VISUALIZE REVOLUTION! We can’t start to rebuild the AMERICAN middle-class until we stop electing and reelecting bribes sucking white-color criminals and until we burn down Wall Street, hang the banksters and billionaires plundering this nation and push Mexico out of our jobs, welfare lines, voting booths and borders! PUT YOUR CELL PHONE DOWN AND GET BUSY BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS AND THE FINAL DEATH OF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS
Sharp rise in US suicide rate
Eighty percent increase among middle-aged white women
By
Kate Randall
23 April 2016
The suicide rate in the United States has increased sharply since
the beginning of the current century, according to federal data released
Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The
increase is led by a particularly sharp rise in suicide among
middle-aged white people, especially women. The study by the CDC’s
National Center for Health Statistics follows recent reports
documenting a decline in life expectancy among whites and sharp
increases in lifespan divergences between rich and poor in America.As
with life expectancy, the incidence of suicide is a key barometer of the
health of a society. The rise in the rate at which people choose to
take their own lives is yet another indication of the social crisis
gripping America.
The new data shows that the age-adjusted suicide
rate in the US jumped 24 percent between 1999 and 2014, from 10.5 per
100,000 people to 13 per 100,000 people. The figures show a 1.0 percent
annual increase in suicide between 1999 and 2006 and a 2 percent yearly
rise from 2007 to 2014. In total, 42,773 people died from suicide in
2014 compared to 29,199 in 1999.
The accelerated rise in the
suicide rate from 2007 to 2014 coincides with the Great Recession and
its aftermath and demonstrates the tragic impact of economic distress on
significant layers of the population. Other contributing factors cited
by the study’s authors include rising drug addiction and overdoses,
growing divorce rates among older Americans, increased social isolation
and a health care system ill-equipped to deal with mental health issues
and suicide prevention.
Over the period of the study, the suicide
rate for women aged 45-64 jumped by 63 percent and by 43 percent for men
in the same age range. White middle-aged women had a shocking 80
percent increase in suicide during this period, three to four times
higher than for females in other racial and ethnic groups.
Suicide
rates for non-Hispanic black females rose by 0.8 percent among women
45-64; the rate for Hispanic women in this age group rose by 0.7
percent. Non-Hispanic black males were the only racial and ethnic group
of either sex to have a lower suicide rate in 2014 than in 1999,
declining by 8 percent.
The suicide rate in the American Indian
and Alaska Native population surged from 1999 to 2014, rising by 90
percent for women and 38 percent for men. Among this group, 188 women
and 348 men took their own lives in 2014.
Suicides among men were
still more than three times the rate among women in 2014, but the study
shows that the gap between the genders is closing. The higher rate among
men is in part attributed to a higher suicide success rate through the
use of firearms, fatal jumps and other methods.
Although based on a
small number of suicides when compared to other age groups (150 in
2014), the suicide rate for females aged 10-14 had the largest
percentage increase, tripling from 0.5 per 100,000 in 1999 to 1.5 per
100,000 in 2014. The suicide rate increased for women in all age groups
except those 75 and above, where it declined by 11 percent.
Suicide
rates for males were also higher in 2014 than in 1999 for all age
groups under 75 years. However, despite an 8 percent decline for men 75
and older, this age group saw the highest rate of suicide in 2014, with
38.8 per 100,000, or 3,106 male seniors, taking their own lives.
The
data shows that from 1999 to 2014, the percentages of suicides
involving firearms and poisoning declined, while those involving
suffocation increased. For both males and females, about one in four
suicides in 2014 was attributable to suffocation, which includes
hanging, self-strangulation and other methods of asphyxia. Experts note
that such suicides are difficult to prevent as almost all people have
the means to carry them out.
Poisoning was the most common method
of suicide for women in 2014, making up about one-third of all female
suicides. Poisoning agents include prescription opioids, heroin and
other toxic substances. While accidental overdoses from opioids have
skyrocketed in recent years, purposeful fatal overdoses have also
increased.
The most frequent “other” suicide methods for females
in 2014 were falls (2.8 percent) and drowning (1.4 percent). For males,
“other” methods included falls (2.2 percent) and cutting or piercing
(1.9 percent).
According to the CDC data, 33,113 people committed
suicide in 2014. Suicide is one of the 10 leading causes of death for
Americans. While death rates for major killers such as some cancers and
heart disease have seen a long-term decline in recent decades, the
suicide rate is rising precipitously.
Psychiatric
conditions--including depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia--as
well as other chronic medical problems undeniably play a role in
suicide. The lack of access to high quality, affordable medical care
leads to isolation and marginalization for increasing numbers of those
in need of counseling and treatment.
The intersection of these
very real medical and mental health issues with the economic devastation
faced by millions in 21st century America is pushing increasing numbers
of people over the brink. While the Obama administration declared
economic “recovery” from the recession in mid-2009, the reality is
starkly different for the vast majority of Americans today.
The
new CDC study does not break down the incidence of suicide by income
level, but its victims are undoubtedly predominantly poor, working class
and lower middle class, similar to those in recent studies on US life
expectancy.
America is a society in which growing numbers of
people survive on low-wage, part-time, temporary and contingent jobs,
often holding down two or more jobs to make ends meet. Working families
are burdened by soaring medical costs and rising mortgage or rent
payments. Many college graduates are saddled with debt and unable to
find secure and decent-paying work. Veterans suffer from post-traumatic
stress syndrome. Retirees are unable to survive on paltry Social
Security benefits. Millions have been driven out of the labor market and
subsist at the margins of society.
This reality does not enter
into the current presidential campaign debate. While “democratic
socialist” Bernie Sanders rails against the “billionaire class,” the
main aim of his campaign is to divert growing anti-capitalist sentiment
among workers and young people back into the confines of the Democratic
Party. A longtime ally of the Democrats and defender of capitalism, he
has pledged to support the Democratic frontrunner, former Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton, a personification of militarism and corruption,
should she secure the nomination.
Billionaire businessman Donald
Trump, the likely Republican candidate, promotes a fascistic and
anti-working class agenda, scapegoating immigrants and Muslims. None of
the candidates of the political establishment have answers to the
economic and social crisis and the personal toll it takes on working
people and youth.
THE REAL PRICE OF OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS ON THE AMERICA MIDDLE CLASS IS DEATH!
U.S. suicides have soared since 1999, CDC report says
Driven by stark increases in the numbers of white women and Native Americans who are taking their own lives, suicide rates in the United States jumped 24% in the years between 1999 and 2014, a new government report says.
Following a slow-but-steady rise in suicides from 1999, the yearly increase accelerated after 2006, as Americans' financial woes mounted and a battering recession settled in. Between 2006 and 2014, the report shows, the annual rise in the U.S. suicide rate jumped from 1% to 2%. Suicide rates climbed among men and women, and in all age groups between 10 and 74 years old.
Suicide rates among non-Latino American Indians and Alaska Natives were, in 1999, already the highest of any ethnic group, despite being widely underreported. By 2014, roughly 1 in 2,000 men in this ethnic group committed suicide, a 60% increase over the suicide rate among male American Indians and Alaska Natives that prevailed in 1999.
Among all men under 75, suicides surged. In the age group most prone to suicide -- 45 to 64 -- almost 30 in 1,000 men took their lives in 2014, a 43% increase over 1999's rate. Non-Latino black males were the only racial or ethnic group of either gender to have a lower suicide rate in 2014 than in 1999.
All told, 42,773 Americans died of suicide in 2014, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That made suicide the 10th leading cause of death for all ages.
"This is definitely harrowing: The overall massiveness of the increase is to me the biggest shocker--the fact that it touched pretty much every group," said Katherine A. Hempstead, who recently published an analysis of U.S. suicide trends in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Hempstead, director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, noted that the surging suicide rate among women--a group that has traditionally committed suicide at a far lower rate than men--was especially significant. Though nearly four times as many men as women kill themselves, suicide rates among women grew much faster than those among men.
"That we've started to see the gender gap close is shocking," said Hempstead, who was not involved in the current study.
Among all women younger than 75, suicide rates grew across the age spectrum. But in the age group of greatest vulnerability--women between 45 and 64--the rate of suicide in 2014 vaulted 80% over 1999's rates.
Among girls 5 to 15 years old--a segment of the population among whom suicide was a rare phenomenon in 1999--rates of suicide tripled between 1999 and 2014, with one suicide yearly for every 6,660 of these girls.
Hempstead's earlier published study of American suicide rates ended with 2010, and had documented a steep rise that appeared strongly related to financial distress and job problems. That that trend continued for four more years may reflect that "the benefits of the recovery have not been shared by all," said Hempstead. Recent reports that nonlethal forms self-harm--drug overdoses and alcohol-related diseases--have begun to erode Americans' life expectancy also underscore the lingering effects of economic hardship on many, she added.
The new report, issued Thursday by the CDC's Center for Health Statistics, also offers a grim look into the changing means by which American suicide victims took their lives. Among both men and women, the 1999-2014 period saw a shift away from the use of firearms, pills and poisons. In 2014, 1 in 4 suicides was by suffocation (hanging, strangulation or suffocation), up from 1 in 5 in 1999.
Firearms continued to be the preferred means of suicide by male victims, occurring in 55.4% of the cases in 2014. Among women, firearms followed close behind poisoning as a favored means of suicide, accounting for 31% of female suicides in 2014.
These facts underscore the importance of coaxing from those in crisis the pills, poison or guns they might use to carry out a suicide, said Catherine Barber, director of the Means Matter Campaign at Harvard's School of Public Health.
Research suggests that many who attempt suicide act on impulse--and when a gun is available, their attempts are vastly more likely to succeed. By contrast, 9 out of 10 people who attempt suicide and survive will not go on to die by their own hand, suggesting that removing the means to commit such an act is not a gesture doomed to fail.
"Often, the moment for a friend to intervene is related to a crisis that is going to resolve, like a divorce," said Barber. "A friend can offer optimism: 'We'll get through this,'" said Barber. "A friendly way of showing concern" would be to offer to hold a distressed person's firearms until the crisis has passed, she added.
BANKSTER-OWNED BARACK OBAMA ORCHESTRATED THE GREATEST TRANSFER OF AMERICA'S ECONOMY TO THE RICH SINCE BILL CLINTON.
"Emmanuel
Saez, a professor of economics at the University of California,
Berkeley, estimates that the top 1 percent of American households now
controls 42 percent of the nation’s wealth, up from less than 30 percent
two decades ago. The top 0.1 percent accounts for 22 percent, nearly
double the 1995 proportion."
