"One of the premier institutions of big business, JP Morgan
Chase, issued an internal report on the eve of the 10th
anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that another
“great liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a government
bailout on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama
will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential impact of
central bank actions in driving inequality between asset
owners and labor."
"The report was drafted in conjunction with a survey conducted among nearly 1,000 banking and business executives, government officials and academics, which found that 93 percent of them feared a worsening of confrontations between the major powers in 2018. Fully 79 percent foresaw a heightened threat of a major “state-on-state” military conflict."
AMERICA’S ROAD TO REVOLUTION:
THE BANKSTER REGIME WILL BE TOPPLED AND
MEXICO PUSHED OUT OF AMERICA’S OPEN BORDERS!
"The report was drafted in conjunction with a survey conducted among nearly 1,000 banking and business executives, government officials and academics, which found that 93 percent of them feared a worsening of confrontations between the major powers in 2018. Fully 79 percent foresaw a heightened threat of a major “state-on-state” military conflict."
"One of the
premier institutions of big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued an internal
report on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which
warned that another “great liquidity crisis” was possible, and
that a government
bailout on the
scale of that effected by Bush and Obama will produce social unrest, “in light
of the potential impact of central bank actions in driving
inequality between asset owners and labor."
STARING IN THE FACE of
AMERICA’S UNRAVELING and the ROAD TO REVOLUTION
“It will more likely come on the heels of
economic dislocation and dwindling wealth to redistribute.”
"The
kind of people needed for violent change these days are living in
off-the-grid rural compounds, or the “gangster paradise” where
the businesses of drugs, guns, and prostitution are much more
lucrative than “transforming” America along Cuban lines." BRUCE THORNTON
There can be no resolution to any social problem confronting the
population in the United States and internationally outside of a frontal
assault on the wealth of the financial elite.
The political system is controlled by this
social layer, which uses a portion of its economic plunder to bribe politicians
and government officials, whether Democratic or Republican.
https://www.breitbart.com/video/2018/09/09/jim-carrey-to-democrats-say-yes-to-socialism-stop-apologizing/
Friday on the HBO weekly airing of “Real Time,” Bill Maher and actor Jim Carrey addressed Republicans “running” with the term “socialism” when it comes to far-left candidates.
Carrey defended socialism, arguing it is not a failure in Canada, where he grew up.
“I grew up in Canada, OK, we have socialized medicine,” said Carrey. “And I’m here to tell you that this bullshit line that you get on all of the political shows from people is that it’s a failure — the system is a failure in Canada. It is not a failure, and I never waited for anything in my life. I chose my own doctors. My mother never paid for a prescription — it was fantastic.”
He continued, “I just got back from Vancouver, and I keep hearing, ‘Canadians are so nice. Canadians are so nice.’ They can be nice because they have health care — because they have a government that cares about them that doesn’t say, ‘Sink or f***ing swim, pal, or you live in a box.’ There are certain people in our society that need to be taken care of.”
Maher replied, “I’ve always said the United States has been quasi-socialist for a hundred years, for crying out loud.”
The actor then said Democrats should just embrace socialism.
“We have to say yes to socialism — to the word and everything,” he proclaimed to Maher. “We have to stop apologizing.”
(h/t Newsbusters)
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent
OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERISM destroyed a 11 TRILLION
DOLLARS in home equity… and they’re still plundering us!
Barack Obama created
more debt for the middle class than any president in US
history, and also
had the only huge QE programs: $4.2 Trillion.
OXFAM reported that during Obama’s
terms, 95% of the wealth created went to the top 1% of the world’s wealthy.
PATHOLOGICAL LIAR BARACK OBAMA MOCKS TRUMP
Obama orchestrated the greatest transfer of wealth to the rich in
U.S. history!
THE WALL STREET BOUGHT AND OWNED DEMOCRAT PARTY
SERVING BANKSTERS, BILLIONAIRES and INVADING ILLEGALS
INCOME PLUMMETS UNDER OBAMA AND HIS WALL STREET CRONIES
collapse of household income in the US…
STILL BILLIONS IN WELFARE HANDED TO ILLEGALS… they already get our jobs and are
voting for more!
THE CRONY CLASS:
Income inequality grows FOUR TIMES FASTER under
Obama than Bush.
“By the time of Bill Clinton’s election
in 1992, the Democratic Party had completely repudiated its association with
the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society periods. Clinton gutted welfare
programs to provide an ample supply of cheap labor for the rich (WHICH NOW
MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a growing layer of black
capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill, with its notorious “three
strikes” provision that has helped create the largest prison population in the
world.”
A week of crisis and deepening dysfunction in US politics
10 September 2018
Every day last week brought new demonstrations of an unprecedented crisis within the Trump White House and US state apparatus. The Trump administration is torn by internal divisions, amidst palace coup conspiracies involving the corporate media and sections of the military-intelligence apparatus, as well as the Democratic Party.
On Tuesday, initial reports on the new book by Bob Woodward portrayed top Trump aides deriding his intelligence and even sanity, working behind the scenes to derail his most inflammatory orders—such as a demand for the assassination of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Trump administration officials were carrying out what Woodward characterized as “an administrative coup d’état,” i.e., disobeying his wishes and carrying out their own.
The next day, the New York Times made public an op-ed, written for its Thursday print edition, in which an unnamed “senior administration official” presented himself as the spokesman for a cabal of top officials working to keep Trump in check. “We are the real resistance,” the official claimed, making clear his support for the main elements of the administration’s right-wing program.
On Friday, Barack Obama weighed in with a campaign-style speech—unusual for an ex-president in the first election after leaving office—in which he described the Trump administration as “radical” and “not normal.” He called on Republicans, conservatives and Christian fundamentalists to vote for Democratic candidates in November, to “restore sanity” in Washington and allow a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives to provide an institutional check on Trump.
President Trump responded in kind. On Monday, he attacked his own attorney-general, Jeff Sessions, for not quashing Justice Department investigations into two Republican congressmen indicted on criminal charges of stock market swindling and theft. On Tuesday he denounced the Woodward book as a fabrication, and on Wednesday he called the New York Times op-ed an act of treason. On Thursday, he told a campaign rally in Montana that they had to vote Republican in November to prevent his impeachment. On Friday, he tweeted his demand that Sessions have the Justice Department investigate the New York Times op-ed and identify the anonymous writer.
Top Trump aides like chief of staff John Kelly, national security advisor John Bolton, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly met with Trump Thursday in an effort to convince him that none of them was the author of the op-ed and that he could still trust his inner circle. Some two dozen top officials issued formal denials that they were the anonymous writer.
There is simply no precedent in modern American history for such a level of political conflict and dysfunction within the leading institutions of the capitalist state. How is this to be explained? What direction will the crisis take?
It is entirely superficial to root such an explanation in the personality of Donald Trump. Even Obama in his Illinois speech admitted that Trump is not the cause, but merely the symptom, of more profound processes. But Obama, of course, covered up his own role, depicting his presidency as eight years of heroic efforts to repair the damage caused by the 2008 financial crash. At the end of those eight years, however, Wall Street and the financial oligarchy were fully recovered, enjoying record wealth, while working people were poorer than before, a widening social chasm that made possible the election of the billionaire con man and demagogue in November 2016.
This social crisis underlies the political convulsions in Washington. There are, of course, political differences within the two factions fighting it out within the ruling elite. They are deeply divided over foreign policy, particularly over how to deal with the failure of US intervention in Syria and the Middle East more broadly, and over whether to target Russia or China first in the struggle to maintain the global dominance of American imperialism. The most significant passage in Obama’s speech was his criticism of the Republican Party for having retreated from its Cold War, anti-Communist roots by tolerating Trump’s supposed “softness” toward Putin.
More fundamental, however, is the growing concern within all sections of the ruling elite over the possibility of a renewed economic crisis under conditions of mounting social opposition from below, following the initial stirrings of the American working class this year—the series of statewide teachers’ strikes, the mounting resistance of industrial workers to sellout contracts imposed by the unions, and the buildup of anger over super-exploitation by giant employers like Amazon and Walmart.
