Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Protect the Constitution

Keeping church and government separate as in the Constitution
Americans United for Separation of Church and State

Protect your right to a day in court
Center for Justice and Democracy

Try to keep science responsible
Center for Science in the Public Interest
(Be sure to get their poster of dangerous chemicals in foods)

Read the CIA and MI5 documents you're not supposed to see
Cryptome

Speaking the truth
Project Censored

Keeping Wal-Mart and McDonald's in their place
Sprawl Busters

For whistleblowers
Government Accountability Project

Help end deficit spending to fund the world's biggest defense budget
Act Blue


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Wednesday, April 9, 2008

The Federal Reserve is Terrified, and Roadrunner Paved to Hell

An excellent blog by famous financial writer Michael "Mish" Shedlock, on the Federal Reserves recent failed attempts to provide liquidity to the credit markets and help alleviate the mess created by the U.S. financial industry "run amock". THIS is exactly what causes federal regulations in the first place, greedy capitalists will never learn, that you can't just "live for today's profits" and ignore tomorrow's needs in the process.

The Fed is Terrified


Read this one also by Elaine Sepkis, her "EZ Reading Money Matters" blog, comparing the Fed to Wiley Coyote:

The Roadrunner Paved to Hell

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Sunday, April 6, 2008

How Big Business is Robbing the US Citizens

Someone eMailed me that "welfare" is bankrupting us, and illegal aliens, not the war in Iraq, so this was my reply. -- Jman Sinclair

Am I wrong, or doesn't the US Constitution say they're forming the country "in order to provide for the general welfare", among other reasons?

***

The U.S. didn't attain wealth through any ingenuity or hard work (unless weapons exports are an example of "genius"), it's really because big business has abused labor here for three centuries:

1. Slave labor -- we undercut the world's prices on textiles, clothes, cotton, ag products by using slaves for an "almost-free" labor force (you had to buy them, feed them, and keep them healthy enough for work, so we assume they got free healthcare, something we can't even provide nowdays! Lump in "indentured servants" here also, those who must "work off" their transportation here from some foreign locale, and end up working 30-40 years for the price of getting here. Some US companies have been caught setting up their own "job agencies" abroad, charging workers to find them jobs, which turn out to be for themselves! An instant discount on a new worker; this is happening in agriculture at least and may be more widespread than known since its not really illegal and the US may not have jurisdiction over a bogus job agency in Thailand or India or Bangla-desh.

2. Foreign labor - the railroads were largely build by Chinese workers imported from China, while the railroads printed the counterfeit money (chinese yuan) they paid them in, then sent them home with suitcases of worthless paper. Many Chinese started gold and silver mines, and mobs of white men killed, beat, and stole their claims. ("kangeroo court" were mining disputes judged privately since there was no real law, the term came from "claim jumping", not from Australia!)

3. Child labor - the fed gov't HAD to step in with labor laws due to the abuses of using children for FREE labor; the catch was the mining industry wouldn't hire any miner unless he had a child he would bring to work for free; also kids were often worked 12-14 hrs a day (and at very sub-adult wages), had no time to play even, much less school.

4. Minimum wage - has NEVER kept pace with inflation; just from 1970 on, when the min wage was 2.50 per hr, it would have to be 17.50 today for the same equivalent as 70 if you add in inflation -- this means that people near min wage NOW are getting 1/3 what the people at the bottom got in 1970 -- I didn't even calc the stats back to when minimum wage was put into effect, but the overall effect is to allow businesses to pay as little as possible for workers, and can go a little above the minimum wage and brag about it to employees: "hey, we're paying you 1.00 per hr over the min wage" - Yep, and still $11 less per hr than I got mowing grass in 1970 or sitting in the art museum on weekends as the receptionist.

5. These days the abused group is both the near-minimum wage workers and illegal aliens who are afraid to go to the authorities if there's any abuse by business -- they've been used for centuries to pick the crops in California cuz the oranges and stuff won't wait; they sneak in, work for 3-6 months then the crop is harvested and they're not needed any more, so most go back -- and they're called "migrant workers". Sometimes they can migrate to other farm areas that need temp workers, but they lack the money or transportation to move far, so most are in California and Texas. It's BIG BUSINESS that got the number of allowable work visas raised each year, telling the President (or he told them) that "we can't find enough U.S. workers", which is total b.s. because if there's any unemployment at all, you have workers. They like to keep unemployment around 5% so they can hire people for as low a wage as possible, knowing there's always someone out of work that can be another body cooking fries or sitting at a desk calling people to sell them something; oh, I forgot, it's prisoners that do the cold-calling, for about .20 per hour, according to 60 Minutes on CBS.

6. Nearly ALL new jobs in the US now are "restaurant service" jobs -- meaning waitress/waiters and fast food workers... we've killed high tech and manufacturing here, which paid better, and most growth here is either new Wal-Marts (notoriously underpaying and all sorts of labor disputes) or new fast food restaurants with an avg pay well below 10 per hr... They "say" the avg wage in the US is $15 per hr but when you subtract all those executives making 100 and 500 million at hedge funds and big corporations (who are included!), then the real avg is probably 9-11 per hr... they say some of those guys make more an hour than the average worker makes in a year!!

There is only a finite amount of wealth out there in the U.S. - to print more dollars causes inflation (those you have are now worth a little less whenever they print more) so when someone makes huge amounts of money it has to come from somewhere, and it's not going to be the government (unless of course, they lose money and can fail altogether). The idiots who pay these big numbers charge the rest of us more and more for everything in order to cover their expenses and keep profits high (more important to them than us). They also say it doesn't matter HOW MUCH the US GOV'T charges them for taxes cuz they'll just pass it on to the consumer anyway!

