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Ted Cruz: Legal Limit Report 4 - 0 views

www.scribd.com/...Ted-Cruz-Legal-Limit-Report-4 Ted-Cruz rule-of-law
shared by Gary Edwards on 07 May 14 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 07 May 14
     
    "  1 THE LEGAL LIMIT: THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION'S ATTEMPTS TO EXPAND FEDERAL POWER  Report No. 4: The Obama Administration's Abuse of Power By U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) Ranking Member Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on The Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights Of all the troubling aspects of the Obama presidency, none is more dangerous than the President's persistent pattern of lawlessness, his willingness to disregard the written law and instead enforce his own policies via executive fiat. The President's taste for unilateral action to circumvent Congress should concern every citizen, regardless of party or ideology. The great 18th-century political philosopher Montesquieu observed: "There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates." America's Founding Fathers took this warning to heart, and we should too. Rule of law doesn't simply mean that society has laws; dictatorships are often characterized by an abundance of laws. Rather, rule of law means that we are a nation ruled   by laws, not men. No one-and especially not the president-is above the law. For that reason, the U.S. Constitution imposes on every president the express duty to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." R ather than honor this duty, President Obama has openly defied it by repeatedly suspending, delaying, and waiving portions of the laws that he is charged to enforce. When President Obama disagreed with federal immigration laws, he instructed the Justice Department to cease enforcing the laws. He did the same thing with federal welfare law, drug laws, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act. In the more than two centuries of our nation's history, there is simply no precedent for the White House wantonly ignoring federal law and asking others to do the same. For all those who are silent now: What would they think of a Republican president who announced that he was going to ignore th
  • Gary Edwards on 08 May 14
     
    "  1 THE LEGAL LIMIT: THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION'S ATTEMPTS TO EXPAND FEDERAL POWER  Report No. 4: The Obama Administration's Abuse of Power By U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) Ranking Member Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on The Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights Of all the troubling aspects of the Obama presidency, none is more dangerous than the President's persistent pattern of lawlessness, his willingness to disregard the written law and instead enforce his own policies via executive fiat. The President's taste for unilateral action to circumvent Congress should concern every citizen, regardless of party or ideology. The great 18th-century political philosopher Montesquieu observed: "There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates." America's Founding Fathers took this warning to heart, and we should too. Rule of law doesn't simply mean that society has laws; dictatorships are often characterized by an abundance of laws. Rather, rule of law means that we are a nation ruled   by laws, not men. No one-and especially not the president-is above the law. For that reason, the U.S. Constitution imposes on every president the express duty to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." R ather than honor this duty, President Obama has openly defied it by repeatedly suspending, delaying, and waiving portions of the laws that he is charged to enforce. When President Obama disagreed with federal immigration laws, he instructed the Justice Department to cease enforcing the laws. He did the same thing with federal welfare law, drug laws, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act. In the more than two centuries of our nation's history, there is simply no precedent for the White House wantonly ignoring federal law and asking others to do the same. For all those who are silent now: What would they think of a Republican president who announced that he was going to ignore the law, or unil
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Deficit and Spending Increase Under Obama - 2010 State of Obama Address WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...3906204575027181656362948.html financial-crisis obammunism 2010 numbers banksters
shared by Gary Edwards on 27 Jan 10 - Cached
  • But as the nearby chart shows, Mr. Obama's major contribution to deficits has been a record spending spree. In 2007, before the recession, federal expenditures reached $2.73 trillion. By 2009 expenditures had climbed to $3.52 trillion. In 2009 alone, overall federal spending rose 18%, or $536 billion. Throw in a $65 billion reduction in debt service costs due to low interest rates, and the overall spending increase was 22%. In one year. CBO confirms that Democrats have taken federal spending to a new and higher plateau: 24.7% of GDP in 2009, 24.1% this year, and back to an estimated 24.3% in 2011. The modern historical average is about 20.5%, and less than that if you exclude the Reagan defense buildup of the 1980s that helped to win the Cold War and let Bill Clinton reduce defense spending to 3% of GDP in the 1990s. This means that one of every four dollars produced by the sweat of American private labor is now taxed and redistributed by 535 men and women in Congress.
  • Compared to this gusher, Mr. Obama's touted spending freeze for some domestic agencies is the politics of gesture.
  • As for the deficit, CBO shows that over the first three years of the Obama Presidency, 2009-2011, the federal government will borrow an estimated $3.7 trillion. That is more than the entire accumulated national debt for the first 225 years of U.S. history. By 2019, the interest payments on this debt will be larger than the budget for education, roads and all other nondefense discretionary spending.
  • Gary Edwards on 27 Jan 10
     
    But as the nearby chart shows, Mr. Obama's major contribution to deficits has been a record spending spree. In 2007, before the recession, federal expenditures reached $2.73 trillion. By 2009 expenditures had climbed to $3.52 trillion. In 2009 alone, overall federal spending rose 18%, or $536 billion. Throw in a $65 billion reduction in debt service costs due to low interest rates, and the overall spending increase was 22%. In one year. CBO confirms that Democrats have taken federal spending to a new and higher plateau: 24.7% of GDP in 2009, 24.1% this year, and back to an estimated 24.3% in 2011. The modern historical average is about 20.5%, and less than that if you exclude the Reagan defense buildup of the 1980s that helped to win the Cold War and let Bill Clinton reduce defense spending to 3% of GDP in the 1990s. This means that one of every four dollars produced by the sweat of American private labor is now taxed and redistributed by 535 men and women in Congress.
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America: No Vacation Time For You | NEWS JUNKIE POST - 0 views

newsjunkiepost.com/...erica-no-vacation-time-for-you vacation america labor congrss
shared by Joseph Skues on 20 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • In the richest country in the world, there is no right to any vacation time
  • In most other wealthy nations, there are between 20-35 vacation days per year (4-7 weeks).
  • 1 in 4 private-sector workers in the US do not receive any paid vacation or paid holidays
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  • *The average paid vacation + paid holidays provided to U.S. workers in the private sector (15) is less than the minimum required by law in nearly every other rich country
  • 69% of low wage workers have vacation
  • 36% of part time workers have any paid vacation
  • The United States is the only advanced economy in the world that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation.
  • but most of the rest of the world’s rich countries offer between five and 13 paid holidays per year.
  • For example, the average lower-wage worker (less than $15 per hour) with a vacation benefit received only 10 days of paid vacation per year in 2005, compared to 14 days of paid vacation for higher-wage workers with paid vacations. If we look at all workers ? those who receive paid vacations and those who don’t ? the vacation gap between lower-wage and higher-wage workers is even larger: only 7 days for lower-wage workers, compared to 13 days for higher-wage workers.
  • we also note that several foreign countries offer additional time off for younger and older workers, shift workers, and those engaged in community service including jury duty.
  • Three countries even mandate that employers pay vacationing workers a small premium above their standard pay in order to help with vacation-related expenses
  • Our analysis does not cover paid leave for other reasons such as sick leave, parental leave, or leave to care for sick relatives.
  • Many of these countries have strong labor unions and the workers are more protected than in the U.S.”
  • Even Koreans who work hundreds of more hours per year than Americans average nearly twice the number of paid vacation days
  • On the other side of the scale, people in The Netherlands work hundreds of hours less per year than Americans,  and averaged 45 paid days off at one time (recent data not available).
  • One in six workers in the US are unable to take any vacation days for various reasons (usually due to workload), with some people going for years without taking their offered time off.
  • They calculate this to be worth $19.3 billion a year to their employers.
  • And 53% of respondents did not know that US employees receive considerably less annual vacation time than their counterparts in other industrialized countries.
  • The research firm Ipsos
  • lists the percentage of people in the following countries that used the full amount of their offered paid vacation time: France: 89 percent Argentina: 80 percent Hungary: 78 percent Britain: 77 percent Spain: 77 percent Saudi Arabia: 76 percent Germany: 75 percent Belgium: 74 percent Turkey: 74 percent Indonesia: 70 percent Mexico: 67 percent Russia: 67 percent Italy 66 percent Poland: 66 percent China: 65 percent Sweden: 63 percent Brazil: 59 percent India: 59 percent Canada: 58 percent United States: 57 percent South Korea: 53 percent Australia: 47 percent South Africa: 47 percent Japan: 33 percent Why the discrepancy?  Kathleen E. Christensen, the founder of the Workplace, Work Force and Working Families program at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and author of the book Workplace Flexibility: Realigning 20th-Century Jobs for a 21st-Century Workforce, states
  • A 2007 report by the World Tourism Organization cataloged a sampling of nations to compare and contrast figures of the average number of vacation days offered: Italy 42 days France 37 days Germany 35 days Brazil 34 days United Kingdom 28 days Canada 26 days Korea 25 days Japan 25 days U.S. 13 days
  • Ironic that the country with the largest economy and greatest wealth in the world does not require any vacation time for the workers who create the wealth with their labor.  When paid annual and holiday leave is offered, it is less than half of what most other countries receive, and of that almost half of Americans do not use all of their days.
  • addition to our finding that the United States is the only country in the group that does not require employers to provide paid vacation time, we also note that several foreign countries offer additional time off for younger and older workers, shift workers, and those engaged in community service including jury duty
  • addition to our finding that the United States is the only country in the group that does not require employers to provide paid vacation time, we also note that several foreign countries offer additional time off for younger and older workers, shift workers, and those engaged in community service including jury duty
  • n addition to our finding that the United States is the only country in the group that does not require employers to provide paid vacation time, we also note that several foreign countries offer additional time off for younger and older workers, shift workers, and those engaged in community service including jury duty.
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Wal-Mart CEO Vows To End Minimum Wage Pay In Future - Business Insider - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/mum-wage-pay-in-future-2014-10 economy WalMart minimum-wage
shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Wal-Mart Stores Inc plans to improve opportunities for its employees so that in the future there will no longer be a few thousand workers on its payroll making minimum wage, the chief executive of the world's top retailer said on Wednesday. The act of upgrading minimum wage positions would be largely a symbolic move for Wal-Mart. Currently only about 6,000 workers make the minimum out of its U.S. workforce of 1.3 million. Wal-Mart says its average full-time hourly wage is $12.92, compared with the federal minimum wage of $7.25. But the comments from CEO Douglas McMillon could draw some attention amid the contentious national debate over proposals to raise the minimum wage. Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the U.S. and a prime target of labor activists who say it doesn't pay workers a living wage.
  • "We only have a few thousand associates in the U.S., less than 6,000 of our 1.3 million associates in the U.S., that currently make a minimum wage and it is our intention over time that we will be in a situation where we don't pay minimum wage at all," McMillon told reporters on Wednesday when asked about the issue following an investor conference. McMillon said the move would be part of a larger effort to "invest in its associate base". It could also look at using promotions and bonus payments to improve opportunities for workers, he said. He didn't disclose further details. OUR Walmart, a workers' group that's been pushing for the retailer to pay higher wages, is organizing two rallies on Thursday - one in New York and one in Washington D.C. - to put a spotlight on the issue, a spokeswoman for the group said.
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Dec 14
     
