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Archive for January, 2015

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Video: Why Elizabeth Warren Should Run For President

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THE PRIMARY PURPOSE OF THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP IS TO INCREASE INCOME AND WEALTH INEQUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES. THAT’S WHY PRESIDENT OBAMA AND THE REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP WANT CONGRESS TO APPROVE FAST TRACT LEGISLATION.

When a bill is fast tracked, it cannot be amended or filibustered. With the approval of fast track legislation, 51 senators can pass the Trans Pacific Free Trade Agreement (TPP), which the vast majority of Democratic senators are against, and which the vast majority of American voters are against. By passing Fast Track legislation, the Democrats in the senate will not be able to filibuster this income redistribution scam, so some Democratic senators who want to vote with the Republicans, but whose voters back home don’t want them to, won’t need to vote for the TPP in order to give it enough votes (60 votes) to bypass a filibuster. Nice scam huh?

In other words, President Obama is working with the Republican Party to defeat the Democratic Party. Is this a Democratic president or a Republican president?

The TPP is the largest income and political power redistribution agreement in world history. The TPP will redistribute income and political power from the 99 to the 1 percent. Hundreds of thousands of jobs will be exported under this agreement, and the difference between the old higher wages and the new lower wages will go into the pockets of the 1 percent via higher corporate earnings, rising share prices, and surging dividends.

In addition, the TPP will will take voting rights away from you. You’ll not be able to vote on the state and local levels for such things as health, safety and labeling laws.

There are, of course, many other onerous things that we’ll need to endure if TPP is approved, such as higher pharmaceutical prices. Most of the provisions of this agreement are secret, except to the 600 corporate lobbyists included at the negotiating table.

If congress approves fast track legislation, congress will not have a robust debate on the merits and faults of this agreement, because the president, Wall Street Democrats like Ron Wyden, and most of the Republican Party don’t want this debate to occur. It might cause a surge in public opinion against this agreement.
Because of the sheer size of the deal, it would be miraculous if any member of Congress actually reads and understands the content. The TPP will fail under its own weight without fast track, so it becomes imperative to stop the fast tracking of the TPP.

If the TPP passes, it will make our already difficult job of transforming government into a real democracy that much harder. From every corner of America, every issue group, every patriot, our duty in the near future is to stop the TPP fast track.

So click on the following link, call your senators, as well as your congressman or congresswoman, and tell them to vote against fast track. Contacting the Congress

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The Oregonian newspaper recently published an op-ed against raising the state minimum wage. The Oregonian is the largest newspaper in the state. The Oregonian is a perfect example of how the 1 percent divide and conquer. They divide us over social issues, while arguing for legislation and trade agreements that redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent.

The primary argument in the op-ed was that raising the minimum wage would raise the wages of tens of thousands of Oregonians, which would then make them ineligible for the public benefits they receive due to their low wages, which would then negate the impact of a higher wage.

In more logical terms, the author was arguing that the public should pay subsidies to the employees of businesses, rather than compel businesses to pay higher wages. The author was arguing that the public should help defray the cost of business with tax dollars going to employees, to keep their wages low, so as to push business profits higher.

Nice third world thinking.

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The Republican’s in congress have been blustering and proposing measures about border security and immigration reform since they have come into power. It’s all hogwash. Okay, it’s pure unadulterated bull shit.

The Republicans want to lower wages in the United States for the 99 percent, and redistribute the difference between the old wages and the new lower wages into the pockets of their billionaire buddies. So do plenty of Democrats, like Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden. Republicans also want to undermine health and safety laws, and an undocumented working population can hardly find a voice against undermining these laws. That’s why the Republicans really are against immigration reform, or fixing border security. They want to continue the current system of keeping millions of people undocumented, and welcoming new arrivals, so as to continue pushing wages down.

Otherwise, the Republicans would:

* Make it a felony to enter the United States undocumented, which many nations already do. In Mexico, it’s a one to two year prison sentence for entering the nation undocumented the first time. This law would likely reduce undocumented immigration by 90 percent, if enforced.

* Would broadcast loudly that any sort of amnesty would reduce the wages of American citizen’s for eleven years, and reduce the gross domestic product of the United States for eleven consecutive years, according to a study by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). See The Economic Impact of S. 744, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act–Congressional Budget Office, giving a strong rationale for the Republicans to rally the troops against undocumented immigrants, but that’s not going to happen.

* would broadcast loudly that the last amnesty for undocumented workers reduced average American wages for eleven years.

* would pass a law requiring all businesses to use the highly accurate and successful E-Verify system, but that would push a lot of undocumented immigrants out of the job markets, thereby reducing the supply of labor, and raising wage rates.

The Republicans, however, don’t want to mention of these things because:

* They want to lower the wages of US workers, as well as undermine US health and safety laws, because those laws undermine profits.

* Building fences and holding tanks for an increasing undocumented population is big business because most of those things are privatized.

* In other words, keeping people undocumented is big business.

The same can be said for the Democratic Party. They also want to lower American wages, which is what President Obama has done according to the CBO report by allowing up to five million undocumented immigrants to stay and work in the United States. The president’s actions have also likely encouraged more people to arrive undocumented in the United States. According to Pew Hispanic Research poll a few years ago, 80 percent of Mexican adults said they would rather live in the United States than Mexico.

