How can we take it back?
- Thread starter Skarekrow
- Start date
Woot! The Cabal was defeated recently at the G20 summit!
http://www.theeventchronicle.com/in...l-defeat-cabal-bush-cohen-crime-families-run/
http://www.theeventchronicle.com/in...l-defeat-cabal-bush-cohen-crime-families-run/
Yay! Huge victory for everyone in the US and probably the world.
No Keystone Oil Pipeline is going to gut the land!
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/keystone-pipeline-fails-senate/story?id=27005358
Also...this Senator's quote is telling....
"Congress is not - nor should it be - in the business of legislating
the approval or disapproval of a "construction" project."....U.S. Senator Angus King of Maine
No Keystone Oil Pipeline is going to gut the land!
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/keystone-pipeline-fails-senate/story?id=27005358
Also...this Senator's quote is telling....
"Congress is not - nor should it be - in the business of legislating
the approval or disapproval of a "construction" project."....U.S. Senator Angus King of Maine
"Today former US Treasury official, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, gave a shocking interview to King World News covering criminal activity by the U.S. Federal Reserve. He also discussed the outrageous action in the gold and silver markets, and why the West is so desperate. Below is what Dr. Roberts had to say in this stunning interview..."
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldn...cking_Interview_On_Criminality_By_US_Fed.html
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldn...cking_Interview_On_Criminality_By_US_Fed.html
And still…where are the arrests? It’s amazing to me that stories like this get buried so far under the steaming pile of crap they force-feed America and the west.
One day, there will be a reckoning. The top has gotten too heavy, there are too many people unjustly suffering under the weight carried by the working class and below, effectively the median worker is caught in debt cycles, even the act of a full-time job, makes you an indentured servant in our society.
We the people are supposed to be in charge of our own destinies…not our employer.
I believe that one day soon, the majority will take back what is rightfully theirs…all the years of hard work for fucking scraps, shitty health insurance that doesn’t cover jack, and pension/retirement/some 401-k bullshit/403b, what’safuckingchristmasbonus?, flat-lined raise, we have had to put up with!
The goddamn baby-boomers (I don’t associate you with the rest of the baby boomers you know that right?lol
) privatized everything that once served them, and they used it up and threw it away…first came the unions…then, education…then housing….then the stock-market…who knows what is next…the death of social security is my guess…and these jack-hole clowns who are in Congress today will try to repeal the Affordable Care Act and then watch the blood flow.
And still…where are the arrests? It’s amazing to me that stories like this get buried so far under the steaming pile of crap they force-feed America and the west.
One day, there will be a reckoning. The top has gotten too heavy, there are too many people unjustly suffering under the weight carried by the working class and below, effectively the median worker is caught in debt cycles, even the act of a full-time job, makes you an indentured servant in our society.
We the people are supposed to be in charge of our own destinies…not our employer.
I believe that one day soon, the majority will take back what is rightfully theirs…all the years of hard work for fucking scraps, shitty health insurance that doesn’t cover jack, and pension/retirement/some 401-k bullshit/403b, what’safuckingchristmasbonus?, flat-lined raise, we have had to put up with!
The goddamn baby-boomers (I don’t associate you with the rest of the baby boomers you know that right?lol
One of these days you and I are doing to have to discuss the baby boomer generation. ... but not now. And yes..yes...I know you don't lump me in there with all of them...but you should. Believe me...I have made some alleged mistakes in my past just like the rest of them....I'm just not mired in all of it now as the majority of them are. Keep in mind we can only act with the level of consciousness we have at the time.
Where are the arrests you say? From what I'm hearing they are getting ready to arrest them - but they're having to be very careful because of the power those at the top have. Witnesses seem to suicide and evidence vanishes into thin air when it comes to those in power. Yes? Do you recall a rash of financial persons allegedly committing suicide towards the end of 2013 and going into 2014?
Besides....we don't want to have a bunch of arrests made with regard to Federal Reserve just yet. You may not know much about the DOW or the S&P or the NASDAQ....but they would crash in a new york minute if news of arrests came out. Our financial situation here in the US is extremely precarious right now....and cannot afford a boat rocking just yet.
I am eagerly awaiting the time to finally see some justice…I think more than anything else in the world second only to love…would be justice.
I believe it’s ingrained in our “soul” to know justice, to know good from evil.
We have lived in a world without it for far too long. It is unsustainable.
Pay attention everyone!
Coverage of the midterm elections has, understandably, focused on the shift in political power from Democrats toward Republicans.