    This latest bit of labor organization breaks with the past in that there has been no serious attempt at forming a union for WalMart employees. It's been a political campaign, joined by a one-day walkout of employees at fast-food chains also pushing for a $15 per hour payment floor. However it's done, the key to economic recovery in the U.S.is to reverse the deaces-old transfer of wealth from the lower classes to the oligarchs. The oligarchs will profit from that becauser the system is designed so that wealth bubbles up, not down.  When Americans have more money to spend, they will spend it, creating demand for goods and services. 
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Progressives: We've Never Heard Of This "Progressive" Group Backing Obama's Trade Deal ... - 0 views

www.buzzfeed.com/...of-this-progressive-group-back TPP trade-agreements lobbying faux-Progressive-groups Obama
shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • On Wednesday, progressives were surprised to learn they were “split” on President Obama’s trade agenda. Few issues have galvanized the American left like trade promotion authority, legislation that would pave the way for the administration to fast-track trade negotiations and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — the trade deal the Obama administration is working tirelessly to make a reality and many Democrats oppose. From senators to the activists that make up the organized left (trade unions, environmentalists, human rights advocates), progressives can’t stand the trade deal. Yet there it was in black and white: “RIFT AMONG PROGRESSIVES EMERGES ON TPP,” read a headline in Politico’s daily labor and employment tipsheet, Morning Shift. The short item detailed the emergence of the “Progressive Coalition for American Jobs ” — a group of “progressives and Democrats committed to leveling the playing field for American workers,” according to the coalition’s barebones website. The website adds that “it’s critical that we give the president trade promotion authority and establish the Trans-Pacific Partnership.”
  • There’s something weird about the group, though: No one in the Washington, D.C., progressive community seems to have ever heard of them before. “Who are they? Are they getting paid? And this group will convince anybody of what?” asked Sen. Sherrod Brown. “There is zero progressive interest in this [trade promotion authority].” The group’s website provides few details about when the coalition was launched or who’s working for the group. But the team behind the Progressive Coalition for American Jobs includes some of the most senior members of Obama’s campaign team. Lefty site Daily Kos reported Mitch Stewart, the former aide the president tapped to run Organizing For America, and Lynda Tran, the former OFA press secretary are involved. A press release earlier in the week announcing the group came from 270 Strategies, the campaign firm started by Stewart and Obama’s former field director, Jeremy Bird. Tran told BuzzFeed News the purpose of the group was to boost liberal voices who support the Obama trade agenda.
  • While there is Democratic support for increasing free trade and the White House has made an effort to placate progressives, arguing any deal will include tough language supporting labor rights and environmental protections, that message hasn’t landed with the left. The Progressive Caucus in the House has released their own set of trade principles arguing that they believe it’s “possible to negotiate a trade agreement that doesn’t replicate the mistakes of the past.” But as it currently stands, House progressives remain diametrically opposed to Obama’s trade agenda. “If you look at the progressives — labor unions, activists, online organizations — who are lined up against the TPP, there are no credible groups left to build a ‘coalition,’” said an aide to a progressive House member, who wasn’t authorized to speak on the record. “The creation of a front group like PCAJ is a sign people pushing for a bad trade deal don’t have the votes to jam the [trade deal] through Congress.”
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  • A senior Democratic leadership aide told BuzzFeed News that the emergence of a group like the Progressive Coalition For American Jobs would bring “some modicum of balance” to the public discussion of the trade negotiations. “I do think it’s helpful to have an outside space for this to happen and for progressives to have a more balanced conversation about this,” the aide said. That’s not how everyone feels, however. With the emergence of the Progressive Coalition For American Jobs, some progressives got the feeling Obama’s allies were trying to flip the script. “It’s insulting,” said Candice Johnson, spokesperson for the Communications Workers of America, one of the many unions organized against TPP. “You put progressive in your name and that’s going to convince people?” She called the group “fake,” noting that it includes none of the biggest names in progressive politics in its coalition. Johnson wasn’t alone in that characterization. “As far as I know, the only thing ‘progressive’ about this so called ‘Progressive Coalition for American Jobs’ is the first word of the group’s name,” said Becky Bond, president of CREDO, the San Francisco-based progressive activist known to tangle publicly with the White House.
  • “At this point, 270 strategies is well known for its AstroTurf efforts to slap a progressive label on the endeavors of Wall Street Wing Democrats and their corporate masters, but this is an earth-shattering new low,” Neil Sroka, spokesperson for Democracy For America, the progressive group formed from the remnants of Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential bid, told BuzzFeed News in an email. “You can be a progressive committed to fighting for working families or you can be for this massive job-killing trade deal written by 500 corporate reps, but you can’t be both.”
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Virtual Economy's Phantom Job Gains Are Based on Statistical Fraud. And More Fraud Is i... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5390330 banksters oligarchy employment stats
shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Washington can’t stop lying.  Don’t be convinced by last Thursday’s job report that it is your fault if you don’t have a job. Those 288,000 jobs and 6.1% unemployment rate are more fiction than reality.  In his analysis of the June Labor Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, John Williams (www.ShadowStats.com) wrote that the 288,000 June jobs and 6.1% unemployment rate  are “far removed from common experience and underlying reality.” Payrolls were overstated by “massive, hidden shifts in seasonal adjustments,” and the Birth-Death model added the usual phantom jobs.  Williams reports that “the seasonal factors are changed each and every month as part of the concurrent seasonal-adjustment process, which is tantamount to a fraud,” as the changes in the seasonal factors can inflate the jobs number.  While the headline numbers always are on a new basis, the prior reporting is not revised so as to be consistent.
  • The monthly unemployment rates are not comparable, so one doesn’t know whether the official U.3 rate (the headline rate that the financial press reports) went up or down. Moreover, the rate does not count discouraged workers who, unable to find a job, cease looking. To be counted among the U.3 unemployed, the person must have actively looked for work during the four weeks prior to the survey. The U.3 rate automatically declines as people who have been unable to find jobs cease trying to find one and thereby cease to be counted as unemployed. There is a second official measure of unemployment that includes people who have been discouraged for less than one year. That rate, known as U.6, is seldom reported and is double the 6.1% rate. Since 1994 there has been no official measure than includes discouraged people who have not looked for a job for more than a year. Including all discouraged workers produces an unemployment rate that currently stands at 23.1%, almost four times the rate that the financial press reports.
  • What you can take away from this is the opposite of what the presstitute media would have you believe.  The measured rate of unemployment can decline simply because large numbers of the unemployed become discouraged workers, cease looking for work, and cease to be counted in the U.3 and U.6 measures of the unemployment rate.   The decline in the employment-population ratio from 63% prior to the 2008 downturn to 59% today reflects the growth in discouraged workers.  Indeed, the ratio has not recovered its previous level during the alleged recovery, an indication that the recovery is an illusion created by the understated measure of inflation that is used to deflate nominal GDP growth.
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  • Insurance (most likely the paperwork of Obamacare) contributed 8,500 jobs. As so few can purchase homes, “real estate rental and leasing” contributed 8,500 jobs. Professional and business services contributed 67,000 jobs, but 57% of these jobs were in employment services, temporary help services, and services to buildings and dwellings.   That old standby, education and health services, accounted for 33,700 jobs consisting mainly of ambulatory health care services jobs and social assistance jobs of which three-quarters are in child day care services.   The other old standby, waitresses and bartenders, gave us 32,800 jobs, and amusements, gambling, and recreation gave us 3,500 jobs.
  • In other words, the economy did not gain 288,000 new jobs last month.   But let’s assume the economy did gain 288,000 jobs and exam where the claimed jobs are reported to be. Of the alleged 288,000 new jobs, 16,000, or 5.5 percent are in manufacturing, which is not very promising for engineers and blue collar workers.  Growth in goods producing jobs has almost disappeared from the US economy.  As explained below, to alter this problem the government is going to change definitions in order to artificially inflate manufacturing jobs. In June private services account for 82 percent of the supposed new jobs.  The jobs are found mainly in non-tradable domestic services that pay little and cannot be exported to help to close the large US trade deficit. Wholesale and retail trade account for 55,300 jobs.  Do you believe sales are this strong  when retailers are closing stores and when shopping malls are closing?
  • Another indication that there has been no recovery is that Sentier Research’s index of real median household income continued to decline for two years after the alleged recovery began in June 2009.   There has been a slight upturn in real median household income since June 2011, but income remains far below the pre-recession level.   The Birth-Death model adds an average of 62,000 jobs to the reported payroll jobs numbers each month. This arbitrary boost to the payroll jobs numbers is in addition to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ underlying assumption that unreported jobs lost to business failures are matched by unreported new jobs from new business startups, an assumption that does not well fit an economy that fell into recession and is unable to recover.   John Williams concludes that in current BLS reporting, “the aggregate average overstatement of employment change easily exceeds 200,000 jobs per month.”
  • Local government, principally education, gave us 22,000 jobs.   So, where are the jobs for university graduates?  They are practically non-existent. Think of all the MBAs, but June had only 2,300 jobs for management of companies and enterprises. Think of the struggle to get into law and medical schools.  There’s no job payoff. June had jobs for 1,200 in legal services, which includes receptionists and para-legals.  Where are all the law school graduates finding jobs? Offices of physicians (mainly people who fill out the mandated paperwork and comply with all the regulations, which have multiplied under ObamaCare) hired 4,000 people.  Outpatient care centers hired 700 people.  Nursing care facilities hired 2,400 people.  So where are the jobs for the medical school graduates? Aside from all the exaggerations in the jobs numbers of which ShadowStats.com has informed us, just taking the jobs as reported, what kind of economy do these jobs indicate:  a superpower whose pretensions are to exercise hegemony over the world or an economy in which opportunities are disappearing and incomes are falling?
  • Do you think that this jobs picture would be the same if the government in Washington cared about you instead of the mega-rich? Some interesting numbers can be calculated from table A.9 in the BLS press release.  John Williams advises that the BLS is inconsistent in the methods it uses to tabulate the data in table A.9 and that the data is also afflicted by seasonal adjustment problems.  However, as the unemployment rate and payroll jobs are reported regardless of their problems, we can also report the BLS finding that in June 523,000 full-time jobs disappeared and 800,000 part time jobs appeared. Here, perhaps, we have yet another downside of the misnamed Obama “Affordable Care Act.”  Employers are terminating full-time employment and replacing the jobs with part-time employment in order to come in under the 50-person full time employment that makes employers responsible for fringe benefits such as health care. Americans are already experiencing difficulties making ends meet, despite the alleged “recovery.”  If yet another half million Americans have been forced onto part-time pay with consequent loss of health care and other benefits, consumer demand is further compressed, with the consequence, unless hidden by statistical trickery, of a 2nd quarter negative GDP and thus officially the reappearance of recession.
  • What will the government do if a recession cannot be hidden?  If years of unprecedented money printing and Keynesian fiscal deficits have not brought recovery, what will bring recovery?  How far down will US living standards fall for the 99% in order that the 1% can become ever more mega-rich while Washington wastes our diminishing substance exercising hegemony over the world? Just as Washington lied to you about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Waco, and any number of false flag or nonexistent attacks such as Tonkin Gulf, Washington lies to you about jobs and economic recovery.  Don’t believe the spin that you are unemployed because you are shiftless and prefer government handouts to work.  The government does not want you to know that you are unemployed because the corporations offshored American jobs to foreigners and because economic policy only serves the oversized banks and the one percent. Just as the jobs and inflation numbers are rigged and the financial markets are rigged, the corrupt Obama regime is now planning to rig US manufacturing and trade statistics in order to bury all evidence of offshoring’s adverse impact on our economy.
  • The federal governments Economic Classification Policy Committee has come up with a proposal to redefine fact as fantasy in order to hide offshoring’s contribution to the US trade deficit, artificially inflate the number of US manufacturing jobs, and redefine foreign-made manufactured products as US manufactured products.  For example, Apple iPhones made in China and sold in Europe would be reported as a US export of manufactured goods. Read Ben Beachy’s important report on this blatant statistical fraud in CounterPunch’s July 4th weekend edition: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/04/we-didnt-offshore-manufacturing/ China will not agree that the Apple brand name means that the phones are not Chinese production. If the Obama regime succeeds with this fraud, the iPhones would be counted twice, once by China and once by the US, and the double-counting would exaggerate world GDP. For years I have exposed the absurd claim that offshoring is merely the operation of free trade, and I have exposed the incompetent studies by such as Michael Porter at Harvard and Matthew Slaughter at Dartmouth that claimed to prove that the US was benefitting from offshoring its manufacturing.  My book published in 2012 in Germany and in 2013 in the US, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, proves that offshoring has dismantled the ladders of upward mobility that made the US an opportunity society and is responsible for the decline in US economic growth. The lost jobs and decline in the middle class has contributed to the rise in income inequality, the destruction of tax base for cities and states, and loss of population in America’s once great manufacturing centers.
  • For the most part economists have turned a blind eye. Economists serve the globalists.  It pays them well. The corruption in present-day America is total. Psychologists and anthropologists serve war and torture. Economists serve globalism and US financial hegemony. Physicists and chemists serve the war industries. Physicists and computer geeks serve NSA. The media serves the government and the corporations. The political parties serve the six powerful private interest groups that rule the country. No one serves truth and liberty. I predict that within ten years truth and liberty will be forbidden words uttered only by “domestic extremists” who are a threat that must be exterminated without due process of law. America has left us.  We now have the tyranny of the Orwellian state that rules, not by the ballot box and Constitution, but by force and propaganda.
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Speaker Ryan: Not enough votes for TPP trade deal - CBS News - 0 views

