Tuesday, April 9, 2019

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP FIRES HIS WAY TO A DICTATORSHIP FOR BILLIONAIRES, BANKSTERS AND WALL STREET

The dictatorial impulse behind Trump’s political purge


The series of firings of top US security officials over the past few days has brought to the surface a profound crisis within the Trump administration and the national-security state as a whole.
On Friday, Trump withdrew the nomination of Ronald Vitiello, acting head of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, to become the permanent director, telling reporters, “We want to go in a tougher direction.” On Sunday, he fired Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, reportedly because she objected to resuming the policy of forcible separation of parents and children for refugees seeking asylum. On Monday, he fired Randolph Alles, the director of the Secret Service, which supplies the president’s personal bodyguard. Like ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Secret Service is a unit of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the second largest US government department, created as an all-encompassing domestic police agency in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Trump’s principal adviser on immigration issues, the fascistic Stephen Miller, was reportedly the driving force in the purge of DHS officials. Miller previously spearheaded the “Muslim ban” against visitors and refugees from mainly Muslim countries and has developed close relations with the most vicious right-wing elements in American political life. The firing of Nielsen came after demands for such action were voiced by the fascist Daily Stormer publication, by Breitbart News, and by leaders of the Border Patrol union.
According to a CNN report, during Trump’s visit to the California-Mexico border area on Friday, he told a group of border agents that he wanted them to stop letting refugees cross the border to make asylum claims, although this procedure is laid down in US and international law and has been repeatedly upheld by the federal courts. Only after the president left the room did supervisors tell the agents that what Trump had asked them to do was illegal, and that they should disregard his request.
The Department of Homeland Security will be run, at least temporarily, by Kevin McAleenan, who has been director of the Customs and Border Protection unit. As a result, DHS, as well as three of its major units, ICE, CBP and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, will all be run by “acting” officials. The Department of Defense is also under an acting secretary, former Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan, following the ouster of Secretary James Mattis, a retired Marine general, in December. A slew of other top posts in the Trump administration are now held by “acting” officials: White House chief of staff, budget director, UN ambassador, secretary of interior.
There are two reasons for Trump’s reliance on such appointees. The “acting” officials conduct themselves as direct instruments of the White House, hoping to gain a permanent appointment by ingratiating themselves with the president. And these officials are not subject to Senate confirmation: there are no committee hearings at which they must testify, undergo questioning, or defend the policies they plan to implement. In this way, the executive branch of the US government more and more conducts itself independently of the legislative branch, rejecting any shred of democratic accountability.
It is significant that such appointments are concentrated in the military-police agencies. This must be understood as an effort by Trump to establish personal control of all the major security forces in the US government, surrounding himself with a network of loyalists. He seeks to create a sort of praetorian guard to protect the administration, not merely from its political opponents within the ruling elite, but from an expected upsurge in social struggles from below.
What is taking place in America is not merely the outcome of the installation in the White House of Trump, the gangster billionaire from the worlds of real estate, casino gambling and “reality” television. Or more precisely, there is an objective social logic to the turn by the US ruling elite to gangsterism as its method of class rule. The constitutional framework through which the United States has been governed for more than two centuries is breaking apart under the stress of class tensions fueled by the unprecedented growth of social and economic inequality.
There is a certain resemblance between the methods of the current White House and those of Mussolini during the first period of his rule. Italy maintained a semblance of constitutional government, although the fascist leader more and more sought to free himself from the constraints of bourgeois parliamentarism, culminating in the murder of the socialist deputy Matteotti after a speech in parliament denouncing the fascists.
Trump, too, seeks at every point to free himself from traditional constitutional restraints, as in the 35-day shutdown of the federal government, followed by his declaration of a national emergency, on a completely illegal and unconstitutional basis, to obtain funds for building a border wall after Congress had refused to provide the money. Now he seeks to incite murderous attacks by the Border Patrol on vulnerable immigrants and refugees fleeing repression and state violence in Central America, while railing against judges who declare his anti-immigrant persecution to be against the law.
There are, of course, important differences between Trump and Mussolini. Trump does not command a mass fascist movement or thousands of black-shirted thugs. But his preparations for violent repression are just as dangerous because they involve the mobilization of the police, the military and the intelligence agencies of the most powerful imperialist state.
The Trump administration is gripped by fear of a social explosion in America, particularly amid signs of an economic slowdown and return to recession conditions, which would explode Trump’s right-wing populist demagogy about restoring jobs in the deindustrialized Midwest and Appalachia.
When Trump rants against socialism and pledges to destroy it, he is reacting to a powerful movement that is developing from below—strikes and protests by teachers, service employees and industrial workers; the prospect of a major clash with autoworkers in the fall; the widespread oppositional sentiments among young people. This terrifies the White House and the entire American financial elite, because its objective logic is to challenge the profit system as a whole.
The Democratic Party, far from representing an opposition to the drive towards authoritarian rule, is merely an alternative route to the same destination. Both capitalist parties--the Republicans under George W. Bush, the Democrats under Barack Obama--have built up the powers of the national-security state, carried out illegal wars, and attacked the democratic rights and social gains of the American working class. Trump invents nothing new. He merely takes hold of instruments forged by his predecessors to use against his political opponents in the ruling class and, above all, against the working class.
There is a chasm between the ruthless and aggressive posture of Trump and the feckless response of the Democratic Party. The Democrats are more frightened of the implications of appealing to the American people to oppose the government than they are of anything the Trump administration might do. Herein lies Trump’s political advantage: his own inclinations better correspond to the desperate position in which the American ruling elite finds itself, with its social order crumbling, the working class coming forward, and the world position of American imperialism in decline.
The Democratic Party fights Trump on a right-wing basis, appealing to the national-security apparatus through its bogus campaign over Russian “meddling” in the 2016 election. It attacks Trump from the right on foreign policy, demanding a more aggressive approach to Syria, Russia, North Korea and China. Even after the Mueller report has debunked their claims, the Democrats continue to promote allegations that Trump is a Russian puppet.
The real threat to democratic rights in America comes from the capitalist state itself, to which both capitalist parties are loyal, the Democrats as much as the Republicans. While the two parties employ the methods of palace coup against each other, they will use even more violent means against a mass movement of the working class.

OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: You were wondering how many jobs went to illegals and how well Obama’s crony banksters have done???

The sputtering economic recovering under President Obama, the last to follow a major recession, has fallen way short of the average recovery and ranks as the worst since the 1930s Great Depression, according to a new report.

Had the recovery under Obama been the average of the 11 since the Depression, according to the report, family incomes would be $17,000 higher, six million fewer Americans would be in poverty, and there would be six million more jobs.


THE DEMOCRAT PARTY’S BILLIONAIRES’ GLOBALIST EMPIRE requires someone as ruthlessly dishonest as Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama to be puppet dictators.

http://hillaryclinton-whitecollarcriminal.blogspot.com/2018/09/google-rigged-it-so-illegals-would-vote.html

1.     Globalism: Google VP Kent Walker insists that despite its repeated rejection by electorates around the world, “globalization” is an “incredible force for good.”

2.     Hillary Clinton’s Democratic party: An executive nearly broke down crying because of the candidate’s loss. Not a single executive expressed anything but dismay at her defeat.

3.   Immigration: Maintaining liberal immigration in the U.S is the policy that Google’s executives discussed the most.

HILLARY CLINTON’S GLOBALIST VISION:

SURRENDER OF OUR BORDERS WITH NARCOMEX AND SUCKING IN GLOBAL BRIBES FOR THE PHONY CLINTON FOUNDATION


Even though it has gone virtually unreported by corporate media, Breitbart News has extensively documented the Clintons’ longstanding support for “open borders.” Interestingly, as the Los Angeles Times observed in 2007, the Clinton’s praise for 
globalization and open borders frequently comes when they are speaking before a wealthy foreign audiences and donors.

CLINTON MAFIA AND THEIR BANKSTERS AT GOLDMAN SACHS
WHO IS TIGHTER WITH THE PLUNDERING BANKSTERS? CLINTON, OBAMA or TRUMP?


The Clinton White House famously abolished the Glass–Steagall legislation, which separated commercial and investment banking. The move was a boon for Wall Street firms and led to major bank mergers that some analysts say helped contribute to the 2008 financial crisis.


Bill and Hillary Clinton raked in massive speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, with CNN documenting a total of at least $7.7 million in paid speeches to big financial firms, including Goldman Sachs and UBS. Hillary Clinton made $675,000 from speeches to Goldman Sachs specifically, and her husband secured more than $1,550,000 from Goldman speeches. In 2005 alone, Bill Clinton collected over $500,000 from three Goldman Sachs events.