DURING THE EIGHT YEARS OF OBAMA'S "HOPE AND NO CHANGE", TWO -THIRDS OF ALL JOBS WENT TO FOREIGN BORN, BOTH LEGALS AND ILLEGALS. THE
MILLIONS OF AMERICAN THAT SUNK INTO POVERTY HAS SOARED, JUST AS THE
CRIMES AND PROFITS OF OBAMA - CLINTON CRONIES ON WALL STREET!
"To this, we say: we hear you.
The system is corrupt. The economy is rigged.
Big campaign contributors do pull the strings in Washington. Working people are right to be angry about trade policy and the betrayal of the middle class, working families, and the poor by an elite establishment that profits from the status quo."
Independent news at its best. If it's blacked-out, covered-up or censored, you can find it here!
March 23, 2016
Statistic of the Week:The amount of assets/wealth the average adult has in each country:
Belgium - $150,348
UK - $126,472
Norway - $119,634
Japan - $96,071
France - $86,156
Canada - $74,750
Netherlands - $74,659
USA - $49,787
-from Credit Suisse via Institute for Policy Studies
In an Age of Privilege, Not Everyone Is in the Same Boat
Companies are becoming adept at identifying
wealthy customers and marketing to them,
creating a money-based caste system.
IAMI — Behind a locked door aboard Norwegian Cruise Line’s newest ship
is a world most of the vessel’s 4,200 passengers will never see. And
that is exactly the point.
In
the Haven, as this ship within a ship is called, about 275 elite guests
enjoy not only a concierge and 24-hour butler service, but also a
private pool, sun deck and restaurant, creating an oasis free from the
crowds elsewhere on the Norwegian Escape.
If
Haven passengers venture out of their aerie to see a show, a flash of
their gold key card gets them the best seats in the house. When the ship
returns to port, they disembark before everyone else.
“It
was always the intention to make the Haven somewhat obscure so it
wasn’t in the face of the masses,” said Kevin Sheehan, Norwegian’s
former chief executive, who helped design the Escape with the hope of
attracting a richer clientele. “That segment of the population wants to
be surrounded by people with similar characteristics.”
With
disparities in wealth greater than at any time since the Gilded Age,
the gap is widening between the highly affluent — who find themselves
behind the velvet ropes of today’s economy — and everyone else.
Room for a Dip While crowds mill around the pool elsewhere on the Escape, there’s space to stretch out in the Haven. Edward Linsmier for The New York Times
It
represents a degree of economic and social stratification unseen in
America since the days of Teddy Roosevelt, J. P. Morgan and the rigidly
separated classes on the Titanic a century ago.
What
is different today, though, is that companies have become much more
adept at identifying their top customers and knowing which psychological
buttons to push. The goal is to create extravagance and exclusivity for
the select few, even if it stirs up resentment elsewhere. In fact,
research has shown, a little envy can be good for the bottom line.
When
top-dollar travelers switch planes in Atlanta, New York and other
cities, Delta ferries them between terminals in a Porsche, what the
airline calls a “surprise-and-delight service.” Last month, Walt Disney
World began offering after-hours access to visitors who want to avoid
the crowds. In other words, you basically get the Magic Kingdom to
yourself.
When
Royal Caribbean ships call at Labadee, the cruise line’s private resort
in Haiti, elite guests get their own special beach club away from
fellow travelers — an enclave within an enclave.
“We
are living much more cloistered lives in terms of class,” said Thomas
Sander, who directs a project on civic engagement at the Kennedy School
at Harvard. “We are doing a much worse job of living out the egalitarian
dream that has been our hallmark.”
Emmanuel
Saez, a professor of economics at the University of California,
Berkeley, estimates that the top 1 percent of American households now
controls 42 percent of the nation’s wealth, up from less than 30 percent
two decades ago. The top 0.1 percent accounts for 22 percent, nearly
double the 1995 proportion.
But
even as income inequality and the wealth gap stoke the discontent that
has emerged as a powerful force in this year’s presidential election,
for American business it represents something else entirely. From cruise
ship operators and casinos to amusement parks and airlines, the rise of
the 1 percent spells opportunity and profit.
The Velvet Rope Economy
The first in an occasional series on how growing disparities in wealth are leading to privileged treatment of the rich.
Today,
ever greater resources are being invested in winning market share at
the very top of the pyramid, sometimes at the cost of diminished service
for the rest of the public. While middle-class incomes are stagnating,
the period since the end of the Great Recession has been a boom time for
the very rich and the businesses that cater to them.
From
2010 to 2014, the number of American households with at least $1
million in financial assets jumped by nearly one-third, to just under
seven million, according to a study by the Boston Consulting Group. For
the $1 million-plus cohort, estimated wealth grew by 7.2 percent
annually from 2010 to 2014, eight times the pace of gains for families
with less than $1 million.
The High Life
For the affluent, spending on
high-end experiences like travel and dining now nearly equals outlays on
luxury goods like cars and fashion.
Luxury spending
Estimated
$307 billion
total in 2012
Other
(yachting, spas etc.)
Travel and hotels
$67 bil.
$135 bil.
‘Experiential’
luxury
spending
Alcohol and food
Technology
Home decoration
Skin care, makeup
$40 bil.
Watches, jewelry
Personal
luxury
goods
Accessories
Clothing
$27 bil.
Arts
$105 bil.
Luxury
cars
“You
go where the money is,” said Steven Fazzari, a professor of economics
at Washington University in St. Louis. “This is where companies are
innovating and where there is demand.”
BLOG: AMERICA - LAND OF THE 1% AND WHERE JOBS GO TO ILLEGALS FIRST!
Class Divisions
In
many ways, the rise of the velvet rope reverses the great
democratization of travel and leisure, and other elements of American
life, in the post-World War II era. As the Jet Set gave way to budget
airlines, in places like airports and theme parks even the wealthiest
often rubbed shoulders with hoi polloi.
These
days, whether the provider is a private company or a public agency,
special treatment for the very rich isn’t personal, it’s business. Late
last year, public officials in Los Angeles agreed to lease a separate
facility at LAX to a private firm that would serve celebrities or anyone
else willing to pay $1,800 to skip the traffic jams and lines at the
main terminals.
Of course, it could be more extreme, and in the past it was.
The
Titanic, in the early 20th century, separated the different classes of
travelers with metal gates. In the 19th century, French railways
refrained from putting roofs on third-class wagons so that passengers
who could afford more expensive second-class seats would not hesitate to
spend a few extra francs.
JLR
Unsinkable
The caste system in travel isn’t new – classes were kept rigidly apart
on the Titanic – but companies have gotten much more adept at targeting
the rich. Father Browne S.J. Collection
What is new is just how far big American companies are now willing to go to pamper the biggest spenders.
For
example, as luggage-toting guests boarded Norwegian’s Breakaway ship in
New York recently, cramming into a handful of elevators, there was
ample room in one bank. But it was off-limits to anyone but Haven guests
going to the top decks. Not far away, in the ship’s theater, red velvet
ropes cordoned off a section up front for Haven passengers.
At
SeaWorld, a family of four can jump to the front of the line and score
the best seats for rides and shows for an extra $80, in addition to the
basic $320 admission. For people in the market for something more
exclusive, there is Discovery Cove, next door to SeaWorld’s traditional
park in Orlando.
Forget
merely swimming with the dolphins. Today, parents can relax at a cabana
and beach of their own, while their budding marine biologists spend the
day with a trainer, feed the park’s birds, otters, nurse sharks and
other creatures and, of course, frolic with the dolphins as well.
There
are no lines to cut here: Daily attendance is capped at 1,300. A day at
Discovery Cove can easily cost $1,000 for a family of four.
How Close Can You Get?
At SeaWorld, guests watch from afar, but next door at Discovery Cove
they can swim with the dolphins or spend the day shadowing a trainer. Edward Linsmier for The New York Times
Next
year, Crystal Cruises will begin an airborne version of one of its
luxury ships: a customized Boeing 777 that ferries passengers on 14- or
28-day trips around the world.
In
theory, according to Steve Tadelis, a professor of economics at the
Haas School of Business at Berkeley, “when an industry is able to create
a richer line of products for people looking to spend their money, that
makes everybody happier. But getting it right in reality is very, very
hard.”
As
companies separate their clientele, a debate has developed over just
how obvious the distinctions should be. Some experts, like David Clarke,
who works with leisure industry giants as a principal at
PricewaterhouseCoopers, say that it is best to be open about what
amounts to a money-based caste system.
“It’s
about transparency,” he said. “What customers hate is when you’re
trying to hide stuff and are not being honest with them.”
Many
companies, though, have discovered that offering ordinary customers
just a whiff of the rarefied air can actually enhance the bottom line,
even if it stirs a certain amount of envy and resentment.
As
coach passengers pile into giant 747s and A380s, for example, “a
glimpse of a shower or private suite creates a marker in people’s
minds,” said Alex Dichter, a director at McKinsey who works with major
airlines. “A lot of brands use products like these as an aspirational
tool, and class segregation can create something to which people can
aspire.”
Choice, for a Price
While
choices for the rich are expanding, poorer Americans are benefiting
less from product innovation, according to new research by Xavier
Jaravel, a graduate student in economics at Harvard. Whether they are
selling fancy cookware, natural cheeses or single malt Scotch, purveyors
of goods aimed at the wealthy are competing more and offering new
products. Downscale items like canned meat or tobacco aren’t drawing as
many new entrants into the market.
There
is also increasing demand from the most affluent shoppers. Spending by
the top 5 percent of earners rose nearly 35 percent from 2003 to 2012
after adjusting for inflation, according to a study by Mr. Fazzari and
Barry Z. Cynamon of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. For everyone
else, spending grew less than 10 percent.
A Growing Divide
In recent decades, spending by those
at the top of the income scale has sharply outpaced consumption gains by
everyone else.
+
150
%
Spending by:
Top 5 percent
+
125
+
100
+
75
+
50
95 percent
+
25
0
–
25
’90
’95
’00
’05
’12
And
with the rise of the Internet and Big Data, companies can pinpoint and
favor these wealthiest customers in ways unimaginable even a decade ago.
“At the high end, we can get into real psychographics and know who
spends more time at the concierge or goes skiing in February,” said
Bjorn Hanson, who teaches courses on tourism and hospitality management
at New York University.
For
companies trying to entice moneyed customers, that means identifying
and anticipating what they want. “The premium customer doesn’t want to
be asked questions,” said Mr. Clarke of PricewaterhouseCoopers. “
*
The biggest tax dodger is technology giant Apple,
with $181 billion held offshore. General Electric had the
second-largest stash, at $119 billion, enough to repay four times over
the $28 billion GE received in federal guarantees during the 2008 Wall
Street crash. Microsoft had $108 billion in overseas accounts, with
companies like Exxon Mobil, Pfizer, IBM, Cisco Systems, Google, Merck,
and Johnson & Johnson rounding out the top ten.