So the president’s actions will also keep the profitable business of catching and holding undocumented immigrants going strong far into the future, even after the US supreme court invalidates his orders.

This issue keeps Americans divided between the law and order Republican grass roots and the bleeding heart liberals. The issue is really about profits, divide and conquer the grassroots, and to keep us from seeing the real picture of income and wealth inequality.

The two parties used to divide us over abortion, but in recent polls, only 1 percent of Americans considered abortion to be a major issue. Undocumented immigration, and immigration in general, were higher up in the polls than abortion. That’s why illegal immigration is the new abortion in the sense that it is a divisive issue that keeps our eyes off the economic prize, and other issues, such as income and wealth inequality, which have been brought about by legislation in the federal government.

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This is the reason why President Roosevelt successfully pushed for a 90 percent top marginal tax rate, to ensure the success of democracy for everybody, not just the rich.

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Why do we have so much inequality of income and wealth today? The Reagan tax cuts unleashed billions of dollars into the political markets on behalf of the rich. The result has been massive corruption in government in all three branches, and both major political parties are now train wrecks of corruption. The result is large numbers of legislation and international income redistribution agreements falsely label trade agreements. These agreements are designed to redistribute income and wealth from the 99 to the 1 percent. That’s why and how the 1 percent steal over 36 percent of the income people produce in the USA yearly, compared to 8 percent in 1980. That’s also why the economy is historically weak.

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is the latest scam being pushed by the 1 percent through their President Barack Obama, as well as Wall Street Senator’s Ron Wyden, Orrin Hatch and Mitch McConnell. Among other things, the TPP will:

* TPP will give incentives for US corporations to export millions of US jobs. The Federal Reserve estimates that 28 million US jobs were exported between 1990 and 2010.

* TPP will increase US income and wealth inequality. The 1 percent have already taken 95 percent of all income growth in the United States since 2009. When the above jobs were exported, the difference between the old higher US wages and the new lower wages will go straight into the pockets of the 1 percent via higher corporate profits, rising dividends and surging share prices.

* Those lost jobs will no longer be paying the taxes for our infrastructure, social safety nets, schools, fire and police, but those lost jobs will push the stock markets higher.

* TPP will effectively eliminate your voting rights on local and state issues since it will unconstitutionally grant investors of the 0.01 percent special privileges to challenge labeling and health and safety local laws and regulations of the 99 percent, which most people call voter suppression, but in this case it should be called voter elimination,

* TPP will offer new monopolies for Big Pharma to raise medicine prices they charge you (which redistributes income from the 99 to the 1 percent),

* TPP will limit food safety standards (which redistributes and transforms your health into the profits of the 1 percent),

* TPP will block financial regulations aimed at preventing the next financial crisis (which will make it easier for Wall Street to redistribute your income and wealth to the 1 percent).

* TPP will destroy millions of jobs in Latin America (230,000 in the textile industry of El Salvador alone) forcing millions of undocumented immigrants into the United States.

* The result of the above will be to depress wages in both North and South America, all to the benefit of the 1 percent, and all at the expense of the 99 percent.

* And we can’t forget that TPP will increase the already massive US trade deficit with other nations, which is supposed to be a bad thing. The exported jobs will be producing goods overseas rather than here, and then US corporations will export their products from China and Vietnam into the United States, exacerbating the current trade deficit.

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Inequality in the United States began with a simple idea; give more money to the rich so they can purchase the favors of government. This was called the Reagan tax cuts. The rich used their money to purchase more tax breaks in the political markets, and that’s exactly what the political area is; a market with buyers and sellers.

When President Franklin Roosevelt pushed for a 90 percent top marginal tax rate, he did it to act as a maximum wage, to save democracy from being purchased by the rich. Reagan let the genie out of the bottle.

Since Reagan, all sorts of legislation has been passed to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent, including income redistribution treaties, falsely referred to as trade agreements.

Now President Obama is pushing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the largest income redistribution agreement of all time. Since 2009, the rich have stolen 95 percent of all income growth. The TPP will increase this inequality. Wall Street Senator’s Orrin Hatch, Mitch McConnell and Ron Wyden are all for the TPP, since they have a history of siding with legislation that redistributes income from the 99 to the 1 percent.

In other words, Reagan’s tax cuts began rigging the game of economics and politics in favor of the 1 percent.

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The polls closed in Greece on Sunday and Syriza has become the first anti-capitalist party in European history to win a national election. The party won 149 seats in the parliament, and will work with another smaller right-wing party to ensure a majority. Syriza is more anti-bailout than anti-capitalist.

Alexis Tsipras was sworn in at a ceremony this morning. The 40-year-old former Communist party youth activist, student leader and firebrand, becomes Greece’s youngest prime minister. He has also broken with tradition by not being sworn in by the head of Greece’s orthodox church, Archbishop Ieronymos. A self-described atheist, Tsipras, who also refused a religious marriage ceremony with his long-time partner, Betty, made a courtesy call to the cleric at 2.30 pm.

Syriza promises to wipe out the debt imposed by bankers and reverse cuts to social services that have resulted in misery. Now corrupt bankers will go on trial, we hope. Democracy will reign once again in Greece, austerity for the 99 percent is at an end, and let us hope that justice will be served and austerity for the corrupt 1 percent, and prison terms as well, will be meted out.

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