Last night, July 29 2015, over 100,000 US citizens gathered in house parties, union halls, businesses, and churches to kickoff the Bernie Sanders for president campaign.
I attended the one held at an outdoor business called Backtracker, where an estimated 500 people showed up. Thousands of Oregonians met all over the state in similar meetings. This meeting was duplicated all over the US in over 3500 locations. Most of these events had been maxed out and were no longer taking volunteers.
It was a historic evening — the largest campaign gathering of this election by a huge margin, and also in US history. And at every event, people signed up to volunteer and committed themselves to building a movement capable of winning an election and reclaiming our democracy from the billionaire class.
In American politics, there are two primary sources of power: organized people, and organized money. Last night proved that Bernie has the people and that he’s well organized.
When the people stand together, there is nothing we cannot accomplish, even when the Republican and Democratic leadership, along with their billionaire masters, try to steal the election from Bernie using every vile and illegal trick in the book.
Not only can Bernie win Democratic primary, but in a recent poll, he won against every Republican candiate for president. So Senator Sanders can win the general election. When that occurs, we can ensure that no one who works a full-time job lives in poverty. We can provide education as a right for all Americans, not just wealthy families. We can guarantee health care as a right, not a privilege, in this country. We can solve the minor problems for social security recipients, like raising the amount people receive, simply by eliminating the unconstitutional cap on contributions created for millionaires and billionaires.
Nothing significant in this country happens in terms of change unless a strong grassroots movement takes place. US Senator Bernie Sanders has just initiated one great grassroots movement, which is nothing more than a political revolution.
Check out the video below for more information on those poll numbers.
Something unprecedented is going to happen tonight. Will you be able to say that you were a part of it?
Wednesday, July 29—in 3,146 homes, town squares, coffee shops and union halls, more than 82,000 people who support Bernie Sander’s campaign will participate in their first organizing meeting. They will see Bernie via live video, make new friends and help build the movement that’s taking our country back from the billionaire class.
We’ve got the people on our side—not the billionaires. Your small donations pay for the basic infrastructure that allows this movement to grow and grow and grow.
Here’s what history looks like. Each dot on this map is an organizing meeting happening Wednesday night:
No other presidential campaign has had this many grassroots events this early on in the race—not even President Obama. That’s what I mean when I say tonight will be historic.
At tonight’s organizing meetings, supporters in your community will meet each other and share their stories about why they support Bernie. Then there will be a live video of Bernie speaking about what our next steps will be to build our campaign in your neighborhood.
It’s going to be a big night. Take back your government. Join us.
Only two oil companies want to drill in the Arctic Ocean. One is Shell Oil, and the other is a Russian corporation. Today, activists from Greenpeace rappelled off the St. Johns Bridge in Portland, Oregon to stop an ice breaker set to sail to the Arctic Ocean to help Shell drill for oil in one of the most dangerous and least profitable places in the world for doing so. The patriots were joined below by about fifty activists in kayaks, who also intend to stand in the way of Shell Oil’s assault on the environment.
Based on the above, my guess is that Hilliary will do the bidding of Wall Street, which include redistributing income from the 99 to the 1 percent; and that Bernie will do the bidding of the 99 percent, which suggests he will begin the process of reversing the redistribution of income and wealth from the 99 to the 1 percent that the government has undertaken during the last 35 years of absolute corruption at the hands and dollars of the 1 percent.
Hilliary has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars of speaking fees from Wall Street investment corporations at the rate of $200,000 per hour. Goldman Sachs is one of her biggest employers in this regard.
The AFL-CIO has refused to endorse Hilliary because she has announced on 45 occasions that she is for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the largest income redistribution scam in US history, which is falsely being marketed as a free trade agreement, but which jacks up the prices of many goods citizens will pay for, such as pharmaceutical medicines.
Are the above the only reasons why Canada’s middle class is growing and the US middle class is shriveling? Of course not. Here’s another reason, and the likely biggest factor.
