Claiming that the war on poverty has been won, Trump administration
works to gut social programs
By Shelley Connor
19 July 2018
A study
released by the White House Counsel of Economic Advisors earlier this week
declared, “Based on historical standards of material well-being and the terms
of engagement, our War on Poverty is largely over and a success.” Starting from
that clearly erroneous assumption, the report goes on to recommend instituting
work requirements for non-cash social programs such as Supplemental Nutrition
Program (SNAP), Medicaid, and housing assistance.
The report
doubles down on perhaps the one consistent theme of the Trump administration:
the idea that the poor are imagining their poverty, that all they lack is
self-sufficiency and the impetus to work.
The report
begins with an obvious fiction: that poverty doesn’t exist in America to any
large degree, because welfare programs, which they count as income, have
allowed people to overcome what they call “material poverty.” The poor, they
maintain, have no incentive to work because of the social programs that have
supposedly lifted them from poverty. The rest of the document is devoted to
tables, graphs, and quotes stretched to the point of absurdity in support of
this conclusion.
The first
several pages of the CEA’s report are devoted to fictive definitions of the
words “poverty,” “homelessness,” and “hunger.” Because 99.6 percent of
Americans did not spend the night in a homeless shelter on one particular
January night in 2017, “homelessness in America is rare.” Because only “2.9
percent of people lived in households defined as food insecure in 2016” (an
outright lie—12.3 percent of US homes were food insecure in 2016), a number
that “includes households which always had sufficient food but at some point
during the year had difficulty in obtaining food or reduced diet quality as a
consequence of limited resources,” the document blusters, “95 percent of
Americans and 99 percent of children” live without hunger.
The document is riven with obvious
contradictions. For example, SNAP benefits and housing vouchers positively
influence children’s health and academic performance, but, the report claims,
they would fare better if work requirements forced their parents off of those
programs. The authors assert simultaneously that social programs have helped
people out of poverty and that they are responsible for people
remaining impoverished:
“The safety
net—including government tax and (both cash and non-cash) transfer policies—has
contributed to a dramatic reduction in poverty (correctly measured) in the
United States. However, the policies have been accompanied by a decline in
self-sufficiency... Expanding work requirements in these non-cash welfare
programs would improve self-sufficiency, with little risk of substantially
reversing progress in addressing material hardship.”
Like Trump’s
attacks on Medicaid, the CEA’s proposed cuts to SNAP, Medicaid and housing
vouchers are disingenuously cloaked with references to the “self-sufficiency”
and economic success of the poor. These claims are belied by their reliance
upon patently false information.
In June,
Nikki Haley, US Ambassador to the UN, scornfully dismissed a United Nations
report on social inequality in the US. “It is patently ridiculous for the
United Nations to examine poverty in America,” she scoffed. She characterized
the statistics quoted by UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston, who witnessed
widespread hookworm infestation and inadequate sewage disposal on his visit to
the US, as “misleading” (the CEA says the same thing about most accepted
measures of poverty).
While there
are, arguably, different methods to assess poverty, the CEA’s hackneyed
attempts to redefine American poverty as extraordinary and rare are shot
through by all meaningful indices of the social well-being of workers in the
US.
Life
expectancy has declined two years in a row—something that has not happened since
the 1960s. So-called deaths of despair—suicides, overdose and alcohol-related
mortality—are higher than in any other wealthy nation. Suicide rates in
children have risen significantly for the first time in recorded history.
Compared to
their counterparts in other wealthy, industrialized countries, American babies
are three times more likely to die before they turn a year old, and over two
times more likely to die of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Had the US
kept pace with other rich countries in this area, over 300,000 babies would
have survived infancy over the past 50 years.
Mothers die
giving birth at a higher rate in the United States than they do in other
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, and
that rate is rising. In 2015, there were 26.4 maternal deaths for every 100,000
live births. By comparison, the UK had a rate of 9.6 deaths per 100,000 births,
the highest in the European Union, and Finland had a rate of 3.8 maternal
deaths per 100,000 births.
