Tuesday, June 28, 2011

$90b spent on border security, with mixed results - Boston.com

$90b spent on border security, with mixed results - Boston.com

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/alipac-calls-for-impeachment-of.html

ALIPAC Calls for the Impeachment of President Barack Obama!

ALIPAC Calls for the Impeachment of President Barack Obama

June 28, 2011

For National Release

Contact: Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC)
(866) 703-0864 / Press@alipac.us

The Americans for Legal Immigration PAC is calling for the impeachment of President Barack Obama for his involvement in the Operation Gunrunner scandal, as well as his recent edict instructing federal employees to establish a form of amnesty for illegal aliens in defiance of the Congress, existing federal laws, and the US Constitution.

Obama's ICE Director John Morton issued a memo on June 17th to all ICE Field Office Directors, Special Agents-in-Charge, and all Chief Counsel, authorizing them to decline to remove illegal aliens who meet the qualifications for amnesty under the DREAM Act Amnesty which Congress has rejected many times.

Congressional investigations have determined that Obama's ATF and Justice Department have been supplying assault weapons to the drug cartels that import most of America's cocaine, methamphetamine, and illegal immigrants.

"President Obama is no longer the legitimate President of the United States," said William Gheen, President of ALIPAC. "By arming drug and human smugglers with assault weapons that have been used to kill American and Mexican citizens and police forces, and by ordering Amnesty for illegal aliens which has been rejected by both the Congress and the American public more than eight times, Obama has committed a form of Treason against the United States and must be removed from office by Congress."

Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) is a national organization founded on 9/11 of 2004. ALIPAC has over 40,000 supporters, comprised of Americans of every race, party, religion, and walk of life, who represent the over 80% who want America's existing immigration laws enforced.

ALIPAC is sending letters to the 137 current members of Congress whom the group endorsed and supported in the 2010 elections requesting the impeachment process to begin immediately in the interest of public safety and civil stability.

"Obama just made it clear to the American public that he does not care what they think, what the current federal laws are, what the US Constitution says, or what Congress has ratified," said William Gheen. "Congress must take immediate action to stop Obama or the American Republic will fall. What use are elections, candidates, or the Congress, if the Executive Branch rules by decree?"

All ALIPAC supporters and like-minded Americans who oppose Amnesty and illegal immigration are called upon to immediately call and write their members of Congress demanding the impeachment of President Barack Obama for crimes against the people of the United States.

If Congress does not respond by July 15, ALIPAC will move to call for public protests across the nation calling for the ouster of this authoritarian regime which feels it can arm rebel groups invading America with their illegal cargo while forcing an Amnesty on the public.

The self-governance of American citizens and the health of the American Republic must be guarded against this form of Treason.

The Congress will be given an opportunity to act before members of the public take things into their own hands and call for a day of nationwide protests.

For more information, to schedule interviews or to show your support for the impeachment of President Obama, please visit ALIPAC at www.ALIPAC.us

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All comments about this release welcome at...
http://www.alipac.us/ftopicp-1239458.html#1239458

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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/will-amerians-surrender-to-mexico.html

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/rachel-alexander-concerns-over-ilegal.html
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"Because of the Obama administration's record, it cannot be trusted with these powers," said Smith in a letter dated June 23 encouraging other House members to sponsor the bill with him.

DEMS ARE NOW THE PARTY OF LA RAZA “THE RACE” ILLEGALS!

The bill has little chance of becoming law. Even if the bill passed the House, it probably would not pass the Democratic-controlled Senate.

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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/mexican-fascist-party-of-la-raza-orders.html
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obamas-agenda-for-open-borders-with.html
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/alipac-obamas-pursuing-executive.html
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/alipac-william-gheen-exposes-wikileaks.html
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/obamas-hispanicazation-of-america-push.html
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obamas-administration-infested-with.html

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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/rise-of-mexican-fascism-under-barack.html


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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obama-mexican-supremacist-party-of-la.html

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PREMEDITATED MERGER

Obama quietly erasing borders
Dem administration advancing 'North American Union' agenda
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Posted: December 15, 2010
By Jerome R. Corsi

Acting quietly, below the radar of U.S. public opinion and without congressional approval, the Obama administration is implementing a key policy objective of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP, to erase the border with Mexico and Canada.
The administration is acting under a State Department-declared policy initiative described in a March 23 fact sheet titled "United States-Mexico Partnership: A New Border Vision."
"Mexico and the United States have a shared interest in creating a 21st century border that promotes the security and prosperity of both countries," the State Department declared. "The U.S. and Mexican governments have launched a range of initiatives that challenge the traditional view of 'hold the line' and are developing a framework for a new vision of 21st century border management."
At the same time, CTV News in Canada has obtained a draft copy of a declaration between the U.S. and Canada entitled "Beyond the Border: A Shared Vision for Perimeter Security and Competitiveness," to be implemented by a newly created Canadian-U.S. "Beyond the Border Working Group."
Get "The Late Great USA" and find out how America is giving away its sovereignty

CALIFORNIA IN MELTDOWN FROM MEXICAN INVASION, OCCUPATION & EVER EXPANDING LA RAZA WELFARE STATE

"Because of the Obama administration's record, it cannot be trusted with these powers," said Smith in a letter dated June 23 encouraging other House members to sponsor the bill with him.

DEMS ARE NOW THE PARTY OF LA RAZA “THE RACE” ILLEGALS!

The bill has little chance of becoming law. Even if the bill passed the House, it probably would not pass the Democratic-controlled Senate.

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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/mexican-fascist-party-of-la-raza-orders.html

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Republicans seek to roll back discretion in immigration cases
By Brian Bennett, Washington Bureau
1:25 PM PDT, June 24, 2011


House Republicans are targeting an Obama administration effort to give immigration officials more leeway when it comes to deciding who to deport from the U.S.

Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, plans to introduce legislation next month that would suspend the Obama administration's ability to exercise executive discretion in immigration cases.

Smith's bill, called the HALT Act, would strip the administration's power to defer deportation of immigration violators, grant work authorization or grant temporary protected status to immigrants who are fleeing a disaster.

The bill is aimed only at the Obama administration: In the proposed legislation, the executive powers would be restored at the end of this presidential term.

"Because of the Obama administration's record, it cannot be trusted with these powers," said Smith in a letter dated June 23 encouraging other House members to sponsor the bill with him.

The bill has little chance of becoming law. Even if the bill passed the House, it probably would not pass the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Smith's move comes a week after the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement instructed immigration officials to take into account a number of factors when deciding whether to continue deportation proceedings against an individual, such as a person's pursuit of education and whether the person came to the U.S. as a young child and has family relationships in the U.S.

The policy changes by the administration came in response to concerns that a federal information-sharing program called Secure Communities was unintentionally ensnaring illegal immigrants who are minor offenders, victims of domestic abuse and other crimes, witnesses to crimes and people who were arrested but not convicted of offenses.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) has pushed for changes to the Secure Communities program and described the new policy guidelines as a "step forward.”

Still, the changes didn't address concerns by local sheriffs that illegal immigrants will be less likely to report crimes if local fingerprint checks are linked with the immigration database, Lofgren said in an interview on Friday.

Also, Lofgren is concerned that immigration agents on the ground may not follow the new instructions.

Chris Crane, president of the National ICE Council union that represents about 7,000 ICE employees, called the new directives a "law enforcement nightmare” that make it difficult for ICE agents to know who can and cannot be arrested.

Some of the new factors in the June 17 memo from ICE Director John Morton corresponded with circumstances that would make someone eligible for the DREAM Act, a proposed law that has yet to get through Congress but would create a path to citizenship for young people in the country illegally who go to college or serve in the military.

"The Obama administration cannot continue to pick and choose which laws it will enforce,” said Smith in a statement Friday. Smith plans to introduce the HALT Act sometime next month.

The DREAM Act, which is under consideration in the Senate, will be the subject of a Senate hearing Tuesday.

Smith plans to introduce the HALT Act sometime next month. The HALT Act stands for "Hinder the Administration's Legalization Temptation" Act.
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City Journal
Mexifornia, Five Years Later

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The flood of illegal immigrants into California has made things worse than I foresaw.