The top 1 percent of Canadians steal slightly more than 10 percent of the total Canadian national income, while the top 1 percent in the US are stealing 37 percent of all income, and this is growing massively since the top 1 percent have stolen 95 percent of all US income growth every year since 2009, thanks to legislation generously supported by US Senators Mitch McConnell and Ron Wyden, such as international income redistribution agreements, commonly and falsely marketed as free trade agreements.
International income redistribution agreements redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent by legally paving the way for US corporations to ship jobs overseas, as well as create jobs overseas, rather than investing in the USA. The difference between the old higher US wages and the new lower overseas wages goes straight to the already fat bank accounts of the 1 percent while the job losers get unemployment insurance if they’re lucky, and lower wages when and if they find a new job.
This legislatively induced US income inequality is the reason why the demand for goods and services is so weak in the USA, and why the current business expansion is the weakest on record, which, not so coincidentally, is also following the previous weakest business expansion in US history. The 99 percent only get 63 percent of income in the USA, and now they have less money to spend, resulting less demand for goods and services, in slower and slower job growth, decreasing wages, less tax dollars for schools, roads, fire, the social security trust fund, and police.
According to the Federal Reserve, 28 million jobs were exported from the US from 1990 to 2010, and millions more have been exported since. That means those jobs don’t pay social security taxes any more, as that income has been redistributed to the super rich. And the rich don’t pay social security taxes on their incomes above $118,500 a year. That means hundreds of billions of dollars of US income are no longer paying social security taxes, resulting in the social security shortfall anticipated in twenty years.
In other words, part of your future retirement income has been redistributed by Wyden and McConnell to the 1 percent via their income redistribution scams. And now the pair are pushing through congress the largest international income redistribution scam of all time, the Trans Pacific Partnership, falsely marketed as a trade agreement.
In the video below, President Franklin Roosevelt talked about the powerful wealthy vested interests that had taken over the USA government prior to his election in 1932. FDR proposed and signed into law legislation that curbed the power and influence of those vested interests in government at all levels, including a 90 percent top marginal tax rate. That reduced the influence of corruption in government, by reducing the money the corrupting people possessed.
President Carter was the last president under the old regime of anti-corruption established by FDR, which is why the US government never fired a missile, or a pistol, or dropped a bomb on another nation during his reign, which, coincidentally, is looking better and better every time we look back at it.
The Reagan tax cuts for the rich unleashed the power of the rich to corrupt government, and that is precisely why, as FDR said in 1936, corporate interests now consider the US government to be a “mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money (corporate interests) is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob (organized crime).” Parenthesis mine.
This is why the US government,
1. demands state wide testing, because it’s highly profitable for the publishing industry, and it redistributes income from local and state taxpayers to rich investors of the publishing industry.
2. wages constant war, because it is highly profitable in that it redistributes income from the taxpayers to the rich shareholders of the war industry.
3. gives fewer grants to university students, because it forces college students to take out more student loans, which redistributes income from the 99 to the 1 percent. Wall Street banks purchase the loans, and then issues bonds against the loans to rich investors. Students pay back the loans, but a large portion of their payment goes to the rich bondholders.
4. raised student loan interest rates from 3.4 to 6.8 percent on all new loans a year ago. Republicans and Democratic lawmakers supported this because it forces students to pay more interest to rich investors.
5. negotiates trade treaties, which are nothing more than income redistribution scam. The treaties pave the legal way for corporations to ship and create jobs overseas, and the difference between the old higher US pay and the new lower third world pay goes straight into the wallets of the 1 percent via higher corporate profits, surging dividends and rising share prices.
The list goes on and on. The federal government is totally corrupted to the core, as are many state and local governments. This corruption is the only cause of the income inequality that has occurred in the USA over the last thirty-five years, whereby 1 percent of the population stole 8 percent of the total income produced in the USA when Carter was president, but now rob the rest of us blind by stealing 37 percent of all income produced in the USA. Since President Obama took office, the 1 percent have been stealing 95 percent of all income growth.
