I am just curious about why it's so important to be a white country, and I was suggesting that it's not really a God-given tradition that the USA is white, considering that the white immigrants are a recent phenomenon, and the majority race in this country (and continent) was Native Americans for over 10,000 years.
I am still probing why some feel it's better if whites are the majority--no one has come up with a reasonable answer yet. Maybe there's a good reason, like keeping variety in the gene pool by not letting the white race die out? This is the kind of long-term thinking I'm looking for, not ridiculous comments about how people wear their pants.
1) The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al-Husseini
2) Gamal Abdul Nasser
3) Yasir Arafat
4) The Assad family of Syria
5) Saddam Hussein
6) The saudi arabian royal family
7) Moamar Khadafy
The video appears to show the detective holding a gun in his left hand as he begins to approach a large group of people, which had gathered for the snowball fight.
People in the crowd can be heard saying "he has a gun".
Police say they are looking into reports that the plain-clothed police officer stepped out of his own vehicle and drew his weapon after his car had been hit by snowballs.
The video was provided by Reason.TV, a libertarian organisation in the United States.
WASHINGTON – The estimated time when whites will no longer make up the majority of Americans has been pushed back eight years — to 2050 — because the recession and stricter immigration policies have slowed the flow of foreigners into the U.S.
I cut off the rest of the news article that discussed census figures in detail.
He conveniently ignores the fact that whites have been the majority in this country for only about 250 years. Our white ancestors, who were all immigrants, killed off much of the native population, making whites the majority for the first time. To whine that we may no longer be the majority in a few years shows a lack of historical perspective.
If the Native Americans had newspapers or blogs in 1790, the headlines could have read, "White immigrant population tops 3,000,000; Whites now outnumber Native Americans, signifying the end of our Tribal Nations."
Please explain, why is it that you want whites to continue to be the majority race in the USA? Is it because they were the first immigrant group to take over this land, because the native tribes didn't have the right weapons to defend their homeland? Might makes right?
US President Barack Obama came to office promising hope and change. But on climate change, he has followed in the footsteps of his predecessor George W. Bush. Now, should the climate summit in Copenhagen fail, the blame will lie squarely with Obama.
The folder labeled "climate change" that George W. Bush left behind for his successor on the desk of the Oval Office in January likely wasn't a thick one. Although Bush once said that America is overly-dependent on oil, he never got beyond that insight. He was too busy waging war on Iraq and searching for a legal basis for extraordinary renditions to pay much attention to the real threat facing humanity. "Forget the climate" seems to have been Bush's unofficial motto.
But few people expected that the Barack Obama, of all people, would continue his predecessor's climate change plan. When he took office at the beginning of 2009, it was clear that the success of the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen in December depended almost entirely on the US — that America needed to take a clear leadership role on a problem that could shake civilization to its very core.
Only if the US manages to reduce its excessive energy consumption, commit itself to mandatory CO2 emission reduction targets and help finance the move away from oil for poorer countries, is there still a chance that countries like China and India will do the same and that a dangerous warming of the Earth can be stopped. On the weekend, Obama announced that there would be no agreement on binding rules in Copenhagen. It was the admission of a massive failing — and the prelude to a truly dramatic phase of international climate policy.
MSNBC is very liberal, but they want to get to the bottom of shit and once they hit bottom, if it is the fault of a Democrat they will say it but CNN/Fox News just slant, distort and gives out, so much of mis-information that one rarely finds any ray of truth breaking through their propaganda.
It's impossible to have a rational debate with these people. Let them vent their anger all over craigslist. It's open 24 hours to accept any post, no matter how insane it sounds.
Making dumb comments while asking others not to? Do you reserve the right to be the only person who makes stupid comments? Can you explain why global warming is a scam? No one else on craigslist has been able to do it. Can you explain why Gore is a "creep"? Others have written about why they disagree with his work, but no one has called him a "creep" yet. "Going green is goofy", now that's the dumbest thing you've said yet. Do you prefer to stay dependent on foreign oil? I suppose you like having huge landfills in your country, as long as they're "not in your backyard."
You are so funny!
____________________________________________________________
So in the completely snow-covered global warming convention, Obama was supposed to be a rock star. President Bush, we were told, had so damaged our nation’s prestige in the world (particularly on the environment) that only a political deity like Obama could dig us out of this negative avalanche.
Yet, the great hope of Saul Alinsky has fallen flat on his face. It seems the world is souring on Obama nearly as quickly as America is. The U.K.’s Guardian reports that Obama "looked visibly frustrated as he appeared before world leaders."
Fringe gaggle of environmental freaks known as "Friends of Earth" claimed that Obama had "disappointed the whole world." Another observer remarked candidly that perhaps "Copenhagen isn’t Mr. Obama’s city" after his other failed visit here in an attempt to score an Olympic hosting job for Chicago. Then of course there was the fore-mentioned attack by his pal Chavez and an accompanying one from Castro.
Perhaps the "citizen of the world" -- returning to America with his tail between his legs and a non-binding yet somehow "meaningful" agreement -- can muster the strength to put aside his "hurt feelings" that people have rejected his supreme deity over mankind long enough to handle the little incident in Iraq, where peace-loving Iran has capturing an Iraqi oil field (no doubt simply for peaceful energy production similar to their nuclear program that Obama fails to see a problem with.) Probably not. It will simply be noted in a future speech as another positive contribution to America by Muslims.
The Federal Government has been taken over by Elitist Globalists (Global Corporations, Global Banks, etc.)
Nation Building, is a Globalist's Agenda
National Building is Anti-Taxpayer
9/11 Was a Pretext, for the Elite Gloalists to Commence their Mid-East Nation Building and further Globalization of the Planet
My Son is turning 18 years old soon
I will FIGHT the Elitist Globalist SCUMBAGS, before they take my Son and send him to Afghanistan, or any other Islamic Neanderthal Country, in the name of Nation Building.
To be clear: Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama are ALL under the Control of Global Corporation and Global Bank's Globalization.
The Globalist SCUMBAGS are also Treasonous, as they allow millions of Poverty Immigrants to infultrate our borders.
You DIRTY RAT BASTARD Globalists will not get my Son (in a draft) without a fight.
The Tax Grabbers expect the Politicians to go after the "rich", or what's left of the Middle Class.
- KaptainAmericana
.........................................................................................................................................................................
WAKE UP! TAX-A-CHUS- SUCKS (USA)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2009-12-19, 2:24AM EST
Reply to: mcsweeney10@verizon.net [Errors when replying to ads?]
WE ARE SO BLIND TO THE FACT WE LIVE IN A ONE PARTY STATE THAT HAS CREATED AN ARISTOCRACY ONTO ITSELF! WITH IT'S OWN POLICE STATE TO ENFORCE THIER WILL, KING GEORGE MUST BE LAUGHING IN HIS GRAVE. BUT,THEY CAN ONLY HAVE THIS POWER FOR AS LONG AS THE MASSES CONDONE IT. THATS WHAT THOMAS PAINE SAID OF THE BRITISH RULE. IN HIS PHAMLET COMMON SENSE. WE SHOULD USE OURS(COMMONSENCE) TO VOTE THEM OUT AND PUT POEPLE IN OFFICE THAT WILL REDUCE THE SIZE OF GOV'T ,CONTROL SPENDING&TAXES ,DEFEND OUR CONSTITUTIONS FEDERAL&STATE AND DE-REGULATE THE PEOPLE WITH REVENUE ENHANCING FINES&FEES WHEN WILL THEY REALIZE THE HAVE TAKEN OUR PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS AWAY FROM US! IT'S NOT THERE JOB TO JUST THINK OF MORE WAYS TO TAX,FINE&FEE US TO DEATH .GODS GIFT TO US IS OUR BRAIN TO REASON WITH, WE DON'T NEED GOV'T TO LEGISTLATE COMMON SENSE ,THATS IMPOSSIBLE. AND IF THE PEOPLE HAVE IT, THEY WOULD VOTE ALLOF YOU HACKS OUT INTO THE REAL WORLD TO SHOW HOW YOU'VE PUT US ALL IN ECONORMIC BONDAGE TO BIG GOV'T. BEWARE! THE MASSES ARE WAKING UP!