But behind the scenes, another major story has been playing out.
Wall Street spent upwards of $300M to influence the election results.
And a key part of its agenda has been a plan to move more and more of the $3 trillion dollars in unguarded government pension funds into privately managed, high-fee investments – a shift that may well constitute the biggest financial story of our generation that you’ve never heard of.
Illinois, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island all recently elected governors who were previously executives and directors at firms which managed investments on behalf of state pension funds.
These firms are now, consequently, in position to obtain even more of these public funds.
This alone represents a huge payoff on that $300M investment made by the financial industry, and is likely to result in more pension money going into investments which offer great benefits for Wall Street but do little for the broader economy.
But Wall Street’s agenda goes beyond any one election cycle.
It has been fighting to turn public pensions into private profits for quite some time, steering retirement nest eggs into investments that are complex, charge hefty fees, and that generate big profits for management firms.
And it has been succeeding.
Of the $3 trillion in public assets currently in pension funds throughout the country, almost a quarter of that has already found its way into so-called “alternative investments” like hedge funds, private equity and real estate.
That translates to roughly $660 billion of public money now under private management, invested in assets that are often arcane and opaque but that offer high management and placement fees to Wall Street financiers.
Our recent financial crisis demonstrated just how risky and potentially destructive these types of assets can be – so the question becomes, why is so much money going into them?
David Sirota has been one of the few journalists to cover this story in depth, and to expose the widespread political corruption that’s gone along with it.
“It’s one of the biggest economic stories in the world because the amounts of money are so huge” says Sirota. “It is happening in every state and every city in the country.”
In 2011 the Wall Street Journal reported that the Blackstone Group – one of the largest private equity firms in the world, with an investment pool of $111 billion dollars – saw “about $37 of every $100” of its funds come from investments from state and local pension plans.
That’s a huge sum, and it’s therefore unsurprising that Blackstone lobbies state governments to help steer more pension money its way.
In many cases, the decision to invest state pension money in alternative investments of questionable value seems to have been driven less by concern for the welfare of future pensioners (gasp!) than by political considerations and the concerted efforts of financial industry lobbyists.
The simple fact is that these investments are not very good.
While they offer lucrative fees for Wall Street middlemen, they have been shown to often significantly underperform against the market.
You’d think that, given the importance of keeping American citizens pensions safe and prosperous, the political representatives overseeing them would hew to safe and stable investments.
Unfortunately, however, that presumption would be wrong.
A document obtained by Sirota and published at his previous employer, Pando Daily, reveals that the contract language for a Blackstone hedge fund invested in by the Kentucky pension system contains language such as: “the possibility of partial or total loss of capital will exist” , “there can be no assurance that any (investor) will receive any distribution”; and “the [fund] should only be considered by persons who can afford a loss of their entire investment.”
That certainly sounds safe and conservative.
Despite the above warnings, over $80 million of Kentucky pension money went into this and another opaque Blackstone fund.
And again, all this was been with almost no public knowledge or debate.
If all this wasn’t egregious enough, a huge preponderance of evidence suggests that this massive transfer of wealth from public to private management is having a corrupting effect on the political process.
Sirota’s reporting seems to have particularly touched a nerve with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has described Sirota as “a hack” and “not a journalist”.
It’s not difficult to see why Christie isn’t a fan.
Earlier this year, Sirota wrote that…
43 financial firms managing New Jersey pension money have spent a total of $11.6 million on contributions to New Jersey politicians…
Many of those donations have gone directly to Gov. Christie’s election campaign … Additionally, many of the contributions came either just before or just after the Christie administration awarded the firms multi-million-dollar pension management contracts.
Those 43 firms ended up managing around $14 billion dollars of state pension money, a take that serves as a timeless reminder of the great rewards that can derive from catering to the needs of receptive politicians.
Christie’s tenure as New Jersey governor has been particularly emblematic of the extent of Wall Street’s reach into the public sphere.
Among other things, he installed a private equity investor as the state’s pension overseer and publicly lied about the manner in which pension fund investment decisions are made.
Ironically enough, he’s defended these practices in his own state while criticizing Democrats for utilizing them through his position as chair of the Republican Governor’s Association.
The flow of public money into Wall Street coffers has greater ramifications than simply putting pension funds at risk and corrupting our political system.
It also fundamentally alters the future shape of American society by changing how public funds will get spent.
Consider what might happen if pension money were steered into the communities where pension beneficiaries live.
