruit a U.S. citizen; and establishing an agricultural worker program.

A.  This would be a blanket amnesty.  The last blanket amnesty also included language to secure the border and track visitors.  Said one blogger, “U.S. Visit, a program to track visitors has never been implemented and the border is just as porous as then.  In addition, few people talk about our northern border which is practically unprotected.  We have seen a surge of illegal alien entry since last year when the White House occupant circumvented Congress with his “discretionary enforcement” policy.  This policy is illegal as described in a lawsuit filed by federal employees of Immigrations Customs enforcement.”

B.  We must educate legal residents and ensure they have a job when they leave school.   Today over 10 million applicants for legal immigration wait at our doors.  Illegal migrants crowd out any chance for legal immigration.

C.  We have a system to identify legal residents but time after time the United States Judiciary rules against using it.  It is called E-Verify. The White House refuses to enforce it.

D.  Current law provides for border security: not enforced.

Reality: we do not need any more immigrants imported into this country with 47.7 million Americans that subsist on food stamps  and another 14 million unemployed permanently. It’s time to take care of America’s poor, unemployed and struggling. Not illegal and legal migrants.  They need to take care of their own countries and improve their own people.

In the end, ask yourself if you want 100 million more immigrants added to America within the next 37 years.

A $14 Trillion Extortion For A Global Warming Scam

The latest megalomaniacal threat from the financial globalists wants to saddle the world economy with a cost of trillions of dollars that benefits favorite corporatists. The phony global warming cult has a core purpose. Their objective is to drive down the standard of living for non-elites and prevent the use of fossil fuel energy. The fallacious science used to create a disinformation scare for politically unsophisticated “True Believers” is a direct result of transnational money manipulators. The Davos crowd sponsors the educational and media institutions that trump up junk research and manufacture idealistic solutions.

Make no mistake about it, the Davos Elites Enjoys the Global Depression, and love corporate welfare. They greatly profit from government subsidized “Green” ventures, which drive up energy costs and line the pockets of compadre companies, under the control of the financial barons. As the rest of us struggle to survive, pronouncements declare an every greater burden to bear. Note the ominous future in Davos Report Calls For Additional $14 Trillion To Restrain Global Warming.

“The world must spend an additional $14 trillion on clean energy infrastructure, low-carbon transport and energy efficiency to meet the United Nations’ goal for capping the rise in average global temperatures, according to a World Economic Forum report released on Monday.”

Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon states the globalist viewpoint.

“Economic growth and sustainability are inter-dependent, you cannot have one without the other, and greening investment is the pre-requisite to realizing both goals.”

What can be expected from these “greening investment” projects? In order to anticipate future plans, a comprehensive understanding of the past and present shady business practices is crucial.

Examine the industrial wind and solar model in detail. The Washington Post reports in, Sting operations reveal Mafia involvement in renewable energy, is just the tip of the iceberg.

“The still-emerging links of the mafia to the once-booming wind and solar sector here are raising fresh questions about the use of government subsidies to fuel a shift toward cleaner energies, with critics claiming that huge state incentives created excessive profits for companies and a market bubble ripe for fraud. China-based Suntech, the world’s largest solar panel maker, last month said it would need to restate more than two years of financial results because of allegedly fake capital put up to finance new plants in Italy. The discoveries here also follow “eco-corruption” cases in Spain, where a number of companies stand accused of illegally tapping state aid.

Because it receives more sun and wind than any other part of Italy, Sicily became one of Europe’s most obvious hotbeds for renewable energies over the past decade. As the Italian government began offering billions of euros annually in subsidies for wind and solar development, the potential profitability of such projects also soared — a fact that did not go unnoticed by Sicily’s infamous crime families.

Roughly a third of the island’s 30 wind farms — along with several solar power plants — have been seized by authorities. Officials have frozen more than $2 billion in assets and arrested a dozen alleged crime bosses, corrupt local councilors and mafia-linked entrepreneurs. Italian prosecutors are now investigating suspected mafia involvement in renewable-energy projects from Sardinia to Apulia.”

The in-depth analysis, Big Wind Energy Subsidies: A Hurricane of Carnage, Cronyism and Corruptionis a good primer on the way plungers game the system and pay off politicians at the taxpayers’ expense.

“Lewis “Lew” Hay, III is executive chairman of NextEra Energy, Inc., and it is estimated by Forbes, that CEO “Hay earns nearly $10 million in total compensation from NextEra.” Despite the fact that Hay was actually a “major political contributor to Sen. John McCain in 2008,” he quickly learned which side his power company could generate the title of the “Third Largest Recipient of DOE Risky Loans.” Hay too joined wealthy Democratic donorson Obama’s Jobs Council in 2011, along with the other two I have tackled in this series, “Spreading the Wealth to Obama’s Ultra-Rich Job Council” –– Jobs Czar, Jeffrey Immelt CEO of General Electric has raked in $3 billion and counting, meanwhile John Doerr, along with his “climate buddy” Al Gore’s, VC firm Kleiner Perkins is tied to at least $10 billion of stimulus funds. Both General Electric and Doerr were key contributors to what went into the 2009 Stimulus.