Riddled with Taxes: This legislation is riddled with tax hikes. They start by taxing those
earning over $10,831 year who don’t buy health insurance $750—a tax that escalates to
$3,800 as income rises. Health insurance, health care devices and drugs are also taxed,
adding to the cost of health care, and decreasing the competitiveness of these businesses.
Medicare Cuts: The bill cuts $500 billion in Medicare spending, including over $130
billion in cuts to Medicare Advantage and nearly $120 billion in Medicare cuts for hospitals
that care for seniors. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says they “expected the
Medicare Advantage plans to lose 2.7 million enrollees over the next decade” as a result.
Raises Insurance Prices: CBO also finds “premiums in the new insurance exchanges
would tend to be higher than the average premiums in the current-law individual market…”
Force, Not Choice: This legislation includes an “individual mandate” forcing all Americans
to purchase health insurance, like the Massachusetts law. Taxpayer subsidies will be given
to those earning up to three times the federal poverty level. Those not qualifying for
subsides will be taxed up to $3,800 if they do not buy insurance. The experience in
Massachusetts has left those caught inbetween unable to afford insurance and having to pay
the tax.
Big Insurance Boondoggle: Forcing all the uninsured into insurance could bring as much as
$200 billion a year in new premiums to insurance companies, including $465 billion in
subsidies over 10 years.
Privacy Violation: This legislation would allow law enforcement agencies such as the FBI
and the Department of Justice unprecedented unfettered access to medical records.
No Lawsuit Reform: This bill fails to curb junk lawsuits. It doesn’t even implement the
“demonstrations projects” on reform the President called for (despite the fact that states like
Mississippi have already done so and seen medical malpractice insurance premiums drop 42
percent). Instead, it will “express the Sense of the Senate that health care reform presents an
opportunity to address issues related to medical malpractice and medical liability insurance.”
Bipartisan Opposition: The only thing bipartisan about this bill is the opposition to it.
A vote for cloture on this legislation is a vote in favor of government-run health care.
We will be watching your vote closely. VOTE NO!
Oppose a government takeover of healthcare!
-No Government Plan: American's can't afford the trillions of dollars in new taxes that would be required to pay for Obamacare.
-No Individual Mandate: Forcing people to buy insurance and then fining them or even putting them in jail if they don't is wrong.
-No Tax Hikes: Tax increases to pay for a new government program will only slow economic recovery and keep unemployment high.
In the USA, the single people and childless couples subsidize major costs of the families who have children. Those who decide to not have children are frequently accused of being selfish, yet their real estate taxes help pay for your children's schooling and sports. Couples who remain childless don't get workplace benefits like maternity leave or paternity leave. Those who remain childless do not get tax discounts for "additional dependents."
If anyone wanted to change the laws to "heavily tax" those who have more than one child, all they have to do is to remove all the tax breaks and other benefits that people with children currently receive.
If you are worried about people with children getting penalized, better watch out for the libertarians. Libertarians want government out of our private lives. If they get their way, you won't have to pay real estate taxes to fund for your local public schools, and the schools' sports programs. In fact, those with children will have to pay tuition for every child they have. Five children = five times the tuition rate. The more children you have, the more it will cost you personally when the state no longer subsidizes your brood. If you can't afford it, you may homeschool your children, but one of the parents will have to stay home to manage this--no dual incomes for you. Don't you childbearing people prefer to have the childless ones and single people subsidizing some of your children's expenses?
Better find a parent who has the time and energy to create a sports program for your homeschooled children, too, when the state no longer provides these programs. Or hire someone to create a local league for your children. You will have to pay your share for the league management, and the childless couples and single people will not be contributing to those costs either, if this were a true libertarian scenario.
Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, “If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?”
She replied, “I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people.” Her parents beamed.
“Wow...what a worthy goal.” I told her, “But you don't have to wait until you're President to do that. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my driveway, and I'll pay you $50. Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house.”
She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, “'Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?”
"That decision has to be made by our leaders and our members," Lodes said. The event with the AARP and the other groups was scheduled before Reid made changes to the bill.
The SEIU executive board will hold what Lodes described as an "emergency" meeting Wednesday night to decide how to move forward. "Right now, they don't have the information they need to make this decision," said Lodes, who added that the SEIU informed the other organizations on Tuesday they would not be joining the press conference.
The board meeting likely will not produce a final determination by the union about whether to support advancing the Senate healthcare bill, which not only lacks a public option and the Medicare buy-in but also would levy an excise tax on so-called Cadillac health insurance plans that some union members have, Lodes said.
"We will not have an absolute decision coming," largely because Reid has not released the final language of the healthcare bill, she said.
Who paid for obama's college and grad school education? I have had Democrats actually answer this with - well everybody knows that answer. But nobody can tell it to me.
re: Truly Remarkable (Massachuasetts)
Date: 2009-12-17, 1:36PM EST
Reply to: comm-gumnq-1514500036@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
IT'S REMARKABLE THAT THE PRESS CAN FIND EVERY WOMAN WITH WHOM TIGER WOODS HAS HAD AN AFFAIR IN THE LAST FEW YEARS, WITH PHOTOS, TEXT MESSAGES, RECORDED PHONE CALLS, ETC.
THEY KNOW NOT ONLY THE CAUSE OF THE FAMILY FIGHT, BUT THEY EVEN KNOW IT WAS A WEDGE FROM HIS GOLF BAG THAT SHE USED TO BREAK OUT THE WINDOWS IN THE ESCALADE. NOT ONLY THAT, THEY KNOW WHICH WEDGE!!!
THIS IS THE SAME PRESS (OR IS IT?) THAT CAN'T LOCATE OBAMA'S BIRTH CERTIFICATE... OR ANY OF HIS PAPERS WHILE IN COLLEGE.
She is an excellent Bolshevick, and will do a tremendous job in foisting Multiculturalism, erasing the Middle Class, and strengthening the Central Government.
Please get out and Vote for Coakley, in order that we may enable a larger Utopian Central Government.
Clinton/Bush/Obama/Harvard Economics Professors, etc.: are either ignorant, misinformed or liars when they say "free trade".
The container ships are leaving the US ports EMPTY for the return trip to China, after they drop off the Chinese goods, in the ports of LA, and Long Beach CA.
There is only ONE-way trade. That is Chinese manufactured goods (Global Corporations) coming into the USA.
Some Bush Repugnant is going to say that "GE" is making money in China by building the infrastructure. BIG DEAL!!!!.......How does that help workers in the USA? It only serves those tied to GE in the Investor Class (Wall St.).
Do you know how difficult it is to sell, even a pair of socks in Japan and China?............Good luck!! You'll never get your goods on store shelves, unless you are closely connected to the leading bureaucrats like Global Corporations are.
What is so hard to understand? The USA has no real "Middle Class" anymore. It's the Investor Class, and the working poor. VIRTUAL Slaves working with aprons on at Home Depot.
Many of you in the Investor Class cannot figure out, that you need a Middle Class to BUY YOUR products that you are invested in. Your stocks will always be in danger, because there is NO more Middle Class consumers to purchase the goods you are invested in............WHAT IS SO FUNKING HARD to understand about this basic economic fact????
Wall Street IDIOTS have fear of "rising" wages. The MORONS cannot figure out that, "rising" wages build up "consumer confidence". You NEED a Middle Class consumer to purchase the goods and services, that you want your vested company to sell..........WHAT IS SO FUNKING HARD for the Investor Class to figure out??????
