The Middle Class Squeeze is a Middle Class Nightmare

The middle class is under siege because your government has been hijacked by the rich and corporations. See the article below for the full story.

Click here for the The Middle Class Squeeze

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If we taxed the rich and corporations at the same rate we did in the 1940s, What would Happen?

The answer to the title of this article is simple. The deficit would be gone. Amazing isn’t it? Instead of raising tax rates to previous levels, the corporate controlled congress and president are negotiating what to cut, and it won’t be the military.

However, right now big money runs the government. So we have an economic crisis that is growing, inequality still growing, and eventually a complete economic collapse will occur that shouldn’t happen if the government was responsible to the people, rather than its wealthy and corporate overlords.

To get a feel for how badly corrupted big money has made congress, the president and the corporate wing of the supreme court, we have the example below.

“A revealing historical incident can introduce our conclusion about the capitalist crisis as it enters Year Five. In May 2011, as gasoline prices rose to between $4 and $5 per gallon, a US Senate committee run by Democrats summoned the heads of major oil companies to testify. The senators asked why the federal government should continue to provide them with special tax loopholes and direct subsidies of $4 billion per year when their companies were earning record high profits. The Democrats had offered a meek plan to merely cut those loopholes and subsidies from $4 to $2 billion per year. After the hearings, the US Senate voted not to cut the loopholes and subsidies at all.”

Click on the story below and read the real story.

Click here for the full story

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The battle of Philedelphia Has Commenced, but the Police Fail to Evict Occupy Philedelphia Today–So Far

Update: As of 6:15, Michael Tracey tweets, “Chief Inspector Joe Sullivan indicates police will *not* be forcibly evicting @OccupyPhilly tonight.”

Following the passing of a 5:00 PM Sunday deadline issued by the City of Philadelphia for the eviction of Occupy Philadelphia protesters from the site where they are encamped near City Hall, police action is expected shortly.

The FireDogLake liveblog reported at 5:33 that according to Michael Tracey (@mtracey), “about 15 police vehicles are at the site outside City Hall. There are a couple vehicles affiliated with Homeland Security. And, then are muncipal [sic] dump trucks there too.”

The liveblog suggests that Philadelphia police are anxious to avoid a violent confrontation and have a tacit agreement with the occupiers that at some point most of the protesters will leave, while those who wish to engage in non-violent civil disobedience will remain and be arrested. A legal team is already prepared to defend them in court.

At 5:44, Michael Tracey tweeted, “A deputy police commissioner just had an informative discussion w/ me re: the department’s tactical response to @OccupyPhilly. NYPD = #fail”

click here for a live feed of the battle of Philedelphia as it unfolds

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The First Amendment has been hijacked by moneyed interests

by Robert Reich

Sunday, November 27, 2011

A funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum: It was hijacked.

According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech, and corporations are now people.

Yet when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, they’re treated as public nuisances – clubbed, pepper-sprayed, thrown out of public parks and evicted from public spaces.

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision last year ended all limits on political spending. Now millions of dollars are being funneled to politicians without a trace.

The limits were eroding even before Citizens United. For years, large corporations have been flooding Washington with lobbyists who bundle individual contributions into a formidable war chest, bankrolling more and more lawmakers’ campaigns.

click here to read the rest of the article, especially now that the Occupy Movement is under seige by the federal government

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The American-Western European Values Gap–Here it is.

From the Pew Research Center and John Hively

“As has long been the case, American values differ from those of Western Europeans in many important ways. Most notably, a new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project finds that Americans are more individualistic and are less supportive of a strong safety net than are the people of Spain, Britain, France and Germany.”

There’s a reason for this. In the USA, there was always amble land to obtain a livelihood as a farmer until about a hundred years ago. Plus, between the founding of the USA in 1776 or anywhere around that time, wages were higher here than in Europe. Europeans didn’t have that western frontier to farm, so they organized into labor unions, which worked together to get what the people wanted. Now the people of the United States find ourselves culturally behind in this regard. But that is changing, hopefully, thanks to the Occupy Movement.

According to Pew, “Americans also are somewhat more inclined than Western Europeans to say that it is sometimes necessary to use military force to maintain order in the world. Moreover, Americans more often than their Western European allies believe that obtaining UN approval before their country uses military force would make it too difficult to deal with an international threat. And Americans are less inclined than the Western Europeans, with the exception of the French, to help other nations.”

These differences between Americans and Western Europeans echo findings from other surveys by the Pew Research Center. However, the current polling shows the American public is coming closer to Europeans in not seeing their culture as superior to that of other nations.

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Super-Committee Meltdown-What You Can Do To Save Social Programs, like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare

By Shawn Sorenson

You’ve probably heard the news. The supercommittee negotiations have broken down. On the one hand, this is good news for progressives because we have avoided massive cuts to vital programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

On the other hand, we know that the supercommittee was unable to reach a deal for one reason and one reason only. Republicans continue to refuse to make the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share — period. They put their oath to “Mr. One Percent Grover Norquist” ahead of their oath to the Constitution, to the other 99 percent, to the good of the country.

So what happens now? Congress, by its own agreement, is required to cut federal spending by $1.2 trillion over the next decade. And here’s the good news: Congress has to cut half a trillion dollars in wasteful Pentagon spending over the next decade. No law has ever required this to happen before.

You’ve worked hard over these past few months to tell Congress to do things like fund job creation, cut big oil subsidies and cut the wasteful Pentagon budget. Now it’s time to make it happen. Pentagon spending must be reined in. We’ve been fighting together to end wasteful Pentagon spending for years, and this could be our best chance to really make it happen.

This budget fight is just beginning. Some Republicans already are threatening to back out on the negotiated agreement, particularly the nearly $500 billion reduction in Pentagon spending. We have a bloated defense budget, which wastes hundreds of billions of dollars on programs that are outdated and obsolete and add nothing to our national security. We KNOW that spending on war and weapons is a lousy way to create jobs too, especially when compared to better ideas like hiring teachers, paying firefighters or investing in road and bridge repair. The President agrees with us, he says he will veto any changes to sequestration. But your Representatives need to hear from you.

Ask your Representatives to keep the Pentagon cuts and vote in favor of the 99% – not the 1% corporate defense contractors. Call your senators and representatives in the House of Representatives now.

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