Michael McCarthy, an assistant professor of sociology at Marquette University, has highlighted how the Quebec government’s pension investment fund boosts the regional economy:
The fund invests in small and medium enterprises that operate within the province. According to their calculations, by 2012, the Solidarity Fund’s investments created 86,624 new jobs and kept 81,993 more from moving overseas.
Pension funds could play a similar role in America, but they don’t. Instead, U.S. pension funds mimic Wall Street investment practices.
Simply put, outsourcing investment decisions to Wall Street instead of giving them to accountable public servants adversely affects where pension investment money goes.
When the money is not managed publicly there is no incentive to invest in local infrastructure, and there is nothing to dissuade investors from putting public money into investments that harm the local community, for example by outsourcing local jobs abroad.
“There is a massive transfer of power and wealth happening from the public to Wall Street, through pensions,” says a former Congressional staffer, who asked to remain anonymous because he has ties to the industry.
“The more that money goes into private hands as opposed to public hands, the less that itets invested into projects which are socially constructive.”
“It’s a policy justified entirely on people’s ignorance of what’s going on.”
WALL STREET IS TAKING OVER AMERICA’S PENSION PLANS
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/20/huge-wall-street-story-one-talking/
<> on April 25, 2014 in New York City.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/20/huge-wall-street-story-one-talking/
<> on April 25, 2014 in New York City.
Coverage of the midterm elections has, understandably, focused on the shift in political power from Democrats toward Republicans.
But behind the scenes, another major story has been playing out.
Wall Street spent upwards of $300M to influence the election results.
And a key part of its agenda has been a plan to move more and more of the $3 trillion dollars in unguarded government pension funds into privately managed, high-fee investments – a shift that may well constitute the biggest financial story of our generation that you’ve never heard of.
Illinois, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island all recently elected governors who were previously executives and directors at firms which managed investments on behalf of state pension funds.
These firms are now, consequently, in position to obtain even more of these public funds.
This alone represents a huge payoff on that $300M investment made by the financial industry, and is likely to result in more pension money going into investments which offer great benefits for Wall Street but do little for the broader economy.
But Wall Street’s agenda goes beyond any one election cycle.
It has been fighting to turn public pensions into private profits for quite some time, steering retirement nest eggs into investments that are complex, charge hefty fees, and that generate big profits for management firms.
And it has been succeeding.
Of the $3 trillion in public assets currently in pension funds throughout the country, almost a quarter of that has already found its way into so-called “alternative investments” like hedge funds, private equity and real estate.
That translates to roughly $660 billion of public money now under private management, invested in assets that are often arcane and opaque but that offer high management and placement fees to Wall Street financiers.
Our recent financial crisis demonstrated just how risky and potentially destructive these types of assets can be – so the question becomes, why is so much money going into them?
David Sirota has been one of the few journalists to cover this story in depth, and to expose the widespread political corruption that’s gone along with it.
“It’s one of the biggest economic stories in the world because the amounts of money are so huge” says Sirota. “It is happening in every state and every city in the country.”
In 2011 the Wall Street Journal reported that the Blackstone Group – one of the largest private equity firms in the world, with an investment pool of $111 billion dollars – saw “about $37 of every $100” of its funds come from investments from state and local pension plans.
That’s a huge sum, and it’s therefore unsurprising that Blackstone lobbies state governments to help steer more pension money its way.
In many cases, the decision to invest state pension money in alternative investments of questionable value seems to have been driven less by concern for the welfare of future pensioners (gasp!) than by political considerations and the concerted efforts of financial industry lobbyists.
The simple fact is that these investments are not very good.
While they offer lucrative fees for Wall Street middlemen, they have been shown to often significantly underperform against the market.
You’d think that, given the importance of keeping American citizens pensions safe and prosperous, the political representatives overseeing them would hew to safe and stable investments.
Unfortunately, however, that presumption would be wrong.
A document obtained by Sirota and published at his previous employer, Pando Daily, reveals that the contract language for a Blackstone hedge fund invested in by the Kentucky pension system contains language such as: “the possibility of partial or total loss of capital will exist” , “there can be no assurance that any (investor) will receive any distribution”; and “the [fund] should only be considered by persons who can afford a loss of their entire investment.”
That certainly sounds safe and conservative.
Despite the above warnings, over $80 million of Kentucky pension money went into this and another opaque Blackstone fund.
And again, all this was been with almost no public knowledge or debate.