HILLARY & BILLARY: The Evita and Juan Peron of Wall Street

The Clinton Looting of the Poor of Haiti




“The couple parlayed lives supposedly spent in “public service”
into admission into the upper stratosphere of American wealth, with incomes in
the top 0.1 percent bracket. The source of this vast wealth was a political
machine that might well be dubbed “Clinton, Inc.” This consists essentially of
a seedy money-laundering operation to ensure big business support for the
Clintons’ political ambitions as well as their personal fortunes. The basic
components of the operation are lavishly paid speeches to Wall Street and
Fortune 500 audiences, corporate campaign contributions, and donations to the
ostensibly philanthropic Clinton Foundation.”

IT WAS BILL CLINTON WHO UNLEASHED WALL STREET’S BIGGEST CRIMINAL BANKSTERS…. And haven’t they sucked up the banksters’ gratuities since?

Only Barack Obama has serviced banksters more than Hillary and Billary!


“Clinton also failed to mention how he and Hillary cashed in after his presidential tenure to make themselves multimillionaires, in part by taking tens of millions in speaking fees from Wall Street bankers.”


Lagarde: World May Face a ‘Monopoly Problem’ in the Future

 


WASHINGTON—The rising power of a few corporate giants could weaken investment, deter innovation, and reduce the share of income paid to workers in advanced economies, according to a new report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
While the overall macroeconomic effects of the rising “monopoly problem” have been modest so far, further increases in the market power of big companies could become increasingly negative if they were left unchecked.
The problem could take a bigger toll on economic growth and people’s incomes in the future, warned the IMF, which urged policymakers to keep the market competition strong.
Speaking at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde talked about the increasing concentration of market power in advanced economies. She said a small number of highly successful companies accounted for the “highest price markups.”
According to the IMF, the price markup—how much a company charges for its products compared with how much it costs to produce—is a good measurement of market power. When a company’s market power increases, it can maximize its profits by charging a higher price and reducing its output.
“In other words, there is a “winner-takes-most” dynamic at play—especially pronounced in the digital economy,” Lagarde said.
“I am not saying that we currently have a ‘monopoly problem.’ But I am saying that we should take appropriate measures—so that it does not become a problem.”
Increase in market power would lead a company to reduce its demand for capital and, therefore, its investment, according to the IMF study. It also stifles innovation, as the firm would have less incentive to innovate to stay competitive.
The study also found that increased market power since 2000 has accounted for at least 10 percent of the drop in the share of labor income in advanced economies.
Lagarde urged policymakers in countries such as the United States to take necessary measures to prevent the escalation of the problem in the future.
“That means reducing barriers to entry for new firms and reforming competition frameworks to ensure a level playing field in all sectors, whether traditional or high-tech,” she said.

A Problem in Advanced Economies

IMF studied the monopoly problem using data for nearly 1 million companies from 27 countries—both advanced and emerging markets—since the beginning of the 2000s.
According to the report, the price markup increases are more concentrated in advanced economies than in emerging markets. This increase in markups has taken place in most industries, with the largest among technology firms. And higher markups have been concentrated among a small number of companies.
Companies with the highest markups raised their average markup by more than 30 percent since 2000. These companies are more profitable and productive than their competitors. They also have more intangible assets like patents and software than others.
“In many markets, the rising market power of the more productive and innovative companies has been helped by their superior ability to exploit proprietary intangible assets, network effects, and economies of scale (reduced costs per unit as output increases),” the report stated.
“In the United States, for example, these high-markup companies have also expanded in size in relation to their low-markup counterparts, contributing to a larger increase in aggregate markups compared with Europe.”
The high markup companies may attempt to entrench their positions by building barriers to entry, such as high customer switching costs, therefore it is important for policymakers to ensure a level playing field among all companies, stated the report.
President Donald Trump has been vocal in his criticism of tech giants, particularly Amazon. In an interview in November 2018, he said his administration was looking into antitrust violations by Amazon, Google, and Facebook.
He has also repeatedly accused Amazon of scamming the U.S. Postal Service. And he has been critical of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post.

IMF Predicts No Recession

The 2019 IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings will be held in Washington on April 12 through 14.
In its January report, the IMF projected that the global economy would grow at 3.5 percent in 2019 and 3.6 in 2020.

Lagarde said that the global economy is at “a delicate moment.”
The IMF cut its global growth forecast twice since last October due to slowing Chinese economic growth, the U.S.–China trade war, and financial worries in emerging markets.
“But, to be clear, we do not see a recession in the near term,” Lagarde said. “In fact, we expect some pickup in growth in the second half of 2019 and into 2020.”
Global economic activity is set to benefit from the recent policy responses, such as the Federal Reserve’s “more patient pace of monetary policy normalization” and increased stimulus in China, according to her.
Follow Emel on Twitter: @mlakan

The very fabric of America is under attack ...