No matter how you slice it, whether we are sending money abroad or fueling corporate welfare here in the United States as well as the egregious practice of crony capitalism, the 2009-Recovery act is a lie, a travesty and a scam, favoring wealthy financial backers of President Obama and the Democratic Party as well as those with influential political connections to both. And with a president that’s dead set on pushing a fierce and radical climate change agenda and funding green energy with taxpayer money, no matter the long list of failures, there is no end in sight to this green corruption scandal.

Besides NextEra Energy taking full advantage of the federal production tax credit (PTC), we now can confirm that the Bank of Obama has rewarded this conglomerate of a power company, and his millionaire job council buddy Lewis Hay, with two large DOE loans ($2.3 billion); one large stimulus smart-grid grant ($200 million); and six 1603 stimulus grants totaling $398.5 million. Thus NextEra’s green tab is on its way to $3 billion of taxpayer money, and that’s not factoring in the PTC.”

With this background and sorry record of corruption to build upon, the World Economic Forum at Davos sets the agenda for the global economy.

Davos 2013: Green Governance To ’Save the World’ is all about enacting their Agenda 21 authoritarianism. Elizabeth Leafloor from RedIceCreations.com writes:

“The WEF suggests a crisis of leadership and debt are some of the biggest challenges facing the world, and that ’global governance’ is the key to stabilization. Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organisation, said: ‘We need proper global governance that has the necessary tools, power and energy to create a more level playing field at the international level.’

At the end of the day, a push for increased global governance and an environmental agenda is on the table for Davos 2013, under the banner of ’Resilent Dynamism’:

“Mr. Klaus Schwab (WEF Founder and executive chairman) said that the world is seeing “a new reality of sudden shocks and prolonged global economic malaise, particularly in major economies experiencing economic austerity”. He also mentioned, “Future growth in this new context requires dynamism – bold vision and even bolder action.

Either attribute – Resilience or Dynamism – alone is insufficient, as leadership in 2013 will require both”.

The “Greening” leadership translates into forcing upon the world a “Cap and Trade” dictatorship. The Calderon bandits that sip champagne from their Swiss chateau want to extend their aristocratic bondage upon a gullible public. The proper dictum is “Save the World” from the New World Order elites.

Read the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act – S. 2191, for the vision of the controlled carbon-trading scheme.

“The L-W CSA allows covered facilities to satisfy up to 15% of their compliance obligation with specific domestic offsets. An additional 15% can be covered using international emission allowances. Unlimited banking is allowed and owners and operators of covered facilities can borrow up to 15% of their annual compliance obligation from future years. The L-W CSA also creates a Carbon Market Efficiency Board to monitor the carbon trading market and implement specific cost relief measures, including increased borrowing and use of offsets.”

What a boondoggle for the consumer and a windfall for organized crime. If you worry about mob infiltration into this extortion racket, you had better focus on the true mafia; namely, the globalist plutocrats.

If the disclosed goal is to extract $14 Trillion from the distressed world economies, one can only reasonably conclude that the surreptitious objective is to widen the income gap between the ultra-rich and the peons. People pay the costs of taxation exploitation. The privileged elites view the masses as useless eaters, destined to be herded into pens of servitude.

The fake global warming panic is pure political propaganda, used to bolster a guilt complex to justify insider theft. A Cap and Trade ploy is designed to push up the costs of fossil fuel with full knowledge that “Greening Dreams” are no substitutes to real energy.

Research projects into technological alternative sources, based upon efficiency and reliability standards are valid. However, allowing governmental cronyism to impose limits on cheap energy, distorts the marketplace. The Davos crews of corporatist gangsters fly into their feast on private jets. The sycophant media reporting by the business toadies that attend the gala celebration of global autocracy should be indisputable evidence that the globalist own the public relations spin.

Even so, such distorted coverage does not blind those who understand the true nature of the planetary struggle. The monopolist plan for adding unwarranted tolls on your family budget, sold as a noble necessity, will only accelerate the systematic impoverishment of your economic existence.

Everyone Who Voted For Obama Voted For More Free Stuff

Churchill said, “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”

Everyone who voted for Barack Obama voted for the man because he and his party give away free stuff. Democrats push socialism at all costs. They love to take your money and give it to everyone else. The fact that the rest of us taxpaying citizens pay for all the free stuff didn’t seem to bother the majority of voters.