Victor Davis Hanson


Winter 2007


“While politicians and academics assured the public that illegal aliens came here only to work and would quickly assume an American identity, the public’s own ad hoc and empirical observations of vast problems with crime, illiteracy, and illegitimacy have now been confirmed by hard data.”
In the Spring 2002 issue of City Journal, I wrote an essay about growing up in the central San Joaquin Valley and witnessing firsthand, especially over the last 20 years, the ill effects of illegal immigration (City Journal’s editors chose the title of the piece: “Do We Want Mexifornia?”). Controversy over my blunt assessment of the disaster of illegal immigration from Mexico led to an expanded memoir, Mexifornia, published the following year by Encounter Press.
Mexifornia came out during the ultimately successful campaign to recall California governor Gray Davis in autumn 2003. A popular public gripe was that the embattled governor had appeased both employers and the more radical Hispanic politicians of the California legislature on illegal immigration. And indeed Davis had signed legislation allowing driver’s licenses for illegal aliens that both houses of state government had passed. So it was no wonder that the book sometimes found its way into both the low and high forms of the political debate. On the Internet, a close facsimile of a California driver’s license circulated, with a picture of a Mexican bandit (the gifted actor Alfonso Bedoya of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre), together with a demeaning height (5’4”), weight (“too much”), and sex (“mucho”) given. “Mexifornia” was emblazoned across the top where “California” usually is stamped on the license.
In such a polarized climate, heated debates and several radio interviews followed, often with the query, “Why did you have to write this book?” The Left saw the book’s arguments and its title—Mexifornia was originally a term of approbation used by activists buoyed by California’s changing demography—as unduly harsh to newcomers from Mexico. The Right saw the book as long-overdue attention to a scandal ignored by the mainstream Republican Party.
Fast-forward nearly five years, and the national climate has radically changed, so much so that the arguments of Mexifornia—close the borders, return to the melting pot, offer earned citizenship to most aliens of long residence in exchange for acceptance of English and American culture—seem tame today, if not passé. In 2002, when I wrote the original City Journal essay, no one thought that the U.S. Congress would vote to erect a wall. Today there is rumbling that the signed legislation entails only 700 miles of fencing instead of spanning the entire 1,950-mile border.
Deportation was once an unimaginable response to the problem of the 11 million here illegally. Now its practicality, rather than its morality, appears the keener point of contention. And the concerted effort by Chicano activists to drive from popular parlance the descriptive term “illegal alien” in favor of the politically correct, but imprecise and often misleading “undocumented worker” has largely failed. Similar efforts to demonize opponents of open borders as “anti-immigrant” or “nativist” have had only a marginal effect in stifling debate, as has the deliberate effort to blur illegal and legal immigration. The old utopian talk of a new borderless zone of dual cultures, spreading on both sides of a disappearing boundary, has given way to a reexamination of NAFTA and its facilitation of greater cross-border flows of goods, services—and illegal aliens and drugs.
So why has the controversy over illegal immigration moved so markedly to the right?
We return always to the question of numbers. While it is true that no one knows exactly how many are here illegally from Mexico and Latin America, both sides in the debate often accept as reasonable estimates of 11 to 12 million illegals—with an additional 500,000 to 1 million arriving per year. Given porous borders, such guesses about the number of illegal aliens in the United States are outdated almost as soon as they are published. It is plausible, then, that there may be an additional 3 to 4 million illegal aliens here who were not here when the City Journal “Mexifornia” piece appeared.
The result of such staggering numbers is that aliens now don’t just cluster in the American Southwest but frequently appear at Home Depot parking lots in the Midwest, emergency rooms in New England, and construction sites in the Carolinas, making illegal immigration an American, rather than a mere Californian or Arizonan, concern.
Indeed, we forget how numbers are at the crux of the entire debate over illegal immigration. In the 1970s, perhaps a few million illegals resided in the United States, and their unassimilated presence went largely unnoticed. Most Americans felt that the formidable powers of integration and popular culture would continue to incorporate any distinctive ethnic enclave, as they had so successfully done with the past generations that arrived en masse from Europe, Asia, and Latin America. But when more than 10 million fled Mexico in little over a decade—the great majority poor, without English, job skills, a high school education, and legality—entire apartheid communities in the American Southwest began springing up.
During the heyday of multiculturalism and political correctness in the 1980s, the response of us, the hosts, to this novel challenge was not to insist upon the traditional assimilation of the newcomer but rather to accommodate the illegal alien with official Spanish-language documents, bilingual education, and ethnic boosterism in our media, politics, and education. These responses only encouraged more illegals to come, on the guarantee that their material life could be better and yet their culture unchanged in the United States. We now see the results. Los Angeles is today the second-largest Mexican city in the world; one out of every ten Mexican nationals resides in the United States, the vast majority illegally.
Since Mexifornia appeared, the debate also no longer splits along liberal/conservative, Republican/Democrat, or even white/brown fault lines. Instead, class considerations more often divide Americans on the issue. The majority of middle-class and poor whites, Asians, African-Americans, and Hispanics wish to close the borders. They see few advantages to cheap service labor, since they are not so likely to need it to mow their lawns, watch their kids, or clean their houses. Because the less well-off eat out less often, use hotels infrequently, and don’t periodically remodel their homes, the advantages to the economy of inexpensive, off-the-books illegal-alien labor again are not so apparent.
But the downside surely is apparent. Truck drivers, carpenters, janitors, and gardeners— unlike lawyers, doctors, actors, writers, and professors—correctly feel that their jobs are threatened, or at least their wages lowered, by cheaper rival workers from Oaxaca or Jalisco. And Americans who live in communities where thousands of illegal aliens have arrived en masse more likely lack the money to move when Spanish-speaking students flood the schools and gangs proliferate. Poorer Americans of all ethnic backgrounds take for granted that poverty provides no exemption from mastering English, so they wonder why the same is not true for incoming Mexican nationals. Less than a mile from my home is a former farmhouse whose new owner moved in several stationary Winnebagos, propane tanks, and outdoor cooking facilities—and apparently four or five entire families rent such facilities right outside his back door. Dozens live where a single family used to—a common sight in rural California that reifies illegal immigration in a way that books and essays do not.
The problem with all this is that our now-spurned laws were originally intended to ensure an (admittedly thin) veneer of civilization over innate chaos—roads full of drivers who have passed a minimum test to ensure that they are not a threat to others; single-family residence zoning to ensure that there are adequate sewer, garbage, and water services for all; periodic county inspections to ensure that untethered dogs are licensed and free of disease and that housing is wired and plumbed properly to prevent mayhem; and a consensus on school taxes to ensure that there are enough teachers and classrooms for such sudden spikes in student populations.
All these now-neglected or forgotten rules proved costly to the taxpayer. In my own experience, the slow progress made in rural California since the 1950s of my youth—in which the county inspected our farm’s rural dwellings, eliminated the once-ubiquitous rural outhouse, shut down substandard housing, and fined violators in hopes of providing a uniform humane standard of residence for all rural residents—has been abandoned in just a few years of laissez-faire policy toward illegal aliens. My own neighborhood is reverting to conditions common about 1950, but with the insult of far higher tax rates added to the injury of nonexistent enforcement of once-comprehensive statutes. The government’s attitude at all levels is to punish the dutiful citizen’s misdemeanors while ignoring the alien’s felony, on the logic that the former will at least comply while the latter either cannot or will not.
Fairness about who is allowed into the United States is another issue that reflects class divides—especially when almost 70 percent of all immigrants, legal and illegal, arrive from Mexico alone. Asians, for example, are puzzled as to why their relatives wait years for official approval to enter the United States, while Mexican nationals come across the border illegally, counting on serial amnesties to obtain citizenship.
These class divisions cut both ways, and they help explain the anomaly of the Wall Street Journal op-ed page mandarins echoing the arguments of the elite Chicano studies professors. Both tend to ridicule the far less affluent Minutemen and English-only activists, in part because they do not experience firsthand the problems associated with illegal immigration but instead find millions of aliens grist for their own contrasting agendas. Indeed, every time an alien crosses the border legally, fluent in English and with a high school diploma, the La Raza industry and the corporate farm or construction company alike most likely lose a constituent.
The ripples of September 11—whether seen in the arrests of dozens of potential saboteurs here in America or the terrorist bombings abroad in Madrid and London—remind Americans that their present enemies can do us harm only if they can first somehow enter the United States. Again, it makes little sense to screen tourists, inspect cargo containers, and check the passenger lists of incoming flights, when our border with an untrustworthy Mexico remains porous. While it may be true that the opponents of illegal immigration have used the post–September 11 fear of terrorism to further their own agenda of closing the border with Mexico, they are absolutely correct that presently the best way for jihadist cells to cross into the United States is overland from the south.
Other foreign developments have also steered the debate ever more rightward. In the last decade, the United States has clearly seen the wages of sectarianism and ethnic chauvinism abroad. The unraveling of Yugoslavia into Croatian, Serbian, and Albanian sects followed the Hutu-Tutsi bloodbath in Rwanda. And now almost daily we hear of Pashtun-Tajik-Uzbek hatred among the multiplicity of warring clans in Afghanistan and the daily mayhem among Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis in Iraq. Why—when we are spending blood and treasure abroad to encourage the melting pot and national unity—would anyone wish to contribute to tribalism or foster the roots of such ethnic separatism here in the United States?
Moreover, all during the 1990s, blue-state America offered up the European Union as the proper postmodern antidote to the United States. But just as we have recoiled from the EU’s statist and undemocratic tendencies—which have resulted in popular dissatisfaction, sluggish economic growth, high unemployment, falling demography, and unsustainable entitlement commitments—so, too, have its unassimilated Muslim minorities served as another canary in the mine. The riots in France, the support for jihadism among Pakistanis in London, and the demands of Islamists in Scandinavia, Germany, and the Netherlands do not encourage Americans to let in more poor Mexican illegal immigrants with loud agendas, or to embrace the multicultural salad bowl over their own distinctive melting pot.
Then there were the April–May 2006 demonstrations here in the United States, when nearly half a million protesters took to the streets of our largest cities, from Chicago to Los Angeles. Previously, naive Americans had considered that their own discussions over border security and immigration were in their own hands. And while Chicano-rights organizations and employer lobbyists were often vehement in their efforts to keep the border open, illegal aliens themselves used to be mostly quiet about our internal legal debates.
In contrast, this spring Americans witnessed millions of illegal aliens who not only were unapologetic about their illegal status but were demanding that their hosts accommodate their own political grievances, from providing driver’s licenses to full amnesty. The largest demonstrations—held on May Day, with thousands of protesters waving Mexican flags and bearing placards depicting the communist insurrectionist Che Guevara—only confirmed to most Americans that illegal immigration was out of control and beginning to become politicized along the lines of Latin American radicalism. I chronicled in Mexifornia the anomaly of angry protesters waving the flag of the country they vehemently did not wish to return to, but now the evening news beamed these images to millions. In short, the radical socialism of Latin America, seething in the angry millions who flocked to support Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, and Mexico’s Andrés López Obrador, had now seemingly been imported into our own largest cities.
Turmoil in areas of Mexico that send many illegal aliens to the United States is especially worrisome. Recently, for example, almost the entire state of Oaxaca was in near-open revolt over efforts to force the resignation of provincial governor Ulises Ruiz. There was widespread lawlessness, vigilantism, and at times the complete breakdown of order. All this feeds the growing perception that illegal aliens increasingly are arriving not merely as economic refugees but as political dissidents who don’t hesitate to take to the streets here to demand social justice, as they did back home.
More important still, Oaxaca’s troubles cast doubt on the conventional wisdom that illegal immigration is a safety valve that allows Mexico critical time to get its house in order. Perhaps the opposite is true: some of the areas, like Oaxaca, that send the most illegal aliens to the United States, still experience the greatest social tensions—in part because of the familial disruption and social chaos that results when adult males flee and depopulated communities consequently become captive to foreign remittances.
Two further issues have persuaded Americans to close the borders: the attitude of the Mexican government and the problems with first-generation native-born children of illegal aliens.
Worker remittances sent back to Mexico now earn it precious American dollars equal to the revenue from 500,000 barrels of daily exported oil. In short, Mexico cannot afford to lose its second-largest source of hard currency and will do almost anything to ensure its continuance. When Mexico City publishes comic books advising its own citizens how best to cross the Rio Grande, Americans take offense. Not only does Mexico brazenly wish to undermine American law to subsidize its own failures, but it also assumes that those who flee northward are among its least educated, departing without much ability to read beyond the comic-book level.
We are also learning not only that Mexico wants its expatriates’ cash—and its nationals lobbying for Mexican interests—once they are safely away from their motherland; we are also discovering that Mexico doesn’t have much concern about the welfare of its citizens abroad in America. The conservative estimate of $15 billion sent home comes always at the expense of low-paid Mexicans toiling here, who must live in impoverished circumstances if they are to send substantial portions of their wages home to Mexico. (And it comes as well at the expense of American taxpayers, providing health-care and food subsidies in efforts to offer a safety net to cash-strapped illegal aliens.) So it is not just that Mexico exports its own citizens, but it does so on the expectation that they are serfs of a sort, who, like the helots of old, surrender much of the earnings of their toil to their distant masters.
But even more grotesquely, in the last five years, the Mexican real-estate market has boomed on the Baja California peninsula. Once Mexico grasped that its own unspoiled coast was highly desirable for wealthy expatriate Americans as a continuation of the prized but crowded Santa Barbara–San Diego seaside corridor, it began to reform its real-estate market, making the necessary changes in property and title law, and it welcomed with open arms cash-laden subdividers looking to come south. This is sound economics, but examine the ethical message: Mexico City will send the United States millions of its own illiterate and poor whom it will neither feed nor provide with even modest housing, but at the same time it welcomes thousands of Americans with cash to build expensive seaside second homes.
Of course, the ultimate solution to the illegal immigration debacle is for Mexican society to bring itself up to the levels of affluence found in the United States by embracing market reforms of the sort we have seen in South Korea, Taiwan, and China. But rarely do Mexican supporters of such globalization, or their sympathetic counterparts in the United States, see the proliferation of a Wal-Mart or Starbucks down south in such terms. Rather, to them American consumerism and investment in Mexico suggest only an owed reciprocity of sentiment: Why should Americans get mad about Mexican illegals coming north when our own crass culture, with its blaring neon signs in English, spreads southward? In such morally equivalent arguments, it is never mentioned that Americanization occurs legally and brings capital, while Mexicanization comes about by illegal means and is driven by poverty.
At the same time, focus has turned more to the U.S.-born children of Mexican illegal immigrants, in whom illegitimacy, school dropout rates, and criminal activity have risen to such levels that no longer can we simply dismiss Mexican immigration as resembling the more problematic but eventually successful Italian model of a century ago. Then, large numbers of southern European Catholics, most without capital and education, arrived en masse from Italy and Sicily, lived in ethnic enclaves, and for decades lagged behind the majority population in educational achievement, income, and avoidance of crime—before achieving financial parity as well as full assimilation and intermarriage. Since 1990, the number of poor Mexican-Americans has climbed 52 percent, a figure that skewed U.S. poverty rates. Billions of dollars spent on our own poor will not improve our poverty statistics when 1 million of the world’s poorest cross our border each year. The number of impoverished black children has dropped 17 percent in the last 16 years, but the number of Hispanic poor has gone up 43 percent. We don’t like to talk of illegitimacy, but here again the ripples of illegal immigration reach the U.S.-born generation. Half of births to Hispanic-Americans were illegitimate, 42 percent higher than the general rate of the American population. Illegitimacy is higher in general in Mexico than in the United States, but the force multiplier of illegal status, lack of English, and an absence of higher education means that the children of Mexican immigrants have illegitimacy rates even higher than those found in either Mexico or the United States.
Education levels reveal the same dismal pattern—nearly half of all Hispanics are not graduating from high school in four years. And the more Hispanic a school district becomes, the greater level of failure for Hispanic students. In the Los Angeles district, 73 percent Hispanic, 60 percent of the students are not graduating. But the real tragedy is that, of those Hispanics who do graduate, only about one in five will have completed a high school curriculum that qualifies for college enrollment. That partly helps to explain why at many campuses of the California State University system, almost half of the incoming class must first take remedial education. Less than 10 percent of those who identify themselves as Hispanic have graduated from college with a bachelor’s degree. I found that teaching Latin to first-generation Mexican-Americans and illegal aliens was valuable not so much as an introduction to the ancient world but as their first experience with remedial English grammar.
Meanwhile, almost one in three Mexican-American males between the ages of 18 and 24 recently reported being arrested, one in five has been jailed, and 15,000 illegal aliens are currently in the California penal system.
Statistics like these have changed the debate radically. While politicians and academics assured the public that illegal aliens came here only to work and would quickly assume an American identity, the public’s own ad hoc and empirical observations of vast problems with crime, illiteracy, and illegitimacy have now been confirmed by hard data. Ever since the influx of illegals into our quiet valley became a flood, I have had five drivers leave the road, plow into my vineyard, and abandon their cars, without evidence of either registration or insurance. On each occasion, I have seen them simply walk or run away from the scene of thousands of dollars in damage. Similarly, an intoxicated driver who ran a stop sign hit my car broadside and then fled the scene. Our farmhouse in the Central Valley has been broken into three times. We used to have an open yard; now it is walled, with steel gates on the driveway. Such anecdotes have become common currency in the American Southwest. Ridiculed by elites as evidence of prejudice, these stories, statistical studies now show, reflect hard fact.
The growing national discomfort over illegal immigration more than four years after “Mexifornia” first appeared in City Journal is not only apparent in the rightward shift of the debate but also in the absence of any new arguments for open borders—while the old arguments, Americans are finally concluding, really do erode the law, reward the cynical here and abroad, and needlessly divide Americans along class, political, and ethnic lines.

