AREN’T YOU AMAZED AT HOW UTTERLY BRAZEN THESE CORPORATE
OWNED POLITICIANS ARE?
GET THIS BOOK!
Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats,
Crooks, and Cronies
by Michelle Malkin
Editorial Reviews
In her shocking new book, Malkin digs deep into the records
of President Obama's staff, revealing corrupt dealings, questionable pasts, and
abuses of power throughout his administration.
From the Inside Flap
The era of hope and change is dead....and it only took six
months in office to kill it.
Never has an administration taken office with more inflated
expectations of turning Washington around. Never have a media-anointed American
Idol and his entourage fallen so fast and hard. In her latest investigative
tour de force, New York Times bestselling author Michelle Malkin delivers a
powerful, damning, and comprehensive indictment of the culture of corruption
that surrounds Team Obama's brazen tax evaders, Wall Street cronies, petty
crooks, slum lords, and business-as-usual influence peddlers. In Culture of
Corruption, Malkin reveals:
* Why nepotism beneficiaries First Lady Michelle Obama and
Vice President Joe Biden are Team Obama's biggest liberal hypocrites--bashing
the corporate world and influence-peddling industries from which they and their
relatives have benefited mightily
* What secrets the ethics-deficient members of Obama's
cabinet--including Hillary Clinton--are trying to hide
* Why the Obama White House has more power-hungry,
unaccountable "czars" than any other administration
* How Team Obama's first one hundred days of appointments
became a litany of embarrassments as would-be appointee after would-be
appointee was exposed as a tax cheat or had to withdraw for other reasons
* How Obama's old ACORN and union cronies have squandered
millions of taxpayer dollars and dues money to enrich themselves and expand
their power
* How Obama's Wall Street money men and corporate lobbyists
are ruining the economy and helping their friends In Culture of Corruption,
Michelle Malkin lays bare the Obama administration's seamy underside that the
liberal media would rather keep hidden.
• Hardcover:
376 pages
• Publisher:
Regnery Publishing (July 27, 2009)
• Language:
English
• ISBN-10:
1596981091
• ISBN-13:
978-1596981096
OBAMA’S AMERICA – LOOTED BY HIS WALL
STREET DONORS and BANKRUPTED BY MEXICO
A rising tide of social misery
By David Walsh
Contrary
to Obama administration and media claims about the recession “easing,” millions
of working people in America are losing their jobs, earnings and health care
benefits at an accelerating pace.
While executives at Goldman
Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and other financial giants prepare to pay themselves
billions of dollars this year in salaries and bonuses, life has continued to
become more and more difficult for a broad layer of the population.
The New York Times
pointed out on Wednesday that in California and a number of other states, “one
out of every five people who would like to be working full time is not now
doing so.”
The official jobless rate of
9.5 percent excludes both those who have stopped looking for jobs because local
conditions are so bleak and those obliged to accept part-time employment.
If
these unemployed and underemployed were included, the real jobless rate in the
country’s most populous state, California, for example, would be 20.3 percent,
according to the Times. In Oregon it would be 23.5 percent, in Michigan
and Rhode Island, 21.5 percent, and in South Carolina, 20.5 percent. The figure
would be just below 20 percent in Tennessee, Nevada and a number of “states
that have relied heavily on manufacturing and housing.”
Given
that the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ national jobless rate is skewed, for
political reasons, to minimize the actual conditions, various analysts step in
and attempt to come up with a “real unemployment” number.
The
Center for Labor Market Studies at Boston’s Northeastern University places the
current jobless rate at 18.2 percent, higher than the official figure on the
eve of World War II. John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics puts the
“Alternative Unemployment” rate at 20.6 percent. Other analysts calculate an
“Effective Unemployment” figure of 18.7 percent. Whatever the precise number,
the army of unemployed is large and swelling. A great many lives have already
been devastated.
David
Rosenberg, chief economist at the investment firm Gluskin Sheff in Toronto and
former chief North American economist at Merrill Lynch, argues: “The official
ranks of the unemployed have doubled during this recession to 14 million and if
you take into account all forms of labour market slack, the unofficial number
is bordering on 30 million, another record.”
The
figures on job losses in the current slump are staggering. Since the start of
the recession in December 2007 the US economy has lost a total of 6.5 million
jobs. In fact, the economy presently has fewer jobs than it did in May 2000.
The Economic Policy Institute points out that “the entire growth in jobs over
the last nine years has been wiped out,” while the labor force has actually
expanded by 12.5 million workers.
According
to economist Rosenberg, “We have lost a record 9 million full-time jobs this
[business] cycle, more than triple what is normal in the context of a post-WWII
recession, with over 2 million pushed onto part-time work.” He notes that
three-quarters of those laid off over the past year were let go on a permanent,
not a temporary basis, and that a record 53 percent of those currently out of
work were displaced for good.