No wonder the "experts" on Wall Street have burned Average Joe Investor so many times. They are over educated IDIOTS, (and LYING Global Economy Zealots) !!!!
Somerville, MA- Over 400 textile workers of Angelica Textile Services in Somerville initiated a strike on Thursday, December 10th at 11:00 am.
A national corporation, Angelica provides laundry and linen services to area hospitals and health care facilities through its Somerville facilities located across the street from the offices of Centro Presente on Inner Belt Road in East Somerville.
The strikers had been working without a contract since December 1st. Negotiations between the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Local 1445, representing the workers, and the company stalled on the provision of a living wage and improved benefits, including parental leave and affordable healthcare. Of the 450 workers, mostly immigrants, only 23 did not join the strike on the first day.
Beginning at 6:00 a.m. the strike continued into the frigid evening until midnight and resumes today at 6:00 am. Centro Presente will maintain its doors open to the workers for the entire time period to provide a respite from the frigid temperatures. The staff of Centro Presente have also literally stood with the workers on the picket line. Today, Friday December 11th there will be a larger rally at 11:00 a.m. in front of the offices of Angelica at 30 Inner Belt Road at noon, come and show support for these brave workers as they fight for Justice!
TAKE ACTION in Solidarity with Striking Immigrant Workers
Come and support the workers on the picket line. We are keeping the offices of Centro Presente open during the extent of the picket which has been from 6 am until midnight daily. We need volunteers to staff our office. If you are able to spend an hour or two in our office in support of these workers' struggle for a fair wage and health benefits.
The strikers had been working without a contract since December 1st. Negotiations between the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Local 1445, representing the workers, and the company stalled on the provision of a living wage and improved benefits, including parental leave and affordable healthcare. Of the 450 workers, mostly immigrants, only 23 did not join the strike on the first day.
Beginning at 6:00 a.m. the strike continued into the frigid evening until midnight and resumes today at 6:00 am. Centro Presente will maintain its doors open to the workers for the entire time period to provide a respite from the frigid temperatures. The staff of Centro Presente have also literally stood with the workers on the picket line. Today, Friday December 11th there will be a larger rally at 11:00 a.m. in front of the offices of Angelica at 30 Inner Belt Road at noon, come and show support for these brave workers as they fight for Justice!
TAKE ACTION in Solidarity with Striking Immigrant Workers
Come and support the workers on the picket line. We are keeping the offices of Centro Presente open during the extent of the picket which has been from 6 am until midnight daily. We need volunteers to staff our office. If you are able to spend an hour or two in our office in support of these workers' struggle for a fair wage and health benefits.
"One school of thought says lowering the minimum wage will actually create more jobs," she continued, without mentioning any counterargument.
Laws enacted by Congress following the Democratic takeover in 2007 have increased the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour as of this July. Prior to that, the minimum wage hadn't been raised since 1997.
Inviting Fox News correspondent James Rosen to discuss the issue, Huddy first asked him: "Why don't we often hear about lowering the minimum wage?" Rosen said the recent minimum wage hike has set off "a furious debate" over its efficacy, and cited a 2008 paper called "Minimum Wages" by David Neumark and William Wascher that argued against the minimum wage. He called it a "landmark study."
To bolster his case, Rosen quoted Washington Post editorial writer Charles Lane as recently saying that cutting the minimum wage "would create some jobs for those who need them most."
Rosen said it's unlikely to happen because of Democratic lawmakers who oppose it for reasons of "social justice." Republicans who favor it, he said, do so because of "macroeconomics."
Fox then played a clip of Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) dubbing the minimum wage "a minimum level of justice," along with one of Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) saying it will "artificially raise the cost of hiring people."
At no point in the segment did either Huddy or Rosen mention an academic case in favor of the minimum wage -- they merely reduced that side of the argument to the nebulous concept of "social justice."
There are, however, accredited economic cases in favor of a strong minimum wage.
One famous study by David Card and Alan B. Krueger called "Minimum Wages and Employment" illustrated various ways by which increasing the minimum wage could decrease unemployment. Its research methods and conclusions have been endorsed by Nobel Laureates Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz.
Another is a 2004 research paper by the Economic Policy Institute called "No Longer Getting By," which finds, among other things, that a robust minimum wage helps mitigate poverty and strengthens consumer purchasing power through periods of inflation.
Although the economy has picked up, job growth remains meek and unemployment is at 10 percent. Americans are anxious for solutions that would create jobs and mitigate their financial woes. According to Fox News, cutting the minimum wage is one answer to their problems
It seems that there has been a clear breach of the Separation of Powers designed into the US constitution - on the part of the current Executive Branch (President) and the Legislative Branch (Senators that met privately with the Pres), for the overt purpose of influencing the creation of a Law.
Hello, why no uproar from the members of the Legislative branch excluded from the meeting, the press and the citizenry? Not even from McCain?
So why do we absolutely have to have a health care bill before year end? Things have been this way for decades in this county.
Abuse of power - trying to influence and control the Congress - Actions that the founders intended to prevent!
If Obama wants to control the senate, he never should have taken an oath to be president. Read the footnotes to the on-line constitution in the link above, they are very informative about actions the president can not engage in like he seems to have done this week.
He could easily have gotten things going a year ago. he has the gift of giving great speeches. Instead he has used his rhetoric to spread gloom and doom to business people who just hunkered down to weather the long and brutal obama storm - will be over 10 years.
re: New poll reveals human cost of US unemployment (The Capitalist Paradise)
Date: 2009-12-16, 8:57AM EST
Reply to: see below
A new New York Times/CBS News poll offers a glimpse of the devastating human impact of the US unemployment crisis.
As massive bank bonuses are due to be announced this month, millions of people have been thrown out of their homes, find it impossible to pay for basic necessities, have depleted limited retirement savings or have lost their health care due to the unemployment crisis. The survey of over 700 unemployed adults was conducted between December 5 and December 10. Accompanying the survey on the Times web site were self-made computer videos of unemployed workers discussing their problems.
The poll and interviews illustrate some of the measures taken by unemployed workers to survive. About one quarter of those surveyed have relied on food stamps and one fifth have received help from food charities. Half said that their spouse has taken on extra hours or another job to supplement family income, and 53 percent have borrowed money from family members in order to make ends meet. Sixty percent have liquidated money from savings and retirement accounts. Among these is Lee Daves, 54, who worked as a machinist making $13 an hour in Springfield, Missouri, until he was laid off in January. His unemployment benefits, which are soon to expire, are not enough to pay for his modest lifestyle. To pay bills, he was forced to sell off his 401(k) retirement account.
One of the survey's more striking revelations is that nearly half of the unemployed workers in its sample have received no unemployment benefits through the nation's restrictive jobless insurance system. Among those who have, 61 percent say that this has not been enough money to pay for mortgages, health insurance, food and other expenditures. Fifty-four percent of those polled by the Times/CBS say they have cut back on medical treatment or visits to the doctor, and forty-seven percent are without health care coverage.
Bill Grierson, of Dayton, Ohio, worked at auto parts maker Delphi for nearly 20 years. He is now jobless and without health insurance for his family. "To have some sort of ailment and not be able to go to the doctor or just wait and hope things get better," is a new experience for his family, Grierson said. After losing health care coverage, Grierson's daughter fell at school and hurt her head. The resulting emergency room bill was $8,000, a sum the family was unable to pay. "Watching them play sports," Grierson says of his children, "you say play your hardest, but please don't get hurt because we can't do anything about it."
Howard Watley, 63, is a laid off construction project manager from North Texas. He is without health insurance for himself and his wife, and his unemployment benefits are set to expire. "We can't afford our medicines sometimes and can't afford our doctors visits," he says. One fourth of those surveyed said they had been threatened with foreclosure or eviction.
