What Does the US Corporate Press Do? It Misleads Us and Lies to Us

In order to get the news, Americans need to turn to independent blogs, or overseas sources. Take the case of the miraculous recovery of the US housing market, which has somehow seen a rise in prices despite historically low demand, as exemplified by the historically low mortgage applications. Only a massive and concerted decrease in the supply of housing can bring about such a rise a prices.

Referring to the housing bubble, the Guardian Newspaper of the UK reported, “This rise in price is, by all accounts, artificial. Housing, like all products, responds to the laws of supply and demand. When supply decreases – when there are fewer homes on the market – then prices will rise. This is what is happening now.

There is evidence that lenders are controlling the housing supply by reducing the number of houses for sale. Last year, AOL Real Estate‘s reporting suggested that as many as 90% of available properties were not even really on the market, but just polished for sale and being held back to keep supply low.

Then, last month, three major banks, including Citigroup and Wells Fargo, halted all their sales of homes in foreclosure; this also reduced the supply of homes on the market. The reduction in housing supply, then, is largely artificial, designed by the banks and institutions that hold thousands of houses and thus have the most to gain from higher house prices.

The result is what looks like a housing recovery to the rest of us, but is, in fact, something of a trap. Fitch, the ratings firm, issued a warning that the alleged recovery in housing is moving too fast and could reverse.”

In the United States, the reporting goes something like the following, as exemplified by the Oregonian newspaper’s Elliot Njus. He wrote, ”In fact, negative equity has helped limit the number of homes on the market, which has in turn pushed prices higher.”

Njus is a propagandist, not a reporter, and certainly not a journalist. If Njus was, he would have written in explainable terms what the Guardian reported above, that the big banks have conspired to withhold houses from the market in order to force prices higher, which, coincidentally, is a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. This is called a conspiracy in restraint of trade.

The result is that the 99 percent are illegally being forced to pay higher prices than what an untampered with market would demand, both in terms of the price of the homes, and by the artificial raise in interest rates that has risen upward with the price of homes. In other words, this is a big income redistribution scam that shifts money from the 99 percent to the 1 percent via the higher corporate profits, rising share prices and enhanced dividends.

The big banks have taken a million homes off the US market since 2010, and almost two million more than they held off the market in 2007. The corporate media doesn’t want you to know this, so they give you meaningless blather, as what Njus wrote above on June 13, 2013.

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US Economic Recovery the Weakest Since the Great Depression

The Wall Street Journal continued its role of propaganda machine for the 1 percent by issuing a story about how our current economic recovery is the weakest since the Great Depression.

The Journal picked up the story from the Associated Press, another piece of the propaganda machine of the 1 percent. Other parts of the machine picked up the story, including the Oregonian newspaper, one of the most viciously anti-middle class mouthpieces of the 1 percent.

The purpose of these corporate propaganda machines is to keep any discussion having to do with income redistribution from the 99 percent to the 1 percent under raps. And so, the story of our economic recovery went like this:

“Economic growth has never been weaker in a postwar recovery. Consumer spending has never been so slack. Only once has job growth been slower.

More than in any other post-World War II recovery, people who have jobs are hurting: Their paychecks have fallen behind inflation.

Many economists say the agonizing recovery from the Great Recession, which began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, is the predictable consequence of a housing bust and a grave financial crisis.

Credit, the fuel that powers economies, evaporated after Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008. And a 30 percent drop in housing prices erased trillions in home equity and brought construction to a near-standstill.”

Note that the authors blame the “housing crisis and a grave financial crisis” for our lame economy. There is no mention of the redistribution of income that began during the reign of the “Great Liar,” President Ronald Reagan.

For example, politicians of both political parties know that free trade treaties are vehicles for redistributing income and wealth from the 99 to the 1 percent. These treaties make it easy for US corporations to ship, or create, jobs overseas. The difference between the old, higher wages in the US and the new, lower wages overseas are directed into the bulging wallets of the super rich via higher corporate profits, rising dividends and soaring share prices.