The fact that our country and all its citizens suffer a $16 trillion debt and headed toward $20 trillion didn’t dissuade the majority of voters to vote for Romney who proved his ability to balance budgets and create jobs. The majority voted to add another $4 trillion in debt to the US financial nightmare.

Why? Answer: more people in this country feel entitled to a lot of free stuff. Over 47.7 million Americans love their free food via food stamps. Millions more love their government jobs where they show up to sit all day doing virtually nothing that creates anything.

This lady, with 15 kids, loves to get free stuff. You may multiply her story times 10 to 20 million single mothers sporting endless children paid for by you. She pointed to all her kids in the video by saying, “Somebody needs to pay for them.”

http://www.thedailysheeple.com/women-with-15-kids-somebody-needs-to-be-held-accountable-and-they-need-to-pay_122011

Several million Americans love the fact that they can continue their two years of unemployment benefits so they can take long vacations on your taxpayer dollar backs.

Freebies such as medical care for 20 million illegal aliens attracted more illegal aliens who are about to become instant citizens. They will vote for another “Obama” in the next election because they expect free stuff.

Ronald Reagan himself could not win an election in today’s America.

Blog writer Pruzansky said, “The simplest reason why Romney lost was because it is impossible to compete against free stuff. Every businessman knows this; that is why the “loss leader” or the giveaway is such a powerful marketing tool. Obama’s America is one in which free stuff is given away: the adults among the 47,000,000 on food stamps clearly recognized for whom they should vote, and so they did, by the tens of millions; those who – courtesy of Obama – receive two full years of unemployment benefits (which, of course, both disincentivizes looking for work and also motivates people to work off the books while collecting their windfall) surely know for whom to vote; so too those who anticipate “free” health care, who expect the government to pay their mortgages, who look for the government to give them jobs. The lure of free stuff is irresistible.”

Most folks love to get free stuff. Free food, free gas, free housing, free rides, free living. The old America, based on European work, thrift, personal accountability, personal accountability and paying your bills—lost in the election.

As we import another 100 million third world people into this country within three decades, we will discover why they flee their own failed countries and come here to “get free stuff.”

Four hundred thousand pregnant illegal migrant women come here every year to deliver their “anchor babies” or what could be called “free stuff getters” : to get free food, housing, medical and other stuff.

Over 1.2 million legal immigrants without any skills come here annually: to get free food, housing, medical and stuff.

At some point, our financial systems collapse and no one gets free stuff. At some point, our communities suffer free fall from so many expecting free stuff. At some point, no one will get free stuff. It’s called a failed civilization.

Pity we voted for so much free stuff.

37 Statistics Which Show How Four Years Of Obama Have Wrecked The U.S. Economy

The mainstream media covered the inauguration of Barack Obama with breathless anticipation on Monday, but should we really be celebrating another four years of Obama?  The truth is that the first four years of Obama were an absolute train wreck for the U.S. economy.  Over the past four years, the percentage of working age Americans with a job has fallen, median household income has declined by more than $4000, poverty in the U.S. has absolutely exploded and our national debt has ballooned to ridiculous proportions.  Of course all of the blame for the nightmarish performance of the economy should not go to Obama alone.  Certainly much of what we are experiencing today is the direct result of decades of very foolish decisions by Congress and previous presidential administrations.  And of course the Federal Reserve has more influence over the economy than anyone else does.  But Barack Obama steadfastly refuses to criticize anything that the Federal Reserve has done and he even nominated Ben Bernanke for another term as Fed Chairman despite his horrific track record of failure, so at a minimum Barack Obama must be considered to be complicit in the Fed’s very foolish policies.  Despite what the Obama administration tells us, the U.S. economy has been in decline for a very long time, and that decline has accelerated in many ways over the past four years.  Just consider the statistics that I have compiled below.  The following are 37 statistics which show how four years of Obama have wrecked the U.S. economy…

1. During Obama’s first term, the number of Americans on food stamps increased by an average of about 11,000 per day.

2. At the beginning of the Obama era, 32 million Americans were on food stamps.  Today, more than 47 million Americans are on food stamps.

3. According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of “Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”

4. The number of Americans receiving money directly from the federal government each month has grown from 94 million in the year 2000 tomore than 128 million today.

5. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 146 million Americans are either “poor” or “low income” at this point.

6. The unemployment rate in the United States is exactly where it was (7.8 percent) when Barack Obama first entered the White House in January 2009.

7. When Barack Obama first entered the White House, 60.6 percent of all working age Americans had a job.  Today, only 58.6 percent of all working age Americans have a job.