Facing an impending eruption of the class struggle, there is little confidence in corporate boardrooms, on Wall Street, or at the Pentagon and CIA that the current chief executive of the American government can meet the test of great events.
One of the premier institutions of big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued an internal report on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that another “great liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a government bailout on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential impact of central bank actions in driving inequality between asset owners and labor.”
The report went on to note that political explosions on the scale of 1968 could develop, facilitated by the role of the internet as a means of dissemination for radical political views and a means of political self-organization. “The next crisis is also likely to result in social tensions similar to those witnessed 50 years ago in 1968,” the bank report warned. “Similar to 1968, the internet today (social media, leaked documents, etc.) provides millennials with unrestricted access to information … In addition to information, the internet provides a platform for various social groups to become more self-aware, polarized, and organized.”
The ruling class response to this danger is to prepare domestic repression on a massive scale. In that respect, there is no difference between Trump and his opponents, except the ferocious disagreement over who should be in control of the forces of repression that will be unleashed against the American working class. Trump, of course, is an authoritarian through and through, organizing a fascistic attack on immigrant workers and developing tools that will be used against the entire working class.
However, his opponents, utilizing of the methods of the palace coup—intrigues, leaks, media smears, special prosecutors and other provocations—are no more wedded to democratic forms than Trump. The essence of the drive to censor the internet, spearheaded by the Democratic Party, is revealed by the JP Morgan report: it is the platform for “social groups,” above all, the working class, “to become more self-aware.”
As one of Trump’s leading media critics, Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum, a frothing anti-communist, wrote Sunday, “Maybe we have also underestimated the degree to which our Constitution, designed in the 18th century, has proved insufficient to the demands of the 21st.”
Trump’s political opponents seek to use the Democratic Party campaign in the November elections both to further the preparations for repression and to disguise them from working people. The disguise is provided by a handful of self-styled leftwing and even “socialist” candidates for the House of Representatives, many aligned with Bernie Sanders, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley.
The substance is provided by the much larger number of Democratic candidates drawn directly from the military-intelligence apparatus, nearly three dozen in all, who will hold the balance of power if the Democrats win control of the House of Representatives. The policy the Democrats will pursue if they win the election has already been demonstrated by the anti-Russia campaign and the accompanying demands for internet censorship.
Whatever the outcome of the elections, it will not resolve the crisis in Washington nor alter the basic trajectory of politics, which is bringing the working class into explosive conflict with the ruling class, the entire state apparatus, and the capitalist system.
A warning to students and the working class
Who are California Governor Jerry Brown’s appointments to the University of California Board of Regents?
By Evelyn Rios
10 September 2018
Democratic California Governor Jerry Brown announced the appointment of four new members to the University of California Board of Regents last month. The four appointees—Michael Cohen, Cecilia V. Estolano, Richard Leib and Laphonza Butler—are trusted representatives of the financial oligarchy and the military-intelligence apparatus and will play an essential role in the university’s further integration into the state apparatus and corporate America.
The selections will join the 28-member Board of Regents, which dictates all aspects of life for the 238,000 students and 190,000 staff throughout the ten campuses, five medical centers, 16 health professional schools, three national laboratories and numerous satellite facilities that comprise the largest public institution of higher learning in the world.
As for their qualifications:
• Cohen has served as director of the California Department of Finance and as Brown’s top budget advisor for the past five years. Since his early August nomination to the board, he has been named the Chief Financial Officer of the California Public Employee Retirement System or CalPERS. Cohen has been the California governor’s top strategist for imposing merciless austerity measures on the working class, including years of massive cuts to CalWorks Welfare to Work program, Supplemental Security Income/State Supplemental Payment (SSI/SSP) recipients, and the axing of dental and vision coverage from Medi-Cal.
• Estolano was the senior policy advisor at the US Environmental Protection Agency from 1993 to 1995 and is a founder and chief executive at Estolano LeSar Advisors, a redevelopment consulting firm. Among her prior appointments is chief executive of the Los Angeles City redevelopment agency from 2006 through 2009 in the administration of former Democratic Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
• Leib is a longtime business executive and consultant who has spent years in the defense and spyware industry. Currently a member of the Solana Beach School District Board of Education and the CEO of Dunleer Strategies, Leib was the executive vice president and general counsel at US Public Technologies from 1994 to 1999 where his company developed applications to process and gather data for automated traffic enforcement. In 1999 Lockheed Martin acquired the company and Leib became vice president of the arms manufacturer from 1999 to 2001.
• Butler is Chair of the University of California African-American Advisory Council and president of SEIU Local 2015, the largest union in California, which represents 325,000 assisted living center and home-care workers. Butler’s greatest asset for the ruling establishment is her perceived ability to corral the poorest paid workers within the ranks of the union and behind the Democratic Party. As a black woman, Butler rides the coattails of identity politics, raking in a yearly salary of over $230,000 while posing as a champion of the poor by advocating a $15 an hour statewide minimum wage, a paltry $31,200 a year full time.
This year, under Butler’s leadership, the union hailed the allowance of sick days as a progressive “baby step” for their workers who live in conditions of poverty with wages at or below $12 an hour. Butler was previously the SEIU’s Property Services Division Director and was responsible for “the strategic direction of the more than 250,000 janitors, security officers, window cleaners and food service workers across the country.”
Before entering the leadership of the SEIU, Butler was the Director for the Board of Governors of the Los Angeles branch of the Federal Reserve System. The inclusion of Butler, a union bureaucrat, on the Board of Regents further confirms the right-wing and anti-working class character of the SEIU and other organizations like it.
The UC Board of Regents is so despised by students and the university workforce, that every meeting it holds is met with demonstrations. At the board’s meeting in May, police officers escorted the Regents out and declared the protest “unlawful,” warning the assembled low-wage service sector workers that if they did not disband in five minutes they would be arrested.
Beginning in 2011, when they voted to increase fees by 30 percent, the Regents were forced to conduct their business in secret, meeting solely on the UC San Francisco campus, where there is no undergraduate population.
The University of California is the largest non-governmental employer in the state of California, in turn the world’s fifth largest economy with a GDP larger than the United Kingdom. In 2017 the state reported global assets of $109.8 billion. The UC System plays a critical role in setting the bar for wages and working conditions throughout the state and beyond its borders. According to the UC Office of the President, the behemoth of an institution “generates more than $46 billion in economic activity in California” and “supports 1 out of every 46 jobs” in the state.
California is home to more of the “super rich” than anywhere else in the US. At the same time it has some of the highest poverty rates and highest cost of living. According to the Economic Policy Institute, California ranks among the top five states with the highest income inequality.
The University of California typifies this process, having built an army of low-wage temporary workers while rapidly expanding the number of highly paid administrators. The Great Recession of 2008 was used by the UC administration with the support of the unions as a wrecking ball against the working class, casualizing labor across the system. What followed were perpetual layoffs, the ushering in of thousands of low-wage temporary workers, while students saw the imposition of unprecedented tuition hikes, the closing of libraries across the campuses, and ending of all forms of student support services.
According to a report produced by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME): “[T]he number of six- to seven-digit salaries escalated for UC executives, as did the ranks of its middle managers. Even with $1.4 billion in tuition increases to replace $900 million in state funding cuts, UC administrators resorted to multiple cost cutting strategies. This included the outsourcing of hundreds, if not thousands, of service jobs (including maintenance, custodial, and food service).”
The UC has been assisted in this massive attack on the working class by the unions, which have made it their goal to “work with UC,” assisting it in pushing through layoffs and furloughs in the aftermath of the recession.
AFSCME is the largest union in the UC System, representing its lowest paid layers, nearly 24,000 UC employees, over 8,000 of whom are service workers and 13,000 are engaged in patient care. These workers have been on the job without a contract since June 30, 2017. Like all of the established trade unions, AFSCME is working with the administration to ensure that workers remain at poverty wages, are compelled to pay more toward their own retirement, and that the UC Retirement option is gutted and replaced with 401k plans.
The union takes no responsibility for the brutal poverty of its members. In 2014, AFSCME openly admitted that “99 percent of service workers [are] currently income eligible for some form of public assistance, and some full time UC workers [are] even living in their cars.” Since then, things have only gotten worse.