So we pay (1) ridiculous profits to them to begin with (Exxon made 80 billion profit last year, so I just worry, is gas high enough for them to beat that again this year? Plus a box of cereal has .03 of wheat or .08 worth of corn in it, how much do we pay - 30-100 times that amount? The BOX it's in cost more than the food... (2) we pay more for goods IF those companies have increased taxes or fines (3) we pay our own worker tax for being allowed to make that big $6-8 per hr wage (4) We have to cover the cost of all the pork added to legislation PLUS the war when we no longer support it as voters.. they LIE to us and congress to get INTO a war - Vietnam also, the Gulf of Tonkein attack was recently admitted to be a LIE in order to get us into Vietnam, plus that Gulf is another gulf full of U.S. oil rigs - you figure it out... it has nothing to do with governments or communists or attacks or anything --- it's always oil or something else that we want or think we need!

Otherwise wouldn't we be in PAKISTAN? An Islamic nation with nuclear weapons, a military coup as well (NOT democracy or anything legal at all!), but they have no major oil. So we don't give a hoot about them, even though Bin Laden MAY be hiding there and not Afghanistan. We've even said as much, so why no invasion of Pakistan? They're certainly a potential nuclear threat, something neither IRAN nor IRAQ are, but those countries both have major oil fields! Don't misunderstand me, I don't believe in violating the sovereignty of any other nation, unless they've declared war with an obvious attack; Pearl Harbor left nothing to the imagination, and "we attacked Japan, not Thailand cuz they're Asian", as Jesse Ventura said on Larry King! (too funny, that guy... he SHOULD be in Washington, perhaps Secretary of State!)

Get this: many of the "suicide terrorists" so far have been OIL WORKERS laid off in Arabia by big U.S. or British oil companies! One said "If I die this way my family will get 50,000 to live on; since I've been laid off I can't even buy them food any more." - so he became a suicide bomber...

The oil companies have enough of our money that NO ONE ever need be laid off... (even rock bands pay their "roadies" something when they're not touring, I knew one that got half salary when back home doing nothing) they're just screwing more and more people the world over for profits and don't answer to anyone. When Bush took office oil was $12 per barrel, now it's around $108!! The US dollar was worth 1.24 on avg worldwide, now its worth .72 due to our high debt and printing dollars to pay other nations! (so your savings are worth less and less, and its driving up oil and gold prices, each denominated in U.S. dollare; what a scam!) Exxon made 80 billion in profit last year; a consumer rebate or lower prices? Nope, they're simply buying back more of their own stock! (Printing stock is like printing money, but the government lets corporations do it all the time! Isn't that inflationary?)

Of course the war is bankrupting us, and illegal workers, and cheap foreign labor, and US corporations, and corporate tax shelters and loopholes -- the corporations and defense industry are bleeding us dry and won't stop until they have ALL the wealth and ALL the workers are so poor they have to work for just any low wage that companies will scrounge up to pay. We could either:
- MOVE to another country (but most expect you to deposit enough in a bank that you can't move if you're poor, or your vast wealth can benefit them, if you've managed to abscond with your millions from a business or a church or a crime!)
- Accept the low wage (most do), or
- Like Jesse Ventura's new book, "Don't Start the Revolution Without Me".

Congress, the Pres and most local politicians are OWNED by corporations who pay for their advertising and campaigns, that's how they get elected, so they only support politicians who support them back with tax breaks and other anti-consumer and anti-labor policies. Just before ENRON went under, cronies of George Bush, he passed legislation in Texas that NO ONE could sue a corporation for more than THREE MILLION dollars! (chicken feed, a day's pay for a CEO) He didn't know anything in advance did he?

This is all beyond unreal -- we're helpless, sometimes we can't even vote for a candidate who gets MOST of the votes and get him elected -- democracy is over, so is a comfortable salary. They'd rather pay Chinese workers $30 per month (their AVERAGE!) to make Wal-Mart merchandise then gouge consumers on the prices than hire Americans to make anything. Our leading export now is only weapons, we import more of just about everything else now.. we even get our lumber from Canada - that used to be our biggest "crop" -- but you can't cut down half a country of forests to build suburbs and malls and still have a lumber industry -- now its just about all in Oregon and Alaska only, two of the last states added!

We should have annexed Mexico in 1848 when we kicked their butt in the war with Robert E. Lee and about 500 Texas Rangers (not the baseball team!), then they'd all be U.S. citizens already, and our southern border would be a tiny thing next to El Salvador, better for both countries! We could build a 100 foot wall there cuz it'd only be 80 miles long or so!

It's CORPORATIONS that are bankrupting us (they pull the governments strings, not the people, not the voters), the war and illegal workers and taxes and high profits and ludicrous wages for executives and everything else is HOW they do it (180 million for the Intel president one year, his two vp's got 120 million each, and the stock didn't even go UP any, it actually fell -- guess not, that's 1/3 of a billion gone right there to just 3 employees at the top!! unreal... these are PUBLIC corporations but somehow the public doesn't have a say in their salaries - they vote on that themselves and in secret. Gee- what are the chances it'll go SKY HIGH when you get to decide your own salary?

I think I'm worth about a million a year for writing good emails and blog posts! Where's my money? I set my own salary, why is it NOT being paid?

From Malcolm in the Middle:"Before you get too excited about that job, remember they'll never pay you what you're worth but just enough to keep you groveling back for more." - Jan Kaczmarek, the mom, on son Reese's first job

"I rant, therefore I am" -- Dennis Miller

ps - IF I disappear (no one will mind or even report it! LOL...), it's likely the NSA, they have far more power and less oversight than the CIA!

"Kid, I got a shovel and a .44 and I doubt anyone would report you missin" - Dan Hedaya, to his daughter's date in Clueless

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