8. During the first four years of Obama, the number of Americans “not in the labor force” soared by an astounding 8,332,000.  That far exceeds any previous four year total.

9. During Obama’s first term, the number of Americans collecting federal disability insurance rose by more than 18 percent.

10. The Obama years have been absolutely devastating for small businesses in America.  According to economist Tim Kane, the following is how the number of startup jobs per 1000 Americans breaks down by presidential administration…

Bush Sr.: 11.3

Clinton: 11.2

Bush Jr.: 10.8

Obama: 7.8

11. Median household income in America has fallen for four consecutive years.  Overall, it has declined by over $4000 during that time span.

12. The economy is not producing nearly enough jobs for the hordes of young people now entering the workforce.  Approximately 53 percentof all U.S. college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed in 2011.

13. According to a report from the National Employment Law Project, 58 percent of the jobs that have been created since the end of the recession have been low paying jobs.

14. Back in 2007, about 28 percent of all working families were considered to be among “the working poor”.  Today, that number is up to 32 percent even though our politicians tell us that the economy is supposedly recovering.

15. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, only 24.6 percent of all of the jobs in the United States are “good jobs” at this point.

16. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the middle class is taking home a smaller share of the overall income pie than has ever been recorded before.

17. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the United States is losinghalf a million jobs to China every single year.

18. The United States has fallen in the global economic competitiveness rankings compiled by the World Economic Forum for four years in a row.

19. According to the World Bank, U.S. GDP accounted for 31.8 percentof all global economic activity in 2001.  That number declined steadily over the course of the next decade and was only at 21.6 percent in 2011.

20. The United States actually has plenty of oil and we should not have to import oil from the Middle East.  We need to drill for more oil, but Obama has been very hesitant to do that.  Under Bill Clinton, the number of drilling permits approved rose by 58 percent.  Under George W. Bush, the number of drilling permits approved rose by 116 percent.  Under Barack Obama, the number of drilling permits approved actuallydecreased by 36 percent.

21. When Barack Obama took office, the average price of a gallon of gasoline was $1.84.  Today, the average price of a gallon of gasoline is$3.26.

22. Under Barack Obama, the United States has lost more than 300,000 education jobs.

23. For the first time ever, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless.  That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year.

24. Families that have a head of household under the age of 30 now have a poverty rate of 37 percent.

25. More than three times as many new homes were sold in the United States in 2005 as were sold in 2012.

26. Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

27. Health insurance costs have risen by 29 percent since Barack Obama became president.

28. Today, 77 percent of all Americans live paycheck to paycheck at least part of the time.

29. It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.

30. The total amount of money that the federal government gives directly to the American people has grown by 32 percent since Barack Obama became president.

31. The Obama administration has been spending money on some of the most insane things imaginable.  For example, in 2011 the Obama administration spent $592,527 on a study that sought to figure out once and for all why chimpanzees throw poop.

32. U.S. taxpayers spend more than 20 times as much on the Obamas as British taxpayers spend on the royal family.

33. The U.S. government has run a budget deficit of well over a trillion dollars every single year under Barack Obama.

34. When Barack Obama was first elected, the U.S. debt to GDP ratio was under 70 percent.  Today, it is up to 103 percent.

35. During Obama’s first term, the federal government accumulated more debt than it did under the first 42 U.S presidents combined.

36. As I wrote about yesterday, when you break it down the amount of new debt accumulated by the U.S. government during Obama’s first term comes to approximately $50,521 for every single household in the United States.  Are you ready to contribute your share?

37. If you started paying off just the new debt that the U.S. has accumulated during the Obama administration at the rate of one dollar per second, it would take more than 184,000 years to pay it off.

But despite all of these numbers, the mainstream media and the left just continue to shower Barack Obama with worship and praise.  Newsweek recently heralded Obama’s second term as “The Second Coming“, and at Obama’s pre-inauguration church service Reverand Ronald Braxton openly compared Obama to Moses…

At Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, Braxton reportedly crafted his speech around Obama’s personal political slogan: “Forward!”

Obama, said Braxton, was just like Moses facing the Red Sea: “forward is the only option … The people couldn’t turn around. The only thing that they could do was to go forward.” Obama, said Braxton, would have to overcome all obstacles – like opposition from Republicans, presumably, or the bounds of the Constitution. Braxton continued, “Mr. President, stand on the rock,” citing to Moses standing on Mount Horeb as his people camped outside the land of Israel.

But it wasn’t enough to compare Obama with the founder of Judaism and the prophet of the Bible. Braxton added that Obama’s opponents were like the Biblical enemies of Moses, and that Obama would have to enter the battle because “sometimes enemies insist on doing it the hard way.”

So what do you think the next four years of Obama will bring?

Source: The Economic Collapse

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