The US has
also failed to address its comparatively high illiteracy rates. An estimated 32
million Americans cannot read at all. Over 14 percent of the population have
below-basic reading skills. Twenty-nine percent of Americans have basic reading
skills—that is, they can read at a fifth-grade level.
These are
not the signs of a country with a three percent poverty rate. They are
hallmarks of deep inequality and crisis, and no matter how the CEA chooses to
define poverty, these numbers show their report for the slanderous fiction that
it is.
The CEA
devotes significant time to praising the Clinton-era Personal Responsibility
and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), which abolished Aid to
Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and replaced it with Temporary Aid to
Needy Families (TANF). States were given broad permission to impose work
requirements upon families seeking TANF.
A 2015
analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) revealed that the
number of children living in deep poverty—which they define as below half of
the national poverty line—increased from 1.5 million to 2.2 million between
1995 (the year before PRORWA passed) and 2005, from 2.1 percent of the
population to 3.0 percent. Children of single mothers, they discovered, had fared
worse. In such families, the rate of children living in deep poverty more than
doubled, rising from 2.8 percent in 1995 to 5.8 percent in 2005.
That the
Trump administration would herald PROWRA as a successful template for
reorganizing SNAP, housing assistance and Medicaid stands out as perhaps the
one honest part of the document. It is an open declaration of Trump’s intent to
gut those safety nets just as surely as PROWRA gutted AFDC.
The PROWRA reference is significant in a second
way. PROWRA was a bipartisan effort. With its passage, the “war on poverty” was
converted to a full-scale, bipartisan war upon the poor. PROWRA’s passage in
1996 marked, as the WSWS has written, “the complete abandonment of
the policy of liberal reform associated with Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s
and Johnson’s War on Poverty in the mid-1960s.” No longer were basic
necessities such as housing, adequate food and childcare regarded as
“entitlements” that should be enjoyed by all, but as rewards to be “earned.”
Like the CEA’s proposals, PROWRA was unashamedly punitive and demeaning.
The Obama
administration showed its colors in its war against the poor when it
immediately bailed out Wall Street and forced low wages upon autoworkers as
part of his stimulus package to “save” automakers. Obama supported the
bankruptcy of Detroit, refusing to intervene when city workers lost their
pensions as part of the bankruptcy deal. Obama lied just as baldly as Trump
when he crowed that the economy had “never been better,” even as wealth
inequality deepened during his tenure.
Today, Trump has taken on the mantel of his
predecessors. He is overseeing an even greater transfer of wealth from the
bottom half of America’s earners to the top ten percent. His rejection of
social spending has been accompanied by a lowering of taxes for the wealthiest
20 percent of Americans. These tax cuts come at the expense of the poor. As the
WSWS reported earlier this week, “US
federal tax cuts have resulted in lost revenue of $5.1 trillion, with 65 percent
of that money going to the top 20 percent of income earners.”
While the
CEA smugly dismisses poor workers as being too dependent upon the government,
the truth is that the Trump administration, like its Republican and Democratic
predecessors, depends upon America’s workers to fund its militarism, its attack
on immigrants, and its tax breaks for the wealthy. Those efforts are paid for
with cuts to public education. They are paid for with stagnant literacy rates.
They are paid for with increasing maternal mortality rates and with
disproportionate SIDS deaths.
Obama
boasts: “I’m surprised how much money I got”
By
Barry Grey
19 July 2018
The corporate media has overwhelmingly praised Barack Obama’s
speech in Johannesburg on Tuesday at an event commemorating the 100th
anniversary of the birth of Nelson Mandela, calling it an “impassioned” defense
of democracy, tolerance, equality and the liberal capitalist world order
established after World War II.
The reports have singled out Obama’s muted and indirect criticisms
of Donald Trump’s “strongman politics” and the “utter loss of shame among
political leaders” who are “caught in a lie and just double down and lie some
more.”