AFSCME has defended the UC system against the anger of its own membership, calling a three-day strike in May to vent steam while giving the UC weeks to locate scab labor. After this stunt, AFSCME urged its members to call the office of Janet Napolitano, President of the Board of Regents, to plead for improved conditions and pay.
Rather than uniting workers in opposition to their exploiters, AFSCME has sought to divide them on the basis of race and gender. A recent report by AFSCME, Pioneering Inequality, argued that the real travesty is not that workers are paid poverty wages, but that a Latino female service worker makes a dollar less an hour than her white male counterpart. The study recommended a more equal share of low wage work.
Conditions are not better for many students. A report published in December, Global Food Initiative: Food and Housing Security at the University of California, found that “19 percent of UC students indicated they had ‘very low’ food security… An additional 23 percent were characterized as having ‘low’ food security, defined by the USDA as reduced quality, variety or desirability of diet, with little or no indication of reduced food intake.” Five percent of UC students reported in surveys that they experienced homelessness, and among students who were independent—those without the support of family or parents—the number is twice that, ten percent.
The protests at the UC Board of Regents are one expression of how such conditions are breeding immense social anger. The UC campus police have been readied to meet and suppress this anger, having been increasingly militarized, clashing with students in riot gear and turning campuses into war zones. These supposed “Peace Officers” across the UC system have carried out some of the largest mass arrests in history and have aggressively attacked students, beating them with batons, shooting them at point blank range with rubber bullets, and dousing peaceful protesters with pepper spray.
Anticipating even larger demonstrations, the UC campus police have repeatedly attempted to acquire military grade mine resistant armored vehicles from the Department of Homeland Security. At least 117 colleges have acquired equipment from the Department of Defense under the federal 1033 Program, which transfers military surplus to law-enforcement agencies and campus police.
The new appointees, and the UC regents as a whole, are representatives of the financial aristocracy and enemies of the working class. It is not by accident that Janet Napolitano, the former Secretary of Homeland Security under President Barack Obama, was selected as the President of the Regents. It was a calculated preparation by the financial oligarchy in anticipation of upheavals among workers and students.
The Socialist Equality Party calls on UC workers, students, faculty and staff to build chapters of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality(IYSSE) at their campus as well as rank-and-file workplace committees to oppose these appointments and the militarization of their universities. The UC system must be taken out of the hands of the financial oligarchy and the corporate-approved Board of Regents, to be transformed into an institution that provides free high-quality public education for all.
HAS AMERICA DESTROYED ITSELF MERELY TO MAKE THE RICH SUPER RICH?
Viking
Economics by George Lakey
by Melville House
This
week, we’re excited to be publishing Viking Economics, George
Lakey’s look at
how the Nordic countries, in a very short span of time, managed to move past
many of the problems faced by nations like the US and UK today — problems with
inequality, infrastructural weakness, the cost of education, and personal
freedom. Today, the people of Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden enjoy widely-shared prosperity,
low crime rates, reliable infrastructure, affordable education, great personal
freedoms — some of the highest standards of living in the world.
Particularly
as both the US and the UK face some of our biggest challenges in a generation —
and, in both cases, under new leadership — Viking
Economicsoffers some
crucial examples of how we might get some things right.
Here’s a
brief excerpt to read on the longship ride over to your local
bookstore to
buy a copy; please try not to get herring on it.
Like most
Americans today, Norwegians a century ago didn’t like the results of a wealth
gap: the hunger and poverty, the crime, elderly friends warehoused or left in
isolation, young people without hope of a good job. Norwegians also didn’t like
the attitudes that went with inequality: an inclination toward arrogance among
higher-income people and the feeling among lower-income people that they were
losers, defeated by the system.
Early in
the twentieth century, Norway had the formal institutions of parliamentary
democracy, but ordinary people were not empowered: they did not set the
direction of their society. The direction was set, instead, by the economic
elite, through the political parties they dominated and the businesses they
ran. Career options were limited, and there was little social mobility.
The
differences between then and now are striking: If you’re a Norwegian teenager
today and the job you’re interested in pursuing doesn’t require higher
education, you can choose among good public vocational courses. If you learn
better in a hands-on apprenticeship mode, publicly supported programs help you
do that. If, instead, you prefer to develop a talent in art or music, or follow
a career at sea or in engineering, you can attend a free post-secondary school.
Paid
maternity and paternity leave (including for adoptive parents) is built into
the system, and your job is held until you return. After the leave is over,
child support is increased if you choose to be a full-time parent. If your
choice is to go back to work, affordable childcare is available.
Extensive,
subsidized public transport means that you probably won’t need a car to get to
work. High educational standards prevail in big-city schools, as well as in the
suburbs. Small towns receive subsidies to make them attractive for people who
might otherwise feel forced to live in a city for cultural amenities, again
increasing your options. The economy subsidizes family farming both for its own
sake and for food security, so farmers can earn a reasonable income, another
freedom denied in many industrialized countries.
The
government offers free vocational counseling, education, and job-training
resources for people seeking a career change, and entrepreneurialism is
encouraged through free health care and a public pension for all: In Norway,
you have the freedom to fail without becoming a failure.
Money
doesn’t dominate the political system, so citizens are freer to participate
meaningfully in political life—and they’re more likely to be exposed to
newspapers with a variety of points of view, because journalism is subsidized
to avoid a narrowing of perspective. According to Freedom House, in 2013,
Norway was tied with Sweden at number one in the world for freedom of the
press. Denmark was sixth, and Iceland was tenth. (The United States was
twenty-sixth.) Indeed, this approach to public life has a long lineage in the
region: Sweden was the first country in the world to establish freedom of the
press—in 1766.
The
Nordics are among the longest-living people in the world, and older citizens
continue to benefit from an economy designed for personal freedom. The Global
Watch Index studied ninety-six countries and rated Norway as the best place to grow old, followed closely by Sweden. The pension system enables you to live
at home with health aides or in a senior living facility. You don’t need to
fear hunger or lack of medicines or of health care. Every small town has a
music and culture center where you can enjoy the arts and pursue your hobbies.
The crime
rate is very low, partly because societies with high equality tend to
experience less crime. Even in their largest city, Norwegians enjoy a
remarkable degree of freedom from fear about personal safety.
Designing
an economy that supports freedom and equality pays off in happiness, judging
from the Vikings’ descendants making the top ten in the UN’s International
Happiness Index. In 2015, the ratings showed Denmark, Iceland, and
Norway sharing first place with Switzerland, while Sweden was close to its
cousins.
The
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), composed of
thirty-four of the most-developed nations, compared life satisfaction
experienced by the people in each country in 2013. The OECD found Norway second, Iceland third, Sweden fourth, and
Denmark fifth.
And yet
in spite of all this security and support, the Nordic yen for adventure has not
disappeared. Americans, too, have a strong yearning for both freedom and
equality, so the Nordic desire for both isn’t surprising. What is surprising,
though, is that they went ahead and built an economy to serve those values.
That’s the story in this book.
Like
their Viking ancestors, the moderns made mistakes in their explorations.
Iceland’s financial collapse of 2008 was a spectacular error, and, as I’ll
describe, back in the 1980s, the Norwegians and Swedes made a series of serious
economic mistakes. The Nordics haven’t built a utopia: Norwegians see
themselves as “a nation of complainers,” and this book doesn’t shy away from
the challenges that face them and their Nordic cousins.
Still,
it’s useful for us as outsiders to observe the Nordics’ expeditions and to use
them to reflect on our own situations. There are many important lessons to be
learned.
Part of
Trump tax bill bonanza for the
wealthy
"The $100 billion figure is not so much a record as it is
another dimension in corporate plunder."
“It has been estimated that the cost of an iPhone, retailing for
around $650 to $700, is made up of $220 for the components and $5 for the labor
of assembly.”
"In the past week, at least one prominent Republican,
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, has publicly admitted that
the tax bill was sold under false pretenses."
