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Archive for August, 2013

From “Food and Water Watch:

“The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a new “free trade” agreement being negotiated between the U.S. and 11 other Pacific Rim countries. Like other Free Trade Agreements, this one is basically a permanent power grab by corporations and financial companies that will make it impossible for the citizens of countries joining the TPP to choose what laws and rules they want to live under.

For Americans, it would lead to increased gas exports and increased imported foods, while undermining our domestic laws and increasing the financialization of nature.

TPP was started under George W. Bush but is being pushed — hard — by President Obama. In fact, he is pushing it so hard that he has indicated he will seek “fast track authority” for the negotiating, meaning that he, and whoever comes after him, would be able to negotiate as desired without oversight by Congress. Isn’t the reason our constitution created three federal branches — executive, judicial and legislative — to ensure checks and balances?”

The economic game is rigged against the 99 percent and has been increasingly so for thirty-three years. Now Phil Knight of Nike, the Koch Brothers, Monsanto, The Walton family of Walmart, President Obama, Wall Street Senators Ron Wyden, Diane Feinstein and Mitch McConnell, Wall Street Congress dupes Nancy Pelosi, Earl Blumenauer, Paul Ryan and John Boehner (pronounced Bone-ner), and many more members of the 1 percent are seeking to rig the game against the 99 percent even more with the Trans Pacific Partnership. Don’t let it happen. This could be the final battle in their War Against the Middle Class, the final move to drive most of the 99 percent into banana republic status. Don’t let these most secret trade negotiations in history destroy us. Massive political corruption is driving us to this end. Fight back.

Please click on the link below, fill out the form at the bottom of the page you come to, “and edit the letter as you wish to urge your congressional representatives to stop Obama’s plan to “fast track” secret trade deals.”

Urge Congress to Stop Obama’s Secret Trade Deals–Food and Water Watch

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As you can see from the graph above, the 1 percent owned 34.6 percent of all the US wealth, which includes homes, cars, boats, ships, stocks, bonds, gold, politicians, U.S. Supreme Court Justices, and other things. You can’t afford to buy stuff if you don’t have the cash. The reason the rich have so much cash to buy all of this stuff is because Wall Street Senators like Ron Wyden and Mitch McConnell are constantly pushing legislation that redistributes income from the 99 to the 1 percent. They’ve had spectacular success at doing this.

When it comes to accumulating wealth at the expense of everybody else, note that the figures in the graphs above and below are out of date. The 2007 data is the most current. It doesn’t reflect the impact of the housing market crash, massive unemployment, and the rise of permanently out of work members of the 99 percent, all of which has occurred due to the corrupt and bankrupt economic policies championed by Wyden, McConnell and others, like Wall Street Congessman Earl Blumenauer.

In 2007, the bottom 60 percent of US citizens had 65 percent of their net work tied up in their homes. The top 1 percent had only 10 percent of their bucks invested in their homes. The bottom 60 percent lost a lot more during the crisis. However, the 1 percent have pulled the levers of political power to further swell the share of total net worth they hold.

The Federal Reserve, for example, handed out $26 trillion in loans to banks and rich investors that have never been paid back. And they never will be. See Breakdown of-the-26-trillion-the-federal-reserve-handed-out-to-save-rich-incompetent-investors-but-who-purchase-political-power–JohnHIvely.wordpress.com. The Fed also continues to purchase billions of dollars of worthless home mortgage backed bonds from the rich at their face value. In other words, the Fed insured that the value of assets possessed by the 1 percent rocketed upward, while the bottom 99 percent slumped.

One other thing needs to be mentioned. The relatively recent rise of the stock market has inflated the wealth of the 1 percent by massive amounts, and this has occurred at the expense of the 99 percent. Wages are still dropping for working folks, their jobs are still being shipped away, and the difference between the old, higher US wages and the new, lower overseas wages are still going into the pockets of the 1 percent via record corporate profits, increased dividends and surging share prices. This money gets invested right back in the stock market, bidding up share prices prices, and inflating the wealth of the 1 percent further, all at the expense of the 99 percent.

There’s too much for me to mention in this post about everything else being redistributed to the 1 percent from the 99 percent.

The result of all of this is simple. Nowadays, in the summer of 2013, the top 1 percent own somewhere between 50 and 60 percent of the total US wealth, those in the 90-99 percent own about 25-30 percent range, and the bottom 90 percent are most likely in the 15-20 percent range.

BTW, your government, Wall Street and the corporate media don’t want you to know this.