Vicky Newton of Mount Pleasant, Michigan, lost her job in March "and from there on, everything went downhill,” she told the Times. She abandoned her house in Flint, Michigan, went on food stamps to feed her daughter, and moved into a rental house owned by her father. Unemployment is causing anxiety, stress, and other mental disorders, the poll finds. Nearly 70 percent of respondents reported being "stressed more than usual," while 55 percent reported suffering from insomnia. A quarter have sought help from mental health professionals. Forty percent say that as a result of unemployment they have noticed changes in the behavior of their children.
“Every time I think about money, I shut down because there is none,” said Tammy Linville, 29, of Louisville, Kentucky, the mother of two small children. “I get major panic attacks. I just don’t know what we’re going to do.” After losing her job, Linville underwent counseling for depression, but was forced to quit after she was unable to afford repairs on her car. Nancy Perry, who lost her job at a Florida child care center and has no unemployment insurance, said that she suffers from insomnia, headaches and depression. "Knowing that it's the holiday season has made it worse." Perry said. "For me there's not going to be a holiday this year."
In response to unemployment, 40 percent of those surveyed said they have considered moving to a different part of the country, two-thirds have pondered switching careers, and 44 percent have tried job retraining or other educational possibilities. These often desperate individual responses, as well as much of the emotional suffering caused by unemployment, result from the lack of a social and political response to the crisis.
But there is also an understanding among unemployed workers that the jobs crisis is not their fault.
“We grow up with the impression there’s a correlation between effort and the fruits of your labor,” said Evan Gutierrez, 29, who lost his job working for a church charity in Los Angeles after its endowment collapsed. “To be honest with you, I have very little confidence I’m going to be able to turn this around. It just feels completely, completely out of my control.” Indeed, mass unemployment arises from the economic crisis, which was set into motion by the predatory financial speculation of the American ruling class. Since then every measure put in place by the Bush and Obama administrations has had as its overriding concern the defense of the biggest banks and the enormous personal wealth of the financial elite.
The Obama administration has taken no serious steps to address mass unemployment, finding in it an important tool in driving down wages and reducing “overconsumption.“ Obama administration officials openly warn the population to expect years of high unemployment. The Times/CBS poll found evidence that many unemployed workers blame some aspect of the political and economic setup for their predicament. Of those surveyed, 26 percent blamed former president George W. Bush, 12 percent blamed the banking industry, and 8 percent attributed unemployment to jobs moving overseas.
Only 3 percent of the sample blamed President Obama, who has ruled out any government jobs program or public works programs to put people to work. On the other hand, 44 percent expressed disapproval over Obama's efforts at job creation. Tuesday found Obama in suburban Virginia at a Home Depot building and repair mega-store, touting his "cash for caulkers" proposal which would offer cash rebates to homeowners able to come up with the money to change windows, put in insulation, and similar "energy saving" schemes. This is, to say the least, a derisory response to an economic crisis in which more than one in six workers are unemployed or underemployed.
It is not only the unemployed who are suffering. A separate Times/CBS poll, also conducted in early December, found that about one third of US workers say that their pay was cut last year as a result of the economic crisis. And a recent Zogby International poll found that an astonishing 72 percent of Americans already consider themselves poor or can imagine themselves becoming poor (20 percent and 50 percent, respectively). And about half of Americans say they worry about money "most or all of the time."
"What they're saying is that they're one, two or three paychecks away from poverty," said John Zogby, the CEO of the polling company. "This has a huge implication." Dennis Jacobe, chief economist of polling firm Gallup, said "people do not feel safe." Workers "compare the stock market rally to the economy they are experiencing, there is an atmosphere of unreality," Jacobe said. "Wall Street gets theirs and the average American doesn't. There is a sense of unfairness and confusion
Huffington, who was also a guest on This Week, reacted with scorn: “he’s the wrong man to be heading the President’s economic team. His response is so lackadaisical, no sense of urgency. This is meaningless; Larry Summers’ accelerating his forecast [on job creation] is so utterly meaningless. I don’t even know why we’re talking about it. All his [other] forecasts have been completely wrong.” Huffington’s tongue lashing was one of the few breaths of fresh air in a constant barrage of political and media propaganda that promises the end of the economic crisis is near.
Summers is technically accurate in claiming that the recession is over- if recession is defined as two consecutive quarters or more of negative growth. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis indicates that national changes in the value of National Gross Domestic Product for the last two quarters of 2008 were -2.7 and -5.4 percent respectively, while the figures for the first three quarters of 2009 were: -6.4, -.7, and 2.8 percent. Since the third quarter of 2009 saw limited economic growth, the U.S. economy cannot, by definition, be in a recession. What was most dishonest about Summers’ portrayal, however, is the implication that the U.S. is emerging from the economic crisis. This promise is highly suspect considering that many economists are predicting an increase in unemployment to 11 percent nationwide by next year.
Summers’ promise of economic redemption seems dubious in light of other current economic indicators, which suggest that the economy is in worse shape now than at any other point in recent decades. Unemployment still stood in November 2009 at 10 percent, a drop of a meager .2 percent from the October 2009 high of 10.2 percent. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures indicate that the November unemployment rate is more than two percent higher than it was in February 2009. Unemployment is currently higher than at any other point in the last ten years, and remains more than twice as high as it was from March of 2007 to February 2008 (when unemployment ranged from 4.4 to 4.8 percent). When put into context, the .2 percent drop in unemployment last month hardly symbolizes an end to the economic crisis. Quite the contrary, the jobless recovery is continuing in light of the high unemployment rate, accompanied by the continued profits posted by major Wall Street banks and investment firms (such profits are largely the product of the economic bailout, rather than increased lending).
If one is still inclined to take Summers seriously, consider some other numbers:
- The New York Times estimates that the job losses accompanying the 2009 recession are the most extreme the U.S. has seen in the last 35 years. The paper also reports that the most recent numbers from the Census Bureau show that the national poverty rate reached 13.2 percent in 2008, an increase from 12.5 percent in 2007, and poverty is at an all-time high over the last ten years. Although numbers are still unavailable for 2009, trends from 2008 suggest that poverty continues to be a monumental problem.
- Further analysis from the New York Times suggests that the median household income has declined by four percent from 2007 to 2008. Similarly, the percent of American adults without health insurance has increased by more than three percent over the past ten years, with approximately 50 million uninsured and another 25 million underinsured (both combined equal about 25 percent of all Americans). The economic crisis has also exacerbated the health care problem, since so many of those thrown out of their jobs lose their health insurance coverage.
- As of late 2009, nearly 10 percent of all U.S. home mortgages were either delinquent or in foreclosure, while projections suggest that up to six million families may lose their homes in the next three years if the government fails to effectively act. 2009 estimates suggest that 17 percent of all homes in the U.S., and four in ten homes sold in the last five years are underwater. End of year foreclosure rates also remain high. For the third quarter of 2009, foreclosure filings reached a total of 937,840, a 23 percent increase from a year earlier. Data for November 2009 suggests that home foreclosures did decline 8 percent from October, but remain 18 percent higher than in November 2008.
- Sadly, Obama’s plan to stabilize the housing market has fallen short up to this point. Although Obama allocated $75 billion to assist troubled homeowners avoid foreclosure, the program has not been as successful as expected. Elizabeth Warren, the head of a Congressional Oversight Panel overseeing the bailout funds, concluded this month that the Obama administration was relatively successful in stabilizing the banking system, although it failed to make similar progress in the troubled housing market. As U.S. News & World Report concluded this month: “while the Obama administration is temporarily reducing mortgage payments for a growing number of troubled borrowers, it has failed to find permanent fixes for all but a precious few. A little more than four percent - or 31,382 - of the more than 728,000 modifications underway through November have advanced from the program’s trial period to the permanent phase.”