www.cbsnews.com/...nough-votes-for-tpp-trade-deal trade-agreements TPP Congress votes
shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, said Thursday that the landmark Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal doesn't have enough votes to pass Congress right now."I don't think the votes are there right now because of the concerns about what's in the TPP," Ryan told reporters at his weekly press conference. "The point is we shouldn't bring something up if we're not confident that we have the support there for it so I think the president and the administration has a lot more work to do to get support for this document because there are some legitimate concerns about it."
  • The president formally signed the deal on February 3, calling it a "forward-looking trade deal that sets new, high standards for trade and investment in one of the world's fastest growing and most important regions." He highlighted the deal's elimination of more than 18,000 taxes that various countries levy on American products, said it promotes a "free and open Internet" and includes "the strongest labor standards and environmental commitments in history."But there are still major concerns about the deal inside and out of Congress, including a carve-out that will prevent tobacco companies from suing nations with regulations aimed at reducing smoking, intellectual property issues relating to biologics, and some provisions dealing with dairy and financial services. There are also still major concerns among labor groups about whether the labor standards are up to snuff.Mr. Obama broke with many members of his own party this year when he asked Congress for authority to fast-track a massive Asia-Pacific free trade deal called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
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Japanese Gov admits "One" Fukushima Cleanup Worker contracted Cancer | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...eanup-worker-contracted-cancer environment Fukushima cover-up deaths
shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The Japanese Labor Ministry announced that it has recognized that one Fukushima cleanup worker has contracted cancer. Some 44,000 workers have participated in the cleanup after the nuclear disaster in 2011. Most of the workers’ health history is undocumented while the government cracks down on journalists who document the government’s and Fukushima Daiichi operator TEPCO’s cover-up of the impact on workers’ health.
  • Some 44,000 workers have participated in the cleanup operation at the crippled Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Power plant since the plant was struck by three reactor core meltdowns, spent fuel fires, and the distribution of highly radioactive spent fuel rods and pellets during an explosion. The vast majority of the cleanup workers belong to socio-economically underprivileged strata of Japan’s society, including long-term unemployed and the homeless. Fukushima Daiichi operator TEPCO has been criticized for outsourcing the recruitment of cleanup workers to sub-contractors with ties to Japan’s organized crime network, the Yakuza. While the Labor Ministry’s admission that one cleanup worker contracted leukemia due to exposure to radioactive nucleides during his work at the disaster site may seem like “progress”, it merely covers the tip of an iceberg. Several factors contribute to what amounts to a systematic cover-up of the true impact on the health of cleanup workers. For one, there is Japanese legislation that threatens anyone, including journalists who disclose unauthorized information about the disaster and its detrimental health and environmental impact with up to ten years imprisonment.
  • Another factor is the systematic intimidation and threats against investigative journalists by the Japanese government, Japanese police, TEPCO, as well as by organized crime networks. One example is the case of independent journalist Mako Oshidori who interviewed and documented the cases of numerous cleanup workers. In 2014 Mako reported that she discovered a TEPCO memo, in which the Fukushima Daiichi operator TEPCO instructs officials to “cut Mako-chan’s (questions) short, appropriately”. Mako Oshidori was enrolled in the School of Life Sciences at Tottori University Faculty of Medicine for three years. Mako revealed that TEPCO and the government cover-up the death of Fukusjima workers and that government agents began following her around after she began investigating the cover-up.
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  • “As of now, there are multiple NPP workers who have died, but only the ones who died on the job are reported publicly. Some of them have died suddenly while off work, for instance, during the weekend or in their sleep, but none of their deaths are reported. … “Not only that, they are not included in the worker death count. For example, there are some workers who quit the job after a lot of radiation exposure, such as 50, 60 to 70 mili Sieverts, and end up dying a month later, but none of these deaths are either reported, or included in the death toll. This is the reality of the NPP workers”.
  • The Labor Ministry’s admission that “one cleanup worker contacted cancer” can, arguably, be perceived as nothing but a continuum of the cover-up of hard scientific data, the prevention of independent studies and the intimidation and criminalization of journalists who could disclose that thousands of Fukushima cleanup workers have fallen critically ill and/or have died.
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The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means and how to respond - Agenda - The World... - 0 views

agenda.weforum.org/...at-it-means-and-how-to-respond
shared by Gary Edwards on 26 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanize production. The Second used electric power to create mass production. The Third used electronics and information technology to automate production. Now a Fourth Industrial Revolution is building on the Third, the digital revolution that has been occurring since the middle of the last century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.
  • Like the revolutions that preceded it, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has the potential to raise global income levels and improve the quality of life for populations around the world. To date, those who have gained the most from it have been consumers able to afford and access the digital world; technology has made possible new products and services that increase the efficiency and pleasure of our personal lives. Ordering a cab, booking a flight, buying a product, making a payment, listening to music, watching a film, or playing a game—any of these can now be done remotely.
  • In the future, technological innovation will also lead to a supply-side miracle, with long-term gains in efficiency and productivity. Transportation and communication costs will drop, logistics and global supply chains will become more effective, and the cost of trade will diminish, all of which will open new markets and drive economic growth.
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  • As automation substitutes for labor across the entire economy, the net displacement of workers by machines might exacerbate the gap between returns to capital and returns to labor. On the other hand, it is also possible that the displacement of workers by technology will, in aggregate, result in a net increase in safe and rewarding jobs.
  • I am convinced of one thing—that in the future, talent, more than capital, will represent the critical factor of production.
  • This will give rise to a job market increasingly segregated into “low-skill/low-pay” and “high-skill/high-pay” segments, which in turn will lead to an increase in social tensions.
  • In addition to being a key economic concern, inequality represents the greatest societal concern associated with the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
  • The largest beneficiaries of innovation tend to be the providers of intellectual and physical capital—the innovators, shareholders, and investors—which explains the rising gap in wealth between those dependent on capital versus labor.
  • Technology is therefore one of the main reasons why incomes have stagnated, or even decreased, for a majority of the population in high-income countries: the demand for highly skilled workers has increased while the demand for workers with less education and lower skills has decreased. The result is a job market with a strong demand at the high and low ends, but a hollowing out of the middle.
  • A winner-takes-all economy that offers only limited access to the middle class is a recipe for democratic malaise and dereliction.
  • An underlying theme in my conversations with global CEOs and senior business executives is that the acceleration of innovation and the velocity of disruption are hard to comprehend or anticipate and that these drivers constitute a source of constant surprise, even for the best connected and most well informed. Indeed, across all industries, there is clear evidence that the technologies that underpin the Fourth Industrial Revolution are having a major impact on businesses.
  • On the supply side, many industries are seeing the introduction of new technologies that create entirely new ways of serving existing needs and significantly disrupt existing industry value chains. Disruption is also flowing from agile, innovative competitors who, thanks to access to global digital platforms for research, development, marketing, sales, and distribution, can oust well-established incumbents faster than ever by improving the quality, speed, or price at which value is delivered.
  • Major shifts on the demand side are also occurring, as growing transparency, consumer engagement, and new patterns of consumer behavior (increasingly built upon access to mobile networks and data) force companies to adapt the way they design, market, and deliver products and services.
  • A key trend is the development of technology-enabled platforms that combine both demand and supply to disrupt existing industry structures, such as those we see within the “sharing” or “on demand” economy. These technology platforms, rendered easy to use by the smartphone, convene people, assets, and data—thus creating entirely new ways of consuming goods and services in the process. In addition, they lower the barriers for businesses and individuals to create wealth, altering the personal and professional environments of workers. These new platform businesses are rapidly multiplying into many new services, ranging from laundry to shopping, from chores to parking, from massages to travel.
  • On the whole, there are four main effects that the Fourth Industrial Revolution has on business—on customer expectations, on product enhancement, on collaborative innovation, and on organizational forms.
  • Overall, the inexorable shift from simple digitization (the Third Industrial Revolution) to innovation based on combinations of technologies (the Fourth Industrial Revolution) is forcing companies to reexamine the way they do business. The bottom line, however, is the same: business leaders and senior executives need to understand their changing environment, challenge the assumptions of their operating teams, and relentlessly and continuously innovate.
  • governments will increasingly face pressure to change their current approach to public engagement and policymaking, as their central role of conducting policy diminishes owing to new sources of competition and the redistribution and decentralization of power that new technologies make possible.
  • Ultimately, the ability of government systems and public authorities to adapt will determine their survival. If they prove capable of embracing a world of disruptive change, subjecting their structures to the levels of transparency and efficiency that will enable them to maintain their competitive edge, they will endure. If they cannot evolve, they will face increasing trouble.
  • In the end, it all comes down to people and values. We need to shape a future that works for all of us by putting people first and empowering them. In its most pessimistic, dehumanized form, the Fourth Industrial Revolution may indeed have the potential to “robotize” humanity and thus to deprive us of our heart and soul. But as a complement to the best parts of human nature—creativity, empathy, stewardship—it can also lift humanity into a new collective and moral consciousness based on a shared sense of destiny. It is incumbent on us all to make sure the latter prevails.
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The REAL Reason Trump Fired Comey - (Worse Than You Think) | StormCloudsGathering - 0 views