No notice is being taken in the press reports of two points in the
rambling, 90-minute address that exposes Obama’s boundless cynicism and
hypocrisy. In a cliché-ridden speech that deplored the “explosion of
inequality” and argued for “inclusive capitalism,” Obama evidently departed
from his written text to quip, with a smile:
“Some [members of the ‘new elite’] even supported Barack Obama for
the presidency of the United States, and by virtue of my status as a former
head of state, some of them consider me as an honorary member of the club.
(Laughter.) And I get invited to these fancy things, you know? They’ll fly me
out.”
Later, in the midst of a call to rein in the “excesses of
capitalism” so that “rich people are still rich” but they’re “giving a little
bit back,” he evoked more laughter and applause from his audience when he said,
in a jocular voice:
“I should add, by the way, right now I’m actually surprised by how
much money I got, and let me tell you something: I don’t have half as much as
most of these folks or a tenth or a hundredth. There’s only so much you can
eat. There’s only so big a house you can have. There’s only so many nice trips
you can take. I mean, it’s enough.”
At this point, the video camera panned the rostrum to show a
broadly smiling and clapping Cyril Ramaphosa, the recently elected president of
South Africa, who parlayed his posts at the head of the country’s trade unions
into lucrative slots on corporate boards and a fortune estimated at $675
million. More on him later.
Obama may be surprised at his recent entry into the American
financial oligarchy, but it’s not for lack of effort on his part to “join the
club.” Even before he left the White House in January of 2017, he and Michelle
were plotting the means to cash in on their services rendered to the rich and
the filthy rich during their eight years in office. That period was
distinguished by two major records: the first two-term presidency to preside
over uninterrupted war for the entire duration, and the greatest transfer of
wealth from the bottom to the top in American history.
Since leaving office, the Obamas have garnered a $65 million book
deal, and Obama is making an estimated 50 speeches a year before corporate and
Wall Street audiences at about $400,000 a clip. It has been estimated that the
couple is on course to rapidly amass a fortune of $242 million (outdoing the
Clintons, who up to now have managed to cash in to the tune of only $75 million).
Meanwhile, they have been photographed frolicking on the yachts
and private islands of billionaires such as Richard Branson in the company of
multi-millionaire Hollywood celebrities and media moguls such as Tom Hanks and
Oprah Winfrey.
This in-your-face corruption was perfectly at home amidst the
fat-cat dignitaries of the African National Congress who hosted Tuesday’s
event. Mandela himself remains admired and even beloved by ordinary South
Africans and millions of poor and oppressed around the world. That is because
of the courage and self-sacrifice he evinced when he played a leading role in
the struggle against the hated apartheid regime, for which he spent 27 years in
prison on Robben Island.
He is, however, honored by world imperialism and the South African
bourgeoisie—white and black—because of the central role he played in channeling
the mass revolt against apartheid behind the aspiring black bourgeoisie, and
the guarantee he gave to the International Monetary Fund that an ANC regime
would uphold capitalist property relations and protect the interests of foreign
capital.
The result of a quarter-century of “black empowerment” has been
the creation of a narrow but infinitely corrupt and grasping black elite that
has presided over an increase in social inequality to unprecedented levels and,
if anything, a worsening of poverty. In paying tribute to Mandela and hailing
his successor Ramaphosa, Obama discreetly omitted mention of the fact that
South Africa is officially the most unequal country on the face of the earth,
with more than half of its population living below the poverty line, an
official jobless rate of 27 percent, and a youth unemployment rate of 50
percent.
In his speech, following a potted history of democratic progress
in the 20th century which failed to mention the single event most responsible
for whatever social and political gains were achieved internationally—the
socialist revolution of October 1917 in Russia—Obama deplored the “explosion of
inequality” over recent decades and criticized the indifference of the “new
elite” to the consequences of their policies for working people.