Where does Summers fit into the larger economic crisis? Aside from his ineptitude in fostering a national recovery and his current state of denial on the state of the economy, Summers and his allies in the Obama administration (including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, and economic advisor Robert Rubin) share major responsibility for creating the economic meltdown in the first place. Summers has amassed quite a controversial record in his various public and administrative positions, as the following review demonstrates.
- Summers was pressured to step down as President of Harvard after he made sexist claims that women were less well represented in the sciences and engineering because of their intellectual inferiority. Summers’ tenure at Harvard was also marked by controversy after he fired Harvard Endowment Manager Iris Mack for blowing the whistle on the university after it became involved in dangerous derivative investments - which were a major contributor to the 2008 economic collapse, and cost Harvard nearly $1 billion in lost investments.
- Summers also became a controversial figure when it was shown that he made over $5 million in profits for the year in hedge fund investments and another $2 million from troubled Wall Street investment firms (many of which received bailout money) for various speaking engagements. The millions made by Summers from his Wall Street connections have raised many eyebrows at a time when he’s supposed to be spearheading an effort by the White House to increase transparency in the national economy and hold Wall Street accountable for its many transgressions.
- Summers enjoys other controversial ties with Wall Street firms. He was strongly criticized after it was revealed that he accepted benefits from Citigroup (one of the major banks responsible for the sub-prime/derivatives economic crisis), including free jet rides. Summers also called prominent members of Congress, requesting that they remove limits on executive pay at companies that received TARP bailout money (Citigroup was one of the companies that would benefit from the removal of the cap).
- Finally, Summers supported the 1999 bi-partisan repeal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act. The Congressional repeal tore down the legal separation between traditional commercial banks and riskier investment banks. This repeal was significant because it ushered in the deregulation of U.S. banks. Deregulation is cited by critics as having played a major role in fostering the current economic collapse and crisis, especially in light of Congress’s deregulation of financial derivatives with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.
Larry Summers is merely a symptom of the much larger problem of big businesses’ dominance of government. Business elites do not merely “control” or “buy” political leaders. Increasingly, business and political elites are one and the same. Many of the most prominent members of Obama administration not only serve the business community, they are an active part of it. A recent report from the Chicago Tribune finds that “virtually all of the top Chicagoans [including Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, and Valerie Jarrett] serving in the West Wing had assets valued at a million dollars or more at the end of 2008.” Other administration officials also made their fortunes in corporate America. These officials - many of whom are responsible for regulating Wall Street - include: Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner (net worth of $1.7 million), economic advisor Robert Rubin ($130 million), Commodity Futures Trading Commission head Gary Gensler ($61.7 million), Security and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Schapiro ($41.8 million), and Chief Economist of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board Austan Goolsbee ($2.7 million), to name just a few.
More generally, the wealthy overwhelmingly dominate the presidential nomination and primary processes. A review of the 2008 presidential election shows that six of the top seven candidates who ran in the Democratic and Republican primaries - including John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards - were all millionaires (only Mike Huckabee wasn’t a millionaire, at least before his 2008 foray into the media punditry).
The problem of business dominance extends beyond the White House as well. As of 2003-2004, an estimated 40 percent of members of the Senate were millionaires. A 2009 study by the Center for Responsive Politics found that close to half - 44 percent of members of Congress - enjoyed assets of more than a million dollars each. Government officials are typically well represented among corporate lobbyists as well. A study by the Washington Post finds that an astounding one-half of all health industry lobbyists employed by the private sector “worked for key [Congressional] committees and lawmakers [who are] debating whether to adopt a public insurance option opposed by major industry groups.” The revolving door between government and the private economy is a major threat to the public good, as government officials serve as defenders of corporate power and are part of the same business class they’re supposed to be regulating.
The results of corporate-government incest are entirely predictable: government’s primary goal is to serve the interests of the business power elite. It is no surprise, then, that officials like Summers appear so inept in light of public demands for stronger regulation of Wall Street. They’re more interested in protecting corporate profitability and ensuring that public subsidies continue to flow from American workers to the business class. As progressive thinker John Dewey once explained: “politics is the shadow cast on society by big business.” This reality couldn’t be any starker when looking at the Obama presidency.
The poll and interviews illustrate some of the measures taken by unemployed workers to survive. About one quarter of those surveyed have relied on food stamps and one fifth have received help from food charities. Half said that their spouse has taken on extra hours or another job to supplement family income, and 53 percent have borrowed money from family members in order to make ends meet. Sixty percent have liquidated money from savings and retirement accounts. Among these is Lee Daves, 54, who worked as a machinist making $13 an hour in Springfield, Missouri, until he was laid off in January. His unemployment benefits, which are soon to expire, are not enough to pay for his modest lifestyle. To pay bills, he was forced to sell off his 401(k) retirement account.
One of the survey's more striking revelations is that nearly half of the unemployed workers in its sample have received no unemployment benefits through the nation's restrictive jobless insurance system. Among those who have, 61 percent say that this has not been enough money to pay for mortgages, health insurance, food and other expenditures. Fifty-four percent of those polled by the Times/CBS say they have cut back on medical treatment or visits to the doctor, and forty-seven percent are without health care coverage.
Bill Grierson, of Dayton, Ohio, worked at auto parts maker Delphi for nearly 20 years. He is now jobless and without health insurance for his family. "To have some sort of ailment and not be able to go to the doctor or just wait and hope things get better," is a new experience for his family, Grierson said. After losing health care coverage, Grierson's daughter fell at school and hurt her head. The resulting emergency room bill was $8,000, a sum the family was unable to pay. "Watching them play sports," Grierson says of his children, "you say play your hardest, but please don't get hurt because we can't do anything about it."
Howard Watley, 63, is a laid off construction project manager from North Texas. He is without health insurance for himself and his wife, and his unemployment benefits are set to expire. "We can't afford our medicines sometimes and can't afford our doctors visits," he says. One fourth of those surveyed said they had been threatened with foreclosure or eviction.
Vicky Newton of Mount Pleasant, Michigan, lost her job in March "and from there on, everything went downhill,” she told the Times. She abandoned her house in Flint, Michigan, went on food stamps to feed her daughter, and moved into a rental house owned by her father. Unemployment is causing anxiety, stress, and other mental disorders, the poll finds. Nearly 70 percent of respondents reported being "stressed more than usual," while 55 percent reported suffering from insomnia. A quarter have sought help from mental health professionals. Forty percent say that as a result of unemployment they have noticed changes in the behavior of their children.
“Every time I think about money, I shut down because there is none,” said Tammy Linville, 29, of Louisville, Kentucky, the mother of two small children. “I get major panic attacks. I just don’t know what we’re going to do.” After losing her job, Linville underwent counseling for depression, but was forced to quit after she was unable to afford repairs on her car. Nancy Perry, who lost her job at a Florida child care center and has no unemployment insurance, said that she suffers from insomnia, headaches and depression. "Knowing that it's the holiday season has made it worse." Perry said. "For me there's not going to be a holiday this year."
In response to unemployment, 40 percent of those surveyed said they have considered moving to a different part of the country, two-thirds have pondered switching careers, and 44 percent have tried job retraining or other educational possibilities. These often desperate individual responses, as well as much of the emotional suffering caused by unemployment, result from the lack of a social and political response to the crisis.
But there is also an understanding among unemployed workers that the jobs crisis is not their fault.
“We grow up with the impression there’s a correlation between effort and the fruits of your labor,” said Evan Gutierrez, 29, who lost his job working for a church charity in Los Angeles after its endowment collapsed. “To be honest with you, I have very little confidence I’m going to be able to turn this around. It just feels completely, completely out of my control.” Indeed, mass unemployment arises from the economic crisis, which was set into motion by the predatory financial speculation of the American ruling class. Since then every measure put in place by the Bush and Obama administrations has had as its overriding concern the defense of the biggest banks and the enormous personal wealth of the financial elite.