stormcloudsgathering.com/why-trump-fired-comey corruption Trump Epstein Lolita-Express
shared by Paul Merrell on 12 May 17 - No Cached
  • Trump is dirty, he’s fully compromised, but not in the way most of his critics assume. Both Trump and Bill Clinton were frequent fliers aboard the Lolita Express with Jeffery Epstein. Epstein is the billionaire pedophile who got busted running an elite child prostitution ring. Victims testified that Epstein had them sleep with rich and powerful men from around the world. They also said that he directed them to collect information on these men. He referred to this as “investing in people”.
  • f this deal: Prosecutors agreed not to bring far more serious federal charges against Epstein, and not to charge “potential co-conspirators”, including four named individuals. From the Guardian Trump’s name came up several times in this case, and in a separate criminal complaint which accused both Epstein and Trump of raping a minor.
  • The judge that let Epstein off with a slap on the wrist and protected the other predators was a man named Alexander Acosta. That would be the same Alexander Acosta that Trump nominated as Labor Secretary. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. Trump has tried to pretend that he hardly knew Epstein, but he made the following quote in an interview in 2002: “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it – Jeffrey enjoys his social life.” Trump in 2002
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  • Now Mr. Comey did behave in a bizarre fashion during the Election. We won’t dive into the details here (lots of wedge issues there). But if you look at that story again in the context of a network of compromised politicians, royalty and ceo’s, one could make the case that it played out something like this: Comey was ordered to stand down. He resisted at first. He saw evidence of corruption. So levers were pulled. Bill Clinton’s conversation with Loretta Lynch on the tarmac was part of this, but we’ll probably never know the full extent. Everyone has skeletons in their closets. Very few have the integrity to do what’s right when facing total ruin.
  • Comey capitulated, but not before he demonstrated that he has a disobedient streak. This combined with the fact that he presided over the FBI during the investigation into the Lolita Express and therefore has access to information that could destroy Trump, Clinton and ultimately a whole gaggle of well placed puppets makes him a liability. Trump’s handlers want Comey replaced with someone who is compromised, and compliant, with a spotless public image.
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SP leader Ainuddin Ahmed presented the example of humanity, like a meal for hungry labo... - 0 views

polkholkhabrai.com/?p=2691 WordPress
shared by shiraj786 on 01 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • shiraj786 on 01 Jun 20
     
    SP leader Ainuddin Ahmed presented the example of humanity, like a meal for hungry laborers
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Do You Live In A Death Spiral State? - Forbes - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...u-live-in-a-death-spiral-state William-Baldwin Forbes Death-Spiral-States
shared by Gary Edwards on 27 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 27 Nov 12
     
    Takers vs. Makers.  It all comes down to that ratio.  Incredibly, California is not at the top of high risk States!  New Mexico holds that honor. excerpt: Don't buy a house in a state where private sector workers are outnumbered by folks dependent on government. Thinking about buying a house? Or a municipal bond? Be careful where you put your capital. Don't put it in a state at high risk of a fiscal tailspin. Eleven states make our list of danger spots for investors. They can look forward to a rising tax burden, deteriorating state finances and an exodus of employers. The list includes California, New York, Illinois and Ohio, along with some smaller states like New Mexico and Hawaii. "Ranked on the taker/maker ratio, our 11 death spiral states range from New Mexico, with 1.53 takers for every maker, down to Ohio, with a 1-to-1 ratio. The taker count is the number of state and local government workers plus the number of people on Medicaid plus 1 for each $100,000 of unfunded pension liabilities. Sources: the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and a study of state worker pensions done in 2009 by two academics, Joshua Rauh and Rovert Novy-Marx. Professor Rauh estimates that the shortage in pension funding is on average a third higher today. The second element in the death spiral list is a scorecard of state credit-worthiness done by Conning & Co., a money manager known for its measures of risk in insurance company portfolios. Conning's analysis focuses more on dollars than body counts. Its formula downgrades states for large debts, an uncompetitive business climate, weak home prices and bad trends in employment."
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Paul Craig Roberts: Our Collapsing Economy and Currency - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33198.htm war & peace economy currency financial-collapse
shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Is the “fiscal cliff” real or just another hoax? The answer is that the fiscal cliff is real, but it is a result, not a cause. The hoax is the way the fiscal cliff is being used. The fiscal cliff is the result of the inability to close the federal budget deficit. The budget deficit cannot be closed because large numbers of US middle class jobs and the GDP and tax base associated with them have been moved offshore, thus reducing federal revenues. The fiscal cliff cannot be closed because of the unfunded liabilities of eleven years of US-initiated wars against a half dozen Muslim countries--wars that have benefitted only the profits of the military/security complex and the territorial ambitions of Israel. The budget deficit cannot be closed, because economic policy is focused only on saving banks that wrongful financial deregulation allowed to speculate, to merge, and to become too big to fail, thus requiring public subsidies that vastly dwarf the totality of US welfare spending.
  • The real crisis facing the US is the impending collapse of the US dollar’s foreign exchange value. The US dollar’s value in relation to silver and gold has already collapsed. In the past ten years, gold’s price in US dollars has increased from $250 per ounce to $1,750 per ounce, an increase of $1,500. Silver’s price has risen from $4 per ounce to $34 per ounce. These price rises are not due to a sudden scarcity of gold and silver, but to a flight from the dollar into the two forms of historical money that cannot be created with the printing press.
  • What can be done? For a number of years I have pointed out that the problem is the loss of US employment, consumer income, GDP, and tax base to offshoring. The solution is to reverse the outward flow of jobs and to bring them back to the US. This can be done, as Ralph Gomory has made clear, by taxing corporations according to where they add value to their product. If the value is added abroad, corporations would have a high tax rate. If they add value domestically with US labor, they would face a low tax rate. The difference in tax rates can be calculated to offset the benefit of the lower cost of foreign labor. As all offshored production that is brought to the US to be marketed to Americans counts as imports, relocating the production in the US would decrease the trade deficit, thus strengthening belief in the dollar. The increase in US consumer incomes would raise tax revenues, thus lowering the budget deficit. It is a win-win solution.
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  • The second part to the solution is to end the expensive unfunded wars that have ruined the federal budget for the past 11 years as well as future budgets due to the cost of veterans’ hospital care and benefits. According to ABC World News, “In the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, 2,333,972 American military personnel have been deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan or both, as of Aug. 30, 2011 [more than a year ago].” These 2.3 million veterans have rights to various unfunded benefits including life-long health care. Already, according to ABC, 711,986 have used Veterans Administration health care between fiscal year 2002 and the third-quarter of fiscal year 2011. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-veterans-numbers/story?id=14928136#1 The Republicans are determined to continue the gratuitous wars and to make the 99 percent pay for the neoconservatives’ Wars of Hegemony while protecting the 1 percent from tax increases. The Democrats are little different.
  • No one in the White House and no more than one dozen members of the 535 member US Congress represents the American people. This is the reason that despite obvious remedies nothing can be done. America is going to crash big time. And the rest of the world will be thankful. America along with Israel is the world’s most hated country. Don’t expect any foreign bailouts of the failed “superpower.”
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The Daily Bell - Thomas DiLorenzo: More on the Myth of Lincoln, Secession and the 'Civi... - 1 views

www.thedailybell.com/...ln-Secession-and-the-Civil-War Lincoln Thomas-DiLorenzo
shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The state cannot tell the people that it is bankrupting them and sending their sons and daughters to die by the thousands in aggressive and unconstitutional wars so that crony capitalism can be imposed at gunpoint in foreign countries, and so that the military-industrial complex can continue to rake in billions. That might risk a revolution. So instead, they have to use the happy talk of American virtue and American exceptionalism, the "god" of democracy," etc.
  • Specifically, he repeated the "All Men are Created Equal" line from the Gettysburg Address to make the case that it is somehow the duty of Americans to force "freedom" on all men and women everywhere, all around the globe, at gunpoint if need be. This is the murderous, bankrupting, imperialistic game that Lincoln mythology is used to "justify."
  • Lincoln spent his entire life in politics, from 1832 until his dying day, as a lobbyist for the American banking industry and the Northern manufacturing corporations that wanted cheaper credit funded by a government-run bank.
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  • No member of the Whig Party was more in bed with the American banking establishment than Lincoln was, according to University of Virginia historian Michael Holt in his book on the history of the American Whig party.
  • Bank of the United States
  • The Whig Party "had no platform to announce," Masters wrote, "because its principles were plunder and nothing else." Lincoln himself once said that he got ALL of his political ideas from Henry Clay, the icon and longtime leader of the Whig Party.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 02 Jun 13
       