Our freedoms, our republic, and our constitutional rights have become contested terrain. The Epoch Times, a media committed to truthful, responsible journalism, is a rare bastion of hope and stability in these testing times.
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We’ve reported truthfully on the current U.S. administration from the start. We reported on the real possibility of a Trump victory in 2016. We’ve led reporting on the Chinese communist threat since 2000; we have been exposing communist thought in our government, schools, universities, popular culture, and media; and we, like no other media, are rigorously investigating and exposing the unscrupulous agents working to subvert our society.
Stand with us in advancing a truly independent and truthful media—the way a free press was intended to be, as a cornerstone of the Republic. Your contribution allows us to continue piercing through the surface narratives of mainstream media, and provide you with a full picture.
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BILLIONAIRES, BANKSTERS AND THE RICH PARTNER WITH TRUMP TO FIGHT … economic equality.

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"JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who was known as Barack Obama’s favorite banker and who has been a major donor to
the Democratic Party, centered his annual letter to shareholders on a denunciation of socialism."

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BANKSTER SOCIALISM

Dimon’s bank received tens of billions of dollars in government bailouts and many billions more from the Obama administration’s ultra-low interest rate and “quantitative easing” money-printing policies.  He told his shareholders that “socialism inevitably produces stagnation, corruption” and “authoritarian government,” and would be “a disaster for our country.”… UNLESS IT IS SOCIALISM FOR BANKSTERS AND WALL STREET!

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"This paved the way for the elevation of Trump, the personification of the criminality and backwardness of the ruling oligarchy."
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"The very fact that the US government officially acknowledges a growth of popular support for socialism, particularly among the nation’s youth, testifies to vast changes taking place in the political consciousness of the 
working class and the terror this is striking within the ruling elite. America is, after all, a country where anti-communism was for the greater part of a century a state-sponsored secular religion. No ruling class has so 
ruthlessly sought to exclude socialist politics from political discourse as the American ruling class."
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Socialism haunts the American ruling class In the two months since Donald Trump vowed in his State of the Union Address that “America will never be a socialist country,” the right-wing demagogue president and the Republican Party have embraced anti-socialism as the defining theme of their campaign in the 2020 elections.


WALL STREET CRIMINALS and the ultimate death of America’s middle-class
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Jim Carrey: America ‘Doomed’ If We Don’t Regulate Capitalism

"The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling an ever greater concentration of wealth at the very top of society, while the economy is starved of productive investment, the social infrastructure crumbles, and working class living standards are driven down by entrenched unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of a broader global process."
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"Hillary will do anything to distract you from her reckless record and the damage to the Democratic Party and the America she and The Obama's have created."
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“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today.” THEODORE ROOSEVELT
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"But what the Clintons do is criminal because they do it wholly at the expense of the American people. And they feel thoroughly entitled to do it: gain power, use it to enrich themselves and their friends. They are amoral, immoral, and venal. Hillary has no core beliefs beyond power and money. That should be clear to every person on the planet by now."  ----  Patricia McCarthy - AMERICANTHINKER.com


HAS AMERICA DESTROYED ITSELF MERELY TO MAKE THE RICH SUPER RICH?
 
Viking Economics by George Lakey

by Melville House

This week, we’re excited to be publishing Viking EconomicsGeorge Lakey’s look at how the Nordic countries, in a very short span of time, managed to move past many of the problems faced by nations like the US and UK today — problems with inequality, infrastructural weakness, the cost of education, and personal freedom. Today, the people of DenmarkIcelandNorway, and Sweden enjoy widely-shared prosperity, low crime rates, reliable infrastructure, affordable education, great personal freedoms — some of the highest standards of living in the world.
Particularly as both the US and the UK face some of our biggest challenges in a generation — and, in both cases, under new leadership — Viking Economicsoffers some crucial examples of how we might get some things right.
Here’s a brief excerpt to read on the longship ride over to your local bookstore to buy a copy; please try not to get herring on it.