US corporate tax cheats hiding $1.4 trillion in profits in offshore accounts
By Patrick Martin 15 April 2016
A
report issued Thursday by the British charity Oxfam found that the 50
largest US corporations are hiding $1.4 trillion in profits in overseas
accounts to avoid US income taxes, much of it in tax havens like Bermuda
and the Cayman Islands.
The
biggest tax dodger is technology giant Apple, with $181 billion held
offshore. General Electric had the second-largest stash, at $119
billion, enough to repay four times over the $28 billion GE received in
federal guarantees during the 2008 Wall Street crash. Microsoft had $108
billion in overseas accounts, with companies like Exxon Mobil, Pfizer,
IBM, Cisco Systems, Google, Merck, and Johnson & Johnson rounding
out the top ten.
Overseas tax havens have been
the focus of recent revelations about tax scams by wealthy individuals,
based on the leak of the “Panama Papers,” documents from a single
Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca, involving 214,000 offshore shell
companies. The firm’s clients included 29 billionaires and 140 top
politicians worldwide, among them a dozen heads of government.
But
the sums involved in corporate tax scams dwarf those hidden away by
individuals. According to the Oxfam report, the offshore manipulations
by the 50 largest US corporations cost the US taxpayer $111 billion each
year, while robbing another $100 billion annually from countries
overseas, many of them desperately poor.
The $111
billion a year in US taxes evaded would be sufficient to eliminate 90
percent of child poverty in America, effectively wiping out that social
scourge. It is more than the annual cost of the food stamp program, or
unemployment benefits, or the total budget of the Department of
Education.
Oxfam timed the release of its report for the April 15
income tax deadline in the United States (actually Monday, April 18 this
year), when tens of millions of working people must file their income
tax returns or face federal penalties. Working people could face
additional tax penalties of up to 2 percent of household income, to a
maximum of $975, under the Obamacare “individual mandate,” if they have
not purchased private health insurance.
There is a
stark contrast between the IRS hounding of working people for relatively
small amounts of money—but difficult or impossible to pay for those on
low incomes—and the green light given to corporate tax cheats who evade
taxation on trillions in income.
“As Americans rush to
finalize tax returns, multinational corporations that benefit from
trillions in taxpayer-funded support are dodging billions in taxes,”
said Raymond C. Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America. “The vast sums
large companies stash in tax havens should be fighting poverty and
rebuilding America’s infrastructure, not hidden offshore in Panama,
Bahamas, or the Cayman Islands.”
The Oxfam report,
titled “Broken at the Top,” expresses concern that “tax dodging by
multinational corporations…contributes to dangerous inequality that is
undermining our social fabric and hindering economic growth.”
It
continues: “This inequality is fueled by an economic and political
system that benefits the rich and powerful at the expense of the rest,
causing the gains of economic growth over the last several decades to go
disproportionately to the already wealthy. Among the most damning
examples of this rigged system is the way large, profitable companies
use offshore tax havens, and other aggressive and secretive methods, to
dramatically lower their corporate tax rates in the United States and
developing countries alike.”
Oxfam collected figures
available from the 10-K reports and other financial documents issued by
the 50 largest US companies, covering the period since the Wall Street
crash, 2008 through 2014, and presented them in an interactive table.
The figures included total profits, federal taxes paid, total US taxes
paid (including state and local), lobbying expenses, tax breaks, money
held in offshore accounts, and benefits received from the federal
government, including loans, loan guarantees and bailouts.
Among the most important findings: *
The top 50 companies made nearly $4 trillion in profits globally, but
paid only $412 billion in federal income tax, for an effective tax rate
of barely 10 percent, compared to the statutory rate of 35 percent.
*
The 50 companies spent $2.6 billion to influence the federal
government, while reaping nearly $11.2 trillion in federal support, for
an effective return of 400,000 percent on their lobbying expenses. *
The overseas cash stashed by the 50 companies, nearly $1.4 trillion, is
larger than the Gross Domestic Product of Russia, Mexico, Spain or
South Korea. *
US multinationals reported 43 percent of their foreign earnings from
five tax havens, countries that accounted for only 4 percent of their
foreign workforce and 7 percent of foreign investment. All told, US
companies shifted between $500 billion and $700 billion in profits from
countries where economic activity actually took place to countries where
tax rates were low. *
In the year 2012 alone, US firms reported $80 billion in profits in
Bermuda, more than their combined reported profits in the four largest
economies (after the US itself): China, Japan, Germany and France. This
figure was nearly 20 times the total GDP of the tiny island country.
The
Oxfam report also pointed to an estimated $100 billion in taxes evaded
in foreign countries, many of them rich in natural resources extracted
by such global giants as Exxon, Chevron and Dow Chemical. According to
the report, “Taxes paid, or unpaid, by multinational companies in poor
countries can be the difference between life and death, poverty or
opportunity. $100 billion is four times what the 47 least developed
countries in the world spend on education for their 932 million
citizens. $100 billion is equivalent to what it would cost to provide
basic life-saving health services or safe water and sanitation to more
than 2.2 billion people.”
The report cited former UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s assessment that “Africa loses more money
each year to tax dodging than it receives in international development
assistance.”
Oxfam offered no solution to the growth of
inequality and the systematic looting by big corporations that its
report documents, except to urge governments around the world to close
tax loopholes. The group also pleads with the corporate bosses
themselves not to be quite so greedy. Neither capitalist governments nor
the CEOs will pay the slightest attention. But the working class should
take note of these figures, which provide ample evidence of the
bankrupt and reactionary nature of capitalism, and the urgent necessity
of building a mass movement, on a global scale, to put an end to the
profit system.
DURING THE EIGHT YEARS OF OBAMA'S "HOPE AND NO CHANGE", TWO -THIRDS OF ALL JOBS WENT TO FOREIGN BORN, BOTH LEGALS AND ILLEGALS. THE
MILLIONS OF AMERICAN THAT SUNK INTO POVERTY HAS SOARED, JUST AS THE
CRIMES AND PROFITS OF OBAMA - CLINTON CRONIES ON WALL STREET!
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: Serve the Rich, Obama's Crony
Banksters, and the Mexican Fascist Party of LA RAZA to
keep wages depressed and corporate profits even greater!
CAN WE REALLY AFFORD ANOTHER WALL STREET-OWNED PRESIDENCY THAT CLINTON 2 WOULD ESTABLISH???
Independent news at its best. If it's blacked-out, covered-up or censored, you can find it here!
March 23, 2016
Statistic of the Week:The amount of assets/wealth the average adult has in each country:
Belgium - $150,348
UK - $126,472
Norway - $119,634
Japan - $96,071
France - $86,156
Canada - $74,750
Netherlands - $74,659
USA - $49,787
-from Credit Suisse via Institute for Policy Studies
New study says entire regions of US will remain in slump until the2020s
By Jerry White
21 March 2016
A
new study by a University of California-Berkeley economist says that
at current sluggish levels of job growth, entire regions of the United
States, which were hit hardest by the Great Recession will not return
to “normal” employment levels until the 2020s. This amounts, to “more
than a ‘lost decade’ of depressed employment” for “half of the
country,” wrote economist Danny Yagan.
The
new study is one of many showing that the fall of the official
unemployment rate, touted by the Obama administration and the news media
as proof of a robust economic recovery, if not a return to “full
employment,” is largely based on the fact that millions of workers fell
out of the labor force in the years preceding and following the 2008
financial crash.
The
labor-force participation rate fell to a 38-year low of 62.4 percent
last fall, and only climbed up to 62.9 percent in February. According
to the Economic Policy Institute, February’s official jobless rate of
4.9 percent—the lowest since the pre-recession level of 4.7 percent in
November 2007—would really be 6.3 percent if the country’s “missing
workers” were included. These include 2.4 million workers who have
given up actively looking for work.
Yagan
based his findings on a detailed study of some 2 million, similarly
paid workers in the retail industry in order to calculate employment
patterns across different local areas and to account for occupations
that might have been particularly hard hit in one region.
He
found that the areas hardest hit by the recession, which began in
December 2007 and officially ended in June 2009, continued to have high
levels of joblessness in 2014. His map of these distressed areas
includes all of Florida and parts of Arizona, Nevada, California,
Colorado, New Mexico, the Dakotas, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Georgia,
Connecticut, New Hampshire and other states.
While different areas of the country are often hit differently by an economic downturn, an article in the Wall Street Journal
on Yagan’s study noted, these economically distressed areas generally
return to normal levels of employment chiefly because workers move to
find work in areas with a higher demand for labor. In the case of the
“Great Recession,” however, the mass layoffs resulted in “muted
migration,” according to other studies cited by the Journal, and workers simply fell out of the labor market. “Unlike
the aftermath of the 1980s and 1990s recessions,” Yagan wrote,
“employment in hard-hit areas remains very depressed relative to the
rest of the country.” Living in areas like Phoenix, Arizona, or Las
Vegas, Nevada means confronting “enduring joblessness and exacerbated
inequality,” Yagan wrote. “If the latest convergence speed continues,
employment differences across the United States are estimated to return
to normal in the 2020s—more than a decade after the Great Recession.” The
lack of decent job opportunities in large swathes of the country has
created a reserve army of unemployed and underemployed workers who are
competing for a shrinking number of jobs in areas that are more or less
permanently distressed. Last month’s Labor Department employment
report noted that the average annual unemployment rate in 36 states,
plus Washington, D.C. was higher in 2015 than the average unemployment
rate for those states in 2007.
The
majority of unemployed people in the US do not receive unemployment
insurance benefits, according to the National Employment Law Project,
with just over one in four jobless workers (27 percent), a record low,
receiving such benefits in 2015.
The
details of these studies will come as no surprise for tens of millions
of workers across the United States who face unprecedented levels of
economic insecurity, ongoing mass layoffs, and more than a decade of
stagnating or falling real wages. This has fueled the growth of
enormous discontent and the initial stirrings of class struggle by
American workers, which the trade unions and both big business parties
have sought to channel in the direction of economic nationalism and
hostility to workers in China, Mexico and other countries.
In
fact, US workers are being subjected to the same attacks as workers
around the world. The reports on the employment situation in the US
coincide with a continual massacre of jobs in the world’s steel, oil and
mining industries, with 1.2 million steel and coal mining jobs
targeted for destruction in China alone.
Continual
layoffs in the US have been driven by the plunging price of steel,
petroleum, coal and other commodities, which has been generated in
large measure by the fall in demand from China and other so-called
emerging economies. Last week, St. Louis, Missouri-based Peabody Energy,
the largest coal mining company in the world, announced it could soon
file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, after its share values fell 46 percent
over the last six months.