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The chart above shows it all. Productivity measures the amount of goods and services produced per worker. Productivity has grown over the years, but the only people who have gained from it are members of the 1 percent. This is because they’re continuously using their political clout to buy legislation from corrupt, depraved, politicians, such as Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden, and Wall Street Congressman Earl Blumenauer.

Both of these boys are supposed to represent the people of Oregon, but they don’t. They represent Wall Street on all economic matters, but they fool the people of Oregon by vocally, but not legislatively, supporting them on all social matters. The local propaganda media, The Oregonian newspaper, always covers up this little charade so as to mislead its readers as to the real purpose of Blumenauer and Wyden being in political office: to redistribute income and wealth from the 99 to the 1 percent via legislation.

Political corruption is why the 99 percent, the people who produce all the goods and services, haven’t received any real pay increases since 1979. That is, when inflation is factored in to pay raises, real spending power has been stagnant. It’s really worse than that because most citizens over the last thirty-three years have also experienced declines in their health benefits and the elimination of their retirement packages, all of which have been redistributed to the 1 percent.

In the meantime, the people who produce no goods or services, the super rich parasites erroneously known as the “elite parasites,” have stolen all of the profits produced by massively increased productivity growth throughout the economy and throughout the decades through their purchases in the political markets, and the easily bought off corporate wing of the US Supreme Court.

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A series of lawsuits have been, and are being, brought, against companies labeling their foods “natural,” or all-natural, when they are in fact loaded with GMO ingredients, according to Conan Milner, reporting in the latest issue of Epoch Times.

In July, Naked Juice Co. agreed to pay $9 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought against it for using the “all-natural” on its labels. The products of this company are loaded with Genetically Modified Ingredients. Naked Juice is owned by Pepisco, whose products, such as Pepsi Cola, are loaded with GMO ingredients.

100 percent of studies that are not funded by the producers of GMO products show these things are harmful to human health. As early as 1995, USDA scientists concluded this, as well as concluding GMO will cause allergies.

There’s nothing natural about GMOs. According to Mark Kastel, director of Cereal Crimes, “‘GMOs by definition are not natural, because they’re talking about genetically manipulating a plant, or conceivably an animal, that becomes an organism that’s never existed on this planet before. That doesn’t seem very natural to me.'”

There’s nothing natural about taking a salmon gene and inserting it into a seed that grows into a plant that produces fruit or vegetables. There’s nothing natural about taking a man made toxin, such as Monsanto‘s Bt and Ht toxins, inserting it into seeds plants, and remain in the plant’s fruit when you eat them. What’s natural about that?

One other point needs to be made. Food and dink companies use GMOs because it’s cheaper and more profitable to use these harmful ingredients rather than natural ingredients. Food prices are going up, not down. And yet, the use of GMOs ensures the cost to produce the food is going down. That means profit margins are widening. GMOs are one of the reasons companies like McDonalds are having record profits. In other words, using GMOs is another way for the parasite 1 percent to redistribute income from the 99 percent by simply poisoning us and taking our money in the process.

PS — Normally I would have a link to this story, but I can’t find it. However, it is on the front page of the August 23-29 street edition of Epoch Times.

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The 1 percent, or rather the top 0.25 percent, of the US population have received the vast bulk of income growth in the US since 1979.

That’s because they’ve held, and continue to hold, all of the mechanisms of legislative power, in the congress and in the white house. They’ve purchased the legislative favors of politicians, such as the corrupt Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden. He’s the face of corruption in government, but the same is true of the US Supreme Court, 100 percent of Republicans in congress, 80 percent of Democrats in congress, and all of the Democrats whose power resides in the white house, such as the president and the attorney general .

Wyden always sides with big money in their war against the middle class. And so he votes to redistribute income from the middle class to the 1 percent via free trade treaties, privatization scams, and deregulation crap. Free trade is really corporate trade, which means lowering wages and reducing standards of living in the process. That’s because free trade treaties are an income redistribution scam, pure and simple, and Wyden knows this. He’s not a stupid boy. These treaties legally pave the way for shipping US jobs overseas to lower wage nations, as well as creating jobs overseas rather than here.

The difference between the old, higher, US wages and the new, lower, wages overseas goes into the pockets of the 0.1 percent via higher corporate profits, rising dividends and surging share prices. The citizens who’ve lost their jobs are lucky to get unemployment insurance, and they might not get a job for years. Wyden and every member of congress and every politician in the white house for the last thirty years know all of this, and yet they still continue to vote with the 1 percent.