That’s why President Carter created on average more jobs per year with rising real wages than every president since him. That’s why Carter was one of the great presidents in US history. The 99 percent earned 92 percent of all income back then, and were able to purchase goods and services in sufficient quantities to create more jobs per year, and with rising real wages every year, than during the reign of any president since then. And that’s precisely why the propaganda machine known as the corporate news media, politicians like Wall Street Senator John McCain, and rich parasites are always putting President Carter down, and call him weak and a bad president, If we look back at the economy of Carter, and his foreign policies, we would call his era the last golden age of the American dream.
Today’s economy is the weakest in history by any measure, including wage and job growth. That’s because the 99 percent now receive only 63 percent of all income in the US. Those people can no longer afford to purchase the goods and services necessary to sustain a strong economy, and those in business and political offices know this is the problem that vexes this economy, but they won’t do anything about it due to the massive corruption.
Excerpt from FDR’s speech:
“For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.
For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.
We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace‹business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me‹and I welcome their hatred.”
Over 60 countries around the world have mandatory GMO labeling laws, if not outright GMO crop cultivation bans. But here in the USA, many of our elected Representatives are working for Monsanto instead of the People that elected them into office. CALL YOUR REP NOW AND TELL THEM NOT TO SUPPORT HR1599 – the mother of all Monsanto protection acts: 202.225.3121
Agrichemical corporations and Big Food don’t want us to know if our food has been genetically engineered because no one would want to buy the GMO food-like products once they’re educated about what GMOs are. Who would want to eat unnatural, lab-created, insecticide-producing crops that are, themselves, EPA-registered pesticides that are then coated with more insecticides before being planted, and then doused again and again with toxic herbicides as they are growing? The EPA, for example, has labeled corn as a pesticide. That’s because the corn plant is loaded with pesticides and herbicides when they’re seeds.
When bugs bite into the GMO corn or the corn plant with the Bt toxin, it ingests the insecticide, which then expands its abdomen until the unfortunate bug blows up. When you eat GMO corn, you’re eating the Bt toxin. Those same corn stalks are filled with herbicides, which kill rival plants for up to three feet from the stalk. When you eat GMO corn, you’re eating herbicides.
Numerous scientific studies link GMOs with health issues in rats, cows, hamsters, amphibians, and humans. See 10-scientific-studies-that-prove-gmos-are-toxic. Those studies are just a few of the studies showing the harmful impacts of GMOs.
Monsanto and its congressional representatives, such as Representative Mike Pompeo, are backing a bill, HR 1599, which was written by the Grocery Manufacturers Association (made up of members like Monsanto, Kellogg’s and Nestle), will keep Americans in the dark about the GMOs in our food. More properly known as the DARK Act (Deny Americans the Right-to-Know), the official name of HR 1599 is intentionally misleading and is deceptively called “The Safe & Accurate Food Labeling Act.”
This DARK Act would outlaw States’ Rights to enact mandatory GMO labeling and prohibit mandatory GMO labeling at the federal level. It would overturn GMO crop cultivation bans passed at the county level such as those in Jackson County, Oregon, and in many counties in Northern California. It would allow GMOs to be labeled “natural” and allow some GMOs to be labeled as Non-GMO. And to further deceive the American People, it would do away with the independent nonprofit Non-GMO Project Verified label in favor of a corrupted USDA non-GMO label.
HB1599 is anything but safe or accurate.
Tell Congress to Stop Doing Big Food and Monsanto’s Dirtywork: Americans Need to Know if It’s GMO. Sign the petition: http://tinyurl.com/StopTheDARKAct
Then contact your Reps directly and tell them to vote NO on HR1599 and YES on DeFazio’s HR913 bill that would require mandatory labeling of GMOs. WE NEED TO KNOW IF IT’S GMO. Find your Reps here: https://salsa4.salsalabs.com/o/51225/getLocal.jsp
After thirty-five years of globalization, most people in the world are still living a wretched existence by US middle class standards, according to the Pew Research Center. More people than ever before have entered the middle class throughout the world, which the US corporate news media will brag about, but definitions of middle class vary throughout the world, which the same corporate news media won’t tell you. So, for example, people living in poverty in Vietnam on $2.70 a day might be considered middle class if their wages double, which would mean those folks are still living a wretched existence by any standard, except now they’re considered middle class, by somebody’s definition.