WAR WITH MEXICO? OBAMA HAS ALREADY PROMISED NARCOmex OUR SURRENDER, OUR JOBS & CASH FOR EXPANDED LA RAZA SUPREMACY!

SINCE THE AMNESTY TO END AMNESTIES OF 1986, THERE HAVE BEEN MILLIONS OF MEXICANS HOP OUR BORDERS FOR OUR JOBS, FREE ANCHOR BABY BREEDING AND WELFARE, AND TO LOOT.

EVERY DAY THE MEXICAN DICTATORSHIP RANTS THAT THEY ARE UNHAPPY THE LOOTING IS NOT RICHER!

EVERY DAY OBAMA PROMISES HIS LA RAZA ILLEGALS, “UNDOCUMENTED DEMS”, THAT HE WILL DEVISE MORE BIT BY BIT BY BIT AMNESTIES, CONTINUE NON-ENFORCEMENT OF LAWS PROHIBITING THE EMPLOYMENT OF ILLEGALS, PUSH OUR BORDERS OPEN WIDER EVEN AS HE LIES ABOUT BORDER SECURITY, AND SUE LEGALS TO ADVANCE LA RAZA SUPREMACY.

THAT ALL ADDS UP TO THE MEXICAN OCCUPATION!

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The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century [Paperback]
George Friedman

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, January 2009: "Be Practical, Expect the Impossible." So declares George Friedman, chief intelligence officer and founder of Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor), a private intelligence agency whose clients include foreign government agencies and Fortune 500 companies. Gathering information from its global network of operatives and analysts (drawing the nickname "the Shadow CIA"), Stratfor produces thoughtful and genuinely engrossing analysis of international events daily, from possible outcomes of the latest Pakistan/India tensions to the hierarchy of Mexican drug cartels to challenges to Obama's nascent administration. In The Next 100 Years, Friedman undertakes the impossible (or improbable) challenge of forecasting world events through the 21st century. Starting with the premises that "conventional political analysis suffers from a profound failure of imagination" and "common sense will be wrong," Friedman maps what he sees as the likeliest developments of the future, some intuitive, some surprising: more (but less catastrophic) wars; Russia's re-emergence as an aggressive hegemonic power; China's diminished influence in international affairs due to traditional social and economic imbalances; and the dawn of an American "Golden Age" in the second half of the century. Friedman is well aware that much of what he predicts will be wrong--unforeseeable events are, of course, unforeseen--but through his interpretation of geopolitics, one gets the sense that Friedman's guess is better than most. --Jon Foro
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
With a unique combination of cold-eyed realism and boldly confident fortune-telling, Friedman (Americas Secret War) offers a global tour of war and peace in the upcoming century. The author asserts that the United States power is so extraordinarily overwhelming that it will dominate the coming century, brushing aside Islamic terrorist threats now, overcoming a resurgent Russia in the 2010s and 20s and eventually gaining influence over space-based missile systems that Friedman names battle stars. Friedman is the founder of Stratfor, an independent geopolitical forecasting company, and his authoritative-sounding predictions are based on such factors as natural resources and population cycles. While these concrete measures lend his short-term forecasts credence, the later years of Friedmans 100-year cycle will provoke some serious eyebrow raising. The armed border clashes between Mexico and the United States in the 2080s seem relatively plausible, but the space war pitting Japan and Turkey against the United States and allies, prognosticated to begin precisely on Thanksgiving Day 2050, reads as fantastic (and terrifying) science fiction. Whether all of the visions in Friedmans crystal ball actually materialize, they certainly make for engrossing entertainment. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Anchor; 1 Reprint edition (January 26, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767923057
• ISBN-13: 978-0767923057
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OBAMA’S HISPANICAZATION OF AMERICA FOR THE LA RAZA VOTE:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/obamas-hispanicazation-of-america-push.html
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WIKI LEAKS EXPOSES OBAMA’S OPEN BORDERS AGENDA – BUILDING A BORDERLESS TERRITORY WITH NARCOMEX:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/wikileaks-exposed-obamas-la-raza-open.html
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OBAMA’S LA RAZA PARTY INFESTED ADMINISTRATION:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obamas-administration-infested-with.html

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OBAMA’S PHANTOM IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/fairusorg-obamas-phantom-immigration.html
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LA RAZA CRIME TIDAL WAVE:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/la-raza-mexican-supremacy-crime-tidal.html
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POLITICIANS HISPANDERING FOR LA RAZA VOTE:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-to-accurately-detect-disingenuous.html
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OBAMA’S LA RAZA ICE RELEASED 8,000 MEX CRIMINALS BACK ONTO US:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/ice-has-released-more-than-8000.html
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OBAMA AND THE FASCIST MEXICAN SUPREMACY MOVEMENT OF LA RAZA “THE RACE”
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obama-mexican-supremacist-party-of-la.html

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OBAMA PROMISES NON-ENFORCEMENT OF LAWS THAT HINDER LA RAZA OCCUPATION:

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/la-raza-occupation-law-enforcement-free.html

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FEDS ALLOW ILLEGALS OVER OUR BORDERS:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/feds-allow-illegal-aliens-to-cross.html
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8 OUT OF 10 ILLEGALS CAUGHT, NEVER PROSECUTED:
8 Out of 10 Illegals Apprehended in 2010 Never Prosecuted
http://www.alipac.us/article-6162-thread-1-0.html
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OBAMA HANDS TAX DOLLARS TO MEXICAN SUPREMACIST:

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/obama-first-hispandering-la-raza.html
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ON THE GROWIN POWER OF “LA RAZA” FASCISM FOR MEX SUPREMACY
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/04/history-of-mexican-fascist-party-of-la.html
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OBAMA’S CATCH AND RELEASE PROGRAM WRITTEN BY MEXICO:

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/04/obamas-promise-to-illegals-catch.html
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OBAMA SABOTAGES OUR BORERS FOR ILLEGALS:

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/alipac-obama-sabotages-us-immigraiton.html
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OBAMA QUIETLY ERASING BORDERS BY DEMAND OF MEXICO, LA RAZA, AND THE U.S. CHAMBER of COMMERCE:

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=240045
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OBAMA TELLS LA RAZA ALL ILLEGALS ARE LEGAL:

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/for-obama-all-illegals-are-legal-la.html


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Lou Dobbs Tonight
Monday, September 28, 2009


And T.J. BONNER, president of the National Border Patrol Council, will weigh in on the federal government’s decision to pull nearly 400 agents from the U.S.-Mexican border. As always, Lou will take your calls to discuss the issues that matter most-and to get your thoughts on where America is headed.

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TERRORIST IN OUR UNDEFENDED NATION, WHILE BILLIONS SQUANDERED OVER IN MUSLIM LAND:

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/04/three-convicted-in-terror-related-cases.html
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OBAMA ARMS MEXICAN ILLEGAL REBELS:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obama-arming-mex-drug-cartels-and.html
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OBAMA KEEPS NARCOMEX ROUTES OPEN TO EASE MORE LA RAZA OVER OUR BORDERS AND INTO THE VOTING BOOTHS:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/04/obama-keeps-narcomex-drug-routes.html
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OBAMA CELEBRATES LA RAZA INVASION:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/at-southern-border-obama-calls.html
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/obamas-hispanicazation-of-america-push.html
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OBAMA TELLS PENTAGON NO TROOPS ON OUR OPEN BORDERS:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/feb2011/mexi-f10.shtml
Pentagon official: US could send troops to fight Mexican “insurgency”



FAIRUS.org
The Administration's Phantom Immigration Enforcement Policy
According to DHS’s own reports, very little of our nation’s borders (Southwestern or otherwise) are secure, and gaining control is not even a goal of the department.
By Ira Mehlman
Published on 12/07/2009
Townhall.com
The setting was not quite the flight deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln with a “Mission Accomplished” banner as the backdrop, but it was the next best thing. Speaking at the Center for American Progress (CAP) on Nov. 13, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declared victory over illegal immigration and announced that the Obama administration is ready to move forward with a mass amnesty for the millions of illegal aliens already living in the United States.
Arguing the Obama administration’s case for amnesty, Napolitano laid out what she described as the “three-legged stool” for immigration reform. As the administration views it, immigration reform must include “a commitment to serious and effective enforcement, improved legal flows for families and workers, and a firm but fair way to deal with those who are already here.”
Acknowledging that a lack of confidence in the government’s ability and commitment to effectively enforce the immigration laws it passes proved to be the Waterloo of previous efforts to gain amnesty for illegal aliens, Napolitano was quick to reassure the American public that those concerns could be put to rest.
“For starters, the security of the Southwest border has been transformed from where it was in 2007,” stated the secretary. Not only is the border locked up tight, she continued, but the situation is well in-hand in the interior of the country as well. “We’ve also shown that the government is serious and strategic in its approach to enforcement by making changes in how we enforce the law in the interior of the country and at worksites…Furthermore, we’ve transformed worksite enforcement to truly address the demand side of illegal immigration.”
If Rep. Joe Wilson had been in attendance to hear Secretary Napolitano’s CAP speech he might well have had a few choice comments to offer. But since he wasn’t, we will have to rely on the Department of Homeland Security’s own data to assess the veracity of Napolitano’s claims.
According to DHS’s own reports, very little of our nation’s borders (Southwestern or otherwise) are secure, and gaining control is not even a goal of the department. DHS claims to have “effective control” over just 894 miles of border. That’s 894 out of 8,607 miles they are charged with protecting. As for the other 7,713 miles? DHS’s stated border security goal for FY 2010 is the same 894 miles.
The administration’s strategic approach to interior and worksite enforcement is just as chimerical as its strategy at the border, unless one considers shuffling paper to be a strategy. DHS data, released November 18, show that administrative arrests of immigration law violators fell by 68 percent between 2008 and 2009. The department also carried out 60 percent fewer arrests for criminal violations of immigration laws, 58 percent fewer criminal indictments, and won 63 percent fewer convictions.
While the official unemployment rate has climbed from 7.6 percent when President Obama took office in January to 10 percent today, the administration’s worksite enforcement strategy has amounted to a bureaucratic game of musical chairs. The administration has all but ended worksite enforcement actions and replaced them with paperwork audits. When the audits determine that illegal aliens are on the payroll, employers are given the opportunity to fire them with little or no adverse consequence to the company, while no action is taken to remove the illegal workers from the country. The illegal workers simply acquire a new set of fraudulent documents and move on to the next employer seeking workers willing to accept substandard wages.
In Janet Napolitano’s alternative reality a mere 10 percent of our borders under “effective control” and sharp declines in arrests and prosecutions of immigration lawbreakers may be construed as confidence builders, but it is hard to imagine that the American public is going to see it that way. If anything, the administration’s record has left the public less confident that promises of future immigration enforcement would be worth the government paper they’re printed on.
As Americans scrutinize the administration’s plans to overhaul immigration policy, they are likely to find little in the “three-legged stool” being offered that they like or trust. The first leg – enforcement – the administration has all but sawed off. The second – increased admissions of extended family members and workers – makes little sense with some 25 million Americans either unemployed or relegated to part-time work. And the third – amnesty for millions of illegal aliens – is anathema to their sense of justice and fair play.
As Americans well know, declaring “Mission Accomplished” and actually accomplishing a mission are two completely different things. When it comes to enforcing immigration laws, the only message the public is receiving from this administration is “Mission Aborted.”