From Mother Jones

Wyden’s free trade income redistribution scams have nearly destroyed the US economy by weakening the demand for goods and services. Nowadays, thanks to Wyden and his corrupt political friends such as Republicans Paul Ryan and John Boehner, the 99 percent receive roughly 68 percent of the total income of the US, compared to 92 percent in 1979. We don’t have the income to demand more than we can, and so job growth is historically weak under President Barack Obama, another servant of Wall Street. Look at the graph below and you’ll see exactly what Wyden has done to the 99 percent. And he plans to wreck more of the middle class on behalf of his Wall Street masters.

Remember, the figures in the above graph are from 1979-2005. Vastly more income has been redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent since then, thanks to George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Scheming Ron Wyden, and a ton of other corrupt officials in Washington D.C.

Under Wyden’s free trade scams, massive amounts of income have been redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent since 1979. Wyden’s scams are destroying the middle class, as well as the nation. He’s not going to change, he’ll always be a Wall Street warrior against the middle class. The graph above shows how much income Wyden has redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent on a yearly basis via legislation in the right column. The left column shows how much his policies have redistributed income from the 99 to the 1 percent in total since 1979. However, the left column underestimates the total.

When a job is shipped overseas, or created there instead of here, income is redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent for as long as that job exists, year after year after year. In other words, the income Wyden redistributes to his corporate buddies is a continuous financial bonanza, or financial loop, for so long as the job exists. Wyden, like the rest of congress and the president, steals jobs from somebody who produces something, and gives it to somebody who produces nothing, except the financial strings they use to manipulate Wyden and his congressional cronies like puppets.

So if Wyden redistributes Joe US’s $60,000 a year job and gives it to Wu Chung in China for $4500 a year, Wyden is redistributing the difference of $55,000 a year to rich shareholders. So long as that job remains outside of the US, the rich continue to receive that money year after year after year. Joe US might get unemployment insurance out of the deal, and Wu Chung gets a life time of slave labor.

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Income distribution from Mother Jones

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Oh, where did it all begin? You should be able to pinpoint the complete corruption of government to the Lewis Powell Memo of 1971, which advocated that Big Corporate Money be used to corrupt government, and establish propaganda machines like the Heritage Foundation and the Fox Propaganda Network, come out with rigged reports by newly established think tanks, and essentially take over government and brain-wash the citizens of the United States in the process. Six months after he wrote the memo, President Richard Nixon nominated Powell, an attorney for a cigarette corporation, to become a US supreme court justice. He was a corporate drone, but others like Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice John Roberts followed. In other words, the Supreme Court will always rule exclusively in favor of Big Money over the Constitution and legal precedence, which it has done repeatedly. The government is massively corrupted, and so now it’s a comedic parody.

Check out the video below for what the US government has become since and because of the Lewis Powell Memo.

Bill Moyers video: The Endgame of Democracy

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Happy Birthday Social Security, well, at least a little belatedly. This insurance program became 75 years old on August 14th. It’s probably the most important government program around, especially when it comes to fighting poverty.

While the United States is still in this low grade Depression, the worst since since the Great Depression that spawned Social Security, government safety net programs have been keeping more and more people from falling into poverty.

Social Security is, by far, the most effective anti-poverty program in the United States. Without Social Security, an additional 8.3 percent of Americans, or over 25 million more people, would fall below the SPM poverty threshold. The SPM is a measurement of how great poverty would be without government programs. As you can see from the chart below, Social Security helps lift more people out of the poverty than any other program. Almost 1/4 of all the people living in the USA would be under the poverty level without the program.

Refundable tax credits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, kept 2.5 percent, or nearly 8 million Americans above the SPM poverty threshold. Other programs such as SNAP (food stamps), unemployment insurance, Supplemental Security Income, and housing subsidies also have a significant impact on the ability of families to stay afloat.

The chart is from the Economic Policy Institute.


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As predicted here, the short-lived housing bubble nose-dived in July by 13.4 percent. The big banks have conspired to take over 2 million homes off the market in the last two years. In addition, they’re also no longer throwing people out of their homes when they’ve fallen months behind on their mortgage payments. This way more homes are kept off the market. All of this has enabled the banks to jack up home prices even though demand has been at or near record levels. Demand for all home mortgages continues to plummet since May. Mortgage applications are at record low levels right now, and going down, down and down further. Since demand is so low, the question must be asked, why were home prices going up since 2012. A little research shows the big banksters have been rigging the game to jack up home prices. This has been an income redistribution scam, illegally shifting money from the 99 percent in the form of higher home prices, and shifting it to the 1 percent in the form of higher bank profits, dividends and share prices. Don’t expect the Obama regime to do anything about this illegal scam. It probably doesn’t matter any more, at least not for those in the market. But for those who bought homes at illegally higher prices. This rigged game might be over.

Check out the link below for mortgage applications.

mortgage daily news

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