Like most Americans today, Norwegians a century ago didn’t like the results of a wealth gap: the hunger and poverty, the crime, elderly friends warehoused or left in isolation, young people without hope of a good job. Norwegians also didn’t like the attitudes that went with inequality: an inclination toward arrogance among higher-income people and the feeling among lower-income people that they were losers, defeated by the system.
Early in the twentieth century, Norway had the formal institutions of parliamentary democracy, but ordinary people were not empowered: they did not set the direction of their society. The direction was set, instead, by the economic elite, through the political parties they dominated and the businesses they ran. Career options were limited, and there was little social mobility.
The differences between then and now are striking: If you’re a Norwegian teenager today and the job you’re interested in pursuing doesn’t require higher education, you can choose among good public vocational courses. If you learn better in a hands-on apprenticeship mode, publicly supported programs help you do that. If, instead, you prefer to develop a talent in art or music, or follow a career at sea or in engineering, you can attend a free post-secondary school.
Paid maternity and paternity leave (including for adoptive parents) is built into the system, and your job is held until you return. After the leave is over, child support is increased if you choose to be a full-time parent. If your choice is to go back to work, affordable childcare is available.
Extensive, subsidized public transport means that you probably won’t need a car to get to work. High educational standards prevail in big-city schools, as well as in the suburbs. Small towns receive subsidies to make them attractive for people who might otherwise feel forced to live in a city for cultural amenities, again increasing your options. The economy subsidizes family farming both for its own sake and for food security, so farmers can earn a reasonable income, another freedom denied in many industrialized countries.
The government offers free vocational counseling, education, and job-training resources for people seeking a career change, and entrepreneurialism is encouraged through free health care and a public pension for all: In Norway, you have the freedom to fail without becoming a failure.
Money doesn’t dominate the political system, so citizens are freer to participate meaningfully in political life—and they’re more likely to be exposed to newspapers with a variety of points of view, because journalism is subsidized to avoid a narrowing of perspective. According to Freedom House, in 2013, Norway was tied with Sweden at number one in the world for freedom of the press. Denmark was sixth, and Iceland was tenth. (The United States was twenty-sixth.) Indeed, this approach to public life has a long lineage in the region: Sweden was the first country in the world to establish freedom of the press—in 1766.
The Nordics are among the longest-living people in the world, and older citizens continue to benefit from an economy designed for personal freedom. The Global Watch Index studied ninety-six countries and rated Norway as the best place to grow old, followed closely by Sweden. The pension system enables you to live at home with health aides or in a senior living facility. You don’t need to fear hunger or lack of medicines or of health care. Every small town has a music and culture center where you can enjoy the arts and pursue your hobbies.
The crime rate is very low, partly because societies with high equality tend to experience less crime. Even in their largest city, Norwegians enjoy a remarkable degree of freedom from fear about personal safety.
Designing an economy that supports freedom and equality pays off in happiness, judging from the Vikings’ descendants making the top ten in the UN’s International Happiness Index. In 2015, the ratings showed Denmark, Iceland, and Norway sharing first place with Switzerland, while Sweden was close to its cousins.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), composed of thirty-four of the most-developed nations, compared life satisfaction experienced by the people in each country in 2013. The OECD found Norway second, Iceland third, Sweden fourth, and Denmark fifth.
And yet in spite of all this security and support, the Nordic yen for adventure has not disappeared. Americans, too, have a strong yearning for both freedom and equality, so the Nordic desire for both isn’t surprising. What is surprising, though, is that they went ahead and built an economy to serve those values. That’s the story in this book.
Like their Viking ancestors, the moderns made mistakes in their explorations. Iceland’s financial collapse of 2008 was a spectacular error, and, as I’ll describe, back in the 1980s, the Norwegians and Swedes made a series of serious economic mistakes. The Nordics haven’t built a utopia: Norwegians see themselves as “a nation of complainers,” and this book doesn’t shy away from the challenges that face them and their Nordic cousins.
Still, it’s useful for us as outsiders to observe the Nordics’ expeditions and to use them to reflect on our own situations. There are many important lessons to be learned.





Part of Trump tax bill bonanza for the 

wealthy


"The $100 billion figure is not so much a record as it is another dimension in corporate plunder."


“It has been estimated that the cost of an iPhone, retailing for around $650 to $700, is made up of $220 for the components and $5 for the labor of assembly.”

"In the past week, at least one prominent Republican, 

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, has publicly admitted that 

the tax bill was sold under false pretenses."

TRUMPERNOMICS: The Trickle Up to the Rich Economy


http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/12/congress-passes-tax-windfall-for-super.html

 "It will, in fact, no more provide decent-paying jobs and improved wages than the previous tax “reforms” carried out over the past three-and-a-half decades. The Reagan tax cuts of 1981 and 1986, Bill Clinton’s capital gains tax cut in 1997 and George W. Bush’s tax “reform” of 2001 were all part of a ruling class offensive against the working class, which included sweeping attacks on wages, jobs, pensions, education, health care, housing and other social benefits."

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