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Archive for February, 2015

According to Mark Graves, a reporter with the Oregonian newspaper, itself a master of propaganda on behalf of the super rich in their war against the middle class, oil prices have been undergoing a normal, mild seasonal price rise lately, and this accounts for the rise in oil prices of about 30 percent over the last three weeks. In the February 25 edition of the Oregonian newspaper he wrote, “Refineries are in the midst of conducting seasonal maintenance, a process that can limit fuel production and put upward pressure on pump prices.”

However, another source suggests a different scenario for why gas prices are rising. Bloomberg News actually did some investigation and discovered that, “U.S. drillers are idling rigs at a record pace, gutting investment plans and laying off thousands of workers…. The number of rigs drilling for oil in the U.S. dropped by 37 last week to 1,019, the fewest since July 2011, data from Baker Hughes Inc. showed Feb. 20. Since Dec. 5, a total of 556 have been taken out of service. Oil explorers including Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Chevron Corp. have announced spending cuts of almost $50 billion since Nov. 1.”

In other words, US oil corporations are cutting production to jack up prices, because the Saudi’s and other OPEC nations refuse to do so. This is called a conspiracy in restraint of trade, which is illegal. This action also has nothing to do with seasonal maintenance whatsoever since they’re shutting down oil rigs and cutting production.

When was the last time we saw a 30 percent increase in gasoline prices in February due to “Refineries conducting seasonal maintenance? How about never. Just take a look at the graph below.

The graph shows gasoline prices did slide up in price in February, but none of the years shown from 2008 to 2013 demonstrates an rise of 25 percent in the average price of gasoline from February to March.  In 2010 there was virtually no increase in prices.

Therefore, one can see that Bloomberg news report being the more accurate of the two reports. Graves report is either simplistically thought out, or it is a case of pure misleading propaganda. He is factually correct that prices normally rise in late winter and early spring, but this doesn’t entirely account for the bulk of the increase in gasoline prices in the last three weeks.

And this is how the corporate propaganda machines tell you only what they want you to believe, which is often not true at all. Check out the Bloomberg report below the graph.

saudis-bold-gambit-paying-off-just-three-months-later-energy–Bloomberg News

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In a new Associated Press Poll, 68 percent of Americans think taxes should be raised on the rich. According to the poll, most people think the middle class pays too much in federal taxes.

President Obama recently declared that the rich should pay more in taxes, as well. However, it should be pointed out that this was the furthest thing from the president’s mind when his Democrats had control of the House of Representatives and 59 votes in the US senate. It’s easy to propose something when it has no chance of succeeding under Republican domination of both houses of congress. In other words, the president is saying something that cannot occur in an attempt to rally the troops for the 2016 elections, especially since Democratic voters stayed home in the last election, in part because of the failure of the Democrats to want to help the middle class. Will the grassroots be fooled again in 2016? Maybe, but most likely not.

Check out more from the poll at the link below.

Findings from the Latest Associated Press Poll–Associated Press

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And Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden wonders why I call him Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden!

If we are going to defeat the job killing, environmentally devastating, Trans-Pacific Partnership from being railroaded through Congress using Fast Track Authority, then we need to get Senator Wyden to oppose it once again. He was against it before he was for it, so he can change his mind on this, but your voice matters, so call now. This time his vote in the senate matters most to all Americans.

Please make the call to 1-866-502-6055 and tell the senator you are against Fast Track Authority and the international income redistribution scam known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

What is Fast Track Authority? What is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)? Why does Senator Wyden support them? I’m happy you asked.

The fast track negotiating authority for trade agreements is the authority of the President of the United States to negotiate international agreements that Congress can approve or disapprove but cannot amend or filibuster. Debate is also limited. Fast track negotiating authority is a temporary and controversial power granted to the President by Congress. The authority was in effect from 1975 to 1994, pursuant to the Trade Act of 1974, and from 2002 to 2007 by the Trade Act of 2002. Although it expired for new agreements on July 1, 2007, it continued to apply to agreements already under negotiation until they were eventually passed into law in 2011. In 2012, the Obama administration began seeking renewal of the authority.

As for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), we know from leaked documents the TPP is a massive income redistribution scam. The TPP has almost nothing to do with international trade. We know that;

* 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. Currently, the 1 percent are stealing 36+ percent of all income produced in the USA, compared to only 8 percent in 1980. International trade scams and other federal legislation have brought inequality about. For example, 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, K-12 education, higher education (tuition and fees will go up), social safety nets, schools, fire, police, public transportation, social security taxes, 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). Bank of America Stands to Gain From This. The bank will be able to steal more money from you with less regulations, which will increase its profits, dividends and share prices, not to mention CEO bonuses. Bank of America is also spending millions of dollars on lobbyists in support of Fast Track and TPP.

* TPP will roll back the limited environmental regulations negotiated with other nations by the administration of President George W. Bush, which will give President Obama a worse environmental record than his predecessor, according to the Sierra Club.

* 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.

Yes, believe it or not, Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden supports this massive income and political power redistribution scam, as well as Fast Track, and corporate plutocrats such as Oregon Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici, and Congressmen Earl Blumenauer and Kurt Schrader keep saying they haven’t made up their minds. What a corporate plutocrat shocker! Listen below to the video showing Senator Wyden using more than six minutes during a town hall to avoid the question of why he supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

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US Senator Elizabeth Warren and US Congressman Elijah Cummings today announced the launching of the The Middle Class Prosperity Project. Warren pointed out the unequal distribution of income and wealth has been due to the government, which has been rigged (you can say corrupted) to only help the rich at the expense of the middle class.