OBAMA & HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS

OBAMA: HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS, LA RAZA SUPREMACIST PARTY BASE OF VOTERS, AND WALL ST. PILLAGERS… CALL IT THE FALL OF AMERICA

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obama-his-la-raza-fascist-party-base.html


http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/looting-of-america-by-les-leopold-obama.html
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obama-his-criminal-bankster-donors.html

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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-obama-duped-nation-but-his-bankster.html
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“All of these writers proceed from a fact of American life that is becoming impossible to deny: the sharp divergence in the fortunes of the banks and investors, on the one hand, and the broad mass of the population, on the other. The Wall Street giants, the very firms that precipitated the financial crisis, are doing better than ever. They are planning record bonuses while unemployment continues to soar and wages are declining at a rate not seen in decades.”
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January 8, 2011

Mary Bottari
Center for Media and Democracy
Full Catastrophe Banking in 2011

With a $4.7 trillion bailout under their belts and no harm done to their billion-dollar bonuses, don't expect Wall Street bankers to be chastened by the 2008 financial crisis. Below we list eight things to watch out for in 2011 that threaten to rock the financial system and undermine any recovery.
1) The Demise of Bank of America WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is promising to unleash a cache of secret documents from the troubled Bank of America (BofA). BofA is already under the gun, defending itself from multiple lawsuits demanding that the bank buy back billions worth of toxic mortgages it peddled to investors. The firm is also at the heart of the robo-signing scandal, having wrongfully kicked many American families to the curb. If Assange has emails showing that Countrywide or BofA knew they were recklessly abandoning underwriting standards and/or peddling toxic dreck to investors, the damage to the firm could be irreparable.
2) Robo-signers Wreaking Havoc With lawsuits abounding, new types of fraud in the foreclosure process are being uncovered daily, including accounting fraud, fake attorneys, destroyed promissory notes and false notarization. The crisis not only calls into question the legality of untold foreclosures, it also calls into question the value of trillions of dollars worth of mortgage-backed securities held by banks, pension funds, federal, state and local governments. The only government report on the topic by the feisty Congressional Oversight Panel for the TARP acknowledges that "it is possible that 'robo-signing' may have concealed deeper problems in the mortgage market that could potentially threaten financial stability."
3) MERS Madness
In addition to outright fraud, numerous state Supreme Courts have questioned the legal standing of the Mortgage Electronic Registration or "MERS" system. MERS is listed as the mortgagee for 60% of U.S. mortgages. It is an electronic clearinghouse created by industry to bypass the property registration system developed in precolonial days to ensure that the King could not easily rob the subjects of their land. Wall Street turned to MERS to speed securitizations (and now foreclosures), but its legal standing is now in doubt and its shoddy processing of documents has major ramifications for the securitization process as well. Look for a rotten "MERS fix" in the new Congress. Let's hope it gives consumer advocates some leverage to demand justice for Americans being robbed by the new Kings on Wall Street.
4) Flash Crash Calamity The "flash crash" of May 2010 rattled the markets and caused a stunning 700 point drop in the Dow within minutes. Regulators think they know what occurred, but they are moving too slowly to put the brakes on hair-trigger trading. Seventy percent of Wall Street trades take place in milliseconds, so it is no surprise that mini-flash crashes are becoming a constant. With traders now gearing up to trade on raw news feeds and Twitter, we can anticipate even more volatility. A small financial transaction tax targeting high-volume, high-speed trades is long overdue. It would throw sand in the roulette wheel and raise much needed revenue for the federal government.
5) Bigger Behemoth Banks The Federal Reserve is planning to "stress test" the big banks again. The same 19 banks that underwent the first stress tests in 2009 will be tested again, but this time the Fed says it won't release the results. Why not? Banks with toxic mortgages and mortgage-backed securities on their books and concomitant legal exposure to "put back" law suits are being kept afloat by accounting tricks, TARP and Fed loans. Honest stress tests of still weak financial institutions may well result in sales and buyouts that will further consolidate the already concentrated banking industry and create larger and more unwieldy "too big to fail" behemoths -- backed by the guarantee of the American taxpayer.
6) Foreclosure Tsunami Housing foreclosures may top nine million in 2011 and [[Goldman Sachs]] predicts the number will reach 12 million in the next few years. The result will be another significant drop in home prices in 2011 and even more families underwater. Civilized nations see the forcible migration of a city the size of New York as an economic and humanitarian catastrophe, but not the United States. The Obama administration and Congress have callously refused to take meaningful action to aid families facing foreclosure even in the face of widespread predatory lending and rampant foreclosure fraud. The only hope now for millions of American families is aggressive action by the 50 state Attorneys General who are actively investigating foreclosure fraud. Whether they have the guts to wrestle a settlement out of the big banks that slows the foreclosure machine and offers families meaningful options has yet to be seen.
7) Bankrupt Cities and States Meredith Whitney, a research analyst who correctly predicted the credit crunch, is now warning that over 100 American cities could go bust next year. She anticipates billions worth of municipal bond defaults and warns: "next to housing this is the single most important issue in the U.S. and certainly the biggest threat to the U.S. economy." States are also in dire straits. The economic shock of mass unemployment on top of years of population decline, deindustrialization and the like have left cities unable to meet their obligations to taxpayers and retirees. With the austerity nuts in charge of the House, it may take a bankruptcy of a major player to prod an appropriate federal response to this looming disaster.
8) Gas Prices above $4.00 The price of energy and other commodities shifted into high gear in late August when the Federal Reserve Chairman decided to stimulate the economy with quantitative easing. Speculators quickly began bidding up the value of asset classes like crude oil, metals and food commodities. In December, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission failed to apply position limits to these commodities, delaying rules that would crack down on speculators and aid consumers who are already seeing big price hikes at the pump. Without swift action, skyrocketing gas prices will further tank an already stalled economy.
As we hope for the best in 2011, let's prepare for the worst. The big banks are sure to deliver.
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/looting-of-america-by-les-leopold-obama.html

THE LOOTING OF AMERICA… continues under OBAMA!
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Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.
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POVERTY RISES AS WALL ST. BILLIONAIRES WHINE!
These guys profited from puffing up the housing bubble, then got bailed out when the going got tough. (Please see The Looting of America for all the gory details.) Without taxpayer largess, these hedge fund honchos would be flat broke. Instead, they're back to hauling in obscene profits.
These billionaires don't even have to worry about serious financial reforms. The paltry legislation that squeaked through Congress did nothing to end too big and too interconnected to fail. In fact, the biggest firms got even bigger as they gobbled up troubled banks, with the generous support of the federal government. No bank or hedge fund was broken up. Nobody was forced to pay a financial transaction tax. None of the big boys had a cap placed on their astronomical wealth. No one's paying reparations for wrecking the US economy. The big bankers are still free to create and trade the very derivatives that catapulted us into this global crisis. You'd think the billionaires would be praying on the altar of government and erecting statues on Capital Hill in honor of St. Bailout.

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While 43.6 million Americans live in poverty, the richest men of finance sure are getting pissy. First Steve Schwartzman, head of the Blackrock private equity company, compares the Obama administration's effort to close billionaires' tax loopholes to "the Nazi invasion of Poland." Then hedge fund mogul David Loeb announces that he's abandoning the Democrats because they're violating "this country's core founding principles" -- including "non-punitive taxation, Constitutionally-guaranteed protections against persecution of the minority, and an inexorable right of self-determination." Instead of showing their outrage about the spread of poverty in the richest nation on Earth, the super-rich want us to pity them?
Why are Wall Street's billionaires so whiny? Is it really possible to make $900,000 an hour (not a typo -- that's what the top ten hedge fund managers take in), and still feel aggrieved about the way government is treating you? After you've been bailed out by the federal government to the tune of $10 trillion (also not a typo) in loans, asset swaps, liquidity and other guarantees, can you really still feel like an oppressed minority?
You'd think the Wall Street moguls would be thankful. Not just thankful -- down on their knees kissing the ground taxpayers walk on and hollering hallelujah at the top of their lungs! These guys profited from puffing up the housing bubble, then got bailed out when the going got tough. (Please see The Looting of America for all the gory details.) Without taxpayer largess, these hedge fund honchos would be flat broke. Instead, they're back to hauling in obscene profits.
These billionaires don't even have to worry about serious financial reforms. The paltry legislation that squeaked through Congress did nothing to end too big and too interconnected to fail. In fact, the biggest firms got even bigger as they gobbled up troubled banks, with the generous support of the federal government. No bank or hedge fund was broken up. Nobody was forced to pay a financial transaction tax. None of the big boys had a cap placed on their astronomical wealth. No one's paying reparations for wrecking the US economy. The big bankers are still free to create and trade the very derivatives that catapulted us into this global crisis. You'd think the billionaires would be praying on the altar of government and erecting statues on Capital Hill in honor of St. Bailout.
Instead, standing before us are these troubled souls, haunted by visions of persecution. Why?
The world changed. Before the bubble burst, these people walked on water. Their billions proved that they were the best and the brightest -- not just captains of the financial universe, but global elites who had earned a place in history. They donated serious money to worthy causes -- and political campaigns. No one wanted to mess with them.
But then came the crash. And the things changed for the big guys -- not so much financially as spiritually. Plebeians, including me, are asking pointed questions and sometimes even being heard, both on the Internet and in the mainstream media. For the first time in a generation, the public wants to know more about these emperors and their new clothes. For instance:
• What do these guys actually do that earns them such wealth?
• Is what they do productive and useful for society? Is there any connection between what they earn and what they produce for society?
• Did they help cause the crash?
• Did these billionaires benefit from the bailouts? If so, how much?
• Are they exacerbating the current unemployment and poverty crisis with their shenanigans?
• Why shouldn't we eliminate their tax loopholes (like carried interest)?
• Should their sky-high incomes be taxed at the same levels as during the Eisenhower years?
• Can we create the millions of jobs we need if the billionaires continue to skim off so much of our nation's wealth??
• Should we curb their wealth and political influence?
How dare we ask such questions! How dare we consider targeting them for special taxes? How dare we even think about redistributing THEIR incomes... even if at the moment much of their money comes directly from our bailouts and tax breaks?
It's true that the billionaires live in a hermetically sealed world. But that doesn't mean they don't notice the riffraff nipping at their heels. And they don't like it much. So they've gotten busy doing what billionaires do best: using their money to shield themselves. They're digging into their bottomless war chests, tapping their vast connections and using their considerable influence to shift the debate away from them and towards the rest of us.
We borrowed too much, not them. We get too much health care, not them. We retire too soon, not them. We need to tighten our belts while they pull in another $900,000 an hour. And if we want to cure poverty, we need to get the government to leave Wall Street alone. Sadly, their counter-offensive is starting to take hold.
How can this happen? Many Americans want to relate to billionaires. They believe that all of us are entitled to make as much as we can, pretty much by any means necessary. After all, maybe someday you or I will strike it rich. And when we do, we sure don't want government regulators or the taxman coming around!
Billionaires are symbols of American individual prowess and virility. And if we try to hold them back or slow them down, we're on the road to tyranny. Okay, the game is rigged in their favor. Okay, they got bailed out while the rest of us didn't -- especially the 29 million people who are jobless or forced into part-time work. But what matters most is that in America, nothing can interfere with individual money-making. That only a few of us actually make it into the big-time isn't a bad thing: It's what makes being rich so special. So beware: If we enact even the mildest of measures to rein in Wall Street billionaires, we're on the path to becoming North Korea.
Unfortunately, if we don't adjust our attitudes, we can expect continued high levels of unemployment and more people pushed below the poverty line. It's not clear that our economy will ever recover as long as the Wall Street billionaires keep siphoning off so much of our wealth. How can we create jobs for the many while the few are walking off with $900,000 an hour with almost no new jobs to show for it? In the old days, even robber barons built industries that employed people -- steel, oil, railroads. Now the robber barons build palaces out of fantasy finance. We can keep coddling our financial billionaires and let our economy spiral down, or we can make them pay their fair share so we can create real jobs. These guys crashed the economy, they killed billions of jobs, and now they're cashing in on our bailout. They owe us. They owe the unemployed. They owe the poor.
Dwight D. Eisenhower was no radical, but he accepted the reality: If America was going to prosper -- and pay for its costly Cold War -- the super-rich would have to pony up. It was common knowledge that when the rich grew too wealthy, they used their excess incomes to speculate. In the 1950s, memories of the Great Depression loomed large, and people knew that a skewed distribution of income only fueled speculative booms and disastrous busts. On Ike's watch, the effective marginal tax rate for those earning over $3 million (in today's dollars) was over 70 percent. The super-rich paid. As a nation we respected that other important American value: advancing the common good.
For the last thirty years we've been told that making as much as you can is just another way of advancing the common good. But the Great Recession erased that equation: The Wall Streeters who made as much as they could undermined the common good. It's time to balance the scales. This isn't just redistribution of income in pursuit of some egalitarian utopia. It's a way to use public policy to reattach billionaires to the common good.
It's time to take Eisenhower's cue and redeploy the excessive wealth Wall Street's high rollers have accumulated. If we leave it in their hands, they'll keep using it to construct speculative financial casinos. Instead, we could use that money to build a stronger, more prosperous nation. We could provide our people with free higher education at all our public colleges and universities -- just like we did for WWII vets under the GI Bill of Rights (a program that returned seven dollars in GDP for every dollar invested). We could fund a green energy Manhattan Project to wean us from fossil fuels. An added bonus: If we siphon some of the money off Wall Street, some of our brightest college graduates might even be attracted not to high finance but to jobs in science, education and healthcare, where we need them.
Of course, this pursuit of the common good won't be easy for the billionaires (and those who indentify with them.). But there's just no alternative for this oppressed minority: They're going to have to learn to live on less than $900,000 an hour.
Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obamanomics-how-barack-obama-is.html

Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses

BY TIMOTHY P CARNEY


Editorial Reviews
Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers. In Obamanomics, investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics.
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obama-operates-la-raza-supremacy-out-of.html
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obama-mexican-supremacist-party-of-la.html
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/04/history-of-mexican-fascist-party-of-la.html
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/wikileaks-exposed-obamas-la-raza-open.html

Mexico Exports Criminals and DOES NOT WANT THEM BACK! KEEP THEM IN GRINGO PRISONS IS CHEAPER FOR MEXICO!

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/mexico-exports-criminals-and-then-they.html
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MEXICO’S BIGGEST EXPORTS: DRUGS, THEIR POOR, PREGNANT AND CRIMINAL CLASSES!
THE RULING DICTATORS OF MEXICO, AND THE MEX BILLIONAIRE FAMILIES THAT RULE THEM, ARE SCARE SHITLESS THAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WILL PREVAIL AND END OPEN BORDERS AND ILLEGALS IN OUR JOBS FIRST, WHICH MAY MEAN 38 MILLION MEX FLAG WAVERS IN OUR COUNTRY ARE SENT HOME!
MEXICO DOES NOT WANT TO PAY FOR THE PRISON COST OF ALL THE MEX CRIMINALS THEY EXPORTED OVER OUR BORDERS TO LOOT!
CA, BANKRUPT FROM THE MEXICAN OCCUPATION, PUTS OUT A BILLION PER YEAR IN PRISON COST, AND HALF THAT IS FOR ILLEGALS!

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Since the amnesty to end amnesties of 1986, Mexico has exported MILLIONS of their poor, illiterate, pregnant and criminal over our borders!
MEXICO DOES THIS UTTERLY SHAMELESSLY!

WE ARE MEXICO’S WELFARE, BIRTHING CENTER, JOBS & JAILS SYSTEM… why should they pay for their own???
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CA PAYS OUT $20 BILLION IN SOCIAL SERVICES TO ILLEGALS, AND HALF THE PRISON POPULATION ARE ILLEGALS FROM MEXICO!

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FROM JUDICIALWATCH.org
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“The Obama Administration seems to be heeding to Mexico’s request by openly halting the deportation of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants. Additionally, the administration has a “backdoor amnesty” plan to legalize millions of undocumented aliens in case Congress doesn’t pass legislation to do it.”
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MEXICO ASKS U.S. TO STOP DEPORTING SERIOUS CRIMINAL… GUESS OBAMA’S LA RAZA I.C.E WILL SIMPLY LET THEM GO?!?
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Mexico Asks U.S. To Stop Deporting Serious Criminals
Last Updated: Mon, 09/27/2010 - 11:14am
In a flabbergasting request, a coalition of Mexican lawmakers has asked the United States to stop deporting illegal immigrants who have been convicted of serious crimes in American courts.
The preposterous demand was made at a recent southern California conference in which the mayors of four Mexican cities that border the U.S. gathered to discuss cross-border issues. The only American mayor who attended the biannual event was San Diego’s Jerry Sanders, evidently because his city hosted it this year at a fancy downtown hotel.
Among the cross-border topics that were addressed at the conference was the deportation of Mexican citizens who have committed violent crimes in the U.S. The felons are persona non grata in their communities, say the mayors of Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, Nogales and Nuevo Laredo. They want U.S. officials to stem the deportation of such convicts to their cities, according to a local newspaper report that covered the conference.
To support the request, the mayor (Jose Reyes Ferriz) of Mexico’s most violent city, Ciudad Juarez, pointed out that of 80,000 people deported to his community in the past three years nearly 30,000 had committed serious crimes in the U.S. Around 7,000 had served sentences for rape and 2,000 for murder. The criminal deportees have contributed to the escalating drug-cartel violence in his city, Mayor Ferriz said, so he wants the U.S. to make other arrangements when prison sentences are completed.
If this seems unbelievable, consider that a few years ago Mexico’s government formally complained that too many Mexicans had been repatriated from the U.S. and that the entire country was overwhelmed with demands for housing, jobs and schools. Various Mexican legislators publicly chastised the U.S. for sending illegal immigrants back, explaining that the country could not accommodate the “repatriated.”
The Obama Administration seems to be heeding to Mexico’s request by openly halting the deportation of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants. Additionally, the administration has a “backdoor amnesty” plan to legalize millions of undocumented aliens in case Congress doesn’t pass legislation to do it.
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CNSNEWS.com

U.S. Spending At Least $18.6 Million Per Day to Incarcerate Illegal Aliens; More Than 195,000 Illegal Aliens Deported in Fiscal 2010 Had Committed Crimes Here



Friday, October 08, 2010
By Edwin Mora

More than 11,000 gang members and their associates have been arrested over a three-year period thanks to a crackdown in immigration enforcement by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.


(CNSNews.com) – U.S. taxpayers are spending at least $18.6 million per day to house an estimated 300,000 to 450,000 illegal immigrants who are incarcerated and eligible for deportation from the United States, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ).
The cost per day for these prisoners is based on Justice Department incarceration cost estimates from 2001 and on the lower-end figure of 300,000 incarcerated deportable aliens, which means the actual expense today could be substantially higher than $18.6 million per day.
The prisoners involved here are foreign national who have come into the United States, committed a crime, been captured, and imprisoned.
Half of the undocumented aliens who were removed from the United States in fiscal 2010 (which ended on Sept. 30) had been convicted of a crime in the United States.
On Wednesday, the office of the DHS Inspector General (IG) released its annual performance plan report for fiscal year 2011, which states that there are “approximately 300,000 to 450,000 criminal aliens incarcerated in federal, state, county, and local correctional facilities [who] are eligible for removal from the United States.”
In its March 2010 report, "Immigration Enforcement Actions: 2009," the DHS defines removal as "the compulsory and confirmed movement of an inadmissible or deportable alien out of the United States based on an order of removal. An alien who is removed has administrative or criminal consequences placed on subsequent reentry owing to the fact of the removal."
Kara McCarthy, a spokeswoman at the DOJ, told CNSNews.com that the latest data available show that “average annual operating costs per state inmate for Fiscal Year 2001 was $22,650; in the Federal Bureau of Prisons it was $22,632.”
These annual operation costs exclude “capital expenditures, juvenile corrections, probation, parole, and most central office functions of corrections spending,” McCarthy told CNSNews.com
The cost of $22,650 per year to house just one inmate at the state level equals about $62 a day ($22,650 divided by 365 days). In the Federal Bureau of Prisons, it also averages out to $62 per day ($22,632 divided by 365 days).
Given this daily average expense (based on fiscal year 2001 costs), it can be estimated that the cost of housing 300,000 incarcerated illegal aliens in U.S. prisons would equal $18.6 million per day; the cost for housing 450,000 incarcerated illegal aliens would equal $27.9 million per day. If inflation in prison costs since 2001 were factored in, the expense would be even greater.
When CNSNews.com asked why incarcerated aliens who are eligible for removal have not been deported, a DHS spokesperson said, “It is because they are still serving their criminal sentence. ICE does not receive criminal aliens from state criminal justice systems until after they have completed their sentences.” (ICE is the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.)
On the same day the IG’s office released its performance plan report, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and ICE Director John Morton announced that half of the undocumented aliens who were removed from the United States in fiscal year 2010, which ended on Sept. 30, were convicted criminals.
“In fiscal year 2010, ICE set a record for overall removals of illegal aliens, with more than 392,000 removals nationwide,” says an Oct. 6 press release from the DHS. “Half of those removed--more than 195,000--were convicted criminals.”
“The fiscal year 2010 statistics represent increases of more than 23,000 removals overall and 81,000 criminal removals compared to fiscal year 2008--a more than 70 percent increase in removal of criminal aliens from the previous administration,” added the release.


It is uncertain whether the IG office’s estimate of 300,000 to 450,000 incarcerated criminal aliens who are eligible for removal takes into account the 195,000 criminal aliens removed in fiscal 2010. The IG office did not respond to CNSNews.com for a clarification on this point before this story was posted.
Nevertheless, the DHS did not deport all of the criminal illegal aliens who are eligible for removal and are currently sitting in U.S. correctional facilities.
The DOJ spokeswoman told CNSNews.com that, according to its latest figures, “In 2008 there were 785,556 inmates in the nation's [local and county] jails and 1,518,559 inmates in state and federal prisons.” That equals 2,304,115 inmates in total in the United States.
Given those numbers, 300,000 incarcerated criminal aliens would equal 13 percent of the entire inmate population of the United States, while 450,000 incarcerated criminal aliens would equal 19.5 percent of the entire inmate population.
According to the IG report from DHS, “The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 requires ICE to initiate deportation proceedings for incarcerated criminal aliens as expeditiously as possible after the date of conviction. Criminal aliens who are eligible for deportation include illegal aliens in the United States who are convicted of any crime and lawful permanent residents who are convicted of a removable offense as defined in the Immigration and Nationality Act.”


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HOW MANY ILLEGAL CRIMINALS ARE ON THE PROWL?
400,000 and they’re just waiting for OBAMA’S LA RAZA AMNESTY!