TRUMPERNOMICS:
The Trickle Up to the Rich Economy
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/12/congress-passes-tax-windfall-for-super.html
"It will, in fact, no more
provide decent-paying jobs and improved wages than the previous tax “reforms”
carried out over the past three-and-a-half decades. The Reagan tax cuts of 1981
and 1986, Bill Clinton’s capital gains tax cut in 1997 and George W. Bush’s tax
“reform” of 2001 were all part of a ruling class offensive against the working
class, which included sweeping attacks on wages, jobs, pensions, education,
health care, housing and other social benefits."
Brings
Democratic Socialists of America Back to Mainstream U.S. Politics
NEW
YORK — The win by Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
in the Democratic Party primary for New York’s 14th Congressional district
serves as a milestone victory for the DSA, which long sought to infiltrate
Democratic politics and push the party far leftwards.
In largely forgotten history, the
DSA played a central role in helping found the Congressional Progressive Caucus
(CPC), which advanced radical DSA ideology within the Democratic party. The CPC
was established in 1991 by six members of the House of Representatives,
including Bernie Sanders, Ron Dellums and Maxine Waters.
With Ocasio-Cortez’s clinch of
the nomination, the DSA now moves into the open within the mainstream of the
Democratic party. She beat veteran Congressman Joe Crowley in an upset victory
that sent shockwaves across the U.S. political landscape.
“Tonight’s
victory shows that we are in the middle of a political revolution,” said Christian
Bowe, a member of the DSA’s National Political Committee. “By running on an
unabashedly Democratic Socialist platform focused on healthcare for all,
housing as a human right, abolishing ICE, justice for Puerto Rico and a federal
jobs guarantee, Ocasio-Cortez was able to defeat a powerful establishment
Democrat who has been in Congress since 1999.”
The
World Socialist Website outlined the role
Ocasio-Cortez played in keeping the socialist revolution within the Democratic
party:
Ocasio-Cortez’s victory reflects
a significant leftward shift of workers and youth who are hostile to the
Democratic party establishment and seeking a way to oppose inequality and the
attack on immigrant workers by the Trump administration. Her own role, and that
of the DSA, is to keep this opposition within the confines of the Democratic
party and prevent it from taking an independent form.
The
DSA was central in promoting her campaign, helping to canvass, organize phone
banks and even reportedly producing one of
her campaign videos.
As
a member of the DSA, the platform for
Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign reads like a socialist wish list:
- Medicare
For All
- Housing
As a Human Right
- A
Federal Jobs Guarantee
- Gun
Control / Assault Weapons Ban
- Immigration
Justice / Abolish ICE
- Mobilizing
Against Climate Change
- Clean
Campaign Finance
- Curb
Wall Street Gambling: Restore Glass Steagall
- The
expansion of Medicare into a universal healthcare system.
- Infiltrating
Congress
Infiltrating the Democratic party
The DSA is the largest socialist
organization in the U.S. and is known for its far-left ideology.
The
anti-capitalist views of the organization are evident in its charter, which calls for wealth
distribution:
We are socialists because we
reject an international economic order sustained by private profit, alienated
labor, race and gender discrimination, environmental destruction, and brutality
and violence in defense of the status quo.
We are socialists because we
share a vision of a humane international social order based both on democratic
planning and market mechanisms to achieve equitable distribution of resources,
meaningful work, a healthy environment, sustainable growth, gender and racial
equality, and non-oppressive relationships.
The
DSA originally emerged in
1982 out of two socialist-leaning groups: the Democratic Socialist Organizing
Committee (DSOC) and the New American Movement (NAM). The DSA traces
its origins to
the radical, anti-war Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), from which Bill
Ayers’ Weather Underground domestic terrorist organization notoriously splintered.
The DSA has its roots in the ideology of American democratic socialist activist
and writer Michael Harrington.
In 1991, the DSA took more of a
national role when it lobbied in a visible way for a universal health care
system in the U.S. It was also around that time that the DSA helped to found
the Congressional Progressive Caucus with Sanders and Waters.
Ocasio-Cortez
served as an organizer for Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign and she is
listed as an endorsed candidate
of the Brand New Congress political action committee, which was founded by
former staff members from Sanders campaign. “True resistance means standing for
the things you believe in,” reads the group’s website, which brandishes
Ocasio-Cortez’s photo on its main page.
Ocasio-Cortez
is also endorsed by Sanders’ Our
Revolution group.
The DSA’s website documents some
of its ties to the CPC. It states that the organization “turned much of its
attention in the late 1990s to working closely with the Congressional
Progressive Caucus and local global justice groups to oppose the Multilateral
Agreement on Investment (MAI).”
While the DSA worked with the
Caucus on the issue of opposing the draft agreement negotiated between members
of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the DSA’s
ties to the Caucus run much deeper. In fact, the DSA played a leading role in
founding the CPC.
The DSA’s role in openly helping
to found the CPC has been documented but largely forgotten.
Chicago
DSA’s New Ground publication identified the
Progressive Caucus in Congress as a group which the DSA “helped to organize.”
The
ties were so close that until November 2002 the CPC’s website was openly hosted
by the DSA’s own website. However, after numerous news media outlets pointed to
the connection, the online list of CPC members was relocated to
Sanders’ own website before getting its own website.
The
radicalism of the DSA’s website was openly brandished. In 1998, it featured
“The Internationale,” the worldwide anthem of communism and socialism,
WND.com reported.
The website also featured the
song titled “Red Revolution,” which was supposed to be sung to the tune of “Red
Robin.”
The lyrics, WND noted, include:
“When the Red Revolution brings its solution along, along, there’ll be no more
lootin’ when we start shootin’ that Wall Street throng.”
Also: “Are you sleeping? Are you
sleeping? Bourgeoisie, Bourgeoisie. And when the revolution comes, We’ll kill
you all with knives and guns, Bourgeoisie, Bourgeoisie.”
The CPC being hosted on the DSA’s
website is noted in the Congressional record.
This
reporter previously documented:
The
issue of the CPC being hosted on the DSA website rose again in June 2000 in
connection with a heated dispute on
the House floor among Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif.; Rep. Peter
DeFazio, D-Ore.; and David R. Obey, D-Wis., over the “merits of the F-22
fighter plane.”
When Cunningham stood to defend
himself, he included in his argument the fact that the relationship between the
CPC and DSA was an open secret.
The
CPC was still hosted by the DSA website in April 2002. On April 23, 2002,
author and political philosopher Balint Vazsonyi noted the connection in the Washington Times when
he asked: “‘What?’ I hear you say. ‘Socialists in the Congress of the United
States?’”
Dozens, dear reader, dozens. And
they make no secret of it. Although of late it has been refurbished and the
address altered, they have their own Web site. They call themselves members of
the Progressive Caucus, until recently an arm of the Democratic Socialists of
America, itself an arm of the Socialist International. The Progressive Caucus
may be a separate entity now, but the details of its program, as advertised on
the website, are indistinguishable from that of the Socialist International.
To their credit, they make no
secret of it. Only the rest of us prefer not to believe it.
In
an earlier article in November 2002,
Vazsonyi further highlighted the presence of the CPC on the DSA website.
DSA aided Sanders political rise
This
reporter previously documented the
DSA’s role in helping to organize support for Sanders’ national political
career:
On
Oct. 24, 1988, The Nation magazine,
identifying Sanders as “the socialist Mayor of Burlington, Vermont,” reported he had been
endorsed for Congress by both the Democratic Socialists of America and the
progressive founders of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream.
The DSA endorsed Sanders for
every one of his subsequent elections and has openly helped to raise funds for
him over the years.
In 2006, for example, the DSA boasted in its literature about
the socialist group’s “involvement in Bernie Sanders’ pivotal independent 2006
Senate campaign in Vermont.”
Indeed, the DSA held “Elect
Sanders” house parties in Atlanta; Boston; Detroit; Portland, Maine; Boulder,
Colorado; Indianapolis; Columbus, Ohio; Ithaca, New York; Springfield,
Massachusetts; Washington, D.C.; and New York City.
“DSAers
wanting to hold Sanders house parties should contact me at fllewellyn@dsausa.org,” wrote one senior DSA activist in the socialist group’s
July 2006 newsletter.