He could, of course, have pointed to Ramaphosa, sitting a few feet
away. In 2012, as a 9 percent shareholder in the Lonmin mine in Marikana, the
current South African president and former head of the National Union of
Mineworkers of South Africa had demanded that the authorities take action
against the “plainly dastardly criminal acts” of striking miners. The call was
carried out when security forces gunned down the strikers, in the worst
massacre since the mass murder carried out by the apartheid regime at
Sharpeville and Soweto. Thirty-four miners were killed and 78 were wounded.
Or, Obama could have looked in the mirror. Typical of Obama’s speeches,
Tuesday’s address criticized reactionary and anti-democratic policies as though
Obama himself had no part in their implementation.
Thus, Obama denounced the rapid growth of inequality, while
gliding over his own multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and
“quantitative easing” policies, which were designed to pump up the stock market
and further enrich the oligarchy. Nor did he note the wage-cutting impact of
his auto bailout, which imposed a 50 percent across-the-board cut in pay for
new-hires; his support for the Detroit bankruptcy, which launched a nationwide
attack on public-employee pension benefits; or his health care “reform,” which
has increased out-of-pocket cost and reduced services for millions or workers.
He attacked escalating press censorship in one breath, and in the
next supplied the pretext for Internet censorship:
“The free press is under attack. Censorship and state control of
media is on the rise. Social media—once seen as a mechanism to promote
knowledge and understanding and solidarity—has proved to be just as effective
promoting hatred and paranoia and propaganda and conspiracy theories.”
But it is a fact that his administration prosecuted more reporters
for leaking classified information than any previous administration, and he
spearheaded the persecution of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian
Assange.
Obama’s supposed commitment to democracy and the rule of law is
belied by his own record of defending the perpetrators of torture, maintaining
the Guantanamo prison camp, overseeing abductions and detention without due
process, defending mass domestic surveillance and expanding drone
assassinations, including against US citizens.
In his speech, he criticized the war against immigrants, making no
acknowledgment of his own role in preparing it, including the deportation of
more immigrants—2.7 million—than all previous administration’s combined.
The central contention of his speech was advanced in the following
sentence: “On Mandiba’s 100th birthday, we now stand at a crossroads—a moment
in time in which two very different visions of humanity’s future compete for
the hearts and the minds of citizens around the world.”
This sentence contains two huge lies. The second is the claim that
“citizens around the world” will have any say in the policies pursued by the
various capitalist governments. The first is the claim that Obama’s empty and
demagogic call for a “kinder and gentler” capitalism represents a fundamentally
opposed and viable alternative to the far-right policies of Trump and similar
right-wing populist regimes and parties around the world.
The reality is that Trump’s policies of war, social
counterrevolution and authoritarianism are an extension, in a somewhat more
extreme form, of the policies of the Obama administration. On these issues, the
entire ruling elite and all of its parties are united, whatever the specific
foreign policy questions over which they are presently brawling.
did you ever hear of HOMELESSNESS before Obama and his banksters showed up???
BOOK:…..TRAGIC!
THE DEATH GAP:
INEQUALITY IS KILLING
AMERICA!
Barack Obama Lectures World on Racial, Wealth Inequality in South Africa
Former President Barack Obama on Tuesday delivered the 16th annual Nelson Mandela lecture in Johannesburg, South Africa and called for greater global wealth redistribution, scolding the rich for having more money than they need.
“For almost all countries, progress is going to depend on an inclusive market-based system – one that offers education for every child, that protects collective bargaining and secures the rights of every worker,” Obama began. “That breaks up monopolies to encourage competition and small and medium-sized businesses and has laws that root out corruption and ensures fair dealing in business, that maintains some form of progressive taxation so that rich people are still rich, but they’re giving a little bit back to make sure that everybody else has something to pay for universal healthcare and retirement security, and invest in infrastructure and scientific research that builds platforms for innovation.”
The former president has raised eyebrows over his opulent lifestyle since departing the White House. Obama in February of 2017 vacationed in the British Virgin Islands with Virgin Group founder and billionaire Richard Branson and joined Oprah and Bruce Springsteen on a luxury cruise on Hollywood mogul David Geffen’s $590 million yacht in April of that year.