The Obama administration has taken no serious steps to address mass unemployment, finding in it an important tool in driving down wages and reducing “overconsumption.“ Obama administration officials openly warn the population to expect years of high unemployment. The Times/CBS poll found evidence that many unemployed workers blame some aspect of the political and economic setup for their predicament. Of those surveyed, 26 percent blamed former president George W. Bush, 12 percent blamed the banking industry, and 8 percent attributed unemployment to jobs moving overseas.
Only 3 percent of the sample blamed President Obama, who has ruled out any government jobs program or public works programs to put people to work. On the other hand, 44 percent expressed disapproval over Obama's efforts at job creation. Tuesday found Obama in suburban Virginia at a Home Depot building and repair mega-store, touting his "cash for caulkers" proposal which would offer cash rebates to homeowners able to come up with the money to change windows, put in insulation, and similar "energy saving" schemes. This is, to say the least, a derisory response to an economic crisis in which more than one in six workers are unemployed or underemployed.
It is not only the unemployed who are suffering. A separate Times/CBS poll, also conducted in early December, found that about one third of US workers say that their pay was cut last year as a result of the economic crisis. And a recent Zogby International poll found that an astonishing 72 percent of Americans already consider themselves poor or can imagine themselves becoming poor (20 percent and 50 percent, respectively). And about half of Americans say they worry about money "most or all of the time."
"What they're saying is that they're one, two or three paychecks away from poverty," said John Zogby, the CEO of the polling company. "This has a huge implication." Dennis Jacobe, chief economist of polling firm Gallup, said "people do not feel safe." Workers "compare the stock market rally to the economy they are experiencing, there is an atmosphere of unreality," Jacobe said. "Wall Street gets theirs and the average American doesn't. There is a sense of unfairness and confusion
Meet local activists with the Socialist Party USA
Learn what Democratic Socialism is all about in plain English
Find out how you can make an impact in today's movements, locally and globally
The Socialist Party of Boston is hosting this meeting for new people who want to learn about socialism and our work in Boston. Brief presentations and facilitation will be conducted by
David Schaich, local secretary and current SPUSA Campaign Clearinghouse Coordinator.
Matthew Andrews, local treasurer and current SPUSA National Committee member.
Plenty of time will be left for discussion to address the questions and interests of participants. This event is totally free and everyone is welcome to come!
Christ has been eliminated from the public square and schools.
Things are ready for me now. I know you will receive me when I inhabit a world leader soon. Do you know which Global Leader I will inhabit?............Ha, ha, ha.....
I have a Human Implant Banking Chip, I want you all to receive under your skin. It's the only way I we can monitor every Human Being. You'll have to take the implant device, because we're going to eliminate cash. There will not be any other way to purchase food, except through banking electronic funds transfer.
Don't listen to Christians, when they say "do not receive the banking implant chip". Don't worry, you won't go to Hell.............Ha, ha,ha..........When Christ returns, I think we can stop him from taking back the Earth, if we all work together, YES WE CAN.
Keep up the good work my slaves.........ha, ha,h a........
I know you have a $100,000 School Loan to pay off, but "Globalization" has moved most of the good jobs "Off-Shore". That incudes White Collar jobs as well.
The LYING Globalizt Economics Professors, said that "only a few" manufacturing jobs would be lost to "Globalization". Well, we know that IS a BIG Lie, because White Collar jobs are moving to Asia as well. At the same time we are IMPORTING Low-Wage Immigrants from the Third-World.
Perhaps you've heard the LYING "Globalization" Economics professors speaking for the White House, or in Congress.
If you can get a bartender spot in Boston, you might make a few bucks cash. Most of the Grads I know, are scurrying for Bartender positions all over Massachusetts. Or, consider accepting a "manager's" position at Wendy's or Walmart.
It's really sad, most were DUPED into "The Global Economy" by these Idiot Economics Professors, who have ties to Global Corporations.
This is what you get, when you keep electing Liberal Democrats to offices of power.
Persecution is what you get, when school Departments are Run By COMMIE SCUMBAGS !!
WAKE-UP ! !!
The Liberal Democrats are FUNKING COMMIES, who are out to TAKE away YOUR way of life, your history, your culture, your families, your incomes, your freedom.
WAKE-UP, and don't be fooled by their smilies, and their innocent appearances. They are NO DIFFERENT than Mao Zedong, Vladimir Lenin, or Pol Pot. Don't go by their attire. They are RAT BASTARD Commies.
In reality, the event was a media exercise designed to placate growing popular anger toward the Obama administration. The true nature of the event was not lost on its attendees. “It's a PR [public relations] stunt,” an unnamed CEO flatly told Time magazine prior to the meeting.
Attending were Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, Ken Lewis of Bank of America, Richard Fairbank of Capital One, Bob Kelly of Bank of New York Mellon, Ken Chenault of American Express, and Ron Logue of State Street Bank. Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, John Mack of Morgan Stanley, and Dick Parsons of Citigroup joined the meeting via video conference.
The nation's biggest banks will soon hand out year-end executive bonuses totalling in the tens of billions. This conspicuous display of bank prosperity comes just over one year after the US Treasury and Federal Reserve began to funnel trillions of dollars to the finance industry. This ensured that the banks would profit from the economic crisis that they precipitated through rampant financial speculation.
The vast majority of the population continues to suffer through the nation's worst social crisis since the Great Depression. One in six workers is without a job or underemployed. For those who have work, speed-up and pay and benefit cuts are the rule. The foreclosure crisis continues. Hunger is at a record high. The destruction of the social safety system by cash-strapped states is accelerating, and the Obama administration is readying years of budget austerity to right the US fiscal crisis at the expense of the working class.
Appearing on the CBS news program “60 Minutes” on Sunday evening, Obama acknowledged the anger. Referring to the Wall Street financiers as “fat cat bankers,” Obama noted, “They're still puzzled why is it that people are mad at the banks.”
“Well, let's see,” Obama continued, “you guys are drawing down 10, 20 million dollar bonuses after America went through the worst economic year that it's gone through in decades, and you guys caused the problem. And we've got 10 percent unemployment.”
Obama did not mention that this is an outcome of the policies of his own administration, which has overseen the Wall Street baillout and has explicitly campaigned to oppose any measure that would curb executive pay. Meanwhile, it has spearheaded the attack on workers' pay, including through the forced bankrupcy of General Motors and Chrysler.
Monday's meeting comes nine months after a similar meeting at the White House in March. Then, Obama pledged not to take any measures that would impinge on the interests of the financial oligarchy. Bank of America's Lewis said at the time that he was confident that no “punitive” actions would be taken after the “pleasant” meeting. (See “Obama holds ‘very pleasant’ meeting with top US bankers”)
While the media had predicted that Obama's criticisms on “60 Minutes” meant he would shame the executives or give them a “dressing down” on Monday, by all accounts the meeting was likewise as pleasant as it was unsubstantial. No transcripts of the discussion have been released.
Richard Davis, CEO of US Bancorp, told the media “there wasn't a lot of disagreement.” “He didn't call us any names,” Davis said, referring to Obama's “fat cat” reference on “60 Minutes.”
Obama pleaded with the bank executives to “explore every responsible way” to increase lending “to help creditworthy small and medium-sized businesses.” Over the past year, a general lack of cash liquidity has forced many businesses to fold, scale back operations, and lay off workers.
Last fall, Obama, President George W. Bush, and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, among others, justified the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) as critically necessary in order to “jump start” or “open the spigot” of lending. Since then every facet of the Wall Street bailout, including the unaccounted trillions extended to the banks from the Federal Reserve, has relied on the same rationale.
But all evidence shows that the banks have hoarded the cash or used it to engage in new forms of speculation. Overall loan volume continued to fall from the second to third quarters this year, according to recent data.