Peabody
has already cut 20 percent of its global workforce since 2012, while
spinning off large sections of its operations in order to cheat
retirees out of their pensions. The company’s announcement follows
bankruptcy filings by both Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources and a
similar threat from coal mining giant Foresight Energy. In its press
release, Peabody pointed to the collapse in the coal market, where the
price per ton has fallen to $40 from $200 in 2008.
The
steel industry continues to wipe out jobs, with 12,000 steelworkers
already laid off or facing imminent job cuts. The largest US
steelmaker, US Steel, has slashed thousands of jobs in Texas, Illinois,
Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania. The aluminum giant Alcoa is just weeks
away from closing its smelter in Warrick County, Indiana, wiping out
another 600 jobs. Meanwhile, the United Steelworkers (USW) union is
pushing for protectionist measures against China, Brazil, Russia and
other countries, even as it pushes through concession-laden contracts
at US Steel, Allegheny Technologies and now ArcelorMittal.
Early
last year, the USW betrayed the strike by thousands of oil refinery
workers, blocking any struggle against the brutal restructuring of the
industry that is now underway. The plunging of oil prices triggered
more than 258,000 layoffs in the global energy industry in 2015—with
the number of active oil and gas rigs in the US falling 61 percent.
Analysts anticipate a new round of job cuts and bankruptcies in early
2016.
Texas
has lost 60,000 energy-related jobs alone, or one-fifth of the
workforce in that sector in the state, with North Dakota and
Pennsylvania also being hard hit. The current US unemployment rate for
the oil, gas and mining sector is 8.5 percent, but could top 10 percent
by February, double the national jobless rate.
Last
month, the air conditioner maker Carrier announced it was eliminating
1,400 jobs at its Indianapolis plant and a nearby facility, and
shipping production to Monterrey, Mexico where wages are approximately
$6 an hour. A video shot by a worker, capturing the explosive anger at a
meeting of plant workers when a manager makes the announcement, has
been viewed millions of times. Far
from organizing any resistance to the closure of the factory and
destruction of jobs, however, the USW is collaborating with United
Technologies Carrier management to carry out an orderly shutdown and the
retraining of displaced workers for lower-paying jobs.
The
USW is hostile to any fight to unite American workers with their
brothers and sisters in Mexico, who have been engaging in growing
resistance to the exploitation by the transnational corporations. USW
officials are telling workers to rely on the Democratic Party to
implement protectionist trade measures to “save jobs” and “take our
country back.” Local and regional union officials have had nothing but
kind words about Donald Trump’s efforts to swindle workers with economic
nationalist appeals.
The
unions have long used economic nationalism to undermine the
class-consciousness of workers and to promote the corporatist outlook of
“labor-management partnership.” In the name of making the corporations
“competitive,” the USW and other unions have suppressed every struggle
against plant closings, job cuts and the destruction of wages and
benefits.
This
has coincided with the political subordination of workers to the
Democratic Party, which under the Obama administration has spearheaded
the attack on workers’ jobs and wages and the historic transfer of
wealth from the bottom to the top.
USW
Local 1999, which claims to represent Carrier workers, is urging them
to support Democrat John Gregg for Indiana governor. A former land
agent for Peabody Coal and lobbyist for Amax Coal Company, Gregg served
as the honorary chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign in Indiana,
and was a proponent of austerity and corporate tax cuts while Speaker of
the state Legislature.
Unless
the political establishment is willing to learn from the anger felt by
millions of Americans who feel left behind, this will not end in
November. (Photo: istockphoto)
The Washington political
establishment has hit the panic button. Not because they are afraid of
any one individual or candidate, but because they are afraid of losing
their own political power.
The Washington political establishment
has hit the panic button.
This
town is filled with well intentioned people who believe they are doing
the right thing, but far too many have lost their way after years in
Washington. Politicians pay more attention to special interests groups
and powerful lobbyists writing checks to their next campaigns than
listening to the people back home who sent them here in the first
place.
This dangerous power vacuum has fueled frustration and
created an entirely new breed of disenfranchised voters who
are fed up with the status quo. These are real people, their
anger is palpable, and it’s not going away anytime soon.
The
Daily Signal is the multimedia news organization of The Heritage
Foundation. We’ll respect your inbox and keep you informed.
A
recent survey of likely Republican primary voters showed that 86
percent believe that “people like me don’t have any say about what the
government does.” Another recent exit poll in my home state of Georgia
showed that six in ten Republicans felt “betrayed” by their political
party.
This
sentiment is something I heard countless times during my campaign for
the United States Senate just over a short year ago. It is what pulled
me to get involved personally to try and make a difference. But this is
not just happening in Georgia. People across America are angry,
frustrated, and scared because they feel as though Washington is not
listening to them.
A growing number of Americans are more motivated by this feeling of frustration than any individual political ideology.
A
growing number of Americans are more motivated by this feeling of
frustration than any individual political ideology. The rise of career
politicians has completely shifted the political paradigm from just
liberal versus conservative. There is now a disconnect between the
Washington political class and everybody else—the insiders versus the
outsiders.
When most Americans look at the federal government, all
they see is years of failed policies that have made life harder
for them and their families, and a political class that is well
connected and uninterested in giving them a say in how to
right the ship.
People are still hurting, and they are weary of Washington’s penchant for business as usual.
Georgians
sent me—someone who had never run for elected office—to the United
States Senate to try and do something about it and change the system. In
state after state this year, voters have voiced support for
presidential candidates who are not part of the political class.
This
is a growing movement, and it is bigger than any one candidate or
election victory. Unless the political establishment is willing to
learn from the anger felt by millions of Americans who feel left behind,
this will not end in November.
True to form, though,
political elites prefer tearing down individuals to understanding what
created this movement. This movement of Americans wants nothing to do
with Washington, and neither endorsements nor criticisms are going to
change that.
No matter who our Republican presidential
nominee is at the end of this process, one thing is clear: We cannot
allow Democrats to double down on the failed policies of the last seven
years.
A better course of action would be a candid examination of what can be done to regain the trust of the American people. Let’s start with simply listening to them.
"Let’s start with simply listening to them"
BLOG: EVEN WITH POLLS DOCUMENTING THAT
ONLY 9% OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
APPROVE OF CONGRESS, IT IS BUSINESS AS USUAL;
ENDLESS LOOTING FOR THEIR PAYMASTERS ON WALL
STREET AND SURRENDERING MORE OF OUR BORDERS,
JOBS AND WELFARE TO INVADING MEXICANS!
HILLARY CLINTON SAYS MILLIONS MORE VOTING
ILLEGAL SHOULD BE HANDED OBAMACARE! CLINTON'S PLATFORM IS SIMPLE: BUILD THE MEX
WELFARE STATE ON AMERICA'S BACK TO BUY THEIR
ILLEGAL VOTES. THEY ALREADY GET MILLIONS OF OUR JOBS AND
NO ONE SERVES HIS PAYMASTERS ON WALL STREET MORE THAN
BARACK OBAMA!
HE SMELLS THOSE SPEECH FEE BRIBES ALREADY!
AND HILLARY IS OBAMA'S CLONE!
Drug prices have also been a theme in the presidential campaign. The
Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, for example, released a campaign
advertisement earlier this month attacking the “predatory pricing” of
Valeant Pharmaceuticals. Like the congressional hearing, this is all for
show. Of all the presidential candidates, Clinton is the top recipient of
donations from the pharmaceutical and health products industry,
taking in $410,460 according to data from the Center for Responsive
Politics.
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: FEEDING THEIR
BIG PHARMA CRONIES!
US drug prices doubled since 2011
By Brad Dixon 18 March 2016
According to a new report by
the pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts, the average price of
brand-name drugs increased by 16.2 percent last year. Between 2011 and
2015, branded prescription drug prices have nearly doubled, rising 98.2
percent. Since 2008, the prices have increased by a whopping 164
percent.
Drug spending rose by 5.2 percent in 2015.
This was about half the increase seen in 2014, the year of the largest
hike since 2003.
The report is based upon prescription
use data for members with drug coverage provided by Express Scripts
plan sponsors. In assessing changes in plan costs, the report
distinguishes between the relative contributions from changes in
patient utilization (e.g. more patients being prescribed the drug) and
changes in the unit price of the drug (e.g., price hikes).
In
the late 1980s and early 1990s, most drug spending was on traditional
drugs (small-molecule, solid drugs) to treat conditions such as
heartburn, depression and diabetes. The recent trend has been a shift
to specialty drugs. Still, within traditional therapy categories there
were significant increases in spending on medications to treat
diabetes, heartburn and ulcers, and skin conditions.
Diabetes
medications remain the most expensive of the traditional drug
categories. Drug spending in this category increased by 14 percent, with
the hike being equally influenced by increased utilization of the drugs
and rise in unit cost. Three diabetes treatments—Lantus, Januvia and
Humalog—were among the top five drugs in terms of spending across all
traditional therapy classes.
Although not discussed in the report, an investigation by Bloomberg News last year found evidence
of “shadow pricing” by drug manufacturers, where companies raise their
prices immediately after their competitors do so. The investigation
found that the prices of diabetes drugs Lantus and Lemivir had increased
in tandem 13 times since 2009, and evidence of similar shadow pricing
for the drugs Humalog and Novolog.
Heartburn and ulcer
drugs saw a 35.6 percent increase in spending, almost solely due to the
rise in unit cost. Although 92.3 percent of the medications filled in
this category were generic, the price unit trend was heavily influenced
by the increase in prices of branded drugs such as Nexium, Dexilant
and Prevacid.
Treatments for skin conditions also saw a
significant increase of 27.8 percent in spending, again due almost
completely to rises in the unit costs of the medications. The report
notes that these increases occurred for both generic and branded
therapies, largely due to industry consolidation through mergers and
acquisitions leading to less competition in the market. While 86.3
percent of the drugs filled were generic, many of the generic versions
saw sharp increases in unit cost, including the two most widely used
corticosteroids, clobetasol (96.2 percent) and triamcinolone (28
percent).
While the overall spending increase for
traditional therapy classes was nominal (0.6 percent), the primary
factor for the increase in spending came from specialty medications.
Specialty medications require special education and close patient
monitoring, such as drugs to treat cancer, multiple sclerosis or cystic
fibrosis. Spending on specialty drugs rose by 17.8 percent in 2015. The
report found that 37.7 percent of drug spending was for specialty
drugs in 2015, and the figure is expected to rise to 50 percent by
2018.