That same year, Sanders spoke at a Detroit fundraiser for
DSA’s Political Action Committee. The fundraiser was connected by telephone
link to a simultaneous DSA fundraising event in Atlanta.
DSA literature notes that in
January 2006, DSA Detroit Chair David Green “took Bernie Sanders to tour Stan
Ovshinsky’s United Solar Ovonics plant in Auburn Hills northwest of Detroit.”
“The
plant makes successful, cost-efficient solar panels and is pioneering the
hydrogen fuel cell,” added the DSA.
Sanders
helped recruit new members to the DSA. In one example, he was the featured speaker at
numerous DSA “house parties” in the fall of 2006 that were aimed not only at
garnering support for his senatorial bid but also used by the DSA to recruit
new members to its ranks.
As
this reporter previously documented:
One New York City event was held
Sept. 19, 2006, at the home of DSA activists Gene and Laurel Eisner on
Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
“The questions and comments
actually had to be cut off to let Bernie get to the plane,” reported the DSA.
DSA reported the Sanders events
helped to recruit new members to the socialist organization.
“Sanders support work provides a
natural vehicle in any locality for DSA to reach out to — and potentially
recruit — unaffiliated socialists and independent radicals.”
With the victory of
Ocasio-Cortez, the DSA has arrived on the political stage as an open,
unapologetically socialist player in the Democratic party.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior
investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the
popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.”
Follow him on Twitter
@AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
Big
GovernmentBig JournalismBreitbart
JerusalemAlexandria Ocasio-CortezBernie
SandersBill AyersCongressional Progressive CaucusDemocratic
PartyDemocratic Socialists of AmericaRep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)Students for a Democratic Society
BOTH BARACK OBAMA AND MARK ARE
SUPPORTERS OF THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of 'LA RAZA' FOR WIDER OPEN BORDERS AND DEPRESSED WAGES.
"The larger fear is that Obama might be just another corporatist, punking voters much as the Republicans do when they claim to be all for the common guy."
BILLIONAIRE ZUCKERBERG SEES THE OBOMB AS DICTATOR OF AN AMERICA RULED BY CRONY BANKSTERS ON WALL STREET. TO ACHIEVE THIS OBAMA MUST FINISH OFF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS, WHICH HE AND ERIC HOLDER SPENT 8 YEARS ATTEMPTING.
"Cold War historian Paul Kengor goes deeply into Obama's communist background in an article in American Spectator, "Our First Red Diaper Baby President," and in an excellent Mark Levin interview. Another Kengor article describes the Chicago communists whose younger generation include David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, and Barack Hussein Obama. Add the openly Marxist, pro-communist Ayers, and you have many of the key players who put Obama into power." Karin McQuillan
“Attorney General Eric Holder's tenure was a low point even within the disgraceful scandal-ridden Obama years.” DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONTPAGE MAG
THE INVITED INVADING HORDES: IT’S ALL ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED!
"In the decade following the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the capitalist class has delivered powerful blows to the social position of the working class. As a result, the working class in the US, the world’s “richest country,” faces levels of economic hardship not seen since the 1930s."
"Inequality has reached unprecedented levels: the wealth of America’s three richest people now equals the net worth of the poorest half of the US population."
STARING IN THE FACE of AMERICA’S UNRAVELING and the ROAD TO REVOLUTION
“It will more likely come on the heels of economic dislocation and dwindling wealth to redistribute.”
"The kind of people needed for violent change these days are living in off-the-grid rural compounds, or the “gangster paradise” where the businesses of drugs, guns, and prostitution are much more lucrative than “transforming” America along Cuban lines." BRUCE THORNTON
There can be no resolution to any social problem confronting the population in the United States and internationally outside of a frontal assault on the wealth of the financial elite.
The political system is controlled by this social layer, which uses a portion of its economic plunder to bribe politicians and government officials, whether Democratic or Republican.
THE LA RAZA SUPREMACY PARTY for OPEN BORDERS, AMNESTY, NON-ENFORCEMENT, NO E-VERIFY and no Legal need apply!!!
The Democratic Party used to be the party of blue collar America- supporting laws and policies that benefited that segment of the U.S. population. Their leaders may still claim to be advocates for American working families, however their duplicitous actions that betray American workers and their families, while undermining national security and public safety, provide clear and incontrovertible evidence of their lies…. MICHAEL CUTLER …FRONTPAGE mag
What did Obama do for black Americans during the 8 years he and Holder were sabotaging our laws and borders to get more Mexicans into our voting booths?!?
BARACK OBAMA and ERICK HOLDER: BUILDING OBAMA’S MUSLIM-STYLE DICTATORSHIP requires destroying white middle class first. BLACKS HAVE ALREADY SELF-DESTRUCTED!
BARACK OBAMA: THE CLOSET MUSLIM PSYCHOPATH WHO HATED AMERICA!
"But the Obamas are the center of the most delusional cult of personality that the media has yet spawned. And so we get bizarre pieces like these."
The mullahs rolled in cash as a result of rolling Obama and his gullible team over the deal, knowing that Obama was desperate for some sort of legacy. MONICA SHOWALTER
MUSLIM DICTATORS, INCLUDING THE 9-11 INVADING SAUDIS, FUNDED THE PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARIES OF BUSH, CLINTON and OBAMA!
BANKSTERS’ RENT BOY ERIC HOLDER DECLARES THAT OBAMA IS
(still) “READY TO ROLL” FOR A THIRD TERM FOR LIFE!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/08/seth-barron-obama-and-building-of.html
“Obama’s new home in Washington has been described as the “nerve center” of the anti-Trump opposition. Former attorney general Eric Holder has said that Obama is “ready to roll” and has aligned himself with the “resistance.” Former high-level Obama campaign staffers now work with a variety of groups organizing direct action against Trump’s initiatives. “Resistance School,” for example, features lectures by former campaign executive Sara El-Amine, author of the Obama Organizing.”
THE OBAMA MARXIST-MUSLIM BANKSTER-FUNDED THIRD TERM for life:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/03/obamas-marxism-still-hankering-for.html
"Cold War historian Paul Kengor goes deeply into Obama's communist background in an article in American Spectator, "Our First Red Diaper Baby President," and in an excellent Mark Levin interview. Another Kengor article describes the Chicago communists whose younger generation include David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, and Barack Hussein Obama. Add the openly Marxist, pro-communist Ayers, and you have many of the key players who put Obama into power." Karin McQuillan
"We know that Obama and his inner circle have set up a war room in his D.C.
home to plan and execute resistance to the Trump administration and his legislative
agenda. None of these people care about the American people, or the fact that
Trump won the election because millions of people voted for him."
Patricia McCarthy / AMERICAN THINKER.com
THE OBAMA COUP:
IT STARTED IN CHARLOTTESVILLE
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/08/did-barack-obama-start-charlottesville.html
"Cold War historian Paul Kengor goes deeply into Obama's communist background in an article in American Spectator, "Our First Red Diaper Baby President," and in an excellent Mark Levin interview. Another Kengor article describes the Chicago communists whose younger generation include David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, and Barack Hussein Obama. Add the openly Marxist, pro-communist Ayers, and you have many of the key players who put Obama into power." Karin McQuillan
OBAMA: FUNDED BY HIS CRONY CRIMINAL BANKSTERS and ELECTED
BY MEXICO – THE FIRST BLACK MAN OR THE FIRST SPY ELECTED TO THE PRESIDENCY???
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/05/matthew-vadum-spies-like-obama.html
Now the outlines of a Watergate-like conspiracy are emerging in which a sitting Democrat president apparently used the apparatus of the state to spy on a Republican presidential candidate. Watergate differed in that President Nixon didn’t get involved in the plot against the Democratic National Committee until later as an accomplice after the fact. Here Obama likely masterminded or oversaw someone like the diabolical Benghazi cover-up artist Ben Rhodes, masterminding the whole thing.