      Nice insult.  But watch how the interviewer responds; "Thanks for the insight".  These guys are funny!
  • I don't usually answer "when did you stop beating your wife"-type questions since they always come from people with I.Q.s in the single digits.
  • Thanks for the insights
  • War is always destructive to a nation's economy regardless of whether it wins or loses the war.
  • War is the opposite of capitalism.
  • Capitalism is a system of peaceful, mutually-advantageous exchanges at market prices based on the international division of labor.
  • War destroys the international division of labor and diverts resources from peaceful, capitalistic exchange to death and destruction.
  • However, there are always war profiteers – the people who profit from selling and financing the military. One doesn't need to invent a conspiracy theory about this: War profiteering is war profiteering and has always existed as an essential feature of all wars.
  • "American exceptionalism" did not become a tool of American imperialism until AFTER the Civil War.
  • British intellectuals like Lord Acton understood and wrote about how the result of the war would be a US government that would become more tyrannical and imperialistic.
  • Knights of the Golden Circle
  • Davis was not a dictator. He had a lot of help losing the war, especially from his generals who insisted on the Napoleonic battlefield tactics they were taught at West Point and which had become defunct because of the advent of more deadly military technology by the middle of the nineteenth century.
  • One of his biggest failures was waiting until the last year of the war to finally do what General Robert E. Lee had been arguing from the beginning – offering the slaves freedom in return for fighting with the Confederate Army in defense of their country.
  • eaceful secession is the only way out of the new slavery for the average American, and it will only happen if we have a president who is more like Gorbachev than Lincoln.
  • The union of the founders was voluntary, and several states reserved the right to withdraw from the union in the future if it became destructive of their rights. Since each state has equal rights in the union, this became true for all states.
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Jun 13
     
    Thank you Thomas DiLorenzo for having the courage to set the record straight.  IMHO, Lincoln should be remembered for freeing the slaves and standing up to the International Bankster Cartel and Wall Street.  But what he did to the USA Constitution and the Bill of Rights was an unprecedented assault on individual liberty.  Good thing the guy could write beautifully on liberty and freedom because his actions amounted to a historic assault on everything the founding fathers held near and dear. excerpt:    "confronting academic "Lincoln revisionism." "Who was Lincoln really and why have you spent so much of your career trying to return Lincoln's academic profile to reality? Thomas DiLorenzo: Lincoln mythology is the ideological cornerstone of American statism. He was in reality the most hated of all American presidents during his lifetime according to an excellent book by historian Larry Tagg entitled The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln: America's Most Reviled President. He was so hated in the North that the New York Times editorialized a wish that he would be assassinated. This is perfectly understandable: He illegally suspended Habeas Corpus and imprisoned tens of thousands of Northern political critics without due process; shut down over 300 opposition newspapers; committed treason by invading the Southern states (Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution defines treason as "only levying war upon the states" or "giving aid and comfort to their enemies," which of course is exactly what Lincoln did). He enforced military conscription with the murder of hundreds of New York City draft protesters in 1863 and with the mass execution of deserters from his army. He deported a congressional critic (Democratic Congressman Clement Vallandigham of Ohio); confiscated firearms; and issued an arrest warrant for the Chief Justice when the jurist issued an opinion that only Congress could legally suspend Habeas Corpus. He waged an unnecessary war (all other countries ended slavery
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Tocqueville's Warning to America: The Dangers of Despotism - 0 views

www.breitbart.com/...erica-The-Dangers-of-Despotism Alexis-de-Tocqueville freedom-liberty
shared by Gary Edwards on 04 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 04 Jul 13
     
    "The words of Alexis de Tocqueville in Book Four, Chapter VI of Democracy America are particularly poignant: I had remarked during my stay in the United States, that a democratic state of society, similar to that of the Americans, might offer singular facilities for the establishment of despotism... I think, then, that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything which ever before existed in the world: our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. I seek in vain for an expression which will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it, the old words despotism and tyranny are inappropriate: the thing itself is new, and since I cannot name, I must attempt to define it. I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest,--his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind; as for the rest of his fellow-citizens, he is close to them, but he sees them not;--he touches them, but he feels them not; he exists but in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country. Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their gate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly la
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Jul 13
     
    "An elective despotism was not the government we fought for." - James Madison
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Freedom to Fascism - the movie - 0 views

freedomtofascism.com Freedom-to-Fascism Aaron-Russo
shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Jul 13 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Jul 13
     
    "Are you aware the money in your pocket is printed by a private bank? Are you aware the REAL ID law will require you to carry a national identification card? Are you aware that there are plans being developed to have all Americans embedded with a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) computer chip under their skin so they can be tracked wherever they go? Are you aware the Supreme Court has ruled that the government has no authority to impose a direct unapportioned tax on the labor of the American people, and the 16th Amendment does not give the government that power? Are you aware that computer voting machines can be rigged and there is no way to ensure that vote is counted Our Friend and Hero, Aaron Russo Has Passed Esteemed filmmaker, ardent activist and loyal patriot Aaron Russo lost his battle to cancer on August 24, 2007 at the age of 64. Aaron will be profoundly missed but always remembered. He was a husband, father, friend, mentor, and inspiration to many. Aaron's long list of achievements includes his work in the areas of filmmaking and political activism. His documentary film, "America: From Freedom to Fascism", debunked the justification of both the IRS and the Federal Reserve as well as exposed their crooked basis. This movie received widespread acclaim, including opening to standing ovations at the Cannes Film Festival. Congressman Ron Paul was also featured in the documentary, in which he presents his views on the economy and the Federal Reserve. Aaron's work in the realm of activism proved to be invaluable and selfless. He will be perpetually revered as a true patriot and tireless fighter for our freedom. We must continue to venerate Aaron's legacy as we move forward by honoring his great words: "There are no boundaries one must adhere to when preserving one's liberty"."
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President Xi's speech to Davos in full | World Economic Forum - 0 views