In a bizarre moment, the former president then criticized himself for amassing too large of a fortune. “I should add, by the way, right now I’m actually surprised by how much money I got, and let me tell you something, I don’t have half as much as most of these folks or a tenth or a hundred thou— there’s only so much you can eat, there’s only so big a house you can have, there’s only so many nice trips you can take. I mean, it’s enough,” he lamented.
Former Pres. Barack Obama: "It is a plain fact that racial discrimination still exists in both the United States and South Africa." abcn.ws/2uvBGfv
Obama also offered up criticism of the current state of race relations in the United States. “It is a plain fact that racial discrimination still exists in both the United States and South Africa,” Obama told attendees of the speech at Ellis Park Arena. “And it is also a fact that the accumulated disadvantages of years of institutionalized depression have created yawning disparities in income, and in wealth and in education, and in health, in personal safety, in access to credit.”
Obama opened by describing today’s times as “strange and uncertain,” adding that “each day’s news cycle is bringing more head-spinning and disturbing headlines.” These days “we see much of the world threatening to return to a more dangerous, more brutal, way of doing business,” he said.
This is the former president’s first visit to Africa since leaving office in early 2017. He stopped earlier this week in Kenya, where he visited the rural birthplace of his late father. Obama’s speech highlighted how the Nobel Peace Prize winner, who was imprisoned for 27 years, kept up his campaign against what appeared to be insurmountable odds to end apartheid, South Africa’s harsh system of white minority rule.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
July 18, 2018
The banality of Barack Obama
Obama made a big speech in South Africa and all I can think is: Same old Obama.
His techniques are all there: Nods to the opposition, odd things thrown into sequences of events to deflect attention from his record, and a view of the world that hasn't changed a bit since his days of reading Tom Friedman. Heck, he probably still reads Tom Friedman, and golfs with him out on the toney gated links, too.
He blathers on about the wonders of globalism and takes credit for all of the "progress." Progress, progressivism, get it? He also does quite a bit to ignore his own record, starting with his doubled-down record of lies (Obamacare, Benghazi, Hillary Clinton's emails) and says other politicians do it. Yecch.
Here are some of the most annoying highlights of his dreary speech, which is sure to fade into the ether, given its rote-loathing of President Trump (not mentioned by name but obvious enough) and inability to grasp his own role in all the problems he talks about.
Praise for the big state over the dynamism and enterprise of the private sector, all because of its control:
In those nations with market-based economies, suddenly union movements developed; and health and safety and commercial regulations were instituted; and access to public education was expanded; and social welfare systems emerged, all with the aim of constraining the excesses of capitalism and enhancing its ability to provide opportunity not just to some but to all people. And the result was unmatched economic growth and a growth of the middle class.
Amazing unfamiliarity with how South Africa has fallen apart since Mandela left the scene, with white farmers' farms expropriated Zimbabwe-style, opening the gate for the rest of that same-old-socialism result. Maybe Mandela didn't set up the institutions to prevent that as he should have. Right now, South Africa has tyranny of the majority, the same miserable picture found all over the third world which stays third world, for this reason.
And then as Madiba guided this nation through negotiation painstakingly, reconciliation, its first fair and free elections; as we all witnessed the grace and the generosity with which he embraced former enemies, the wisdom for him to step away from power once he felt his job was complete, we understood that -- (applause) -- we understood it was not just the subjugated, the oppressed who were being freed from the shackles of the past. The subjugator was being offered a gift, being given a chance to see in a new way, being given a chance to participate in the work of building a better world.
Or this:
It is a plain fact that racial discrimination still exists in both the United States and South Africa. (Cheers and applause.)