Spending in this category was topped by
inflammatory conditions—such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory
bowel diseases and psoriasis—which rose by 25 percent, driven by a 10.3
percent increase in utilization and 14.7 percent rise in unit cost. The
average cost per prescription in 2015 was $3,035.95. The medications
Humira Pen and Enbrel, which captured more than 66 percent of the
market share for this class, saw unit cost increases of more than 17
percent.
Spending on oncology therapies increased by
23.7 percent, due to both increased use (9.3 percent) and increased
unit cost (14.4 percent). New cancer therapies average $8,000 per
prescription and the average cancer regimen is around $150,000 per
patient. Between 2005 and 2015, the anti-cancer drug Gleevec,
manufactured exclusively by Novartis, has seen its price more than
triple, with an annual cost of $92,000. In 2015, the year prior to the
drug’s patent expiration, Novartis increased the unit cost of the drug
by 19.3 percent. This is a common practice for companies facing patent
expiration.
Drug spending on cystic fibrosis treatments rose by a
significant 53.4 percent, largely based on increases in unit cost
(40.9 percent vs. 13.3 percent from patient utilization). This rise was
largely due to use of the new oral combination therapy, Orkambi, which
became available in mid-2015. The drug costs more than $20,000 per
month.
The report forecasts that between 2016 and 2018
spending will increase annually by 7-8 percent for traditional drugs
and around 17 percent for specialty drugs.
The prices
of generic drugs have on average decreased, although there are notable
exceptions. Pharmaceutical companies like Horizon Pharma, Turing
Pharmaceuticals, and Valeant Pharmaceuticals have purchased generic
drugs and then significantly hiked their prices.
The
report notes the emergence of “captive pharmacies” in 2015 as another
factor responsible for higher drug spending. Captive pharmacies are
owned or operated by pharmaceutical manufacturers and tend to promote
their manufacturer’s drugs, rather than generic or other low-cost
alternatives. The report gives as examples the arrangements between
Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Philidor Rx Services, and between Horizon
Pharma and Linden Care Pharmacy.
The Express Scripts
data matches the findings released earlier this year by the Truveris
OneRx National Drug Index, which found that branded drugs rose by 14.8
percent in 2015.
Despite the widespread media publicity
of the notorious drug price hikes by companies like Turing and
Valeant, pharmaceutical companies have continued to inflate prices in 2016, with Pfizer leading the way with an average price hike of 10.6 percent for 60 of its branded drugs.
Workers
are rightly outraged at the skyrocketing price of drugs. A Kaiser
Family Foundation poll conducted last year found that 74 percent of
respondents felt that the drug companies put profits before people.
The
political establishment, however, has sought both to exploit this anger
for electoral support and to direct it into safe channels that do not
disrupt the status quo.
A congressional hearing held in January placed a spotlight on the price-gouging practices of HYPERLINK Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Turing Pharmaceuticals, whose dubious activities were highlighted in a pair of congressional memos.
The purpose of the hearing, however, was not probe the underlying
causes of the sharp rise in drug prices. Instead, legislators sought to
safeguard the profits of the pharmaceutical industry as a whole through
a verbal lambasting of the industry’s most notorious culprits.
Drug prices have also been a theme in the presidential campaign.
The Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, for example, released
a campaign advertisement earlier this month attacking the
“predatory pricing” of Valeant Pharmaceuticals. Like the
congressional hearing, this is all for show. Of all the presidential
candidates, Clinton is the top recipient of donations from the
pharmaceutical and health products industry, taking in $410,460
according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.
Clinton’s
rival, Bernie Sanders, who has stated that he will support Clinton if
he loses the Democratic nomination, received $82,094 in donations from
the industry. Sanders has proposed a series of minor reforms to address
drug prices, such as the re-importation of drugs from Canada, allowing
Medicare to negotiate prices with drug manufacturers, and decreasing
the patent life of branded drugs.
None of the candidates,
including the “democratic socialist” Sanders, challenge the private
ownership of the pharmaceutical industry in which everything from
research and development and clinical testing to drug pricing and
promotion are subordinated to the profit interests of corporations.
.............. what would have happened to this once great nation if
instead of handing billions in welfare to criminal banksters, and
millions of our jobs to illegals.... we handed free education to
America's youth. but then we wouldn't need to import boatloads of educated people
to take our tech jobs!!! OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: TRANSFERRING THE NATION'S
WEALTH TO THE 1%, JOBS AND WELFARE TO ILLEGALS
TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED AND BUILD THE DEM
PARTY BASE WITH MEX FLAG WAVERS
“My greatest worry is working all my life, constantly chasing debt
and never being to own a house or have children,” writes a
millennial named “Gemma” in a section of the series entitled
Incomes for young people born
between 1980 and 1994 have hit unprecedented low levels in the
aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse, according to a recent
investigative series conducted by the UK’s Guardian publication titled “Millenials: The Trials of Generation Y.”
The study draws on income statistics from eight of the world’s 15 most
advanced economies, including the US, Canada, Great Britain, Australia,
France, Italy, Spain and Germany to paint a picture of dimming social
prospects for young people throughout the developed world.
The Guardian cites as contributing factors “a combination of debt, joblessness, globalization, demographics and rising house prices” which “have grave implications for everything from social cohesion to family formation.” Whereas during the 1970s and 1980s people in their 20s averaged more than the national income, the study found that young couples and families in five of the eight countries listed made 20 percent less than the rest of the population today.
“It
is likely to be the first time in industrialized history, save for
periods of war or natural disaster, that the incomes of young adults
have fallen so far when compared with the rest of society,” the British
newspaper states.
In the US and Italy, incomes were
lower in actual figures than they were a generation ago, with Americans
averaging a yearly salary of $27,757 in 2010 compared to $29,638 in
1979. The study notes that young US workers currently make less than
those in retirement. In France, households headed by individuals under
the age of 50 made less disposable income than recent retirees. In
Italy, an 80-year-old pensioner possesses more income than someone under
the age of 35.
In many cases, the 2008 financial
collapse simply accelerated trends that were already underway. Housing
prices in Great Britain and Australia are among the most expensive in
the developed world. The average price for a home in Sydney, Australia,
is $1 million in Australian dollars, more than 12 times the median
household income in the city. The average home loan for first-time
buyers in New South Wales is A$424,000. This figure has increased by 43
percent in the past four years alone.
According to the Australian
Bureau of Statistics, housing prices have increased more sharply and
for a longer period in the past 20 years than at any time since 1880.
The Guardian notes that housing costs in the UK and Australia
have been increasing at a “neck and neck” pace ahead of the average
household income. “We’re heading for a world where rates of home
ownership among young people are below 50 percent for the first time,”
states Alan Milburn of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission,
adding that the UK is heading toward becoming “a society that is
permanently divided.” Income for those in their late 20s in the UK
remain below levels seen in 2004-2005.
A recent survey
by British polling firm Ipsos Mori found that 54 percent of those
questioned thought the next generation was or would be worse off than
the previous. “It’s the highest we’ve measured—it’s completely flipped
around from April 2003,” stated Bobby Duffy, managing director of Ipsos
Mori’s Social Research Institute of the findings.
In
addition, more than a quarter of individuals in this age group live
with their parents. An average woman in this age group today waits 7.1
years longer to become married than in 1981; and the average age of
childbirth for young families is nearly four years later than those in
1974.
“My greatest worry is working all my life, constantly chasing debt and never being to own a house or have children,” writes a millennial named “Gemma” in a section of the series entitled “#Itsnotjustyou: Millenials share their secret fears.” Continuing, she states: “The cost of renting privately is rising, the cost of travelling is rising, the cost of living is rising and yet the salaries don’t reflect this rise. … I am worried that capitalism is pushing this and creating a greater wealth inequality gap. It seems unsustainable and to be driving people apart—a recent example is the demonization of our own NHS service and the junior doctors.” Many others share similar nightmares.
The
study comes amid other findings revealing similar declines in living
standards for youth in the developed world. A 2013 Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report found nearly 30
million youth in the developed capitalist countries without a job or an
education, the basic requirements for functioning in society.
The
circumstances faced by young people throughout the world speak to a
systemic breakdown of the social order in both the so-called developing
and advanced countries, which has been compounded by war and
militarism, consecutive attacks on living standards and cuts to social
programs, which invariably hit the youngest and most vulnerable the
hardest. Though not covered by the study, European nations such as
Greece have been reduced to conditions unseen in the developed world,
with youth unemployment at over 60 percent due to attacks on living
standards demanded by the European Union and enforced by consecutive
governments, both right and “left,” under Syriza.
The authors of the Guardian investigation,
in an effort to divert rising anger away from the social system
responsible for the poverty, destruction of living standards and
attendant social misery, single out the relatively-better off living
conditions of retirees in order to make a case for attacking pensions
and other benefits accruing to the older generation. The publication
quotes a recently published interview with Mario Draghi, head of the
European Central Bank (ECB), who states “in many countries the labor
market is set up to protect older ‘insiders’—people with permanent,
high-paid contracts and shielded by strong labor laws. … The side-effect
is that young people are stuck with lower-paid, temporary contracts and
get fired first in crisis times.”
Rather than receiving expanded employment, pay and
access to better living conditions, it is proposed that the
young and the old fight over the rapidly diminishing
resources made available by bourgeois public officials and
the wealthy.While
Draghi advocates attacking the pay and benefits of older workers, the
ECB head has funneled billions into the hands of European banking
institutions; recently upping the monthly total of cash infusions to
€80 billion from €60 billion previously and adding to the wealth of the
financial elite.
The fate of retirement benefits and
wages under the profit-system is pointed to when the newspaper notes
“pensioners’ incomes are likely to rise for at least the next decade,
after which future generations will be unlikely to benefit [due to] a
drop in home ownership, weaker private sector pension schemes and the
expectation that state pensions will be less generous in the future.”
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: SERVE THE
RICH, WALL STREET CRONIES AND LA
RAZA, THE MEX FASCIST PARTY of
AMERICA....
Then hand what is left of the American middle
class the tax bills for bailouts and Mexico's
crime wave in our open borders and LA
RAZA "The Race" welfare state on our backs! "The
Clinton family charities have outsourced many U.S. white-collar jobs to
foreign college graduates instead of hiring American college
graduates."
The
Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, which does “wonderful
work” (if you ask Hillary), also has sought to hire a lot of foreign
tech workers brought to the country under the H-1B visa program to fill
jobs Americans supposedly can’t be found to perform. Breitbart reports:
The
Clinton family charities have outsourced many U.S. white-collar jobs to
foreign college graduates instead of hiring American college graduates. The
outsourcing started in 2004 and it continues to this year. When asked
if the foundation is still hiring foreign white-collar workers via the
controversial H-1B visa program, Vena Cooper, one of the foundation’s
personnel officers, responded “We do.” The
foundations declined to answer questions from Breitbart News, but
available data shows they sought to hire up to 130 foreign graduates.