www.weforum.org/...te-at-the-world-economic-forum globalization China Xi Davos speech must-read
shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” These are the words used by the English writer Charles Dickens to describe the world after the Industrial Revolution. Today, we also live in a world of contradictions. On the one hand, with growing material wealth and advances in science and technology, human civilization has developed as never before. On the other hand, frequent regional conflicts, global challenges like terrorism and refugees, as well as poverty, unemployment and widening income gap have all added to the uncertainties of the world. Many people feel bewildered and wonder: What has gone wrong with the world? To answer this question, one must first track the source of the problem. Some blame economic globalization for the chaos in the world. Economic globalization was once viewed as the treasure cave found by Ali Baba in The Arabian Nights, but it has now become the Pandora’s box in the eyes of many. The international community finds itself in a heated debate on economic globalization.
  • Today, I wish to address the global economy in the context of economic globalization. The point I want to make is that many of the problems troubling the world are not caused by economic globalization. For instance, the refugee waves from the Middle East and North Africa in recent years have become a global concern. Several million people have been displaced, and some small children lost their lives while crossing the rough sea. This is indeed heartbreaking. It is war, conflict and regional turbulence that have created this problem, and its solution lies in making peace, promoting reconciliation and restoring stability. The international financial crisis is another example. It is not an inevitable outcome of economic globalization; rather, it is the consequence of excessive chase of profit by financial capital and grave failure of financial regulation. Just blaming economic globalization for the world’s problems is inconsistent with reality, and it will not help solve the problems.
  • But we should also recognize that economic globalization is a double-edged sword. When the global economy is under downward pressure, it is hard to make the cake of global economy bigger. It may even shrink, which will strain the relations between growth and distribution, between capital and labor, and between efficiency and equity. Both developed and developing countries have felt the punch. Voices against globalization have laid bare pitfalls in the process of economic globalization that we need to take seriously. As a line in an old Chinese poem goes, “Honey melons hang on bitter vines; sweet dates grow on thistles and thorns.” In a philosophical sense, nothing is perfect in the world. One would fail to see the full picture if he claims something is perfect because of its merits, or if he views something as useless just because of its defects. It is true that economic globalization has created new problems, but this is no justification to write economic globalization off completely. Rather, we should adapt to and guide economic globalization, cushion its negative impact, and deliver its benefits to all countries and all nations.
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  • Whether you like it or not, the global economy is the big ocean that you cannot escape from. Any attempt to cut off the flow of capital, technologies, products, industries and people between economies, and channel the waters in the ocean back into isolated lakes and creeks is simply not possible. Indeed, it runs counter to the historical trend.
  • First, lack of robust driving forces for global growth makes it difficult to sustain the steady growth of the global economy. The growth of the global economy is now at its slowest pace in seven years. Growth of global trade has been slower than global GDP growth. Short-term policy stimuli are ineffective. Fundamental structural reform is just unfolding. The global economy is now in a period of moving toward new growth drivers, and the role of traditional engines to drive growth has weakened. Despite the emergence of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and 3-D printing, new sources of growth are yet to emerge. A new path for the global economy remains elusive. Second, inadequate global economic governance makes it difficult to adapt to new developments in the global economy. Madame Christine Lagarde recently told me that emerging markets and developing countries already contribute to 80 percent of the growth of the global economy. The global economic landscape has changed profoundly in the past few decades. However, the global governance system has not embraced those new changes and is therefore inadequate in terms of representation and inclusiveness. The global industrial landscape is changing and new industrial chains, value chains and supply chains are taking shape. However, trade and investment rules have not kept pace with these developments, resulting in acute problems such as closed mechanisms and fragmentation of rules.
  • Third, uneven global development makes it difficult to meet people’s expectations for better lives. Dr. Schwab has observed in his book The Fourth Industrial Revolution that this round of industrial revolution will produce extensive and far-reaching impacts such as growing inequality, particularly the possible widening gap between return on capital and return on labor. The richest one percent of the world’s population own more wealth than the remaining 99 percent. Inequality in income distribution and uneven development space are worrying. Over 700 million people in the world are still living in extreme poverty. For many families, to have warm houses, enough food and secure jobs is still a distant dream. This is the biggest challenge facing the world today. It is also what is behind the social turmoil in some countries. All this shows that there are indeed problems with world economic growth, governance and development models, and they must be resolved. The founder of the Red Cross Henry Dunant once said, “Our real enemy is not the neighboring country; it is hunger, poverty, ignorance, superstition and prejudice.” We need to have the vision to dissect these problems; more importantly, we need to have the courage to take actions to address them.
  • First, we should develop a dynamic, innovation-driven growth model. The fundamental issue plaguing the global economy is the lack of driving force for growth.Innovation is the primary force guiding development. Unlike the previous industrial revolutions, the fourth industrial revolution is unfolding at an exponential rather than linear pace. We need to relentlessly pursue innovation. Only with the courage to innovate and reform can we remove bottlenecks blocking global growth and development. With this in mind, G-20 leaders reached an important consensus at the Hangzhou Summit, which is to take innovation as a key driver and foster new driving force of growth for both individual countries and the global economy. We should develop a new development philosophy and rise above the debate about whether there should be more fiscal stimulus or more monetary easing. We should adopt a multipronged approach to address both the symptoms and the underlying problems. We should adopt new policy instruments and advance structural reform to create more space for growth and sustain its momentum. We should develop new growth models and seize opportunities presented by the new round of industrial revolution and digital economy. We should meet the challenges of climate change and aging population. We should address the negative impact of IT application and automation on jobs. When cultivating new industries and new forms models of business models, we should create new jobs and restore confidence and hope to our peoples.
  • Second, we should pursue a well-coordinated and inter-connected approach to develop a model of open and win-win cooperation. Today, mankind has become a close-knit community of shared future. Countries have extensive converging interests and are mutually dependent. All countries enjoy the right to development. At the same time, they should view their own interests in a broader context and refrain from pursuing them at the expense of others. We should commit ourselves to growing an open global economy to share opportunities and interests through opening-up and achieve win-win outcomes. One should not just retreat to the harbor when encountering a storm, for this will never get us to the other shore of the ocean. We must redouble efforts to develop global connectivity to enable all countries to achieve inter-connected growth and share prosperity. We must remain committed to developing global free trade and investment, promote trade and investment liberalization and facilitation through opening-up and say no to protectionism. Pursuing protectionism is like locking oneself in a dark room. While wind and rain may be kept outside, that dark room will also block light and air. No one will emerge as a winner in a trade war.
  • Third, we should develop a model of fair and equitable governance in keeping with the trend of the times. As the Chinese saying goes, people with petty shrewdness attend to trivial matters, while people with vision attend to governance of institutions. There is a growing call from the international community for reforming the global economic governance system, which is a pressing task for us. Only when it adapts to new dynamics in the international economic architecture can the global governance system sustain global growth. Countries, big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor, are all equal members of the international community. As such, they are entitled to participate in decision-making, enjoy rights and fulfill obligations on an equal basis. Emerging markets and developing countries deserve greater representation and voice. The 2010 IMF quota reform has entered into force, and its momentum should be sustained. We should adhere to multilateralism to uphold the authority and efficacy of multilateral institutions. We should honor promises and abide by rules. One should not select or bend rules as he sees fit. The Paris Agreement is a hard-won achievement which is in keeping with the underlying trend of global development. All signatories should stick to it instead of walking away from it as this is a responsibility we must assume for future generations.