Using euphemisms for socialism. Name one "closed" economy that isn't socialist. And plenty of those "market-based principles" were little more than crony capitalism, alongside U.S. Democratic Party-linked academics feeding at the U.S. government trough and not introducing "market-based" anything in other than name, as the horrible experience of Russia in the 1990s showed. There's a reason Russia turned to Vladimir Putin:
The introduction of market-based principles, in which previously closed economies along with the forces of global integration powered by new technologies, suddenly unleashed entrepreneurial talents
Bringing up billionaires, not quite getting beyond "fly him out" and getting to how they hand him the six-figure speaking fees, fancy vacations on private islands, and a celebrity lifestyle that characterizes his current hypocritical life. He would have us think he's not enjoying it and all he cares about are the ordinary schmoes - who by the way voted for Trump because of it. Get a load:
Now, it should be noted that this new international elite, the professional class that supports them, differs in important respects from the ruling aristocracies of old. It includes many who are self-made. It includes champions of meritocracy. And although still mostly white and male, as a group they reflect a diversity of nationalities and ethnicities that would have not existed a hundred years ago. A decent percentage consider themselves liberal in their politics, modern and cosmopolitan in their outlook. Unburdened by parochialism, or nationalism, or overt racial prejudice or strong religious sentiment, they are equally comfortable in New York or London or Shanghai or Nairobi or Buenos Aires, or Johannesburg. Many are sincere and effective in their philanthropy. Some of them count Nelson Mandela among their heroes. Some even supported Barack Obama for the presidency of the United States, and by virtue of my status as a former head of state, some of them consider me as an honorary member of the club. (Laughter.) And I get invited to these fancy things, you know? (Laughter.) They'll fly me out.
Here's another whopper of lumped together ideas of problems told in a way that obscures his own bad record in creating them:
And their decisions -- their decisions to shut down a manufacturing plant, or to try to minimize their tax bill by shifting profits to a tax haven with the help of high-priced accountants or lawyers, or their decision to take advantage of lower-cost immigrant labor, or their decision to pay a bribe -- are often done without malice; it's just a rational response, they consider, to the demands of their balance sheets and their shareholders and competitive pressures.
So where was he on the flat tax back when he was president? Flat tax is the only thing that breaks these wrap-arounds on the tax structure. Where was he on illegals that benefited these Democrat-donor tycoons who hired the cheap labor? That's right, practically inviting them in as loyal potential Democrat voters. Where was he on manufacturing? Out denouncing the bitter clingers and saying the jobs would never come back. There are a lot of doozies in that sequence. He throws in bribes for good measure to muddy the waters from his own record. Speaking of bribes, where was he on Hillary Clinton's foundation donations for State Department favors?
It gets worse. Trump voters are his next problem, because Democrats repeatedly say their motivation in voting for Trump is that it's all about their hate for people who 'look different.'
But to say that our vision for the future is better is not to say that it will inevitably win. Because history also shows the power of fear. History shows the lasting hold of greed and the desire to dominate others in the minds of men. Especially men. (Laughter and applause.) History shows how easily people can be convinced to turn on those who look different, or worship God in a different way.
The old bitter clingers, right?
Then there's his tax-the-rich mantra, one that always hits the little guy, not the billionaire Democratic campaign donors he purported claims his aim is at. Look at this drivel and think about Obama's record of hanging out with jet-setting billionaires:
And when economic power is concentrated in the hands of the few, history also shows that political power is sure to follow -- and that dynamic eats away at democracy. Sometimes it may be straight-out corruption, but sometimes it may not involve the exchange of money; it's just folks who are that wealthy get what they want, and it undermines human freedom....And how we achieve this is going to vary country to country, and I know your new president is committed to rolling up his sleeves and trying to do so. But we can learn from the last 70 years that it will not involve unregulated, unbridled, unethical capitalism. It also won't involve old-style command-and-control socialism form the top. That was tried; it didn't work very well. For almost all countries, progress is going to depend on an inclusive market-based system -- one that offers education for every child; that protects collective bargaining and secures the rights of every worker -- (applause) -- that breaks up monopolies to encourage competition in small and medium-sized businesses; and has laws that root out corruption and ensures fair dealing in business; that maintains some form of progressive taxation so that rich people are still rich but they're giving a little bit back to make sure that everybody else has something to pay for universal health care and retirement security, and invests in infrastructure and scientific research that builds platforms for innovation.