"Cold War historian Paul Kengor goes deeply into Obama's communist background in an article in American Spectator, "Our First Red Diaper Baby President," and in an excellent Mark Levin interview. Another Kengor article describes the Chicago communists whose younger generation include David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, and Barack Hussein Obama. Add the openly Marxist, pro-communist Ayers, and you have many of the key players who put Obama into power." Karin McQuillan
Adios, Sanctuary La Raza Welfare State of California
A fifth-generation Californian laments his state’s ongoing economic collapse.
By Steve Baldwin
American Spectator, October 19, 2017
What’s clear is that the producers are leaving the state and the takers are coming in. Many of the takers are illegal aliens, now estimated to number over 2.6 million. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that California spends $22 billion on government services for illegal aliens, including welfare, education, Medicaid, and criminal justice system costs.
A fifth-generation Californian laments his state’s ongoing economic collapse.
By Steve Baldwin
American Spectator, October 19, 2017
What’s clear is that the producers are leaving the state and the takers are coming in. Many of the takers are illegal aliens, now estimated to number over 2.6 million. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that California spends $22 billion on government services for illegal aliens, including welfare, education, Medicaid, and criminal justice system costs.
BLOG: MANY DISPUTE CALIFORNIA’S EXPENDITURES FOR THE LA RAZA WELFARE STATE IN MEXIFORNIA JUST AS THEY DISPUTE THE NUMBER OF ILLEGALS. APPROXIMATELY HALF THE POPULATION OF CA IS NOW MEXICAN AND BREEDING ANCHOR BABIES FOR WELFARE LIKE BUNNIES. THE $22 BILLION IS STATE EXPENDITURE ONLY. COUNTIES PAY OUT MORE WITH LOS ANGELES COUNTY LEADING AT OVER A BILLION DOLLARS PAID OUT YEARLY TO MEXICO’S ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS. NOW MULTIPLY THAT BY THE NUMBER OF COUNTIES IN CA AND YOU START TO GET AN IDEA OF THE STAGGERING WELFARE STATE MEXICO AND THE DEMOCRAT PARTY HAVE ERECTED SANS ANY LEGALS VOTES. ADD TO THIS THE FREE ENTERPRISE HOSPITAL AND CLINIC COST FOR LA RAZA’S “FREE” MEDICAL WHICH IS ESTIMATED TO BE ABOUT $1.5 BILLION PER YEAR.
Liberals claim they more than make that up with taxes paid, but that’s simply not true. It’s not even close. FAIR estimates illegal aliens in California contribute only $1.21 billion in tax revenue, which means they cost California $20.6 billion, or at least $1,800 per household.
Nonetheless, open border advocates, such as Facebook Chairman Mark Zuckerberg, claim illegal aliens are a net benefit to California with little evidence to support such an assertion. As the Center for Immigration Studies has documented, the vast majority of illegals are poor, uneducated, and with few skills. How does accepting millions of illegal aliens and then granting them access to dozens of welfare programs benefit California’s economy? If illegal aliens were contributing to the economy in any meaningful way, California, with its 2.6 million illegal aliens, would be booming.
Furthermore, the complexion of illegal aliens has changed with far more on welfare and committing crimes than those who entered the country in the 1980s. Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute has testified before a Congressional committee that in 2004, 95% of all outstanding warrants for murder in Los Angeles were for illegal aliens; in 2000, 23% of all Los Angeles County jail inmates were illegal aliens and that in 1995, 60% of Los Angeles’s largest street gang, the 18th Street gang, were illegal aliens. Granted, those statistics are old, but if you talk to any California law enforcement officer, they will tell you it’s much worse today. The problem is that the Brown administration will not release any statewide data on illegal alien crimes. That would be insensitive. And now that California has declared itself a “sanctuary state,” there is little doubt this sends a message south of the border that will further escalate illegal immigration into the state.
Nonetheless, open border advocates, such as Facebook Chairman Mark Zuckerberg, claim illegal aliens are a net benefit to California with little evidence to support such an assertion. As the Center for Immigration Studies has documented, the vast majority of illegals are poor, uneducated, and with few skills. How does accepting millions of illegal aliens and then granting them access to dozens of welfare programs benefit California’s economy? If illegal aliens were contributing to the economy in any meaningful way, California, with its 2.6 million illegal aliens, would be booming.
Furthermore, the complexion of illegal aliens has changed with far more on welfare and committing crimes than those who entered the country in the 1980s. Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute has testified before a Congressional committee that in 2004, 95% of all outstanding warrants for murder in Los Angeles were for illegal aliens; in 2000, 23% of all Los Angeles County jail inmates were illegal aliens and that in 1995, 60% of Los Angeles’s largest street gang, the 18th Street gang, were illegal aliens. Granted, those statistics are old, but if you talk to any California law enforcement officer, they will tell you it’s much worse today. The problem is that the Brown administration will not release any statewide data on illegal alien crimes. That would be insensitive. And now that California has declared itself a “sanctuary state,” there is little doubt this sends a message south of the border that will further escalate illegal immigration into the state.
"If the racist "Sensenbrenner Legislation" passes the US Senate, there is no doubt that a massive civil disobedience movement will emerge. Eventually labor union power can merge with the immigrant civil rights and "Immigrant Sanctuary" movements to enable us to either form a new political party or to do heavy duty reforming of the existing Democratic Party. The next and final steps would follow and that is to elect our own governors of all the states within Aztlan."
Indeed, California goes out of its way to attract illegal aliens. The state has even created government programs that cater exclusively to illegal aliens. For example, the State Department of Motor Vehicles has offices that only process driver licenses for illegal aliens. With over a million illegal aliens now driving in California, the state felt compelled to help them avoid the long lines the rest of us must endure at the DMV. And just recently, the state-funded University of California system announced it will spend $27 million on financial aid for illegal aliens. They’ve even taken out radio spots on stations all along the border, just to make sure other potential illegal border crossers hear about this program. I can’t afford college education for all my four sons, but my taxes will pay for illegals to get a college education.
Indeed, California goes out of its way to attract illegal aliens. The state has even created government programs that cater exclusively to illegal aliens. For example, the State Department of Motor Vehicles has offices that only process driver licenses for illegal aliens. With over a million illegal aliens now driving in California, the state felt compelled to help them avoid the long lines the rest of us must endure at the DMV. And just recently, the state-funded University of California system announced it will spend $27 million on financial aid for illegal aliens. They’ve even taken out radio spots on stations all along the border, just to make sure other potential illegal border crossers hear about this program. I can’t afford college education for all my four sons, but my taxes will pay for illegals to get a college education.
Democrats Move Towards ‘Oligarchical Socialism,’ Says Forecaster Joel Kotkin
Left-wing progressives are embracing a political alliance with Silicon Valley oligarchs who would trap Americans in a cramped future without hope of upward mobility for themselves or their children, says a left-wing political analyst in California.
Under the headline “America is moving toward an oligarchical socialism,” Joel Kotkin writes:
Historically, liberals advocated helping the middle class achieve greater independence, notably by owning houses and starting companies. But the tech oligarchy — the people who run the five most capitalized firms on Wall Street — have a far less egalitarian vision. Greg Fehrenstein, who interviewed 147 digital company founders, says most believe that “an increasingly greater share of economic wealth will be generated by a smaller slice of very talented or original people. Everyone else will increasingly subsist on some combination of part-time entrepreneurial ’gig work‘ and government aid.”Numerous oligarchs — Mark Zuckerberg, Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, Elon Musk and Sam Altman, founder of the Y Combinator — have embraced this vision including a “guaranteed wage,” usually $500 or a $1,000 monthly. Our new economic overlords are not typical anti-tax billionaires in the traditional mode; they see government spending as a means of keeping the populist pitchforks away. This may be the only politically sustainable way to expand “the gig economy,” which grew to 7 million workers this year, 26 percent above the year before.Handouts, including housing subsidies, could guarantee for the next generation a future not of owned houses, but rented small, modest apartments. Unable to grow into property-owning adults, they will subsist while playing with their phones, video games and virtual reality in what Google calls “immersive computing.”
This plan, however, is being challenged by the return of populism and nationalism when President Donald Trump defeated the GOP’s corporatist candidates and the progressives’ candidate in 2016. In his 2017 inauguration, Trump declared:
For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered, but the jobs left and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories. Their triumphs have not been your triumphs. And while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.That all changes starting right here and right now because this moment is your moment, it belongs to you …What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.