What the banks have made liquid has not been invested in production. Instead much of it has been been shifted into new asset bubbles, primarily in Asia. From this and other speculative practices the banks have made windfall profits only one year after they teetered on the brink of collapse.
The banks have used some of these profits to pay back TARP funds in order to escape modest limitations on executive pay. Citigroup and Wells Fargo became the latest Wall Street firms to do so, announcing Monday they would pay back $20 billion and $25 billion, respectively. They join Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley.
Obama also implored the bankers to “close the gap” between their declared support for finance reform and their vocal opposition to the regulatory bill passed by the US House of Representatives last week, even though the proposed law would, if anything, expand possibilities for financial speculation.
Such hypocritical entreaties from the president characterized the meeting. There was no mention of any penalties or consequences to banks that fail to increase their lending. Unsurprisingly, results were slim, with only Bank of America announcing it intends to make $5 billion more available to small and medium-sized businesses, a drop in the bucket compared to the enormous need for capital and liquidity.
Wall Street executives' determination to not lend to the productive sectors of the economy¯while rewarding themselves billions in compensation¯is not a question of morality, nor is it an aberration. It arises from the historical decay of capitalism and its turn to evermore parasitic forms of financial speculation.
While media accounts attempted to present the gathering as an example of Obama “taking on” the bankers, they could not conceal the real relationship of forces. The Obama administration's efforts to put on the show of getting tough produced the opposite image, that of the president as willing supplicant before the masters of Wall Street.
It is significant that Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Mack of Morgan Stanley, and Parsons of Citigroup did not attend in person. While their last-minute cancellations were chalked up to weather¯fog in the Washington DC area delayed some flights on Monday morning¯they more likely aimed a rebuke at Obama over his “fat cats” comments. Parsons was already a substitute for Citi CEO Vikram Pandit, whose decision to skip the event was attributed to his bank's negotiations with the Treasury to pay back TARP.
“The President has real problems only the banks can help him solve,” according to Time magazine. “On jobs, housing and the strength of the economy, he needs bankers to change their behavior, and there's only so much he can do to force them. So when he sits down with the financial industry elite on Monday, he may talk tough, but he'll also be asking for their help.”
The admission that a democratically elected president has no power over a handful of financiers is an acknowledgement of the oligarchic character of US society. The financial aristocracy in fact controls every lever of state power and dictates economic and social policy. Obama is their representative.
Watching the Senate press last week toward passage of President Obama's universal health care, my Red Alert is forced to contemplate whether a socialist agenda is intending to bankrupt the United States with trillion-dollar social-welfare programs there is no way the country will ever be able to afford.
In "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality," I clearly established that Barack Obama is trained in the Saul Alinsky "Rules for Radicals" methodology of lying to voters to disguise a true intent to transfer wealth from the "haves" to the "have nots."
But as we watch President Obama expand the social-welfare state to an unprecedented level, the question is this: Is Barack Obama silently pursuing the Cloward-Piven strategy with an intent to destroy private-enterprise capitalism itself?
A central theme of "America for Sale: Fighting the New World Order, Surviving a Global Depression and Preserving USA Sovereignty" is that the nation is bankrupt, with a $65.5 trillion negative net worth and trillion-dollar deficits stretching for a decade or more ahead.
Put simply, there is no way the U.S. government can possibly honor current obligations in programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, to say nothing of the universal health care being pushed relentlessly by the Obama administration, despite continued and growing voter resistance.
Now the bond-rating agencies are warning the United States that unless trillion-dollar federal budget deficits are curtailed soon, the United States may lose a triple-A credit rating.
Could it be that President Obama intends to bankrupt the USA in order to destroy free-enterprise capitalism itself?
The only other alternative would be to charge the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress with incompetence, arguing that somehow the president and the Democratic Party were not responsible for understanding that their unprecedented spendthrift ways would necessarily cause the United States to become economically insolvent.
The Cloward-Piven strategy
On May 2, 1966, two Columbia University sociologists, professor of social work Richard A. Cloward, and his then-research associate Frances Fox Piven, wrote a pivotal article in The Nation, articulating "a strategy to end poverty."
In what became known as the Cloward-Piven strategy, the article advocated a revolutionary approach to mobilizing the poor in a form of class warfare against capitalist forces viewed as exploiting labor and oppressing the poor.
David Horowitz, a long-time student of leftist political movements in the United States, characterized the Cloward-Piven strategy as seeking "to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse."
Cloward and Piven argued a "guaranteed annual income" should be established as an entitlement for the poor, a right the poor could assert and demand to be paid.
Arguing for massive registration of poor in existing social-welfare programs, Cloward and Piven sought to create a crisis that could be exploited to obtain a fundamental redistribution of power in favor of the "have-nots."
Advancing their socialist revolutionary aims, Cloward and Piven explained the crisis they sought "can occur spontaneously (e.g., riots) or as the intended result of tactics of demonstration and protest which either generate institutional disruption or bring unrecognized disruption to public attention."
The Cloward-Piven strategy sought to apply the tactics of the revolutionary civil-rights movement, including urban riots, to the poor as a whole, transcending interest-group politics defined by race to involve interest-group politics defined by class.
Radical black activist George Wiley created the National Welfare Reform Organization, or NWRO, to implement the Cloward-Piven strategy.
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Sol Stern, writing in the City Journal, noted that foot soldiers hired by the NWRO were successful in expanding welfare rolls from 4.3 million to 10.8 million by the mid-1970s, with the result that in New York City, where the strategy had been particularly successful, "one person was on the welfare rolls ... for every two working in the city's private economy."
James Simpson, a former White House staff economist and budget analyst, writing in American Thinker, argued the "vast expansion of welfare in New York City that came of the NWRO's Cloward-Piven tactics sent the city into bankruptcy in 1975."
Is President Obama intentionally placing so many on the government dole, including the inclusion of illegal aliens in Obamacare, because he wants to bankrupt the United States to destroy the private enterprise system, following the lead of the leftist radicals that employed the Cloward-Piven strategy to bankrupt New York City in the 1970s?
ACORN, Barack Obama, and the Cloward-Piven strategy
William Rathke, the founder of ACORN, was a member of the radical Students for a Democratic Society before he dropped out of Williams College in 1968 to join the anti-draft movement protesting the Vietnam War.
He next worked for George Wiley's NWRO in Springfield, Mass., before leaving for Little Rock, Ark., in 1970, where he formed the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now, an organization whose name he morphed into the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, to form a national entity.
With ACORN, Rathke resolved to apply the Cloward-Piven strategy to working as a "community organizer" in the effort to recruit radicals to register to vote, often fraudulently, as Democrats to vote in local, state and national elections.
Rathke's idea was to create a crisis in voter registration similar to the crisis in registration for welfare benefits that Cloward and Piven had initially sought to cause. Funded heavily by George Soros through his Open Society Institute, ACORN has followed a three-point strategy James Simpson described as follows:
Register as many Democratic voters as possible, legal or otherwise, and help them vote, multiple times if possible;
Overwhelm the system with fraudulent registrations using multiple entries of the same name, names of deceased and names selected at random from the phone book; and
Make the system difficult to police by lobbying for minimal identification standards required of voters arriving at polling stations to vote.
In 1992, while he was working as a community organizer in Chicago, Barack Obama headed the Chicago operations of Project Vote!, an ACORN effort to register voters nationally. In Chicago, Obama had his biggest impact registering African-American voters on Chicago's South Side.
George Soros attacks capitalism
That Barack Obama may intend to undermine the free-enterprise system itself is not so far-fetched when we consider the attack George Soros, one of candidate Obama's primary financial supporters, has launched on capitalism.
Now billionaire hedge-fund financier George Soros has decided to spend $50 million to fund a new institute designed to undermine the free-enterprise system, according to a report published last week in Newsweek.