Rosenberg
estimates that more than four million jobs in financial services, residential
construction, durable goods manufacturing, wholesale-retail and
leisure-hospitality “are not going to come back.” The destruction of millions
of better-paying, full-time jobs has enormous implications for the living
standards of working families.
Job
openings in the US have dropped by 42 percent since the end of 2007, so that in
June 2009 there were some six unemployed looking for every job. As a result,
the percentage of the jobless out of work for more than six months increased by
nearly 70 percent from June 2008 to June 2009 (17.1 to 29 percent).
Since
employers, who can afford to pick and choose, are generally taking experience
over youth, and workers over 55 are holding on to their jobs for dear life, the
official unemployment rate for young people has jumped to 15.2 percent for
20-24 year olds (a 49 percent increase in 12 months!) and 24 percent for 16-19
year olds. For African-Americans 16 to 19, the jobless rate is currently 38
percent.
As
serious as they are, the jobless figures are only part of the story. Public and
private employers across the country are taking advantage of the recession to
cut wages, hours (through “unpaid leave,” “furloughs” and other means) and
benefits, impoverishing many of those still employed.
The
average work week fell to 33 hours in June, the lowest since data was collected
in 1964, and 48 minutes shorter than when the recession began. The combined
decline in jobs and hours in June was the equivalent of a loss of some 800,000
jobs.
Business
Week notes
that “Cuts in pay and hours are rippling throughout the economy in businesses
large and small and industries from mining to retail.” A survey commissioned by
the Economist in June found 5 percent of respondents had already taken a
furlough in 2009 and 13 percent had taken a pay cut.
Mortimer
Zuckerman in the July 14 Wall Street Journal commented: “Full-time
workers are being downgraded to part time as businesses slash labor costs to
remain above water, and factories are operating at only 65% of capacity.” Average
weekly earnings fell to $611.49 in June, from $613.34 in May.
The
Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday that real average weekly earnings
fell by 1.2 percent from May to June after seasonal adjustment. The drop
resulted from a 0.3 percent decrease in average weekly hours and a 0.9 percent
increase in the Consumer Price Index, driven by a sharp jump in gasoline
prices.
Also
on Wednesday, reports showed that industrial production declined in the US, for
the eighth straight month. The industrial sector operated at 68 percent of its
capacity in June, down from 68.2 percent in May, a new low in the 42 years
since the data have been collected.
Meanwhile,
eleven of the 17 Federal Reserve governors and regional bank presidents are
predicting that unemployment will be 10 percent or higher in the final three
months of 2009, and they expect the downturn, according to the Washington
Post, “to be long-lasting.”
American
workers are not only losing jobs and homes, they are also losing health care
“at an alarming rate,” says a new report from Families USA. While the latest
data from the Census Bureau indicated that 45.7 million Americans lacked health
coverage in 2007, “economists believe the situation has only worsened in the
intervening months as the economic downturn has taken its toll.” Experts
predict an additional 6.9 million people in the US—a 15 percent increase—will
lose their health coverage by the end of 2010.
Behind
this health care disaster are the combined effects of rising costs, businesses
slashing or eliminating coverage, and unemployment.
Noting
that the rapid increase in joblessness means that the various states will
probably “experience even greater losses ... than can be captured by our Key
Findings,” Families USA estimates that between January 2008 and December 2010,
995,200 people in California, for example, will lose health coverage—or 6,380
per week. In Texas, which has the highest percentage of uninsured, some 866,000
residents will lose coverage by the end of next year.
In
Florida, more than 3,500 people a week are losing coverage; in New York, nearly
2,500 people; in both Illinois and Georgia some 1,600 people; in New Jersey,
1,200, and in Michigan, a little more than 1,000 people each week.
In
the US as a whole, the group estimates that 44,000 people are losing their
health care every week.
On
July 7 the American Bankers Association reported delinquencies on consumer debt
rose to record levels, as customers had difficulty paying for everything from
credit cards to automobiles. The percentage of borrowers at least 30 days late
paying a balance is the highest since the association began keeping records in
1974.
ABA
Chief Economist James Chessen stated bluntly, “The number one driver of
delinquencies is job loss. When people lose their jobs, they can’t pay their
bills. Delinquencies won’t improve until companies start hiring again.”
Public
outrage at the present situation is growing. It is not uncommon to hear the
rich, the “filthy” bankers, being denounced in work places and neighborhoods.
Many workers—abandoned by the unions to their fate, lied to and cheated by the
Democrats—have been stunned by the rapidity of the crisis. The Economist,
a little nervously, refers to “The quiet Americans,” who are “proving stoical
in the face of pay cuts and compulsory unpaid leave.” Later the magazine adds,
“for the moment.”
Whatever
the initial problems and hesitations of the population, the raging economic
crisis will destabilize American political and social life, and radicalize vast
numbers of people. It is inevitably creating the conditions for a showdown
between working people, the vast majority, and the corporate aristocracy.
Building an independent political movement of the working class based on a
socialist and internationalist program to offer a progressive way out of the
crisis is the most pressing task.
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