That’s roughly half the number of 250 jobs outsourced by Disney last
October, which has reignited political criticism of the middle-class
outsourcing program. The
130 foreign graduates sought by the Clinton’s foundations were and are
not immigrants. Instead, they’re temporary “guest” workers who fill
outsourced professional jobs for up to six years. The
Clintons’ foreign graduates have been hired via the H-1B visa program
that also is used by Disney and U.S. corporations and universities to
employ a population of roughly 650,000 young and cheap foreign
professionals in business, design, healthcare, software, science, education, p.r. and media and pharmaceutical jobs. After their six years in the United States, most H-1Bs return home with the work-experience and connections that help them compete against U.S. professionals in the global marketplace. The
young foreign H-1B professionals are also used to push down average
salaries earned by experienced and older American professionals. In
turn, those salary cuts boost profit margins and company values on Wall
Street.
Hey,
those private jets and 5-star luxury hotels favored by the traveling
Clintons don’t come cheap, so they’ve got to pinch pennies wherever they
can. And besides, a lot of their money comes from foreign sources, so they’re just returning it to some of the home countries.
President Barack Obama seized on
the February employment report, released Friday morning by the Labor
Department, to tout the supposed “success” of his economic policies and
paint a picture of a thriving US economy. The report, which showed a
larger-than-predicted growth in private nonfarm payrolls of 242,000
jobs, confirmed that the US economy was “the envy of the world,” Obama
told reporters at a White House appearance.
“The fact
of the matter is that the plans that we have put in place to grow the
economy have worked,” he boasted.” He derided “an alternative reality
out there from some of the political folks that America is down in the
dumps.” He countered, “America is pretty darn great right now.”
He
did not attempt to explain why the “alternative reality,” which his
labor secretary, Thomas Perez, attributed to “fear-mongers and
fact-deniers,” is believed by tens of millions of Americans, whose anger
over economic injustice is dramatically reflected in the current
election campaign.
One does not have to look too
closely at the Labor Department’s report, however, to get an idea of
what is fueling the social indignation of working people in the eighth
and final year of the Obama administration. Behind the top-line number
for new jobs and the quasi-fictional official unemployment rate of only
4.9 percent, ongoing trends with disastrous consequences for the
working class are evident. They account for two other important indices
in the report: a decline in average earnings from the previous month of
3 cents, or 0.1 percent, to $25.35, bringing the increase for the year
down to just 2.2 percent, and a fall in the average private-sector
workweek of 0.2 hours to 34.4 hours, a two-year low.
These
two figures arise from the fact that the vast bulk of new jobs created
in February were low-wage and a huge percentage were part-time. The
low-paying service sector—retail, bars and restaurants, health
care—accounted for 245,000 jobs. The reality of recession in basic
production was reflected in a 16,000 decline in manufacturing and the
loss of another 19,000 mining jobs, bringing to 171,000 the total
decline in mining since September 2014. The only better-paying
industrial sector that saw an increase was construction, which recorded a
gain of 19,000.
Another figure highlights the hollow
and socially regressive character of Obama’s so-called “recovery.” The
financial cable network CNBC pointed out that according to the Labor
Department’s household survey, which is the basis for the unemployment
rate figure (the figure on payroll growth is derived from a separate
survey of business establishments), full-time jobs increased in February
by only 65,000, while part-time positions increased by 489,000. This
means that a mere 11.7 percent of new jobs in February were full-time!
These
statistics point to the fact that the American ruling class, through
its instrument, the Obama administration, has utilized the financial
crash of 2008, for which it was responsible, to fundamentally reorganize
the US economy, transforming it into a low-wage system. The millions of
decent-paying jobs that were destroyed have been largely replaced by
poverty-wage, part-time and temporary jobs.
The median
household income has fallen sharply. Pensions and health benefits have
been gutted, schools closed by the thousands, teachers and other public
workers laid off by the millions. At the other end, the Federal
Reserve and the US Treasury have pumped trillions of dollars into the
financial markets, driving up the stock market and bringing the
concentration of wealth at the very top to unprecedented levels. This
is what Obama lauds as “success.”
Meanwhile, millions
of Americans remain mired in long-term unemployment. The number of
long-term unemployed, defined as without work for 27 weeks or more, was
essentially unchanged at 2.2 million in February. This number has not
shifted significantly since last June. The long-term jobless accounted
last month for 27.7 percent of the unemployed, a far higher percentage
than in any previous period categorized as an economic recovery.
A
broader measure of unemployment that includes people working part-time
but wanting full-time work and those too discouraged to seek
employment registered 9.7 percent last month, nearly double the
official jobless rate. There are, in addition, millions of people who
have dropped out of the labor market and are not even counted in
government employment reports.
While the
employment-to-population ratio edged up to 59.8 percent and the labor
force participation rate rose slightly to 62.9 percent, both measures
remain extraordinarily low by historical standards.
The impact of
soaring social inequality and falling living standards for broad
sections of the population is reflected in a growing crisis in the
retail sector. This week, sporting goods chain The Sports Authority
filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announced it was closing
at least 140 of its 463 stores and laying off 3,400 of its 13,000
employees. This follows recent announcements by Walmart, Sears/Kmart
and Macy’s of hundreds of store closures and thousands of layoffs.
Hillary Clinton repeatedly claims that she is the
champion of the little guy. It has always been a
risible claim, but if any of her supporters
(including at the Post) are actually paying
attention to the scoundrel, this latest gambit ought
Samuel
Johnson’s aphorism that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel
doesn’t apply to Hillary Clinton in her email scandal, because nobody –
not even her die-hard supporters – would believe her if she said that
she set up the private email server in the interests of the United
States. Rather, the last refuge of this scoundrel is to blame everybody
else she dealt with at the State Department, in the process impugning
not only her own close aides, but career diplomats and other
nonpolitical professionals who deserve better.
This
strategy is reflected in the campaign’s current mantra that
“everybody,” including former secretaries Colin Powell and Condoleezza
Rice, at one time or another sent emails that were later determined to
be classified. A recent Washington Post analysis of Hillary’s released
classified emails demonstrates that she directly sent at least 104 to
various aides and officials, and that they too, including the current
secretary of state, John Kerry, occasionally sent out emails through
nonsecure servers that were later deemed classified. However, what the
analysis also shows is that these government officials, when they did
use unsecured servers, at least used government accounts, which provide a
measure of security, not a private home-brewed server like Mrs.
Clinton’s. The
Post’s news editors must be popping a lot of Thorazine, because their
coverage of Clinton is increasingly schizophrenic. As longtime readers
of the paper know, the news operation is considerably more left-leaning
than the editorial side (which occasionally takes a more centrist
view). News stories are routinely slanted to present the most favorable
liberal perspective and mock or demean opposing outlooks. This
tendency is apparent in the Clinton case as well. The Post has broken
some important stories in the email scandal, like the recent revelation that the Justice Department granted former Clinton I.T. aide Bryan Pagliano immunity. And the Post’s most heroic figures, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein,
have separately suggested that the Clinton scandal is the real thing.
But since Hillary is the Post’s gal, they seeded the Pagliano report
with expert liberal analysis that suggested that the immunity deal is
either nothing to get excited about (a weird way to promote a scoop) or
actually a good thing for Clinton, while omitting contrary interpretations.
The
Post’s analysis of her emails follows the same pattern. On the one
hand, the news that Clinton herself personally authored over 100
classified items cuts against her chosen narrative that she got a lot of
emails and that she can hardly have been expected to actually read and
analyze them all for security issues as she received them or passed
them on. On the other hand, the article goes out of its way to suggest
that this was an endemic problem at State. And strangely again, the
explanation is rather contradictory. We are told that the sending and
receipt of classified information was the result of poor security
procedures that preceded Clinton’s arrival. But we are also told (in
line with claims made by Clinton and her campaign) that there is a
culture of “over-classification” in the government. So which is it?
Were officials at State too lax about security procedures or too anal?
If nothing else, one thing this controversy demonstrates is that the
Clinton State Department was pretty much a mess.
But
besides the country itself, which is now enduring yet more Clintonian
malfeasance in the midst of a critical election, are many individuals
that Clinton is cold-bloodily demeaning in an attempt to exonerate
herself with the “everybody did it” canard. This rests on the weak
premise that other government officials – aides, ambassadors, career
officials – occasionally misidentified information as innocuous or
insufficiently sensitive to merit security classification. There is
little doubt this happened, and continues to happen, as government
employees do their best to protect sensitive information but not bog the
government down in layers of unnecessary security protocol. But none
of the officials identified in the Post analysis did this deliberately
by establishing a private home-brewed email system to avoid State
Department classification procedures entirely – and this no less, by the
head of the State Department itself.
The
Post article anonymously quotes one poor soul (identified as a former
senior official) whose good name has now been impugned as a careless
operator: “I resent the fact that we are in this situation – and we’re
in this situation because of Hillary Clinton’s decision to use a private
email server.”
Hillary Clinton repeatedly claims that she is the
champion of the little guy. It has always been a
risible claim, but if any of her supporters
(including at the Post) are actually paying
attention to the scoundrel, this latest gambit ought
The Hillary Clinton emails: A record of imperialist crimes
By Tom Hall
7 March 2016
Last Monday, the US State
Department published the last batch of declassified emails from a
private, unsecured server used by Democratic
presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton during her tenure as secretary of state. This
latest release draws to a close a year-long review by US intelligence
agencies of 52,000 pages of Clinton emails, ostensibly motivated by
concerns over possible leaks of classified material.
To
date, more than 30,000 emails dating from Clinton’s four-year tenure as
secretary of state have been released to the public. Clinton played a
central role in the prosecution of aggressive wars in Afghanistan, Syria
and Libya as well as the carrying out of drone assassinations and other
illegal
actions in a number of additional countries, including Pakistan, Yemen
and Somalia. Yet in its extensive reporting of the email scandal, the
American media has virtually ignored the actual content of these emails,
which contain a wealth of information about the day-to-day functioning
of the Clinton State Department.
A review of even a
small sampling of the emails, which are available on the State
Department’s web site, reveals the reason why: the emails are a damning
indictment of the criminal activities of not only Hillary Clinton
herself, but the entire imperialist state apparatus, with the
corporate-controlled media in tow. The emails could easily serve as
evidence in future war crimes trials of Clinton and other top US
officials.