If all this wasn’t egregious enough, a huge preponderance of evidence suggests that this massive transfer of wealth from public to private management is having a corrupting effect on the political process.
Sirota’s reporting seems to have particularly touched a nerve with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has described Sirota as “a hack” and “not a journalist”.
It’s not difficult to see why Christie isn’t a fan.
Earlier this year, Sirota wrote that…
43 financial firms managing New Jersey pension money have spent a total of $11.6 million on contributions to New Jersey politicians…
Many of those donations have gone directly to Gov. Christie’s election campaign … Additionally, many of the contributions came either just before or just after the Christie administration awarded the firms multi-million-dollar pension management contracts.
Christie’s tenure as New Jersey governor has been particularly emblematic of the extent of Wall Street’s reach into the public sphere.
Among other things, he installed a private equity investor as the state’s pension overseer and publicly lied about the manner in which pension fund investment decisions are made.
Ironically enough, he’s defended these practices in his own state while criticizing Democrats for utilizing them through his position as chair of the Republican Governor’s Association.
The flow of public money into Wall Street coffers has greater ramifications than simply putting pension funds at risk and corrupting our political system.
It also fundamentally alters the future shape of American society by changing how public funds will get spent.
Consider what might happen if pension money were steered into the communities where pension beneficiaries live.
Michael McCarthy, an assistant professor of sociology at Marquette University, has highlighted how the Quebec government’s pension investment fund boosts the regional economy:
The fund invests in small and medium enterprises that operate within the province. According to their calculations, by 2012, the Solidarity Fund’s investments created 86,624 new jobs and kept 81,993 more from moving overseas.
Pension funds could play a similar role in America, but they don’t. Instead, U.S. pension funds mimic Wall Street investment practices.
When the money is not managed publicly there is no incentive to invest in local infrastructure, and there is nothing to dissuade investors from putting public money into investments that harm the local community, for example by outsourcing local jobs abroad.
“There is a massive transfer of power and wealth happening from the public to Wall Street, through pensions,” says a former Congressional staffer, who asked to remain anonymous because he has ties to the industry.
“The more that money goes into private hands as opposed to public hands, the less that itets invested into projects which are socially constructive.”
“It’s a policy justified entirely on people’s ignorance of what’s going on.”
Arnold Abbott is a 90-year-old chef in south Florida who’s been going down to the beach and feeding homeless people since 1979.
But you can relax.
The police finally caught up to this prick.
He now faces hundreds of dollars in fines and up to two months in jail.
It turns out Fort Lauderdale, like 57 other cities, has new laws restricting the feeding of the homeless.
The idea behind laws like this is, if you feed these people, it’ll just encourage them to remain homeless or, worse yet, encourage others to enter into the sweet, sweet, free-food homeless lifestyle.
On the surface, it looks like a kind gesture — feeding a fellow human who’s starving — but if you look at the big picture, you’re just endorsing their bad choices.
Let’s call Fort Lauderdale’s law what it really is — an attempt to deal with a very real homeless problem without spending a precious dime.
Their intent is to starve out their local homeless so they move down the beach to a city that doesn’t have an anti-feeding ordinance… yet.
Don’t conservatives always say that it’s not the government’s job to provide a safety net and that ample charity can be provided privately through churches and generous individuals?
Well, Chef Arnold is a generous individual and he was cited along with two clergymen and a member of his non-profit who were assisting him.
You can’t have it both ways.
You can’t say I don’t want the government feeding the hungry with my tax dollars and I also don’t want decent, kind people feeding the hungry with their own money.
Forget the “War on Christmas” and the “War on Women” for a minute.
Aren’t we waging a “War on the Poor”?
What ever happened to the “thousand points of light?”
Are we turning those off so we don’t have to see the impoverished and can pretend they don’t exist?
@ Skarekrow
I can feel the frustration coming from your posts skarekrow and i can totally sympathise
The hard part of understanding whats going on is that you then have a stronger sense that something needs to be done and of what might possibly be done
Those that are unconscious of all these things are still feeling the austerity but they think that's just the way life is
The older baby boomer generation do not want to wake up.....all they want now is to retire and secure their pensions
It is basically going to fall on the younger generations
I think there is lots of great energy and ability in the younger generations but i worry also that they can be led astray by technology and by all the distractions available today like pop culture and the pervasiveness of consumerism
The only thing that will set them free is if they can engage with information that the baby boomer generation didn't engage with for whatever reason
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I agree, and I’m not actually blaming the baby boomers per se…because they too, were a product of the system of the time.