For several years, Kotkin has been dissecting the Democrats’ shift from working-class politics toward a tacit alliance with the billionaires in the new information-technology industries that are centralizing wealth and power through the United States. In 2013, for example, he argued that California’s politics were increasingly “feudal“:
As late as the 80s, California was democratic in a fundamental sense, a place for outsiders and, increasingly, immigrants—roughly 60 percent of the population was considered middle class. Now, instead of a land of opportunity, California has become increasingly feudal. According to recent census estimates, the state suffers some of the highest levels of inequality in the country. By some estimates, the state’s level of inequality compares with that of such global models as the Dominican Republic, Gambia, and the Republic of the Congo.At the same time, the Golden State now suffers the highest level of poverty in the country—23.5 percent compared to 16 percent nationally—worse than long-term hard luck cases like Mississippi. It is also now home to roughly one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients, almost three times its proportion of the nation’s population.Like medieval serfs, increasing numbers of Californians are downwardly mobile, and doing worse than their parents: native born Latinos actually have shorter lifespans than their parents, according to one recent report. Nor are things expected to get better any time soon. According to a recent Hoover Institution survey, most Californians expect their incomes to stagnate in the coming six months, a sense widely shared among the young, whites, Latinos, females, and the less educated.
Read Kotkin’s “oligarchal socialism” article here.
If Immigration Creates Wealth, Why Is California America's Poverty Capital?
California used to be home to America's largest and most affluent middle class. Today, it is America's poverty capital. What went wrong? In a word: immigration. According to the U.S. Census Bureau'...: The Golden State is peddling fool's gold lately.
California used to be home to America's largest and most affluent middle class. Today, it is America's poverty capital. What went wrong? In a word: immigration.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau's Official Poverty Measure, California's poverty rate hovers around 15 percent. But this figure is misleading: the Census Bureau measures poverty relative to a uniform national standard, which doesn't account for differences in living costs between states – the cost of taxes, housing, and health care are higher in California than in Oklahoma, for example. Accounting for these differences reveals that California's real poverty rate is 20.6 percent – the highest in America, and nearly twice the national average of 12.7 percent.
Likewise, income inequality in California is the second-highest in America, behind only New York. In fact, if California were an independent country, it would be the 17th most unequal country on Earth, nestled comfortably between Honduras and Guatemala. Mexico is slightly more egalitarian. California is far more unequal than the "social democracies" it emulates: Canada is the 111th most unequal nation, while Norway is far down the list at number 153 (out of 176 countries). In terms of income inequality, California has more in common with banana republics than other "social democracies."
More Government, More Poverty
High taxes, excessive regulations, and a lavish welfare state – these are the standard explanations for California's poverty epidemic. They have some merit. For example, California has both the highest personal income tax rate and the highest sales tax in America, according to Politifact.
Not only are California's taxes high, but successive "progressive" governments have swamped the state in a sea of red tape. Onerous regulations cripple small businesses and retard economic growth. Kerry Jackson, a fellow with the Pacific Research Institute, gives a few specific examples of how excessive government regulation hurts California's poor. He writes in a recent op-ed for the Los Angeles Times:
Extensive environmental regulations aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions make energy more expensive, also hurting the poor. By some estimates, California energy costs are as much as 50% higher than the national average. Jonathan A. Lesser of Continental Economics ... found that "in 2012, nearly 1 million California households faced ... energy expenditures exceeding 10% of household income."
Some government regulation is necessary and desirable, but most of California's is not. There is virtue in governing with a "light touch."
Finally, California's welfare state is, perhaps paradoxically, a source of poverty in the state. The Orange Country Register reports that California's social safety net is comparable in scale to those found in Europe:
In California a mother with two children under the age of 5 who participates in these major welfare programs – Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), housing assistance, home energy assistance, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children – would receive a benefits package worth $30,828 per year.
... [Similar] benefits in Europe ranged from $38,588 per year in Denmark to just $1,112 in Romania. The California benefits package is higher than in well-known welfare states as France ($17,324), Germany ($23,257) and even Sweden ($22,111).
Although welfare states ideally help the poor, reality is messy. There are three main problems with the welfare state. First, it incentivizes poverty by rewardingthe poor with government handouts that are often far more valuable than a job. This can be ameliorated to some degree by imposing work requirements on welfare recipients, but in practice, such requirements are rarely imposed. Second, welfare states are expensive. This means higher taxes and therefore slower economic growth and fewer job opportunities for everyone – including the poor.
Finally, welfare states are magnets for the poor. Whether through domestic migration or foreign immigration, poor people flock to places with generous welfare states. This is logical from the immigrant's perspective, but it makes little sense from the taxpayer's. This fact is why socialism and open borders arefundamentally incompatible.
Why Big Government?
Since 1960, California's population exploded from 15.9 to 39 million people. The growth was almost entirely due to immigration – many people came from other states, but the majority came from abroad. The Public Policy Institute of California estimates that 10 million immigrants currently reside in California. This works out to 26 percent of the state's population.
This figure includes 2.4 million illegal aliens, although a recent study from Yale University suggests that the true number of aliens is at least double that. Modifying the initial figure implies that nearly one in three Californians is an immigrant. This is not to disparage California's immigrant population, but it is madness to deny that such a large influx of people has changed California's society and economy.
Importantly, immigrants vote Democrat by a ratio higher than 2:1, according to a report from the Center for Immigration Studies. In California, immigration has increased the pool of likely Democrat voters by nearly 5 million people, compared to just 2.4 million additional likely Republican voters. Not only does this almost guarantee Democratic victories, but it also shifts California's political midpoint to the left. This means that to remain competitive in elections, the Republicans must abandon or soften many conservative positions so as to cater to the center.
California became a Democratic stronghold not because Californians became socialists, but because millions of socialists moved there. Immigration turned California blue, and immigration is ultimately to blame for California's high poverty level.
BEFORE HIS FIRST DAY IN OFFICE, BARACK OBAMA
HAD ALREADY SUCKED IN MORE BRIBES FROM
PLUNDERING BANKSTERS THAN ANY OTHER
PRESIDENT IN HISTORY. BOTH OF OBAMA'S
ATTORNEY GENERALS WERE SELECTED BECAUSE
OF THEIR LONG HISTORY OF SERVING BANKSTER
CRIMINALS
PRESIDENT IN HISTORY. BOTH OF OBAMA'S
ATTORNEY GENERALS WERE SELECTED BECAUSE
OF THEIR LONG HISTORY OF SERVING BANKSTER
CRIMINALS
IMAGE:
BANKSTERS’ RENT BOY FORMER ATTORNEY GEN ERIC HOLDER POSES WITH HITLER PRAISING LEADER OF RACIST, HOMOPHOBIC, ANTI-SEMITIC HATE MONGER LOUIS FARRAKHAN
NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY SUCKED IN MORE BRIBES FROM CRIMINAL BANKSTERS THAN BARACK OBAMA!
This was not because of difficulties in securing indictments or convictions. On the contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate committee in March of 2013 that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on the national economy.”
THE RISE TO POWER OF BANKSTER-OWNED BARACK OBAMA
'Incompetent' and 'liar' among most frequently used words to describe the president: Pew Research Center
The larger fear is that Obama might be just another corporatist, punking voters much as the Republicans do when they claim to be all for the common guy.
“Records show that four out of Obama's top
five contributors are employees of financial
industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330),
UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase
($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).”
OBAMA and HIS BANKS: THEIR PROFITS, CRIMES and LOOTING SOAR
CRONY KING OBAMA:
The Obamas live the 1% life
OBAMAnomics: FROM THE MAN THAT HATED AMERICAN BUT LOVED AMERICAN BANKSTERS:
OBAMA, THE BANKSTER OWNED LA RAZA DEM
“The response of the administration was to rush to
the defense of the banks. Even before coming to
power, Obama expressed his unconditional
support for the bailouts, which he subsequently
expanded. He assembled an administration
dominated by the interests of finance capital,
symbolized by economic adviser Lawrence
Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy
Geithner.”