According to a Pew Research Center analysis, “…though there was growth in the middle-income population (in the world) from 2001 to 2011, the rise in prosperity was concentrated in certain regions of the globe, namely China, South America and Eastern Europe. The middle class barely expanded in India and Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central America.”
This rise in the third world middle class corresponds with a decline in the middle class in the United States, which the corporate news media won’t mention. That’s because globalization is a facade hiding the reality that free trade as is currently negotiated is nothing more than an income redistribution scam. Here’s how it works, and here’s how the researchers at Pew have been easily fooled.
One needs to earn between $6,000 and $25,000 a year to be considered middle class in China. See understanding-chinas-middle-class–China Business Review. In China, these people are free from such things as social security, free from overtime pay, free to suck in the world’s worst air pollution, free to drink among the world’s most polluted water, and they’re are often forced to work sixteen hours a day.
Do a little math. A person in the USA earning the federal minimum wage of $7.50 an hour working forty hours earns $15,600 a year, hardly middle class by US standards. The difference between middle class in the US and China is one of income redistribution.
When the US government signs a so-called free trade treaty, the result redistributes income from the 99 to the 1 percent because these agreements legally pave the way for US corporations to ship jobs from the US to lesser paying nations, like China. The treaties also pave the way for US corporations to create jobs overseas, rather than in the US, so they serve to discourage US job growth, and corporate investment in the USA. The difference between the old higher US pay and the new lower pay, in say China, goes straight into the pockets of the 1 percent via higher corporate profits, rising share prices and soaring dividends.
So, for example, a job paying $50,000 in the US may pay only $6,000 in China (with no overtime pay, and often being forced to work 16 hours a day). The difference between the two figures is $44,000, and that goes toward rising corporate profits, which in turn, goes into the pockets of the one percent via rising dividends and share prices. The US jobs losers get a few months of unemployment insurance, if they’re lucky.
In the meantime, as millions of jobs are shipped overseas, or created there when they would have been created over here in the absence of these income redistribution scams known as free trade agreements, the tax dollars that normally go to schools, fire, police, roads and other infrastructure, and our social safety nets, are being redistributed to the 1 percent with every job that is exported overseas. By the way, the BIGGEST EXPORT PRODUCT OF THE UNITED STATES IS JOBS.
These agreements weaken the Social Security Trust Fund because the people earning $55,000 a year are paying into it, and the people who steal their wages when jobs are shipped overseas, pay social security taxes on only the first $118,500 of their their $10,000,000+ income, which, coincidentally, violates the fourteenth amendment’s equal protection clause of the US Constitution.
However, narrow minded researchers and corrupt news media reporters influenced by corporate dollars will declare that free trade agreements are good things, and they’ll point to China’s growing middle class as their evidence, rather than the declining US middle class, as an example. And they’ll do this without mentioning that middle class in China means living a very subsistence life style at best, and being encapsulated with dire poverty at the worst.
So when the corporate news media reports on the growth of the middle class throughout the world, take it for what it’s worth, which is nothing.
“Folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie was born on July 14, 1912, yet his words, music, and mission continue to stir us as if he were a contemporary figure, not just a legendary one. On what would have been his 100th birthday, NPR produced a retrospective on Guthrie that included this insightful quote from Time‘s Joe Klein, who wrote a biography of the iconic figure in 1980.
“The further we get away from Woody’s birth and death, and take a look at his influence, [the more] it helps us learn about ourselves as Americans… There’s a wild-ass quality to this country that he personified. I go around the country. The greatest fear is that we’re losing that — we’re losing our creativity, our individualism. Woody was an individual, and a militantly individual individual.”