The Soros-funded "Institute for New Economic Thinking" is designed to make research grants and fund symposiums on the need for central government control of the economy, advancing an argument from the political left that the private economy is in need of the re-regulation to prevent the occurrence of another global economic recession.
The move re-enforces a Democratic Party argument that the Bush administration's deregulation of the economy was the cause of the Economic Panic of 2009, even though President Bill Clinton accomplished the major regulatory reform of recent decades – namely, the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.
In a revealing passage, Soros identifies his antipathy to George W. Bush in terms fashioned from Popper's Open Society philosophy: "When I heard President Bush say, 'Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists,' I was reminded of Nazi propaganda."
Fundamentally, Soros criticized the "Bush agenda" as being "nationalistic," too focused on pursuing narrowly defined U.S. nation-state interests. Soros was particularly vituperative toward Vice President Cheney, whom he demonized as "the power behind the throne" and characterized as working with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to largely succeed "in imposing their views on Bush."
Asking how he came to have a position of influence on world affairs, Soros honestly admitted, "I have made a lot of money." Nor has Soros been shy about spending his money to advance his political agenda.
Since founding the Open Society Institute in 1979, Soros has spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding this flagship organization, which in turn has funneled millions to organizations dedicated to advancing causes of the political left, including MoveOn.org and the Center for American Progress.
In 2004, Soros admittedly spent several hundred of millions of dollars in the attempt to prevent George W. Bush from winning a second term as president. Soros was an early supporter of Barack Obama, holding a fundraiser for Obama at his home and donating the maximum legal amount even before Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate. In 2006, Soros urged Obama to run for president.
When Obama declared his candidacy, Soros organized a meeting with other financiers in Soros's Wall Street office. His strong and early financial support of candidate Obama has given Soros a strong voice in the Obama White House.
Soros has offered many different proposals for overhauling the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. Yet, always his conclusion is the same: Global financial markets require international regulation from a new generation of world-governance organizations capable of imposing global political control over global economics.
On December 11, 2009, a federal judge ruled that Congress had unconstitutionally cut off all federal funds to ACORN. The judge issued an injunction stopping federal authorities from continuing to cut off past, present and future federal funds to the community organization.
ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and its allies in 75 cities will again have access to millions of federal dollars to counsel people facing foreclosure, seeking IRS tax refunds, and looking for affordable low cost housing. ACORN, which has received about $54 million in government grants since 1994, will be able to apply for new federal programs just like any other organization.
The court ruled that Congress violated the U.S. Constitution “by singling out ACORN and its affiliates for severe sweeping restrictions” and that such action constitutes illegal punishment or a “bill of attainder.”
What is a bill of attainder? Even most lawyers have no idea. Bills of attainder are acts of congress which unilaterally punish an individual or organization. Essentially Congress acts as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner.
The U.S. Constitution has prohibited bills of attainder since 1787. U.S. founders objected to bills of attainder because in England Parliament passed many such bills against political enemies, used them to throw people in prison and even execute them without trial.
Congress punished ACORN without even trying to figure out if any laws had been broken or allowing the 500,000 member organization to defend itself.
What about protecting the taxpayers against fraud? As the court pointed out, there are many legal ways for the government to investigate and terminate federal contractors which have been proven to engage in fraud or illegal activity.
But Congress did not want to wait for trials or proof or to allow ACORN due process.
Conservatives developed a voting majority and imposed punishment without a hearing or anything.
ACORN has been a target of right-wing politicians for years. Conservatives hate ACORN primarily because it registered over two million people to vote since 2003 and because it has an overwhelming African American, working class, democratic-voting, membership.
Fox News is obsessed with ACORN. Google Fox News and ACORN and you will see over two million hits. Google Glenn Beck and ACORN and you get over a million hits, six hundred thousand for Rush, and three hundred thousand for Michelle Malkin.
Right wing members of Congress accused ACORN of being a “shell game” using millions of taxpayer dollars “to advertise for a political candidate” and which “helped President Obama get elected.”
After a highly dubious right-wing sting operation in September, the conservative media machine overran Congress members, including, sadly, many democrats, and passed the bill of attainder cutting off all federal funds to ACORN and any affiliates, subsidiaries and allies.
Most Congress reps knew full well this was an illegal bill of attainder as it was pointed out in the debates and even by the Congressional Research Office, but voted to let it go through anyway. Representatives Nadler and Grayson and Senator Leahy, among others, repeatedly pointed out that this was unconstitutional. Democrats who voted for the bill of attainder included many who had sought and received help from ACORN members in the past. They have some explaining to do.
Progressives who remained silent while the nation’s largest low income African American community organization was under attack also should re-think their lack of support. Did anyone think that if the right-wingers took down Van Jones and ACORN they would stop there?
What is ahead? Surely the conservative opponents of ACORN will continue to bloviate and continue to try to put ACORN out of business. There will likely be fights galore. But with this ruling the fights will be a little fairer.
ACORN won this case. The U.S. Supreme Court has called the prohibition of congressional bills of attainder a “bulwark against tyranny.” Here the bulwark against tyranny worked to stop the right-wing smear machine.
Taunton second-grader suspended over drawing of Jesus
Father angered by forced psychological evaluation of boy, 8
A Taunton father is outraged after his 8-year-old son was sent home from school and required to undergo a psychological evaluation after drawing a stick-figure picture of Jesus Christ on the cross.
The father said he got a call earlier this month from Maxham Elementary School informing him that his son, a second-grade student, had created a violent drawing. The image in question depicted a crucified Jesus with Xs covering his eyes to signify that he had died on the cross. The boy wrote his name above the cross.
“As far as I’m concerned, they’re violating his religion,” the incredulous father said.
He requested that his name and his son’s name be withheld from publication to protect the boy.
The student drew the picture shortly after taking a family trip to see the Christmas display at the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette, a Christian retreat site in Attleboro. He made the drawing in class after his teacher asked the children to sketch something that reminded them of Christmas, the father said.
“I think what happened is that because he put Xs in the eyes of Jesus, the teacher was alarmed and they told the parents they thought it was violent,” said Toni Saunders, an educational consultant with the Associated Advocacy Center.
Saunders is working with the boy’s parents after a mutual acquaintance referred them to her.
“When I got that call, I was so appalled that I had to do something,” Saunders said.
“They weren’t looking at the fact that this is an 8-year-old child with special needs,” she added. “They made him leave school, and they recommended that a psychiatrist do an evaluation.”
The school, in fact, required the evaluation before the boy could return, the father said.
Maxham School principal Rebecca Couet referred all questions on the matter to the superintendent’s office.
Superintendent Julie Hackett said district policy prevents her from discussing a “confidential matter regarding a student.”
“Generally speaking, we have safety protocols in place,” Hackett said. “If a situation warrants it, we ask for outside safety evaluations if we have particular concerns about a child’s safety. We followed all the protocols in our system.”
Hackett refused to specifically discuss the student’s drawing or the school’s reaction to it.
The father was flabbergasted when he learned his son had to undergo an evaluation.
“When she told me he needed to be psychologically evaluated, I thought she was playing,” he said.
The man said his son, who gets specialized reading and speech instruction at school, has never shown any tendency toward violence.
“He’s never been suspended,” he said. “He’s 8 years old. They overreacted.”
The boy made the drawing and was sent home from school on Dec. 2. He went for the psychological evaluation — at his parents’ expense — the next day and was cleared to return to school the following Monday after the psychological evaluation found nothing to indicate that he posed a threat to himself or others.
The boy, however, was traumatized by the incident, which made going back to school very difficult, the father said. School administrators have approved the father’s request to have the boy transferred to another elementary school in the district.
This is not the first time in recent years that a Taunton student has been sent home over a drawing. In June 2008, fifth-grade student Cullen Smithson was suspended from Mulcahey Middle School for a day after creating a stick figure drawing that appeared to depict him shooting his teacher and a classmate.