That’s precisely why the 1 percent have been able to rob the 99 percent of much of their income, curtailing the demand for goods and services, making the current recovery the weakest on record.

The 1 percent received about 7 percent of the total income produced in the US thirty-two years ago, but now their ability to purchase legislation (free income redistribution trade treaties, for example) from their plutocrats in public office, such as Wall Street Senator Ron “Hedge Fund Lover” Wyden, have allowed the 1 percent to steal between 27 and 30 percent of the total national income.

Nowadays, the 99 percent receive between 70 and 73 percent of the total national income compared to about 93 percent 32 years ago. By any statistical measurement, the economy was much stronger way back then and the most significant difference between then and now is that a ton of income has been legislatively redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent. Demand for goods and services is weak now compared to then. It’s obvious. That’s how we have such a weak economy.

And that’s why consumer spending is so weak. That’s also why there was a housing bubble, and that’s why there was a “financial crisis.” In other words, the propaganda machine is working overtime to distance their readers and listeners from the reality of income redistribution to pure bull shit. We’re frogs in the water that is slowly heating up, but now the water is near to boiling. Wake up!

One behalf of the 1 percent, the corporate propaganda organs, such as the Wall Street Journal and the Oregonian newspaper, lied to us about Trickle Down Economics, deregulation, free trade and numerous other income redistribution scams. They’re still up to it. Don’t let them lie to you any more.

Related stories

US economic recovery is weakest since World War II–Wall Street Journal

Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone?– Johnhively.wordpress.com

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Boycott the Oregonian newspaper, A Propaganda Conduit of the One Percent

The Oregonian newspaper is the primary propaganda organ of the one percent in the state of Oregon. The newspaper reported today that the Beaverton School District is going to lay off 344 employees. The district is the third largest in the state. What is conspicuous is what the Oregonian chose not to mention; much of the tax base has been shipped overseas via free trade agreements. It’s true that most school funding in Oregon is derived from property taxes, but it’s equally true that if thousands of jobs have been shipped overseas because of free trade agreements, the people who lose those jobs can’t usually afford a house, or their property taxes. Just look at your country. Where is the housing market going? Down. That’s where.

The same thing occurs when an American based company decides to create jobs overseas, rather than here, when free trade agreements open the door to do so. The people that lose their jobs may get unemployment checks and a foreclosed house.

The Oregonian also doesn’t mention that the difference between the old higher wages here, and the new lower wages there, are pocketed by the one percent via higher corporate profits, enhanced dividends and rising share prices. That’s why the free trade agreements are an income redistribution scam. But the Oregonian staff doesn’t want you to know that. The exact same thing holds true when jobs are created overseas by US companies that normally wouldn’t occur without the free trade agreements.

The Oregonian also hides the fact that they endorse politicians such as Congressman Earl Blumenauer and Senator Ron Wall Street Wyden. Wyden has never met an income distribution trade treaty that he hasn’t liked, because his buddies at the Oregonian and on Wall Street like them. Blumenauer votes for most of them.

Apparently, the folks at the Oregonian think the sole purpose of the US economy is to enrich the one percent at the expense of everybody else. The Oregonian is the Fox News of Oregon. It is the propaganda wing of the one percent in the state. Save yourselves, your school districts, your police and other public services. Save your jobs, save your neighbors. Put the Oregonian out of business by not buying it. Boycott!

Related Stories

Beaverton School District to Lay off 344

Why Are Teacher Cut Backs Coming? Blame Free Trade Agreements

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Obama Ordered the Attacks Against the Occupy Movements Last Weekend

By John Hively

The Washington establishment and Wall Street ganged up on main-street when President Barack “Wall Street” Obama authorized the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to organize a coordinated police-state crackdown on the middle class folks of the Occupy movement as if we lived in the old Soviet Union and he was Joe Stalin.