  • Fourth, we should develop a balanced, equitable and inclusive development model. As the Chinese saying goes, “A just cause should be pursued for common good.”Development is ultimately for the people. To achieve more balanced development and ensure that the people have equal access to opportunities and share in the benefits of development, it is crucial to have a sound development philosophy and model and make development equitable, effective and balanced.
  • We should foster a culture that values diligence, frugality and enterprise and respects the fruits of hard work of all. Priority should be given to addressing poverty, unemployment, the widening income gap and the concerns of the disadvantaged to promote social equity and justice. It is important to protect the environment while pursuing economic and social progress so as to achieve harmony between man and nature and between man and society. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development should be implemented to realize balanced development across the world. A Chinese adage reads, “Victory is ensured when people pool their strength; success is secured when people put their heads together.” As long as we keep to the goal of building a community of shared future for mankind and work hand in hand to fulfill our responsibilities and overcome difficulties, we will be able to create a better world and deliver better lives for our peoples.
  • This is a path that puts people’s interests first. China follows a people-oriented development philosophy and is committed to bettering the lives of its people. Development is of the people, by the people and for the people. China pursues the goal of common prosperity. We have taken major steps to alleviate poverty and lifted over 700 million people out of poverty, and good progress is being made in our efforts to finish building a society of initial prosperity in all respects. This is a path of pursuing reform and innovation. China has tackled difficulties and met challenges on its way forward through reform. China has demonstrated its courage to take on difficult issues, navigate treacherous rapids and remove institutional hurdles standing in the way of development. These efforts have enabled us to unleash productivity and social vitality. Building on progress of 30-odd years of reform, we have introduced more than 1,200 reform measures over the past four years, injecting powerful impetus into China’s development.
  • This is a path of pursuing common development through opening-up. China is committed to a fundamental policy of opening-up and pursues a win-win opening-up strategy. China’s development is both domestic and external oriented; while developing itself, China also shares more of its development outcomes with other countries and peoples. China’s outstanding development achievements and the vastly improved living standards of the Chinese people are a blessing to both China and the world. Such achievements in development over the past decades owe themselves to the hard work and perseverance of the Chinese people, a quality that has defined the Chinese nation for several thousand years. We Chinese know only too well that there is no such thing as a free lunch in the world. For a big country with over 1.3 billion people, development can be achieved only with the dedication and tireless efforts of its own people. We cannot expect others to deliver development to China, and no one is in a position to do so. When assessing China’s development, one should not only see what benefits the Chinese people have gained, but also how much hard effort they have put in, not just what achievements China has made, but also what contribution China has made to the world. Then one will reach a balanced conclusion about China’s development.
  • Between 1950 and 2016, despite its modest level of development and living standard, China provided more than 400 billion yuan of foreign assistance, undertook over 5,000 foreign assistance projects, including nearly 3,000 complete projects, and held over 11,000 training workshops in China for over 260,000 personnel from other developing countries. Since it launched reform and opening-up, China has attracted over $1.7 trillion of foreign investment and made over $1.2 trillion of direct outbound investment, making huge contribution to global economic development. In the years following the outbreak of the international financial crisis, China contributed to over 30 percent of global growth every year on average. All these figures are among the highest in the world. The figures speak for themselves. China’s development is an opportunity for the world; China has not only benefited from economic globalization but also contributed to it. Rapid growth in China has been a sustained, powerful engine for global economic stability and expansion. The inter-connected development of China and a large number of other countries has made the world economy more balanced. China’s remarkable achievement in poverty reduction has contributed to more inclusive global growth. And China’s continuous progress in reform and opening-up has lent much momentum to an open world economy.
  • Despite a sluggish global economy, China’s economy is expected to grow by 6.7 percent in 2016, still one of the highest in the world. China’s economy is far bigger in size than in the past, and it now generates more output than it did with double-digit growth in the past. Household consumption and the services sector have become the main drivers of growth. In the first three quarters of 2016, added value of the tertiary industry took up 52.8 percent of the GDP and domestic consumption contributed to 71 percent of economic growth. Household income and employment have steadily risen, while per unit GDP energy consumption continues to drop. Our efforts to pursue green development are paying off. The Chinese economy faces downward pressure and many difficulties, including acute mismatch between excess capacity and an upgrading demand structure, lack of internal driving force for growth, accumulation of financial risks, and growing challenges in certain regions. We see these as temporary hardships that occur on the way forward. And the measures we have taken to address these problems are producing good results. We are firm in our resolve to forge ahead. China is the world’s largest developing country with over 1.3 billion people, and their living standards are not yet high. But this reality also means China has enormous potential and space for development. Guided by the vision of innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development, we will adapt to the new normal, stay ahead of the curve, and make coordinated efforts to maintain steady growth, accelerate reform, adjust economic structure, improve people’s living standards and fend off risks. With these efforts, we aim to achieve medium-high rate of growth and upgrade the economy to higher end of the value chain.
  • — China will foster an enabling and orderly environment for investment. We will expand market access for foreign investors, build high-standard pilot free trade zones, strengthen protection of property rights, and level the playing field to make China’s market more transparent and better regulated. In the coming five years, China is expected to import $8 trillion of goods, attract $600 billion of foreign investment and make $750 billion of outbound investment. Chinese tourists will make 700 million overseas visits. All this will create a bigger market, more capital, more products and more business opportunities for other countries. China’s development will continue to offer opportunities to business communities in other countries. China will keep its door wide open and not close it. An open door allows both other countries to access the Chinese market and China itself to integrate with the world. And we hope that other countries will also keep their door open to Chinese investors and keep the playing field level for us.
  • — China will vigorously foster an external environment of opening-up for common development. We will advance the building of the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific and negotiations of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership to form a global network of free trade arrangements. China stands for concluding open, transparent and win-win regional free trade arrangements and opposes forming exclusive groups that are fragmented in nature. China has no intention to boost its trade competitiveness by devaluing the RMB, still less will it launch a currency war. Over three years ago, I put forward the “Belt and Road” initiative. Since then, over 100 countries and international organizations have given warm responses and support to the initiative. More than 40 countries and international organizations have signed cooperation agreements with China, and our circle of friends along the “Belt and Road” is growing bigger. Chinese companies have made over $50 billion of investment and launched a number of major projects in the countries along the routes, spurring the economic development of these countries and creating many local jobs. The “Belt and Road” initiative originated in China, but it has delivered benefits well beyond its borders.
  • Ladies and Gentlemen,Dear Friends, World history shows that the road of human civilization has never been a smooth one, and that mankind has made progress by surmounting difficulties. No difficulty, however daunting, will stop mankind from advancing. When encountering difficulties, we should not complain about ourselves, blame others, lose confidence or run away from responsibilities. We should join hands and rise to the challenge. History is created by the brave. Let us boost confidence, take actions and march arm-in-arm toward a bright future.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Jan 17
     
