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The enemy has been building its forces surreptitiously for some time now… It is moving its forces into position to invade and strike a knockout blow…. Ironically we will be the ones who open the gates of the city, willingly, and let them in…. They are mankind’s oldest enemy. They are resplendent through out all ancient texts. They controlled European civilization for a thousand years….
They took a set-back in the Great Depression. Democracy out-foiled them. It has since taken 80 years for them to grow back… But they are here….. Camped right outside our gates!
It’s the idea that people exist for wealth’s sake… and not, that wealth exists for people…..
Although phrased differently in different languages through out man’s civilization, today it can be encapsulated in today’s term: …. corporations….
Ha, ha. YOU laughed…. didn’t you? 🙂 That means one simple thing… You do not know.
In your defense, you aren’t supposed to know… Which is why it is all being done in secret, behind closed doors, among lobbyists, free trade activists, and legislators often put in office by corporate financing. Financing which under Citizens United is so broad that legislators verily feel threatened to stand up for people anymore…
From a historical perspective, corporations have always been powerful…. John Jacob Astor would have owned the world, but unfortunately chose the Titanic to ride home on. Corporations controlled Caesars during the Late Roman periods. Corporations were a big influence propelling Elizabeth’s England and the Hanseatic League,,,,
But people were cheap back then. Killed at will. Imprisoned their whole lives as slaves. Used for sex. Expendable, I think is the proper word we are looking for….
Such consequences are the price of making more money… And since there were no laws to protect people, money mattered; people didn’t…
Right now, negotiations are being taken across the world by these 59% of the world’s largest entities to insure that no nation-state can go against these corporations… Not to tax them. Not to legislate damages against them. Not even ban them….
What’s up for grabs in the innocuously named “Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership” (TTIP) which is nothing short of handing over the control and ownership of virtually every governmental sector and public service in both Europe and the U.S. over to privatization….
The treaty seeks to (among many other things):
• “Lock in” the privatisations of services – even in cases where private service delivery has failed – meaning governments can never return water, energy, health, education or other services to public hands.
• Restrict a government’s right to regulate stronger standards in the public’s interest. For example, it will affect environmental regulations, licensing of health facilities and laboratories, waste disposal centres, power plants, school and university accreditation and broadcast licenses.
• Specifically limit the ability of governments to regulate the financial services industry at exactly the time when the global economy is still recovering from a crisis caused by financial deregulation..
This is about enforcing the minimization of people’s rights. These documents will give corporations the higher pecking order…. It gives a signed, stamped piece of paper buried in a filing cabinet hidden somewhere in the state of Delaware, a paper signifying a small fee has been paid, far more power than all of us in unison combined….
This leads to very unstable societies. Instead of having our armed service currently fighting for America’s self-interests, they will be perversely fighting for perhaps Wal*mart’s, or BP’s, or Mirage’s, or Gasprom’s interests…. We might even go back to being drafted since who would volunteer for such a service?
It also leads to necessary governmental services being assessed from those most stricken, and not properly paid by those wealthy who are easily able to pay them… The investors get richer, the people get poorer….
As an intellectual example, let us say that a government is duly elected by the people and then attempts to make changes… As one proper example, an African nation wanting zero oil spills, moves to require a higher corporate investment in environmental safety and a higher rate per barrel on oil drawn from its waters…
Each and every one of those U.S. firms will now be able to launch expensive legal battles, potentially for billions of dollars, in the name of foregone profits.
Suing for lost profits?… Have you ever heard of such a thing? What ever happened to …. risk?
No problem you say. Surely a national court will decide for its people over potential profits…. But … you see, it doesn’t go to national court… It goes to arbitration… The case would not be heard in a court of law, under the scrutiny of a judge and jury, but rather in front of arbitration panels made up of three professional arbitrators — one representing the company, one representing the country and the other chosen by the first two to sit as president of the panel.
No citizen of any affected country can demand leverage or accountability over the proceedings.
The intent of these treaties glossed over as “trade deals” is to make Corporations immune from any government meddling. In their marketing, they stress that this frees up business from being toyed with by totalitarian or corrupt governments… But what their marketing never mentions, is that this sword cuts two ways… It also insulates corporations from actions requested by the people in those nations who are also full-fledged democracies. If these documents are ever signed, we will wake one day, and find our wishes simply no longer matter.