There are currently over 400,000 unaccounted for illegal alien criminals with outstanding deportation orders. Those are just the ones apprehended. At least one fourth of these are hard core criminals. Nobody knows how many more there are, but they are numerous and roaming your neighborhoods, preying on you and your family. Read more about it here.
Many of these heinous crimes are against children. How many children are being molested, raped, and murdered by illegal aliens? Nobody knows for sure but the numbers are staggering. To give you some idea of the prevalence of the crime, peruse the ICE Public Information News Releases.
While there are numerous reports of individual sexual predators such as Mexican Sex Offender and Six-Time Deportee in ICE Custody or Man Deported Following Conviction For Molesting 6-year-old, you will see many reports of multiple child predators being caught and deported. Some of them over the last two years are as follows:
• 45 child predators arrested in New York City,,
• 36 convicted Orange County child sex offenders face deportation
• ICE arrests 52 child predators in NYC operation
• Four Child Predators Arrested In Rhode Island
• ICE Arrests 16 predators in Westchester County Operation
• ICE Agents Arrest 8 Child Sex Predators In Washington, DC And Virginia
• 18 Predators Nabbed By ICE In Nassau County
• ICE Arrests 25 Child Sex Offenders in Chicago Area
• ICE Arrests 7 in Rockland County, NY
• 12 Child Sex Predators Arrested in Santa Clara County
• ICE Arrests 27 Sexual Predators in Suffolk County
In case you are interested, that is 250 illegal alien child molesters. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
When we talk about the costs to secure our borders, we need to ask "How many crimes against children is acceptable collateral damage?" Isn't that what it is all about? Cheap lettuce versus molested, raped and murdered children - a cost/benefit tradeoff.
Occasionally, the Federal Government decides to actually do something about some of the more violent illegal alien criminals - after they are already here and have committed mayhem! Operation Predator evolved out of ICE's mission to find and deport illegal aliens with the more heinous criminal records. The majority of the arrests under Operation Predator - roughly 85% - involved foreign nationals in this country whose child sex crimes made them removable from the United States. By matching immigration databases with state Megan's law directories, ICE agents have arrested more than 1,800 registered sex offenders.
Digressing for a moment, what the hell was a convicted, illegal alien sex offender even doing out of jail or not immediately deported – even if 63% do come right back - let alone roaming around the neighborhoods while on a registry! Has the judicial system in this country gone insane?
In any case, Operation Predator began on July 9, 2003, and resulted in 6,085 child predator arrests throughout the country - an average of roughly 250 arrests per month and eight arrests per day. While arrests have been made in every state, the most have occurred in these states: Arizona (207), California (1,578), Florida (255), Illinois (282), Michigan (153), Minnesota (190), New Jersey (423), New York (367), Oregon (148) and Texas (545).
While Operation Predator was a noble effort and ICE is to be commended, it only made a small dent in the criminal activity and number of horrific crimes being committed by illegal alien child sexual predators.
It is worth noting that some pedophile statistics report that each pedophile molests average of 148 children. If so, that could be as many as 900,580 victims from just the 6,085 illegal alien predators that were caught. Regardless, how many children being molested is acceptable collateral damage?
In fact, the criminal activity in the illegal alien community is now so bad that illegal aliens are being held for ransom and as slaves by other illegal aliens and smugglers are kidnapping illegal aliens from other smugglers! Then there is the fast growing "sex slave" problem as reported in The Girls Next Door, SEX TRAFFICKING - San Francisco Is A Major Center For International Crime Networks That Smuggle And Enslave, Raid in Tennessee ends girl's captivity as a sex slave Profiling Sex Trafficking: Illegal Immigrants At Risk, Latina Sex Slavery, and Police sting in Colorado shuts down Pacifica brothel
For more crimes committed by illegal aliens and the personal impact it has had on individual citizens see Immigrations Human Cost, Victims of Illegal Aliens, Crime Victims of Illegal Aliens, Escaping Justice, Predatory Aliens, Crimes involving immigrants from around the world, both legal and otherwise, and Victims of Illegal Aliens Memorial. Go to Fallen Heroes for information on a few more cops killed by illegal aliens.
When visiting any of the links and sites, keep in mind that nobody is tracking and reporting the crimes on a national basis and these are just the tip of the iceberg.
While it is a fact that most illegal aliens are law abiding, except for breaking immigration laws, it is also a fact that a significant percentage of illegal aliens have no respect for the rule of law and our legal customs. Many come with anti-American attitudes and philosophies that are totally alien to our culture, a subject addressed later in this paper. The end result is an ever-growing lawlessness among large portions of the illegal alien communities. It only makes sense that illegal alien criminals come to the United States - this is where the money is and our jails are a whole lot nicer than what they have in their home countries.
As previously noted, this report does not go into the property crimes being committed by illegal aliens. However, like the activities of other equal opportunity criminals, many property crimes are drug related, an activity that many illegal aliens, especially illegal alien gangs, are involved in. While violent crimes against one's person are the most serious, if your identity or car is stolen by an illegal alien you won't be too happy about it.
As a small example of property crimes, in 2003, according to the Arizona Department of Motor Vehicles, 57,600 cars were stolen in Phoenix alone. The owner losses are estimated to exceed $864 million. Most of the stolen cars ended up in Mexico and were never recovered. How many of those cars were stolen by illegal alien criminals versus resident criminals is unknown but you can rest assured that illegal aliens had a large part of it..
Next Section: Impacts of Illegal Immigration: Gangs
Previous Section: Impacts of Illegal Immigration: Sex Crimes
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Obama Quietly Erasing Borders (Article)


Article Link:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=240045

Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obamanomics-how-barack-obama-is.html

Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His
Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses

BY TIMOTHY P CARNEY


Editorial Reviews

Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?

Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers. In Obamanomics, investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics.
Congressman Ron Paul says, “Every libertarian and free-market conservative needs to read Obamanomics.” And Johan Goldberg, columnist and bestselling author says, “Obamanomics is conservative muckraking at its best and an indispensable field guide to the Obama years.”
If you’ve wondered what’s happening to America, as the federal government swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit exploding “stimulus packages,” this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book names the names—and it will make your blood boil.
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Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers.
Investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics. In this explosive book, Carney reveals:
* The Great Health Care Scam—Obama’s backroom deals with drug companies spell corporate profits and more government control
* The Global Warming Hoax—Obama has bought off industries with a pork-filled bill that will drain your wallet for Al Gore’s agenda
* Obama and Wall Street—“Change” means more bailouts and a heavy Goldman Sachs presence in the West Wing (including Rahm Emanuel)
* Stimulating K Street—The largest spending bill in history gave pork to the well-connected and created a feeding frenzy for lobbyists
* How the GOP needs to change its tune—drastically—to battle Obamanomics
If you’ve wondered what’s happening to our country, as the federal government swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit exploding “stimulus packages” that create make-work government jobs, this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book names the names—and it will make your blood boil.
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Praise for Obamanomics
“The notion that ‘big business’ is on the side of the free market is one of progressivism’s most valuable myths. It allows them to demonize corporations by day and get in bed with them by night. Obamanomics is conservative muckraking at its best. It reveals how President Obama is exploiting the big business mythology to undermine the free market and stick it to entrepreneurs, taxpayers, and consumers. It’s an indispensable field guide to the Obama years.”
—Jonha Goldberg, LA Times columnist and best-selling author
“‘Every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich.’ With this astute observation, Tim Carney begins his task of laying bare the Obama administration’s corporatist governing strategy, hidden behind the president’s populist veneer. This meticulously researched book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how Washington really works.”
—David Freddoso, best-selling author of The Case Against Barack Obama
“Every libertarian and free-market conservative who still believes that large corporations are trusted allies in the battle for economic liberty needs to read this book, as does every well-meaning liberal who believes that expansions of the welfare-regulatory state are done to benefit the common people.”
—Congressman Ron Paul
“It’s understandable for critics to condemn President Obama for his ‘socialism.’ But as Tim Carney shows, the real situation is at once more subtle and more sinister. Obamanomics favors big business while disproportionately punishing everyone else. So-called progressives are too clueless to notice, as usual, which is why we have Tim Carney and this book.”
—Thomas E. Woods, Jr., best-selling author of Meltdown and The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to American History
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• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Regnery Press (November 30, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596986123
• ISBN-13: 978-1596986121

OBAMAnation: RICH DONORS GET RICHER, AND LA RAZA GETS OUR JOBS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED! Everyone On Wall St. Is Tickled Pink!

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obamanomics-rich-donors-get-richer-and.html

OBAMA’S PROMISE TO CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS: DOUBLE YOUR PROFITS, NO REGULATION, ANY NO-STRINGS BAILOUT YOU DEMAND….

OBAMA’S PROMISE TO LA RAZA: GRINGO JOBS, NO E-VERIFY, OPEN BORDERS, NEUTERED I.C.E., DHS NOW DEPT. OF HOMELAND SECURITY = PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP, AND LA RAZA OPERATING OUT OF WHITE HOUSE WITH CECELIA MUNOZ (LA RAZA SUPREMACIST)
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obamanomics-why-super-rich-love-obama.html
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AMERICA – LAND OF BILLIONAIRES, AND MILLIONS OF ILLEGALS. ALL MADE POSSIBLE OFF THE BACKS OF THE RAPED AND PILLAGED MIDDLE CLASS.

IT IS CORPORATE AMERICAN THAT WANTS OPEN BORDERS, NO E-VERIFY, ANY AND ALL AMNESTIES, OR AT LEAST OBAMA’S CONTINUED NON-ENFORCEMENT.
MOST OF THE FORTUNE 500 ARE GENEROUS DONORS TO THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA . IT IS THE U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE FRONTING FOR BIG BUSINESS THAT PERPETUALLY SABOTAGES E-VERIFY, AND PUSHES FOR OPEN BORDERS AND NON-ENFORCEMENT TO PUT MORE “CHEAP” LABOR ILLEGALS INTO OUR JOBS.
BUT HOW “CHEAP” IS THAT LABOR???
LOS ANGELES COUNTY ALONE PUTS OUT (OF PROPERTY TAXES) $600 MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR IN WELFARE TO ILLEGALS! AND HOSPITALS ALL OVER CA ARE IN MELTDOWN DUE TO “FREE” EMERGENCY ROOM SERVICES FOR LA RAZA!
THE STATE OF CA PUTS OUT $20 BILLION PER YEAR IN SOCIAL SERVICES TO ILLEGALS, BUT THERE IS NOT TALK OF CUTTING THIS AS GOV JERRY BROWN WAS ELECTED BY LA RAZA ILLEGALS!
IT’S ALL ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED, WHICH IS WHY NYC BILLIONAIRE BLOOMBERG, AS WELL AS THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD, MEXICAN CARLOS SLIM, AND THE FORMER RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD, BILLIONAIRE BILL GATES ALL WANT OPEN BORDERS, AMNESTY, NO E-VERIFY, AND HORDES MORE ILLEGALS!
NO ONE IS PUSHING THE OPEN BORDERS AGENDA MORE THAN BARACK OBAMA!
CHECK OUT OBAMA’S LA RAZA INFESTED ADMINISTRATION:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obama-operates-la-raza-supremacy-out-of.html
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obama-mexican-supremacist-party-of-la.html
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/04/history-of-mexican-fascist-party-of-la.html

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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/wikileaks-exposed-obamas-la-raza-open.html
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“What's needed to discourage illegal immigration into the United States has been known for years: Enforce existing law.” ….. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