Warren and Cummings call for reversing some of the inequality which has taken place. Warren pointed out that the government earned over $60 billion in interest from nearly $3 trillion student loans last year, and that this profit subsidizes tax cuts for billionaires. She said that student loans could be renegotiated to reduce the interest rates student pay, and that would help out the middle class. Run! Elizabeth! Run!

Check out the USA Today story by clicking on the link below.

Warren & Cummings: Free the middle class–USA Today

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What more evidence do you need that the US government and our political representatives represent the coprorate elite? Seven US corporations earned a combined $74 billion in 2013, paid their CEOs an average of $17.4 million a year, and received 2.5 percent of their earnings back as tax rebates, or about $1.4 million.

Click on the link below to discover the seven corporations that receive tax rebates on taxes they never paid.

http://www.schwartzreport.net/these-seven-corporations-make-billions-in-profit-and-have-tax-rate-of-negative-2-5-percent/

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How the Corporate Propaganda Machine Works in the United States

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“A network of Republican lawmakers and their rightwing corporate funders are battling behind closed doors to block minimum wage increases in cities across the US, in a step-by-step counter-attack that could cut back the incomes of millions of Americans despite an economic upswing.

According to strategic details obtained by the Guardian, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) – along with its localized sister organization, ACCE – is trying to prevent elected city representatives from raising the minimum wage to levels above those set by their states. The group has launched an aggressive dual-track mission that combines legislation and litigation in what Alec calls a “new battleground” over worker compensation.”

Why would rich people want to stop poor people from earning more money? The answer is simple.

The financial markets are Ponzi schemes. More and more money has to be pumped into the financial markets, or the values of corporate shares that are traded on those markets will crumble into nothingness. For example, if shares of Weyerhauser climb to $50 per share, yet profits go down, more sellers will enter the market than buyers, and the value of the shares go down. However, the process is also true if profits stay the same from one quarter to the next. In which case, there might be exactly as many buyers as sellers of Weyerhauser shares if other stock prices are rising.

Why hold a static stock when when you can sell and purchase shares that are on the rise? The result of static corporate profits (and profits are the key to whether or not share prices rise), is to send share prices down. Weyerhauser’s stock plummeted from $50 to $1 per share from 1929 to 1933, which is when the Ponzi Scheme known as Wall Street collapsed. I demonstrated this in greater detail in The Rigged Game: Corporate America and a People Betrayed.

This is why ALEC opposes increasing the minimum wage anywhere except for shareholders, CEOs and corporate lobbyists. If corporations need to pay workers higher wages, that will reduce profits and potentially send share prices lower. This is also why the 1 percent wage war against the middle class, corrupt government at all levels with their ill-gotten gains, and have their legislators push legislation to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent. This is also why we have much greater inflation today than the government lets us know about, but that’s another story.

Check out the rest of the story from the Guardian by clicking on the link below.

How a powerful rightwing lobby is plotting to stop minimum wage hikes–the Guardian

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About 150 protestors rallied yesterday against the looming Trans-Pacific Partnership, the largest income and political power redistribution scam in US history, which is falsely called an international trade agreement by government plutocrats and corporate hacks. The protestors voiced their disapproval of Fast Track Legislation which might be introduced to congress as early as next week.

Representatives from diverse grass roots organizations converged on the meeting places, which included the Oregon offices of Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden, and Wall Street US House Representatives Earl Blumenauer, Suzanne Bonamici and Kurt Schrader. Labor organizations, religious groups (First Unitarian Church) and environmental groups (Sierra Club), as well as human rights groups, such as Black Lives Matter, sent representatives.

The fast track negotiating authority for trade agreements is the authority of the President of the United States to negotiate international agreements that Congress can approve or disapprove but cannot amend or filibuster. Debate is also limited. Fast track negotiating authority is a temporary and controversial power granted to the President by Congress. The authority was in effect from 1975 to 1994, pursuant to the Trade Act of 1974, and from 2002 to 2007 by the Trade Act of 2002. Although it expired for new agreements on July 1, 2007, it continued to apply to agreements already under negotiation until they were eventually passed into law in 2011. In 2012, the Obama administration began seeking renewal of the authority.

As for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), we know from leaked documents the TPP is a massive income redistribution scam. The TPP has almost nothing to do with international trade. We know that;

* 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. Currently, the 1 percent are stealing 36+ percent of all income produced in the USA, compared to only 8 percent in 1980. International trade scams and other federal legislation have brought inequality about. For example, 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, K-12 education, higher education (tuition and fees will go up), social safety nets, schools, fire, police, public transportation, social security taxes, 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). Bank of America Stands to Gain From This. The bank will be able to steal more money from you with less regulations, which will increase its profits, dividends and share prices, not to mention CEO bonuses. Bank of America is also spending millions of dollars on lobbyists in support of Fast Track and TPP.

* 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.

Yes, believe it or not, Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden supports this massive income and political power redistribution scam, as well as Fast Track, and corporate plutocrats such as Oregon Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici, and Congressmen Earl Blumenauer and Kurt Schrader keep saying they haven’t made up their minds. What a corporate plutocrat shocker!

* 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.

In other words, the TPP has almost nothing to do with trade. It’s about taking away your money, your voting rights, and giving them to the 1 percent.

TPP, in other words, is designed to put more of your money in the hands of the 1 percent, and this money will be used to corrupt government even more while impoverishing you, and redistributing your future and the future of your children to the 1 percent.

You can rest assured, if Fast Track passes, and the TPP passes with it, profits, as well as the tax rebates Bank of America receives, will become greater, and at your expense.

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