We can see it everywhere today… Put in a power plant in downtown Newark. Good for investors; people don’t matter. Put in a corporate Common Core educational program that is bullshit. Good for investors; people don’t matter. Dump sludge from Delaware City’s refinery into the marsh. Good for investors; people don’t matter. Sell the Wilmington Port to Kinder-Morgan. Good for investors; people don’t matter. Get rid of prevailing wage. Good for investors; people don’t matter. Get rid of unions, especially the teacher’s union. Good for investors; people don’t matter. Make corporations hide their owners. Good for investors, people don’t matter. Build a giant shopping center in Barley Mills. Good for investors; people don’t matter. Tear down historic buildings and barns to make into a trailer park. Good for investors; people don’t matter. Don’t give mobile home owners any rights. Good for investors, people don’t matter. Don’t tax the top 1% to rebuild a broken bridge. Good for investors; people don’t matter. Get rid of Obamacare. Good for investors; people don’t matter. Mainstream special-ed students. Good for investors; people don’t matter….
Everywhere you look… it is there… You can’t escape it… The funny thing is that after WWII, when the GI’s came home, we had a nation that KNEW people really mattered. They saw with their own eyes what happens when the top in governments do what they wish, with impunity. They saw with their own eyes both dead and broken people who no longer mattered… They knew that people who by luck had the benefit to still be living, really do matter a lot…
They made a cannon of laws to protect those people still living… Giving us the right to make the final decisions to decide our own fate… Since the election of 2000 that has slowly and consistently eroded. We are losing control over our lives… to something as silly as money. Of that they print more everyday. Forget that a person is one in a trillion. There can never be, nor will ever be, an exact copy made….
So never, never open the gates to them. Nor accept their Trojan Horses. They are conquerors; we are the bounty. It is the same war that has been waged ever since man first discovered the power of money. Mankind has been this conquest’s loser over most of history… Do not let the advantage we won in 1932 now go to waste… It is so close to slipping through our fingers. We will not get it back in our lifetimes nor our children’s… For they have been and will be, waging their war across centuries; we today are stupidly living our lives in fear of pissing them off….
Piss them off and put them back into their box. Get moving now.
Here is where we need to be: … We, the People, will allow you the opportunity to make money, but it must be done to our benefit and our rules... The End.
In the Reagan era it was different. Big Business was the ticket up. Not so in the 60’s when Big Business was what got us into Vietnam, messed up Iran, made us embargo Cuba, and then proceed with a lottery which based on birthdays, picked who would go across the Pacific and die….
But under Reagan, Big Business was the panacea against the liberalism the 70’s caused… The terrorists, the welfare scum, the petty criminals, the horrible 70’s TV series….
The tide is changed.
Big Business candidate Mitt Romney drummed down in a humiliating electoral landslide. Occupy Wall Street rallying America against the 1%. Business interests being stymied across the United States…
America hates Big Business.
America hates Big Business….
Now look at the reality….
America hates Big Business.
And now we have the NSA tapping all phone calls, and storing every single thing we write, speak, or send in a photo. Not to protect us from terrorists. But to sell, to Big Business.
America hates Big Business.
Delaware just threw the head of their Chamber of Commerce out of the state. She was promoting “Big Business” and insisted on smashing every opponent in the mouth with her fist. (figuratively)
Delaware hates Big Business…
In Delaware, despite low employment, Newark residents are up in arms over having a GIGANTIC SPEWING POWER PLANT just 200 feet from their back fences. It doesn’t help that they were lied to. “oh, it will be like one of those little things on top of an IKEA store, you know, an auxiliary power plant…”
Newark hates Big Business.
In lower New Castle County, there was huge opposition against the refinery, which the Big Business administration of Jack Markell and Alan Levin had allowed to bypass the Coastal Protection Act….
New Castle County hates Big Business….
Big Business was back in the eighties allowed back to make its contribution to society. It had previously been barred because it refused to comply to game rules… Once comfortable and settled in, it has returned to its old habits….
America hates Big Business….. and all those politicians kowtowing to them for a few crumbs…..
It is clearer now that the biggest benefactors for the NSA spying were commercial enterprises. The Obama administration went along with the Bush plan and accelerated it, primarily to give American companies a heads up, and keep jobs here. It worked too.
One can’t argue with success. But one can find how American businesses were co-opted to assist the NSA. From the Guardian, the following, allegedly from Snowden himself.
• Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook.com portal;
• The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail;
• The company worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via Prism to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million users worldwide;
• Microsoft also worked with the FBI’s Data Intercept Unit to “understand” potential issues with a feature in Outlook.com that allows users to create email aliases;
• In July last year, nine months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism;
• Material collected through Prism is routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA document describing the program as a “team sport”.
it is revealing that the beneficiaries of the Patriot Act and probably one of the reasons it has been intact long after terrorism faded offshore, are the exact same who are suing each other left and right, using the anti-piracy laws as their barrage. It appears that laws are not for people anymore; they are for corporations. It is corporations who want the US to fund listening posts for every American word and sentence.
The only way to fix that, is to divide the corporations Teddy-Roosevelt-style, thereby giving We, the People a little more clout. …
Gosh, that is a shocking headline. Of course headlines are meant to grab attention. I hope this one works….
The common denominator is in “hurting students.”
Obviously there are different ways. Jeb Bush’s way though honestly not even in the same ballpark as the other one I paralleled him with, is probably the greatest danger…
Here is what will happen.
Private educational corporations are giving standardized tests out to students. They are warning that classrooms are not ready to take these standardized tests, because the material on them has not been covered by teachers in the classroom…
The poor scores, then, will force state legislators to buy their products to correct that balance.
Imagine I am your teacher. I say here is your study guide and when you are done I will give you a test. I make up both. I make up the study guide, and then I make up the test with nothing from the study guide on it… You take the test and go WTF! I never saw any of it…. I use the bad grades to shake down Representative Pete Schwartzkoph to give me $30 million dollars… Then I pull a switcheroo and give you the real study guide, and voila, you get a 100%… I say: “See, I told you I was good.” Your education problem is now fixed.
Is this illegal? It was done in Kentucky. And it appears it is about to be done in New York…
The problem is Common Core. The owner is Jeb Bush…. The charge is that to increase corporate earnings (and private paycheck) students are purposefully being made to flunk by switching tests to stuff they don’t know, and then, profiting handsomely by putting the correct test guide into circulation….
“I don’t think people fully realize the challenges that will come when the reality sets in that so few of our kids are college and/or career ready,” former Florida Governor Jeb Bush said recently, speaking at an education conference in Washington, D.C. The conference was sponsored by the Foundation for Excellence in Education, which Bush created to promote some of the ideas he backed as governor, including early reading tests, vouchers and charter schools.
“Moms and dads are going to be mad,” Bush said. “The reality is going to create problems for elected officials across the spectrum.”
When you lose a whole year… do you ever get that year back?
This is from open secrets.org. It has accumulated evidence throughout the election how much money superpacs have collected….
This money is just from the SuperPac’s. It does not include money given directly to the candidate…
Over all, during the election of 2012, SuperPacs collected total receipts of $663,014,402 and total independent expenditures of $680,716,540 in the 2012 cycle. Notice the $17 million deficit for which revenues still must be acquired….
Briefly put, here are the donations broken down by industry…..
Agribusiness…….. 23 million
Communication/Electronics…….. 25 million
Construction………15 million
Defense.………….14 million
Energy/Natural Resources……….29 million
Finance/Insurance/Real Estate…..65 million
Health.……………55 million
Single Issue……….60 million
Labor……………..64 million
Lawyers/Lobbyists…..16 million
Misc. Business……..38 million
Other……………..01 million
Transportation……..21 million
Keep in mind this is over and beyond what may have personally been given to the candidates and filed with the FEC….
One begins to see what’s behind some rather peculiar pieces of legislation we have had thrust upon us…. Oddly, the balance for the most part was even between Democrats and Republicans…
Courtesy of Climate Code Red
If you kinda thought the weather was wild this year, you were right. The most ice lost is taking place right while you read this. A large chunk was broken up by a freak storm. Another similar on is on its way. The question that no one knows the answer to, is… will this affect the circulation pattern.
We all know in our lives that as human beings we can put up with aggravation rather well, unless we are Type A. Whether it is aggravation from our boss, from our spouse, from our in-laws, from our choir director, from that guy selling papers on the corner,… we put up with it, accepting it as the normal course of business. Except once or twice in our lives, we just snap. And the consequences of that, momentary snap, cause big changes… maybe in our employment, maybe in our marriage, maybe in our in-law’s will, maybe from the choir director’s husband, maybe from the police…. things change for us in a big way…..
That is how we have to see this. From a mud core taken from an ancient lake, Lough Monreach, in Ireland in 2009 it was discovered that in a matter of one month 12,900 years ago, we went from normal seasonal temperatures to an ice age. The cause came from a switch in ocean currents. As cold fresh water entered the ocean, warm water stopped flowing north. That Ice Age lasted 1300 years before the thaw returned. It flipped in one month…. 30 days more or less.