One particularly revealing email from 2010, cited by the Interceptn web
site but not picked up by the national media, recounts the experiences
of former ambassador Joseph Wilson (whose CIA agent wife
Valerie
Plame was outed by the Bush administration in retaliation for his
criticisms of the war in Iraq) during a recent trip to Iraq in his
capacity as an executive for a US engineering firm. The Obama
administration,
elected by exploiting mass anti-war sentiment, continued the US
occupation of Iraq for three years during Obama’s first term in office,
when Clinton was secretary of state, prolonging a conflict that claimed
more than 1 million lives. Since then, US troops have returned to
Iraq, ostensibly to fight ISIS, as part of the US war for regime-change
in neighboring Syria.
Wilson’s email begins: “My trip to Baghdad (September 6-11) has left me slack jawed. I have
struggled
to find the correct historical analogy to describe a
vibrant,historically important Middle Eastern city being slowly bled to
death.Berlin and Dresden in World War II were devastated, but they and
their populations were not subjected to seven years of occupation.”
Describing
the rampant racism and sadism among US occupation troops, Wilson
writes, “Shirts with mushroom clouds [for sale at a gift shop on a US
military base at the Baghdad airport] conveyed the Baghdad weather as
32,000 degrees and partly cloudy. Others referred to Arabs as camel
jockeys
and those were the least offensive… The service people don’t see
themselves there to bring peace, light, joy or even democracy to Iraq.
They are there to kill the ‘camel jockeys.’”
Hundreds more emails deal with the US-led proxy war in Libya, in which Clinton played a
leading role. As a recent series of articles in the New York Times confirmed,
Clinton was the leading advocate in the White House for the clandestine
arming of “rebel” militias comprised largely of Islamic
fundamentalists, which comprised the main fighting force against the
regime of Muammar Gaddafi.
One email from February
2011, written by a veteran diplomat before the launching of the US-NATO
war that ended with the murder of Gaddafi, lays out proposals for the
construction of a future “post-Gaddafi” political order in Libya. The
memo recommends the use of the United Nations to lend political
legitimacy to the imperialist carve-up of the country.
“A
UN ‘hat’ for multinational/international assistance efforts could be
effective,” the author states bluntly. However, the extensive
involvement of Italy, whose participation in the war marked a return to
the scene of its bloody colonial occupation, should, the author
recommends, be “kept relatively low-profile.” Another email chain
discusses how to disburse the tens of billions of dollars of frozen
Libyan assets stolen by the imperialist powers during the regime-change
operation.
Many other emails concern the organization
and coordination of the Obama administration's drone assassination
program, which has killed thousands in Afghanistan and Pakistan alone.
“Twenty-two of the emails on Mrs. Clinton’s server have now been
classified as ‘top secret’ at the demand
of the CIA because they
discuss the program to hunt and kill terrorist suspects using drone
strikes, as well as other intelligence operations and sources,” the New York Times noted two weeks ago, prior to
the
latest release. “The emails [also] contain direct and indirect
references to secret programs,” the newspaper added obliquely.
One
such secret program was the bribing of high-ranking officials in the
Afghan government by the CIA. “[The US embassy in Afghanistan's] line
has been and will be the standard approach--that we refrain from comment
on stories discussing intelligence matters,” one embassy official
writes in a 2010 email, in response to an impending New York Times story
revealing that Muhammad Zia Salehi, head of the Afghan National
Security Council, was on the CIA payroll. Later reports by the Times revealed that former President Hamid Karzai for years received shopping bags full of cash from the CIA on a regular basis.
Dozens
of emails document the collusion between the corporate-controlled media
and the State Department in containing the fallout from the release of
US diplomatic cables by Wikileaks. In one
2010 exchange, Washington Post writer
Craig Whitlock reaches out to the State Department to request “a
mechanism to receive [the] State [Department's] input” before running a
series of articles based on cables revealing the existence of a secret
US drone base in the Seychelles Islands, off the coast of Somalia.
The exchange demonstrates that the major newspapers, including the Washington Post and the New York Times,
provided the State Department with advance printed copies of every
cable about which they planned to write, along with drafts to the White
House, to be redacted or censored at their discretion. In a
conversation between Whitlock’s State Department handlers, they note
approvingly
that the practice “was extremely helpful in preparing
our redaction requests, as well as anticipating what damage control
we’d need to do in diplomatic channels.” Another email describes an
editorial by the Washington Post calling for the prosecution of Wikileaks editor Julian Assange and
Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning as “helpful,” adding, “We’ll try and get pickup in [the] international media.”
Clinton also received hundreds of emails via her private server from Sidney Blumenthal, a
former
advisor in the Bill Clinton administration, who served as the head of
Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign. Blumenthal, then an employee of
the Clinton Family Foundation, functioned as a de facto back channel
intelligence gatherer and advisor for Clinton, despite not
officially
being a member of her staff. It was Blumenthal’s 2015 testimony to the
House Select Committee on Benghazi, the Republican-controlled body set
up for the purpose of torpedoing the
likely presidential run of Clinton, which revealed the existence of Clinton’s private email server.
Blumenthal sent Clinton a wide array of intelligence reports from foreign countries targeted by US
imperialism.
In one email, he passes on concerns that Islamist militias in Libya
might retaliate against the assassination of Osama bin Laden,using
weapons obtained from the United States. In another, he recounts the
furtive dealings between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian
military to smother the Egyptian revolution, writing that the two will
“continue to work together secretly in an effort to establish a stable
government” and create “a secure environment throughout the country” for
investment.
In
another email, Blumenthal advises Clinton on how to orchestrate the
cover-up of the circumstances surrounding the assassination of bin Laden
in a cross-border raid into Pakistan by US Special Forces. As a report
by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh later made clear, the
official version of bin Laden’s death was a collection of lies from
start to finish.
“Show [the pictures of bin Laden’s body] to members of Congress in a special secure room,
something
like when members were permitted to view Abu Ghraib pictures,”
Blumenthal writes. “Each of them will emerge speaking to the national
and local press on what they have seen… Having members of Congress
testify to the reality of the photos will suppress any potential
‘Deather’ movement, that the administration has either fabricated the
event or suppressed some aspect of it.”
What the ultimate out come of the Clinton email scandal will be is not yet clear. An FBI criminal
investigation
into the emails is ongoing, with signs that the case might be headed to
a grand jury. On Wednesday, a former employee of Clinton’s 2008
presidential campaign, Bryan Pagliano, who set up the private email
server in Clinton’s home, was granted immunity by federal investigators
as part of the investigation.
TIME TO END MEXICO'S LOOTING? "As alarming as those numbers are, it's gotten a whole lot worse.
It's the reason why in both 2013 and 2015 I introduced legislation,
the "Remittance Status Verification Act," to fix this. I call this the
"Wire Act" for short."
"My bill would require a fee on remittances for customers who
wire money to another country but cannot prove that they are in the
United States legally. The fee would be used to enhance border
security. Basically, we would be able to dramatically improve
border security while making illegal immigrants pay for it." "We also have evidence that many of those illegals who are
remitting money are more likely to be illegal immigrant
households receiving Social Security, health care benefits,
unemployment insurance and/or stimulus money. Is it really fair for
those individuals to live off our tax dollars but send untaxed, under-
the-table money abroad?" ON TOP OF THESE FIGURES ADD THE TENS OF BILLIONS HANDED TO INVADING MEXICANS IN THE FORM OF WELFARE. ON THE STATE LEVEL ALONE, MEXIFORNIA HANDS LA RAZA $30 BILLION IN SOCIAL SERVICES. THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES CHIPS IN ANOTHER BILLION FOR THE LA RAZA ANCHOR BABY BREEDING FOR GRINGO WELFARE PROGRAM. NOW..... HOW MUCH DOES THE MEX DRUG CARTELS HAUL BACK? SOME ESTIMATES PUT THE NUMBER AT $40 - $60 BILLION! BLOG: IT IS ESTIMATED THAT THE COUNTY OF LOS
ANGELES HAS A MEXICAN TAX-FREE UNDERGROUND
ECONOMY CALCULATED TO BE IN EXCESS OF $2
BILLION PER YEAR! There are the billions of taxpayer dollars used to
subsidize illegal immigrants' health care and education.
There's the revenue we lose out on when illegal
immigrants don't pay income taxes. And there's a less
recognized pot of billions — the billions of dollars of
earnings that illegal immigrants wire out of the United
"As alarming as those numbers are, it's gotten a whole lot worse.
It's the reason why in both 2013 and 2015 I introduced legislation,
the "Remittance Status Verification Act," to fix this. I call this the
"Wire Act" for short."
"My bill would require a fee on remittances for customers who
wire money to another country but cannot prove that they are in the
United States legally. The fee would be used to enhance border
security. Basically, we would be able to dramatically improve
border security while making illegal immigrants pay for it." "We also have evidence that many of those illegals who are
remitting money are more likely to be illegal immigrant
households receiving Social Security, health care benefits,
unemployment insurance and/or stimulus money. Is it really fair for
those individuals to live off our tax dollars but send untaxed, under-
the-table money abroad?" ON TOP OF THESE FIGURES ADD THE TENS OF BILLIONS HANDED TO INVADING MEXICANS IN THE FORM OF WELFARE. ON THE STATE LEVEL ALONE, MEXIFORNIA HANDS LA RAZA $30 BILLION IN SOCIAL SERVICES. THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES CHIPS IN ANOTHER BILLION FOR THE LA RAZA ANCHOR BABY BREEDING FOR GRINGO WELFARE PROGRAM. NOW..... HOW MUCH DOES THE MEX DRUG CARTELS HAUL BACK? SOME ESTIMATES PUT THE NUMBER AT $40 - $60 BILLION! BLOG: IT IS ESTIMATED THAT THE COUNTY OF LOS
ANGELES HAS A MEXICAN TAX-FREE UNDERGROUND
ECONOMY CALCULATED TO BE IN EXCESS OF $2
BILLION PER YEAR! There are the billions of taxpayer dollars used to
subsidize illegal immigrants' health care and education.
There's the revenue we lose out on when illegal
immigrants don't pay income taxes. And there's a less
recognized pot of billions — the billions of dollars of
earnings that illegal immigrants wire out of the United
money out of the U.S. TSA Airport Credentialing Process
Overlooks Terrorists, Criminals, and Illegal
Aliens on a Large Scale
By Dan Cadman
CIS Immigration Blog, February 16, 2016
. . .
Calculating
those figures, it means that more than 16 percent of the individuals
who were subjected to these secondary inquiries (which represent only a
small fraction of the workforce) — and, as Roth notes, already
recipients of airport clearances — were illegal aliens with no right to
work. What's more, Roth also notes that airport authorities routinely
fail to annotate their security credentials with the expiration date of
aliens' employment authorization documents, meaning that such persons
are routinely employed in sterile areas long past their legally
authorized right to work.