This means the “change” and “hope” on which Obama campaigned for president in 2008 was always a lie, fraud and deceit. That’s always been obvious, but never more so than now. In the war for control of our economic and political destinies, Obama, as usual, has chosen to be an all conquering political mercenary of Wall Street in its continuous and parasitic raping and pillaging of the livelihoods and futures of the adults and children of the patriots of the middle class.

At some point prior to the police attacks on the Occupy movement, it’s likely the parasites of Wall Street got nervous about the movement and called upon their investor class president to voice their concerns. It wasn’t difficult to convince him to use the power of the state to attempt to eradicate the middle class threat of the Occupy Movement. Wall Street has given Obama more money than they have given to all the Republican Party candidates combined so far during the 2012 election cycle.

But Obama had to be careful. He needs the votes of working people to win reelection. So he can’t let us know that he is the latest master mind of our financial and political rape and pillage by the 1 percent; but only one person could have authorized DHS to plan the attacks and that person is Obama.

The Department of Homeland Security is a cabinet level position. Does anybody really think the crackdown wasn’t discussed during cabinet meetings, or in conversations between the DHS head, Janet Napalitano, and Obama.

Obama chose to let his underling Napalitano do his dirty work, but not until after the 1 percent had used their corporate media to launch a public relations assault to paint the Occupiers as shiftless, homeless, drug abusers; not to mention criminal thugs. The corporate media throughout the nation swift boated the Occupiers by attributing any alleged rise in crime anywhere near the Occupy encampments to the Occupiers themselves, without so much as a scrap of evidence to support their claims. For example, the Oregonian newspaper, a propaganda outlet of the 1 percent, followed their orders to perfection in their slanderous attempts to turn public opinion against the Portland Occupiers.

As the public relations campaign began, at Obama’s behest, DHS officials called a meeting or meetings with eighteen city mayors, who then developed a coordinated plan and timing of the attacks, which are now history.

One thing is obvious, or rather more obvious. Obama is Wall Street’s president. He’s not ours. He never was. There’s something worse; a vote for Obama is a vote for the barons of Wall Street and a vote for middle class destruction.

It’s true all the Republican candidates are also in bed with Wall Street, like prostitutes, like Obama. But one has to remember that only the zealously anti-communist Richard Nixon could go to China. A Republican president could never privatize Social Security, or harm middle class people in the manner that a Democratic president could, because only a Democrat could do that, or pass NAFTA, or pass the Telecommunications Act. Obama might be a greater danger to working people in his second term than any Republican because he won’t need their votes ever again.

Maybe we need an Occupy candidate for 2012. Even if the Democrats lose the White House because of the candidacy of an Occupier, what have working people got to lose? How about nothing? We’ll either get a Republican or Democrat Wall Street candidate. The establishment of an Occupier political party and a 2012 presidential candidate could be the beginning of something important, like building a movement from the ground up and putting a real man or woman of the people in the white house in 2016.

For additional information, click the links below.

Homeland Security, FBI, others involved in coordinated crackdown of Occupy movement

Was Homeland Security involved in the Crackdown on Wall Street?

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Occupy Portland Gets Notice of Eviction Under Pressure

Portland Mayor Samuel Adams has announced a deadline of 12:01 am Sunday to leave their encampment or be forcibly evicted. The mayor seems to have been sympathetic to the Occupy Portland, but he is under pressure from powerful members and supporters of the one percent.

The most publicly vocal of these seems to be the Oregonian newspaper. Based on what the editors have written about ending Occupy Portland, as well as their support for the outsourcing of jobs and reducing the wages and benefits of working people, it would appear that the Oregonian was taken over by sycophants of the Koch Brothers and Rupert Murdoch. The Oregonian is clearly the local propaganda arm of the One Percent in their war against the middle class.

Adams does not seem to be on board with the Koch Brothers, but he is under pressure and apparently will act on Sunday.

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