THE GLOBALIST LEGACY OF A SOCIOPATH
Obama warns against “cynicism” at Ohio State commencement address
At a commencement address on Sunday at Ohio State University, President Barack Obama counseled students not to be “cynical” about government and politics.
There was an almost comically absurd element to Obama’s remarks, delivered with his characteristic demagogy and attempted gestures at profundity. In his first four years in office, along with the first months of his second term, Obama proceeded to systematically repudiate every campaign pledge and to deflate every illusion that, with the assistance of a highly coordinated marketing campaign, led millions of people, including a large number of young people, to vote for him in 2008.
The Obama administration handed trillions of dollars to the banks; has overseen a massive attack on public education; is leading the campaign to slash Social Security and Medicare, the core federal retirement and health care programs; expanded the war in Afghanistan, led a war against Libya, and is preparing a new war in Syria; and has asserted the right to kill anyone, anywhere, including US citizens, without due process.
The Obama administration handed trillions of dollars to the banks; has overseen a massive attack on public education; is leading the campaign to slash Social Security and Medicare, the core federal retirement and health care programs; expanded the war in Afghanistan, led a war against Libya, and is preparing a new war in Syria; and has asserted the right to kill anyone, anywhere, including US citizens, without due process.
After this record of service to the corporate elite, he declares: “When we turn away and get discouraged and cynical… we grant our silent consent to someone who will gladly claim it. That’s how we end up with lobbyists who set the agenda; and policies detached from what middle class families face every day; the well-connected who publicly demand that Washington stay out of their business—and then whisper in government’s ear for special treatment that you don’t get.”
The references to the “whispers” of the wealthy and well-connected is particularly rich, coming only a week after Obama nominated Penny Pritzker for commerce secretary. The selection of Pritzker—a longtime Obama confidant, billionaire heiress and owner of a private equity company—only underscores the fact that the administration is a government of, by and for the financial aristocracy. She will be the wealthiest person ever to serve in a presidential cabinet.
Previous to his appointment of Pritzker, Obama appointed Mary Jo White to head the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), one of the main financial regulators. White made millions of dollars as an attorney for banks responsible for the financial crisis, including Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, whose CEO, Jamie Dimon, called White the “perfect choice” to head the SEC.
Practically every cabinet appointee of Obama’s has close personal connections to the ruling class, many having come directly from corporate boardrooms. Under Obama’s watch not a single executive at a major financial firm has been criminally tried, much less sent to jail, for their role in the financial crisis.
As a whole, Obama’s speech was characterized by a complete separation from the actual conditions facing the graduates he spoke to, who confront joblessness, falling wages, and a lifetime in debt. “You have every reason to believe that your future is bright,” he told his audience. “You’re graduating into an economy and a job market that is steadily healing.”
He added later, “The trajectory of this great nation should give you hope.” Really? This is under conditions in which over 11 percent of college graduates are unemployed a year after getting out of school, and another 16.1 percent simply drop out of the labor force, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Most of those who do find a job are paid barely enough to get by, let alone pay off student loans. Wages for young adults are falling faster than any other part of the population, and are down by 6 percent in the past four years.
Most of the students that Obama addressed Sunday will be so burdened with debt that they will delay or have to completely put off starting a family or buying a home.
It is not surprising that Obama should neglect to dwell on this disastrous situation, because his administration bears responsibility for it. In the government-sponsored restructuring of the auto industry, the White House insisted that the wages of new-hires be slashed in half, setting the stage for vast reduction of wages throughout the economy.
Obama sought to paint opposition to the government’s violation of democratic rights as right-wing hysterics. “Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity,” Obama said. “They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.”
This comes from a president who has personally overseen the illegal assassination of thousands of people, including at least three American citizens, in weekly “Terror Tuesday” meetings. The assertions of executive power have been systematically expanded, going beyond those claimed even by the Bush administration. The specter of a police state—the response of the ruling class to growing social opposition—is in fact lurking around the corner.
The moribund state of American politics, of which the Obama administration is a principal expression, is, according to the president, the fault of the American people. “Democracy doesn’t function without your active participation,” he admonished. If politicians “don’t represent you the way you want… you’ve got to let them know that’s not okay. And if they let you down, there’s a built-in day in November where you can really let them know that’s not okay.”
Such limp efforts to encourage illusions in the viability of the “democratic process” in the United States will not go very far. The experience of the past four years has not passed in vain. Millions of people, including many of those in the audience at Ohio State, are drawing the quite justified, if “cynical,” conclusion that the entire political and economic system is rotten to the core.
GEORGE SOROS PARTNERS WITH BARACK OBAMA and ERIC HOLDER TO CREATE A GLOBALIST REGIME FOR THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS and CRONY BANKSTERS…. Open borders and endless hordes of illegals will make it happen!
BARACK OBAMA
GLOBALIST FOR BANKSTERS AND THE SUPER RICH and OPEN BORDERS TO FINISH OFF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/09/barack-obama-and-his-muslim-style.html
“Democrats Move Towards ‘Oligarchical Socialism,’ Says Forecaster Joel Kotkin.”
Obama Mocks Trump's 'Economic Miracle': Don't Forget When the Recovery Started
President Obama accepted an ethics award from the University of Illinois in Champaign, IL, Friday before delivering a speech to his audience of college students. Raised in Chicago, Obama said it "was good to be home," before making a few local references that delighted the students.
Obama's main objective, however, was to offer voters a message for the midterms. He did so by suggesting he and Democrats deserved the credit for the improving jobs numbers. Republicans in Congress and the Trump team have been promoting the stats. The U.S. added 201,000 jobs and wage gains increased to 2.9 percent in August.
Yet, Obama was eager to rain on the Republicans' parade.
The GOP is promoting today's "economic miracle," Obama mocked. He asked voters to "remember when the recovery started." Today's economic numbers "were the same" in 2015 and 2016, he explained.
Former
President Obama on President Trump:
"He is a symptom, not the cause. He's just capitalizing on resentments that politicians have been fanning for years." pic.twitter.com/UUzo4Sti59
"He is a symptom, not the cause. He's just capitalizing on resentments that politicians have been fanning for years." pic.twitter.com/UUzo4Sti59
His administration "couldn’t reverse 40-year trends in eight years," he said, "especially" after Republicans took over in 2010 and blocked everything they tried to do.
"We pulled the economy out of crisis," Obama insisted.
The former president did take a few moments to credit Republican President Abraham Lincoln with ending slavery, and other Republicans for promoting civil rights. But, he used those examples to contrast with today's Republican Party.
Today's GOP, Obama said, have tamped down minority votes with voter ID laws, "embraced wild conspiracy theories" like those surrounding Benghazi, his birth certificate, they have "rejected science" on climate change, ignored deficits, took away Americans' health care and are "cozying up to Russia."
"None of this is conservative," Obama said. This is not what Lincoln had in mind, I think, when he formed the Republican Party. It's "radical."
Obama put it all in context with November's midterms, which he called the most important in his lifetime. He admitted he has said that before, but this time is different.
"What happened to the Republican Party?" Obama asked. "This is not normal."
OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERISM destroyed a 11 TRILLION DOLLARS in home equity… and they’re still plundering us!
Barack Obama created more debt for the middle class than any president in US
history, and also had the only huge QE programs: $4.2 Trillion.
OXFAM reported that during Obama’s terms, 95% of the wealth created went to the top 1% of the world’s wealthy.
INCOME PLUMMETS UNDER OBAMA AND HIS WALL STREET CRONIES
collapse of household income in the US… STILL BILLIONS IN WELFARE HANDED TO ILLEGALS… they already get our jobs and are voting for more!
THE INVITED INVADING HORDES: IT’S ALL ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED!
"In the decade following the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the capitalist class has delivered powerful blows to the social position of the working class. As a result, the working class in the US, the world’s “richest country,” faces levels of economic hardship not seen since the 1930s."
"Inequality has reached unprecedented levels: the wealth of America’s three richest people now equals the net worth of the poorest half of the US population."
No comments:
Post a Comment