    Very important speech. A must-read (I snipped only portions).
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Truth Attack - Attorney Tom Cryer - 2 views

www.truthattack.org/index.php Income-Tax Constitution
shared by Gary Edwards on 10 Apr 12 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 10 Apr 12
     
    .. Restore Economic Freedom .... Rediscover your constitutional rights ..... Unwind the Income Tax behemoth  In 2006, Attorney Tommy Cryer was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for two counts of tax evasion. In July of 2007, the IRS reduced the charges to willful failure to file income tax returns. He went to trial and was unanimously acquitted by the jury. This issue is NOT about "paying your fair" share on April 15th. This is a legal issue that involves more lies by "our" government. excerpt: Dare to look behind the Wizard's curtain and you'll discover the "Great and Powerful Income Tax" is a monumental fraud. Cleverly built over decades amid the swamp of a single misunderstood word ("income") not to mention boxcars of false data heaped on school children, what your "income" actually IS -- as guaranteed by the US Constitution -- and what you think it is, are two separate things. Read on as Attorney Tom Cryer delivers you out of the IRS catecombs, toward a deeper appreciation of your own cherished freedoms and economic rights. The US Constitution prohibits any direct tax upon your labor or property. When federal agencies are allowed to operate above the law only then can you be ruled by fear, intimidation and force.  The Fed uses money stolen through income tax to buy legislators and bring states in line. Thus the Fed, not you nor your state representatives, rules. Your state has  been reduced, once again, to a colony of a distant and indifferent  government, and YOU ARE NOT FREE! Finally, third, and perhaps even more importantly, the power to tax  is the power to destroy. If the federal government can tax one freedom, it can tax all of our freedoms. If we permit them to tax our most precious and  fragile assets, if all we have is kept only by the consent of the  government-then we are at its mercy and YOU ARE NOT FREE!
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The Obama Factor and Unemployment Statistics | Western Free Press - 0 views

www.westernfreepress.com/...-critical-statistic-to-monitor Obammunism
shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Apr 12
     
    Great chart!  It shows the Labor Force Participation (LFP) Rate, which rolls off the table under the Obama regime.  This graphical statistic depiction answers the following simple question: "What fraction of our total civilian working-age population is actually working?" Now you know where the St Louis Federal Reserve Banksters came up with their underemployed stat of 88 MILLION workers either out of work or delivering pizza part time. http://www.westernfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Image1-570x448.jpg excerpt: What fraction of our total civilian working-age population is actually employed? In this statistic, people are counted as either working or not-working.   It doesn't matter whether they're looking for work or not.  That makes this statistic harder to "fudge" than the widely reported "unemployment rate".  While there are month-to-month variations, note the steady, linear decline in the trend lines since Obama took office in January, 2009.  Well done, Mr. President! This is The Obama Factor. 
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JB Williams -- Congress Must Immediately Impeach Entire Obama Administration - 0 views

www.newswithviews.com/...williams180.htm Impeachment Impeach-Obama JB-Williams newswithviews
shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Mar 12
     
    A well written list of particulars calling for the impeachment of the entire Obama administration.  The article ends with an appeal to restore the Constitution, identifying two groups in particular: US Patriots Union and the US Veterans "Defenders of America".  Outstanding stuff.  When you read this you will know you're in the presence of true Patriots. http://www.patriotsunion.org/DECLARATION-RESTORE-THE-CONSTITUTIONAL-REPUBLIC.pdf http://www.veterandefenders.org/ excerpt: The Obama Administration has intentionally and criminally bankrupted what was once the most productive, prosperous and powerful nation on earth. This is nothing compared to Obama's other first term achievements. Via their Federal "wealth redistribution" bailouts, the Obama Administration seized control of General Motors, screwed every individual who ever invested in the company and steered the company through managed bankruptcy so that it would emerge the property of labor unions, not the people who had invested in it for years. The Obama Administration has since seized control of Energy, Banking, Insurance, Health Care, Food production and distribution, manufacturing, water supply and outlawed free speech on public lands to protect elected servants from an increasingly angry society that currently gives Obama, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court their lowest approval ratings in U.S. history. The Obama Administration designed and launched the so-called Arab Spring across the Middle East, attacking Jews and Christians alike and unseating leaders of sovereign nations and redistributing political power throughout the region to the Muslim Brotherhood, purposefully responsible for total civil unrest around the globe and rising gas prices at the pumps. Last Friday evening, Obama issued yet another Executive Order seizing unbridled power over every aspect of American life, all the way down to the water in your toilet bowl and the garden in your back yard, sharing that power with each mem
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