Woody wrote songs about income inequality, political power inequality, undocumented immigrants, poor people and their struggles (think the rising number of homeless and jobless), the dust bowl (think California drought), crooked politicians, corrupt bankers, and much more that is applicable to the circumstances of today, which has been created by rich folks utilizing the levers of political power that their ill gotten gains are able to purchase. Woody’s songs have been recorded by a massive number of singers, ranging from Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Brian Wilson, Billy Bragg, and U2.
One of my favorite Woody Guthrie quotes is his philosophy of song writing
“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good.
I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose.
No good to nobody. No good for nothing.
Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that.
Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling.
I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood.
i am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built.
I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and your work.”
In his web-only video essay, “Bill Moyers looks back at the singer-songwriter’s life and work, finding many points of irony and relevance given the current state of our economy and democracy. Is this land truly made for you and me? In this visual and musical journey, Bill asks the question, and puts forth a sobering answer.”
To check out Bill’s video on Woody Guthrie, click on the link below.
From Arthur Stamolis of CitizensTradeCampaign.Org (words in parenthesis mine)
Just last year, the U.S. State Department listed Malaysia among the world’s worst countries when it comes to human trafficking. While exact counts are impossible to come by, we’re likely talking about millions of people affected. Many of these modern-day slaves end up not only as prostitutes and domestic servants, but working in Malaysia’s export-oriented electronics and palm oil sectors. One-third of all electronics workers in Malaysia are estimated to be trafficking victims. (Some of these slaves will likely wind up working for US corporations, their contractors and subcontractors, should Malaysia be included in the TPP. This means US workers making $30 an hour will need to compete against slaves. Thank you Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden!)
Less you think this is anything less awful and barbaric than it really is, just this spring, dozens of trafficking camps with guard posts, barbed wire and their own mass graves were uncovered in the country’s jungles. A human rights campaigner said at the time, “The only way these kinds of camps could operate was with the support of military, police and politicians who were either directly involved or were paid to look the other way.”
The Fast Track legislation recently passed by Congress — as awful as it was — at least included a provision against fast tracking trade deals with the worst human trafficking abusers. Rather than requiring the Malaysian to clean up its act before it joins the TPP, the Obama administration has reportedly chosen to just write the problem away with a new trafficking report that says the country is no longer that big of a concern. (What an asshole we have as a president)
Top human rights advocates all agree the sudden “upgrading” of Malaysia’s trafficking status has nothing to do with human rights improvements, and everything to do with greasing the skids for the TPP, which means greasing the skids for Wall Street and the 0.01 percent to financially rape and pillage the 99 percent since the TPP is nothing more than an income and political power redistribution scam falsely marketed as a free trade agreement, and its political supporters all know this. They aren’t stupid little boys and girls.
A “stunned” Human Rights Watch representative said Malaysia has done very little in the past year to protect trafficking victims, and “This would seem to be some sort of political reward from the United States.”
An Amnesty International representative further argued that “Malaysia’s anti-trafficking efforts have been severely wanting,” and that “the U.S.’s willingness to sidestep one of the world’s worst rights crises” was instead motivated by “the value of trade this would bring.”
TAKE ACTION NOW: Please urge your U.S. Representative to speak out against attempts to cook the books in the State Department’s forthcoming human trafficking report.
The Rigged Game: Corporate America and A People Betrayed
The Rigged Game: Corporate America and a People Betrayed
Wall Street is up to no good, and has been since 1980, when it took over the Republican Party, and then the Democratic Party in 1994. Income has been massively redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent via legislative scam after scam, from tax cuts for the rich to international income redistribution schemes falsely labeled as trade agreements. In The Rigged Game, John Hively exposes how this has all come about starting with a revolutionary, but simple reality, all recessions begin in the financial markets.
John Hively's Blog: News and Analysis of the War Against the Middle Class 