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For years, statistics have depicted growing income disparity in the United States, and it has reached levels not seen since the Great Depression. In 2008, the last year for which data are available, for example, the top 0.1 percent of earners took in more than 10 percent of the personal income in the United States, including capital gains, and the top 1 percent took in more than 20 percent. But economists had little idea who these people were. How many were Wall street financiers? Sports stars? Entrepreneurs? Economists could only speculate, and debates over what is fair stalled.
Now a mounting body of economic research indicates that the rise in pay for company executives is a critical feature in the widening income gap.
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With executive pay, rich pull away from rest of America
By Peter Whoriskey, Published: June 18
It was the 1970s, and the chief executive of a leading U.S. dairy company, Kenneth J. Douglas, lived the good life. He earned the equivalent of about $1 million today. He and his family moved from a three-bedroom home to a four-bedroom home, about a half-mile away, in River Forest, Ill., an upscale Chicago suburb. He joined a country club. The company gave him a Cadillac. The money was good enough, in fact, that he sometimes turned down raises. He said making too much was bad for morale.
Forty years later, the trappings at the top of Dean Foods, as at most U.S. big companies, are more lavish. The current chief executive, Gregg L. Engles, averages 10 times as much in compensation as Douglas did, or about $10 million in a typical year. He owns a $6 million home in an elite suburb of Dallas and 64 acres near Vail, Colo., an area he frequently visits. He belongs to as many as four golf clubs at a time — two in Texas and two in Colorado. While Douglas’s office sat on the second floor of a milk distribution center, Engles’s stylish new headquarters occupies the top nine floors of a 41-story Dallas office tower. When Engles leaves town, he takes the company’s $10 million Challenger 604 jet, which is largely dedicated to his needs, both business and personal.
The evolution of executive grandeur — from very comfortable to jet-setting — reflects one of the primary reasons that the gap between those with the highest incomes and everyone else is widening.
For years, statistics have depicted growing income disparity in the United States, and it has reached levels not seen since the Great Depression. In 2008, the last year for which data are available, for example, the top 0.1 percent of earners took in more than 10 percent of the personal income in the United States, including capital gains, and the top 1 percent took in more than 20 percent. But economists had little idea who these people were. How many were Wall street financiers? Sports stars? Entrepreneurs? Economists could only speculate, and debates over what is fair stalled.
Now a mounting body of economic research indicates that the rise in pay for company executives is a critical feature in the widening income gap.
The largest single chunk of the highest-income earners, it turns out, are executives and other managers in firms, according to a landmark analysis of tax returns by economists Jon Bakija, Adam Cole and Bradley T. Heim. These are not just executives from Wall Street, either, but from companies in even relatively mundane fields such as the milk business.
The top 0.1 percent of earners make about $1.7 million or more, including capital gains. Of those, 41 percent were executives, managers and supervisors at non-financial companies, according to the analysis, with nearly half of them deriving most of their income from their ownership in privately-held firms. An additional 18 percent were managers at financial firms or financial professionals at any sort of firm. In all, nearly 60 percent fell into one of those two categories.
Other recent research, moreover, indicates that executive compensation at the nation’s largest firms has roughly quadrupled in real terms since the 1970s, even as pay for 90 percent of America has stalled.
This trend held at Dean Foods. Over the period from the ’70s until today, while pay for Dean Foods chief executives was rising 10 times over, wages for the unionized workers actually declined slightly. The hourly wage rate for the people who process, pasteurize and package the milk at the company’s dairies declined by 9 percent in real terms, according to union contract records. It is now about $23 an hour.
“Do people bitch because Engles makes so much? Yeah. But there’s nothing you can do about it,” said Bob Goad, 61, a burly former high school wrestler who is a pasteurizer at a Dean Foods plant in Harvard, Ill., and runs an auction business on the side to supplement his income. “These companies have the idea that the only people that matter to the company are those at the top.”
Through a spokesman, Engles declined to be interviewed. Company officials threatened to call the police as a reporter was interviewing workers outside one of its dairies.
Defenders of executive pay have argued that today’s chief executives are worth more because, among other things, companies are larger and more complex.
But critics question why so much of the growth in income should go to the wealthiest. Douglas, the Dean Foods chief from the ’70s, died in 2007. But his son, Andrew Douglas, said his father viewed wages in part as a moral issue.
If his father had seen how much executives were making today, Andrew Douglas said, he’d be “spinning in his grave. My dad just believed that after a while, what else would you need the money for?”
Inherent inequality
Inequality, economists have noted, is an essential part of capitalism. At least in theory, “the invisible hand,” or market system, sets compensation levels to lead workers into pursuits that are the most productive to society. This produces inequality but leads to a more efficient economy.
As a result, economists have noted, there is an inherent tension in market-oriented democracies because while society aims to endow each person with equal political rights, it allows very unequal economic outcomes.
“American society proclaims the worth of every human being,” economist Arthur M. Okun, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in his 1975 book on the subject, “Equality and Efficiency.’’ But the economy awards “prizes that allow the big winners to feed their pets better than the losers can feed their children.”
Americans have been uneasy about the income gap at least since the ’80s, according to polls.
Repeated surveys by the National Opinion Research Center since 1987 have found that 60 percent or more of Americans agree or strongly agree with the statement that “differences in income in America are too large.”
The uneasiness arises out of the fear that extremes of wealth can unfairly reduce the economic opportunities and political rights of everyone else, according to sociologists. The wealthy, for example, can afford better private schools for their children or acquire political might by purchasing campaign advertising or making campaign donations. Moreover, as millions struggle to find jobs in the wake of the recession, the notion that the very wealthiest are gaining ground strikes some as unfair.
“Americans think income inequality is excessive and have done so consistently for years,” said Leslie McCall, a sociology professor at Northwestern University who is writing a book on the subject. “Their concerns arise when it seems that extreme incomes for some are restricting opportunities for everyone else.”
Whatever people think of it, the gap between the very highest earners and everyone else has been widening significantly.
Income inequality has been on the rise for decades in several nations, including the United Kingdom, China and India, but it has been most pronounced in the United States, economists say.
In 1975, for example, the top 0.1 percent of earners garnered about 2.5 percent of the nation’s income, including capital gains, according to data collected by University of California economist Emmanuel Saez. By 2008, that share had quadrupled and stood at 10.4 percent.
The phenomenon is even more pronounced at even higher levels of income. The share of the income commanded by the top 0.01 percent rose from 0.85 percent to 5.03 percent over that period. For the 15,000 families in that group, average income now stands at $27 million.
In world rankings of income inequality, the United States now falls among some of the world’s less-developed economies.
According to the CIA’s World Factbook, which uses the so-called “Gini coefficient,” a common economic indicator of inequality, the United States ranks as far more unequal than the European Union and the United Kingdom. The United States is in the company of developing countries — just behind Cameroon and Ivory Coast and just ahead of Uganda and Jamaica.
Democratic leaders, whose constituents have expressed more alarm over the divide, have used the phenomenon to justify their policies, such as universal health care.
“A nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous,” President Obama said in his inaugural address.
Breakdown of earners
But exactly what the government ought to do about the income gap hasn’t been clear, because economists have been divided over what is causing it to grow.
They weren’t even sure, for example, who was making all that money. Sure, people like Bill Gates and LeBron James made lots. But it wasn’t at all clear who the other roughly 140,000 earners were in the top 0.1 percent — that is, people earning about $1.7 million a year, including capital gains.
Then, late last year, economists Bakija, Cole and Heim completed their massive analysis of income tax returns.
Little noticed outside academic circles, their research focused on the top 0.1 percent of earners. From those tax returns, they could glean a taxpayer’s occupation, which is self-reported. Using the employer’s tax identification number, the researchers found the industry they were employed in.
After executives, managers and financial professionals, the next largest groups in the top 0.1 percent of earners was lawyers with 6.2 percent and real estate professionals at 4.7 percent. Media and sports figures, who are often assumed to represent a large portion of very high-income earners, collectively made up only 3 percent.
“Basically, executives represent a much bigger share of the top incomes than a lot of people had thought,” said Bakija, a professor at Williams College, who with his co-authors is continuing the research. “Before, we just didn’t know who these people were.”
Acceptable greed
Defenders of executive pay argue, among other things, that the rising compensation is deserved because firms are larger today. Moreover, this group says, more packages today are based on stock and options, which pay more when the chief executive is successful.
Critics, on other hand, argue that executive salaries have jumped because corporate boards were simply too generous, or more broadly, because greed became more socially acceptable.
Again, in settling these arguments, economists were hampered by a lack of data, particularly any that might give some historical perspective.
It wasn’t until economists Carola Frydman from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Raven E. Molloy of the Federal Reserve collected and analyzed data going back to 1936 — an exhaustive task because of the lack of computerized records going that far — that the longer-term trends became clear.
What the research showed is that while executive pay at the largest U.S. companies was relatively flat in the ’50s and ’60s, it began a rapid ascent sometime in the ’70s.
As it happens, this was about the same time that income inequality began to widen in the United States, according to the Saez figures.
More importantly, however, the finding that executive pay was flat in the ’50s and ’60s, when firms were growing, appears to contradict the idea that executive pay should naturally rise when companies grow.
This is a “challenge for the market story,” Frydman said.
So what happened since the ’70s that has sent executive pay upward?
While no company over this period of time — from the 1970s to today — can be considered completely typical, Dean Foods offers a better comparison than most because fundamentally it hasn’t changed.
The dairy business is still the root of the company; it was on the Fortune 500 by the late ’70s and remains there today. It grew then and more recently through acquisition.
Moreover, both chief executives — Douglas and Engles — could boast records of growing the company and profits.
From 1970 to 1979, while Douglas was the chief executive, sales at Dean Foods tripled and profits increased tenfold, to $9.8 million, according to company records. Similarly, from 2000 to 2009, sales at what would be Dean Foods had roughly doubled, and so had profits, to $228 million. (Engles became chief executive after the company he led bought Dean Foods in 2001 and adopted its name.)
Yet there are vast differences in the way the two men were paid, even when you adjust for the effects of inflation.
In the late 70s — 1977, 1978 and 1979 — Douglas made about $1 million annually in today’s dollars. The largest part of that was a salary; some came from a long-term incentive based on the stock price that would not mature until he retired.
By contrast, in the late 2000s — 2007, 2008 and 2009 — Engles averaged $10.5 million annually, most of it in stock and options awards and other incentive pay, according to proxy statements. After ’09, which was a particularly bad year, Engles’s compensation dropped to $4 million in 2010. If profits return, so will his higher earnings.
The case of Dean Foods appears to bolster the argument that executive compensation moves with company size: The profits for Dean Foods in 2009 were roughly 10 times what they were in 1979, adjusted for constant dollars. Engles’s compensation has averaged 10 times that of Douglas.
“It’s a different company today,” company spokesman Jamaison Schuler said. He declined to comment further.
But some economists have offered an alternative, difficult-to-quantify explanation: that the social norms that once reined in executive pay have disappeared.
This new attitude, according to this view, was reflected in epigrammatic form by the 1987 movie “Wall Street,” which made famous the phrase “greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” Americans were growing more comfortable with some extremes in pay. Payoffs for the stars on Wall Street, in the movies and in pro sports were rising.
But back in the ’70s, something was holding executive salaries back.
Harold Geneen, the president of ITT, then one of the nation’s largest companies, told Forbes in 1975 that while he might be worth six times as much to the company as he was making, he hadn’t sought a raise.
“No one moved up there, and I didn’t dare do it alone,” he explained.
Over at Dean Foods, Kenneth Douglas was likewise resistant to making more. Most years, board members at Dean Foods wanted to give Douglas a raise. But more than once, Douglas, a former FBI agent who literally married the girl next door, refused.
“He would object to the pay we gave him sometimes — not because he thought it was too little; he thought it was too much,” said Alexander J. Vogl, a members of the Dean Foods board at the time and the chair of its compensation committee. “He was afraid it would be bad for morale, him getting a big bump like that.”
“He believed the reward went to the shareholders, not to any one man,” said John P. Frazee, another former board member. “Today we get cults of personality around the CEO, but then there was not a cult of personality.”
Outside one of the Dean Foods dairies recently, the workers at the plant for the most part only rolled their eyes when asked about Engles’s salary. But they spoke admiringly of Douglas.
“People back then thought enough was enough,” said Ron Smith, 63, who maintains the machines at the plant.
Some were reluctant to criticize Engles to a reporter. Others defended him.
“You’re king of the hill, and you get paid for that,” said Ray Kavanaugh, 61, who operates a filler at the dairy. “He’s worth it if he keep the company making money.”
The employees said they only occasionally dwell on Engles’s riches, anyway. Their primary focus is on making ends meet, they said.
Joe Bopp, 55, said he has a second job taking care of a cemetery during the summer months, mowing the grass and digging graves.
“Twenty-three dollars an hour sounds like a lot of money,” he said. “But when you pay $4 a gallon for gas and $3.29 for a gallon of milk, it goes away real fast.”
This is the first in an occasional series.
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Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.
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POVERTY RISES AS WALL ST. BILLIONAIRES WHINE!
These guys profited from puffing up the housing bubble, then got bailed out when the going got tough. (Please see The Looting of America for all the gory details.) Without taxpayer largess, these hedge fund honchos would be flat broke. Instead, they're back to hauling in obscene profits.
These billionaires don't even have to worry about serious financial reforms. The paltry legislation that squeaked through Congress did nothing to end too big and too interconnected to fail. In fact, the biggest firms got even bigger as they gobbled up troubled banks, with the generous support of the federal government. No bank or hedge fund was broken up. Nobody was forced to pay a financial transaction tax. None of the big boys had a cap placed on their astronomical wealth. No one's paying reparations for wrecking the US economy. The big bankers are still free to create and trade the very derivatives that catapulted us into this global crisis. You'd think the billionaires would be praying on the altar of government and erecting statues on Capital Hill in honor of St. Bailout.