That's his solution, tax "the rich" to pay for bureaucrats and put half the Millennial generation in their moms's basements, for lack of work. Sounds lovely. Been there, done that.
And then with perfect opacity, he natters on about how at some point he's had enough - and praises himself for 'giving back' or some such tale, given that he's doing nothing:
I should add, by the way, right now I'm actually surprised by how much money I got, and let me tell you something: I don't have half as much as most of these folks or a tenth or a hundredth. There's only so much you can eat. There's only so big a house you can have. (Cheers and applause.) There's only so many nice trips you can take. I mean, it's enough. (Laughter.) You don't have to take a vow of poverty just to say, "Well, let me help out and let a few of the other folks -- let me look at that child out there who doesn't have enough to eat or needs some school fees, let me help him out. I'll pay a little more in taxes. It's okay. I can afford it."
He blathers on most disingenously, with a long passage about 'facts' which he doesn't have, and Friedmanian talk about 'technology' which adds nothing new, then his biggest problem, which is that he listens to no one but himself and Ben Rhodes:
Most of us prefer to surround ourselves with opinions that validate what we already believe. You notice the people who you think are smart are the people who agree with you. (Laughter.) Funny how that works.
Best I can conclude from this dreck is that Donald Trump has nothing to worry about from this frozen-in-amber soggy socialist thinking, coupled with a very bad presidential record he seems unaware of. Been there, done that, indeed.
THE INVITED INVADING HORDES: IT’S ALL ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED!
"In the decade following the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the capitalist class has delivered powerful blows to the social position of the working class. As a result, the working class in the US, the world’s “richest country,” faces levels of economic hardship not seen since the 1930s."
"Inequality has reached unprecedented levels: the wealth of America’s three richest people now equals the net worth of the poorest half of the US population."
"Like Katrina, Hurricane Harvey has lifted the lid on the ugly reality of American society, exposing colossal levels of social inequality, pervasive poverty and ruling class criminality."
"The reason why these warnings have been ignored is not hard to fathom. They have been resolutely opposed by corporate interests, including the real estate industry, Wall Street and Big Oil. Their ability, operating through bribed politicians of both parties, to veto and block elementary measures to protect the American people, exemplifies the complete subordination of all social needs under capitalism to the selfish drive of a corporate-financial oligarchy to accumulate ever greater levels of personal wealth and profit."
SOARING POVERTY AND DRUG ADDICTION UNDER OBAMA
"These figures present a scathing indictment of the social order that prevails in America, the world’s wealthiest country, whose government proclaims itself to be the globe’s leading democracy. They are just one manifestation of the human toll taken by the vast and all-pervasive inequality and mass poverty.
WALL STREET TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE: DIE YOUNG… your company pension dies with you!
OPIOID AND ALCOHOL ADDICTION KILLS OF MIDDLE AMERICA
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS to serve the filthy rich
The same period has seen a massive growth of social inequality, with income and wealth concentrated at the very top of American society to an extent not seen since the 1920s.
“This study follows reports released over the past several months documenting rising mortality rates among US workers due to drug addiction and suicide, high rates of infant mortality, an overall leveling off of life expectancy, and a growing gap between the life expectancy of the bottom rung of income earners compared to those at the top.”
OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERISM destroyed a 11 TRILLION DOLLARS in home equity… and they’re still plundering us!
Barack Obama created more debt for the middle class than any president in US history, and also had the only huge QE programs: $4.2 Trillion.
the top 1% of the world’s wealthy.
AMERICA: ONE PAYCHECK AND TWELVE ILLEGALS AWAY FROM HOMELESSNESS!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/12/rick-moran-los-angeles-mexicos-second.html
A dashcam video of downtown Los Angeles on Christmas day reveals a stunning sight: hundreds of tents and lean-tos on the sidewalks that serve as shelter for the homeless. The scene is reminiscent of a third-world country. RICK MORAN / AMERICANTHINKER com
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