Which raises the question:
Why have rules not been written that simply preclude individuals with
limited time authorizations on their work permits or, better yet, who
are not legally authorized to live in the United States on a permanent
basis, from being employed in secure areas of airports? Is this so
onerous, given the importance of securing the safety of the traveling
public?
But back to the immediate issue of TSA and its
oversight of airport authorities doing the credentialing. There is
obviously something seriously amiss.
By John Wahala
CIS Immigration Blog, February 19, 2016
. . .
Given
the obstacles they face, the poor academic performance of immigrant
students is not surprising and has been well documented.
English-language fluency, test scores, and graduation rates lag far
behind. Some researchers have even called the situation a crisis that
threatens democracy itself. But more troubling than slow academic
progress is the way mass immigration is shifting the educators' focus.
When resources and time are diverted from teaching, the quality of
education deteriorates. Learning becomes secondary when teachers are
trying to keep children safe and well-adjusted.
. . . http://www.cis.org/wahala/schools-undergo-comprehensive-immigration-reform
Border Surge Solution: Send ‘Em to Camp David! By Michelle Malkin
Human Events Online, February 17, 2016
. . .
As
Brandon Judd of the National Border Patrol Council testified on Capitol
Hill recently: “The cartels understood that the unaccompanied minors
would force the Border Patrol to deploy Agents to these crossing areas
in order to take the minors into custody. I want to stress this point
because it has been completely overlooked by the press,” he told the
House Judiciary Committee. The unaccompanied minors could have walked
right up to the port of entry and requested asylum if they were truly
escaping political persecution or violence. “Why did the cartels drive
them to the middle of the desert and then have them cross over the Rio
Grande only to surrender to the first Border Patrol Agent they came
across?” Judd challenged.
“The reason is that it
completely tied up our manpower and allowed the cartels to smuggle
whatever they wanted across our border.”
This is just
another maddening example of Obama’s warped priorities at work. Instead
of building effective walls and enforcing our borders to prevent the
coming illegal immigration waves manufactured by criminal racketeers,
this administration rushes to build welcome center magnets that shelter
the next generation of Democrat voters.
. . . http://humanevents.com/2016/02/17/border-surge-solution-send-em-to-camp-david/
U.S. Failed Three Times to Deport Illegal
Alien Who Murdered Woman Judicial Watch Corruption Chronicles,
February 18, 2016
. . .
Here’s
what we already know from local media reports in Norwich, the city of
about 40,000 residents where the murder occurred; the DHS agency
responsible for deporting illegal immigrants, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE), failed to remove Jacques at least three times dating
back to 2002. As if this weren’t atrocious enough, Jacques spent 17
years in prison for attempted murder before authorities released
him—instead of deporting him—in January of 2015, the Norwich Bulletin
reports. Six months later the 41-year-old illegal alien convict stabbed
25-year-old Casey Chadwick to death. Police said Chadwick died of sharp
forced injuries to the head and neck. Jacques is being held on a $1
million bond.
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated
case. In the last few years illegal immigrants with lengthy criminal
histories have been allowed to remain in the U.S. despite being repeat
offenders. Judicial Watch has investigated several of the cases and
obtained public records from the government. For instance, back in 2008
JW launched a California public records request with the San Francisco
Sheriff’s Department to obtain he arrest and booking information on
Edwin Ramos, an illegal alien from El Salvador who murdered three
innocent American citizens. Ramos was a member of a renowned violent
street gang and had been convicted of two felonies as a juvenile (a
gang-related assault on a bus passenger and the attempted robbery of a
pregnant woman) yet he was allowed to remain in the country.
. . . http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2016/02/u-s-failed-3-times-to-deport-illegal-alien-who-murdered-woman/ UNIVISION: MOUTHPEICE FOR LA RAZA
"The Race" FASCISM
Univision News Howls 'Anti-Immigrant' at
Proposed Wisconsin Laws By Jorge Bonilla
NewsBusters.org, February 12, 2016
Univision
News' national broadcast continues to howl at any legislative attempt
to protect local communities by enforing our immigration laws. The
latest instance comes from efforts in Wisconsin.
Wednesday
evening's newscast featured a story about two enforcement proposals
recently filed in Wisconsin: one to ban sanctuary city policies, and the
other to ban local governments from issuing official alternate ID's to
illegal immigrants.
Anchor MarÃa Elena Salinas'
introduction to the story was less incendiary than her late-night
counterpart, which we covered last week. The "anti-immigrant" framing
was presented indirectly ("activists say"...), as opposed to Ilia
Calderón's direct indictment of Florida's HB675 (which overwhelmingly
passed the House but seems destined to die in the Senate). Nonetheless,
the screengrab above (which reads "anti-immigrant proposals") reflects a
reversion to classic form.
. . . http://newsbusters.org/blogs/latino/jorge-bonilla/2016/02/12/univision-news-howls-anti-immigrant-proposed-wisconsin-laws
Largest Civil Disobedience Action of the Century isn’t Anti-Trump, It’s Pro-Democracy
In an article published
here Wednesday, Aaron Klein wrongly characterized Democracy Spring as
an “Anti-Trump” campaign organized by “radicals…involved in shutting
down Donald Trump’s Chicago rally.”
We
want to set the record straight, make it clear where we stand on Trump,
and reach out to the all the conservatives who agree with us that big
money is corrupting our political system.
First,
setting aside any opinions on it, the assertion that the Chicago
disruption was the work of Democracy Spring is simply untrue. Over 100
organizations have endorsed Democracy Spring. Their independent actions
(and funders – George Soros hasn’t given us a dime) are distinct from
our collective effort.
Second,
while the leaders, organizations, and the vast majority of
participants in Democracy Spring have profound and severe disagreements
with Donald Trump, our nonviolent, non-partisan campaign is not a
response to him.
Nor
is it a response to any single candidate, party, or election. Democracy
Spring is a response to the corruption of our entire political system, a
system dominated by big money and inaccessible to many Americans who
face growing barriers to the ballot box.
No
matter who you support for president this year, surely we can all agree
that our elected officials should work for all of us – not just wealthy
special interests and big campaign contributors. In fact, we know many
voters support Trump because he calls out this corrupt system and
claims to stand outside of it as a self-financing candidate.
To this, we say: we hear you. The
system is corrupt. The economy is rigged. Big
campaign contributors do pull the strings in
Washington. Working people are right to be
angry about trade policy and the betrayal of
the middle class, working families, and the
poor by an elite establishment that profits
from the status quo.
But
we also challenge Trump supporters to consider a few things. Our
corrupt campaign finance system goes far beyond presidential races and
will not change by simply electing a president who supposedly can’t be
bought. Without serious policy solutions, whoever we elect
Commander-in-Chief will still have to deal with 435 members of Congress
who are more eager to appease their donors than their own constituents.
Trump
has yet to propose any solutions that would ensure every member of
Congress and candidate for local and state office in America are elected
in a way that makes them, as James Madison wrote, “solely dependent
upon the People as whole – not the rich more than the poor.” If our
system only allows us to choose between candidates who are bought by
billionaires and billionaires themselves, then it is not a democracy. It
is plutocracy.
That
is why more than 2,600 American patriots have pledged to risk arrest in
Democracy Spring, a massive nonviolent sit-in at the U.S. Capitol this
April. The campaign will force Congress to choose between putting
hundreds of peaceful defenders of the republic in handcuffs, or simply
doing their job and passing reforms to fix our broken system.
It’s
true Democracy Spring is led by many organizations associated with the
left. But there’s no reason it must remain that way. We are a
nonpartisan campaign open to all. And conservatives and liberals agree
when it comes to the urgent need for solutions to rebalance the system.
Last year, John Pudner, the political strategist who helped lead
Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA)
100%
’s 2014 upset over former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, launched Take Back our Republic to
advance conservative solutions to the problem of money in politics. For
example, Take Back supports tax credits for small donations to
political candidates to encourage more people to become involved in the
political process. The group also supports more disclosure of large
donors to ensure voters’ right to know who is trying to influence their
vote and their lawmakers.
In a recent column,
Richard Painter, President George W. Bush’s chief White House ethics
lawyer, explained why the current system fails to address the needs and
concerns of conservatives. He wrote, “campaign contributions drive
spending on earmarks and other wasteful programs — bridges to nowhere,
contracts for equipment the military does not need, solar energy
companies that go bankrupt on the government’s dime and for-profit
educational institutions that don’t educate.” Moreover, he writes,
“campaign contributions breed more regulation” as companies use campaign
cash to win special legal advantages over their competitors.
Progressives
would disagree on public funding to spur clean energy innovation and
the characterization of more regulations as necessarily bad, but we
stand fully with Painter on his core point: “[Today’s] system is a
betrayal of the vision of participatory democracy embraced by the
founders of our country.”
Indeed,
there is an opportunity today for progressives and conservatives to
stand together to defend our republic and win reform that will let us
settle our other differences on an even, open playing field where the
best ideas and the broadest support are what count – not the backing of a
moneyed elite.
Yet
– and allegiance to the values that truly make America a great country
demand that we make this crystal clear – Donald Trump’s candidacy is
making this kind of unity across differences incredibly difficult. We
are a nonpartisan campaign but not an amoral one. We are compelled to
speak (and I am confident that I can speak for us all) when I say that
Trump’s statements, proposed policies, and threats of violence
concerning undocumented immigrants, Muslims, the KKK, protesters
exercising their First Amendment rights, and others have crossed a very
serious line into the territory of fascism and hate speech.
America is better than this. Conservatives are better than this.
Democracy
Spring is a nonviolent campaign and, in the tradition of the civil
rights movement, will strive to reach out to our most bitter opponents.
We will seek unity with all who agree that every American deserves an
equal voice and a government of, by, and for the people. Rather than
letting our differences divide us, conservatives and progressives of
conscience should come together on this common ground and renew our
republic.
Politicians
from both parties broke the system. It’s going to take voters from both
parties — and independents committed to neither — to force our
representatives to fix it.
It’s time to demand that Congress listen to the people and pass common-sense solutions to return our government to us all.
Kai Newkirk is lead organizer of Democracy Spring.
This town is filled with well intentioned people who believe they are doing the right thing, but far too many have lost their way after years in Washington. Politicians pay more attention to special interests groups and powerful lobbyists writing checks to their next campaigns than listening to the people back home who sent them here in the first place.
This dangerous power vacuum has fueled frustration and
created an entirely new breed of disenfranchised voters who
are fed up with the status quo. These are real people, their
anger is palpable, and it’s not going away anytime soon.