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While 43.6 million Americans live in poverty, the richest men of finance sure are getting pissy. First Steve Schwartzman, head of the Blackrock private equity company, compares the Obama administration's effort to close billionaires' tax loopholes to "the Nazi invasion of Poland." Then hedge fund mogul David Loeb announces that he's abandoning the Democrats because they're violating "this country's core founding principles" -- including "non-punitive taxation, Constitutionally-guaranteed protections against persecution of the minority, and an inexorable right of self-determination." Instead of showing their outrage about the spread of poverty in the richest nation on Earth, the super-rich want us to pity them?
Why are Wall Street's billionaires so whiny? Is it really possible to make $900,000 an hour (not a typo -- that's what the top ten hedge fund managers take in), and still feel aggrieved about the way government is treating you? After you've been bailed out by the federal government to the tune of $10 trillion (also not a typo) in loans, asset swaps, liquidity and other guarantees, can you really still feel like an oppressed minority?
You'd think the Wall Street moguls would be thankful. Not just thankful -- down on their knees kissing the ground taxpayers walk on and hollering hallelujah at the top of their lungs! These guys profited from puffing up the housing bubble, then got bailed out when the going got tough. (Please see The Looting of America for all the gory details.) Without taxpayer largess, these hedge fund honchos would be flat broke. Instead, they're back to hauling in obscene profits.
These billionaires don't even have to worry about serious financial reforms. The paltry legislation that squeaked through Congress did nothing to end too big and too interconnected to fail. In fact, the biggest firms got even bigger as they gobbled up troubled banks, with the generous support of the federal government. No bank or hedge fund was broken up. Nobody was forced to pay a financial transaction tax. None of the big boys had a cap placed on their astronomical wealth. No one's paying reparations for wrecking the US economy. The big bankers are still free to create and trade the very derivatives that catapulted us into this global crisis. You'd think the billionaires would be praying on the altar of government and erecting statues on Capital Hill in honor of St. Bailout.
Instead, standing before us are these troubled souls, haunted by visions of persecution. Why?
The world changed. Before the bubble burst, these people walked on water. Their billions proved that they were the best and the brightest -- not just captains of the financial universe, but global elites who had earned a place in history. They donated serious money to worthy causes -- and political campaigns. No one wanted to mess with them.
But then came the crash. And the things changed for the big guys -- not so much financially as spiritually. Plebeians, including me, are asking pointed questions and sometimes even being heard, both on the Internet and in the mainstream media. For the first time in a generation, the public wants to know more about these emperors and their new clothes. For instance:
• What do these guys actually do that earns them such wealth?
• Is what they do productive and useful for society? Is there any connection between what they earn and what they produce for society?
• Did they help cause the crash?
• Did these billionaires benefit from the bailouts? If so, how much?
• Are they exacerbating the current unemployment and poverty crisis with their shenanigans?
• Why shouldn't we eliminate their tax loopholes (like carried interest)?
• Should their sky-high incomes be taxed at the same levels as during the Eisenhower years?
• Can we create the millions of jobs we need if the billionaires continue to skim off so much of our nation's wealth??
• Should we curb their wealth and political influence?
How dare we ask such questions! How dare we consider targeting them for special taxes? How dare we even think about redistributing THEIR incomes... even if at the moment much of their money comes directly from our bailouts and tax breaks?
It's true that the billionaires live in a hermetically sealed world. But that doesn't mean they don't notice the riffraff nipping at their heels. And they don't like it much. So they've gotten busy doing what billionaires do best: using their money to shield themselves. They're digging into their bottomless war chests, tapping their vast connections and using their considerable influence to shift the debate away from them and towards the rest of us.
We borrowed too much, not them. We get too much health care, not them. We retire too soon, not them. We need to tighten our belts while they pull in another $900,000 an hour. And if we want to cure poverty, we need to get the government to leave Wall Street alone. Sadly, their counter-offensive is starting to take hold.
How can this happen? Many Americans want to relate to billionaires. They believe that all of us are entitled to make as much as we can, pretty much by any means necessary. After all, maybe someday you or I will strike it rich. And when we do, we sure don't want government regulators or the taxman coming around!
Billionaires are symbols of American individual prowess and virility. And if we try to hold them back or slow them down, we're on the road to tyranny. Okay, the game is rigged in their favor. Okay, they got bailed out while the rest of us didn't -- especially the 29 million people who are jobless or forced into part-time work. But what matters most is that in America, nothing can interfere with individual money-making. That only a few of us actually make it into the big-time isn't a bad thing: It's what makes being rich so special. So beware: If we enact even the mildest of measures to rein in Wall Street billionaires, we're on the path to becoming North Korea.
Unfortunately, if we don't adjust our attitudes, we can expect continued high levels of unemployment and more people pushed below the poverty line. It's not clear that our economy will ever recover as long as the Wall Street billionaires keep siphoning off so much of our wealth. How can we create jobs for the many while the few are walking off with $900,000 an hour with almost no new jobs to show for it? In the old days, even robber barons built industries that employed people -- steel, oil, railroads. Now the robber barons build palaces out of fantasy finance. We can keep coddling our financial billionaires and let our economy spiral down, or we can make them pay their fair share so we can create real jobs. These guys crashed the economy, they killed billions of jobs, and now they're cashing in on our bailout. They owe us. They owe the unemployed. They owe the poor.
Dwight D. Eisenhower was no radical, but he accepted the reality: If America was going to prosper -- and pay for its costly Cold War -- the super-rich would have to pony up. It was common knowledge that when the rich grew too wealthy, they used their excess incomes to speculate. In the 1950s, memories of the Great Depression loomed large, and people knew that a skewed distribution of income only fueled speculative booms and disastrous busts. On Ike's watch, the effective marginal tax rate for those earning over $3 million (in today's dollars) was over 70 percent. The super-rich paid. As a nation we respected that other important American value: advancing the common good.
For the last thirty years we've been told that making as much as you can is just another way of advancing the common good. But the Great Recession erased that equation: The Wall Streeters who made as much as they could undermined the common good. It's time to balance the scales. This isn't just redistribution of income in pursuit of some egalitarian utopia. It's a way to use public policy to reattach billionaires to the common good.
It's time to take Eisenhower's cue and redeploy the excessive wealth Wall Street's high rollers have accumulated. If we leave it in their hands, they'll keep using it to construct speculative financial casinos. Instead, we could use that money to build a stronger, more prosperous nation. We could provide our people with free higher education at all our public colleges and universities -- just like we did for WWII vets under the GI Bill of Rights (a program that returned seven dollars in GDP for every dollar invested). We could fund a green energy Manhattan Project to wean us from fossil fuels. An added bonus: If we siphon some of the money off Wall Street, some of our brightest college graduates might even be attracted not to high finance but to jobs in science, education and healthcare, where we need them.
Of course, this pursuit of the common good won't be easy for the billionaires (and those who indentify with them.). But there's just no alternative for this oppressed minority: They're going to have to learn to live on less than $900,000 an hour.
Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.

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OBAMA AND GEITHNER WORKING HARD FOR CRIMINAL WALL ST. BANKSTERS
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obama-geithner-working-hard-for-wall-st.html
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NEW YORK TIMES
October 20, 2009
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Safety Nets for the Rich
By BOB HERBERT
The headlines that ran side by side on the front page of Saturday’s New York Times summed up, inadvertently, the terrible fix that we’ve allowed our country to fall into.
The lead headline, in the upper right-hand corner, said: “U.S. Deficit Rises to $1.4 Trillion; Biggest Since ’45.”
The headline next to it said: “Bailout Helps Revive Banks, And Bonuses.”
We’ve spent the last few decades shoveling money at the rich like there was no tomorrow. We abandoned the poor, put an economic stranglehold on the middle class and all but bankrupted the federal government — while giving the banks and megacorporations and the rest of the swells at the top of the economic pyramid just about everything they’ve wanted.
And we still don’t seem to have learned the proper lessons. We’ve allowed so many people to fall into the terrible abyss of unemployment that no one — not the Obama administration, not the labor unions and most certainly no one in the Republican Party — has a clue about how to put them back to work.
Meanwhile, Wall Street is living it up. I’m amazed at how passive the population has remained in the face of this sustained outrage.
Even as tens of millions of working Americans are struggling to hang onto their jobs and keep a roof over their families’ heads, the wise guys of Wall Street are licking their fat-cat chops over yet another round of obscene multibillion-dollar bonuses — this time thanks to the bailout billions that were sent their way by Uncle Sam, with very little in the way of strings attached.
Nevermind that the economy remains deeply troubled. As The Times pointed out on Saturday, much of Wall Street “is minting money.”
Call it déjà voodoo. I wrote a column that ran three days before Christmas in 2007 that focused on the deeply disturbing disconnect between Wall Streeters harvesting a record crop of bonuses — billions on top of billions — while working families were having a very hard time making ends meet.
We would later learn that December 2007 was the very month that the Great Recession began. I wrote in that column: “Even as the Wall Streeters are high-fiving and ordering up record shipments of Champagne and caviar, the American dream is on life support.”
So we had an orgy of bonuses just as the recession was taking hold and now another orgy (with taxpayers as the enablers) that is nothing short of an arrogantly pointed finger in the eye of everyone who suffered, and continues to suffer, in this downturn.
Whether P.T. Barnum actually said it or not, there is a sucker born every minute. American taxpayers might want to take a look in the mirror. If the epithet fits...
We need to make some fundamental changes in the way we do things in this country. The gamblers and con artists of the financial sector, the very same clowns who did so much to bring the economy down in the first place, are howling self-righteously over the prospect of regulations aimed at curbing the worst aspects of their excessively risky behavior and preventing them from causing yet another economic meltdown.
We should be going even further. We’ve institutionalized the idea that there are firms that are too big to fail and, therefore, “we, the people” are obliged to see that they don’t — even if that means bankrupting the national treasury and undermining the living standards of ordinary people. What sense does that make?
If some company is too big to fail, then it’s too big to exist. Break it up.
Why should the general public have to constantly worry that a misstep by the high-wire artists at Goldman Sachs (to take the most obvious example) would put the entire economy in peril? These financial acrobats get the extraordinary benefits of their outlandish risk-taking — multimillion-dollar paychecks, homes the size of castles — but the public has to be there to absorb the worst of the pain when they take a terrible fall.
Enough! Goldman Sachs is thriving while the combined rates of unemployment and underemployment are creeping toward a mind-boggling 20 percent. Two-thirds of all the income gains from the years 2002 to 2007 — two-thirds! — went to the top 1 percent of Americans.
We cannot continue transferring the nation’s wealth to those at the apex of the economic pyramid — which is what we have been doing for the past three decades or so — while hoping that someday, maybe, the benefits of that transfer will trickle down in the form of steady employment and improved living standards for the many millions of families struggling to make it from day to day.
That money is never going to trickle down. It’s a fairy tale. We’re crazy to continue believing it.
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-obama-duped-nation-but-his-bankster.html
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“All of these writers proceed from a fact of American life that is becoming impossible to deny: the sharp divergence in the fortunes of the banks and investors, on the one hand, and the broad mass of the population, on the other. The Wall Street giants, the very firms that precipitated the financial crisis, are doing better than ever. They are planning record bonuses while unemployment continues to soar and wages are declining at a rate not seen in decades.”