So is that happening?
The science is too big. We don’t know. It will be like on the Day after Tomorrow where we first find out from buoys scattered across the Atlantic. It cannot be predicted.
What can be foretold is that the earth has never had this much stress before during civilized mans span on earth. Do you know when you snap, or does it take you off guard as well?
That is where we are…
Of course nothing could come about it… Just like when your boss insults you in front of all your staff, your office competitor’s staff, and ridicules you like you have never been before… You just take it…
The boss tells your competitor… “I knew he was a wus… I wasn’t worried one bit… you have nothing to worry about him…”
Republicans will say in Tampa:… “I knew it was a scam…. I wasn’t worried one bit… we have nothing to worry about burning carbon fuels and putting carbon dioxide into the air.”
News Flash: The earth is not a wus……..
2012, day 230, 2.87743 million square kilometers
2011, day 253, 2.90474 million square kilometers (previous record low)
Stats and Chart Courtesy of Northeastern University
Stats and Chart Courtesy of Northeastern University
In a Study by Northeastern University, the rise in corporate profits was matched to the fall in real wages. Whereas corporate profits surged by 48%, real wages fell by more then 1%. When coupled with the 14 million still unemployed, people who work for a living are getting hit twice.
Two things come out of this study. One we need to use another method besides unemployment to evaluate an economic system’s recovery, for Obama has truly engineered a magnificent recovery. Two, if we elect Romney who promises nothing will change, we will continue to have the same result; high corporate profits and high levels of unemployment.
Not included in this study is the financial strength of the government. We know that is a failure. To assist and enable corporate profits to grow this much, the Federal Government has gone $5 Trillion deeper in debt.
So lets look at the balance sheet.
Corporate Profits……….. Through The Roof
Federal Government….. $5 Trillion in New Debt
American Workers…..12.8 million unemployed
Any business person investigating his companies balance sheet upon seeing such imbalance would automatically say, we need to transfer assets from the corporate side to first the American People. There are two ways to do that. One is pass laws that every American be given a gigantic humongous raise, and that businesses stop recording high profits, and instead invest in themselves.
The other way would be to raise the tax rates, so high, that businesses would do that anyway, themselves.
Which is easier?
And why is ANYONE still supporting the Republican Party out of which all its candidates said, they would use painful cuts instead of raising taxes one penny to balance the deficit?
Courtesy of mjperry.blogspot.com
So taxing America’s corporate profits 100% at 1.7 trillion per quarter, would in ten quarters or 2 and one half years, totally, completely, irrevocably erase our national debt to zero.
In the meantime, corporations would hide their profits in their business, as anyone alive during the forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, can tell you, it is what everyone did… And life was good for all… Only starting in 2001, did the profits start to soar with money coming out of the American People’s pockets…..
It didn’t trickle down, did it?
Well it can… Do not vote for a Republican again until the deficit is 0, and unemployment is under 3% …. They are the cause. If you need further proof, see how the red and blue lines are conjoined after TARP? That is due to the tax cuts Republicans insisted upon… There is no tax being paid by corporations…. Real profits and Nominal profits are identical…..
So… how well is that benefiting you? Long for the good old days under Clinton? You are not alone. Join America in demanding corporations pay 100% tax rate until the deficit is down…..
If you didn’t live baseball, this is probably over your heads. You can get background here.
But this just came out. Eric Cantor, the Tea Party Republican who documented here was solely responsible for the Budget Crises of August 2011, who was solely responsible for the lowering of America’s Standard and Poors Rating, who was solely responsible for the stock market crash and ensuing two quarters of luckluster growth that put the recovery back on its heels as well as putting many out of work, that Eric Cantor who killed the $4 Trillion agreement between Speaker Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and the White House, actually heavily bought US Treasuries short in late June and early July.
When you buy something short, it means you make money when they lose value. In baseball terms, it means you bet on an outcome and then use your position to “throw the game”…
There is no difference between what Eric Cantor did, and what Pete Rose did. The only possible explanation is that Congress is not run by standards of excellence as high as that of baseball.
It needs to be.
Eric Cantor is not in your district. But, you can take it out on Republicans. All of them. If they feel your anger, your hate, your passion, your fire, it will be a long time before the likes of Eric Cantor return to the hallowed halls of Congress.
This is corruption in its most viable form.
How can you deny Pete Rose his spot in history, when you have someone much, much worse as second in command of the Republican Party?
How?
kavips 