They were groomed to be selfish and to have a sense of insatiable greed…they will also fight to the bitter end I foresee.
I do think we stand a chance once people see how destructive these folk are!
The voter turnout in the recent US midterm elections was the lowest it had been in 72 years.
With less than 29 percent of eligible voters casting votes, Indiana, Texas, Utah and New York were the states with the lowest totals.
But with a turnout of 36.3 percent, the national average was not much higher.
One has to go back to 1942 to find a lower percentage.
The trend toward lower voter turnout is a general one, present in many contemporary democracies.
There are many explanations for this phenomenon, but an important factor is people's disaffection toward the current political system.
People's trust in democratic institutions and in the electoral procedures for appointing those in charge of these institutions is constantly decreasing.
Even those who keep participating in the electoral game do not have much confidence in the system.
According to the exit polls, only 10 percent of those who voted in the midterm elections on November 4 trust the government in Washington to do what is right all or most of the time.
People's lack of trust is not difficult to explain.
Contemporary democracies are not real democracies.
To a large extent, they are just pseudo-democracies.
Real democracy requires strong and equally shared popular control over decisions that affect people's well-being and freedom.
But in contemporary democracies, the decisions that affect people's well-being and freedom are not taken (directly or indirectly) by ordinary people.
Ordinary people have, at most, a superficial influence on such decisions.
Many of these decisions are taken by elected politicians, or by unelected officials selected and appointed by elected politicians.
Most of the time, these politically powerful individuals are entirely unresponsive to the interests, needs and requests of ordinary people.
These individuals are unresponsive to the interests of the 99% because they can advance their own interests by protecting and furthering the interests of the ultrarich.
And furthering the interests of the ultrarich often requires ignoring or thwarting the interests of ordinary people.
Moreover, many decisions that significantly affect the well-being and freedom of ordinary people are not even under the control of elected politicians or their appointees.
Instead, they are in the hands of multinational corporations and financial firms, or more precisely in the hands of those who control such organizations.
Multinational corporations and financial firms have enormous power.
They exploit every profit-making opportunity they can find, and they give very little back to the national or local communities that are often responsible for the existence of such profit-making opportunities.
These organizations bypass and avoid restrictive national legislation by moving their operations from one country to another, or by aggressively lobbying elected politicians and regulators.
They try to eliminate any barrier to the maximization of their profits - whatever its nature and irrespective of the fact that this elimination often imposes huge hidden costs on ordinary people.
These costs manifest themselves, for example, in the form of pollution (and thereby poorer health), a worsening of working conditions, wage depression, cuts in public spending or a higher public debt.
Despite the myths disseminated by these organizations, the wealth that they extract from our communities, and from the natural and social resources that rightfully belong to our communities, does not trickle down.
With the help of elected politicians, such wealth is never fairly redistributed.
People's trust in democratic institutions is disappearing because there is hardly any democracy left in democratic regimes.
People's trust in democratic regimes is evaporating because democracy itself is evaporating.
Political power is becoming ever more concentrated in the hands of a small group of individuals: the ultrarich and those - including politicians and bureaucrats - who work for them.
Many people crave real democracy, but they realize that participating in the electoral game is not a way for them to satisfy this craving.
They realize that the electoral game is simply of way of selecting between competing elites, and that the competition is not a real competition.
The competing elites are often extremely similar to each other in their backgrounds and in their plans, and they often end up doing similar things once in power.
This explains why some of those who crave real democracy often do not vote, or vote only when they have a feeling - often a short-lived and fleeting feeling - that their vote might, just for once, make some kind of difference, for example, in some presidential elections.
And it also explains why some of those who crave real democracy do vote - but out of habit and not because they think voting is a way for them to exercise control over political decision making.
The craving for real democracy is an important component of human nature, both in its biological and in its social and cultural elements.
Unfortunately, this does not mean that everyone has it, and it does not mean that it will always be there.
But it means that many people crave real democracy because only with real democracy do they have a real chance to protect and advance all of their fundamental human interests.
These include the interest in finding a decent job with decent working conditions, the interest in being healthy and in living in social and natural environments that preserve and promote physical and mental health, the interest in not being exploited by rapacious oligarchies, and so on.
But these fundamental interests also include the interest in living a life not determined by the will of others and the fundamental interest in being able to contribute to determining one's own future, the future of one's community and the future of humanity.
People who crave real democracy are increasingly rejecting the way current democratic regimes work and the standard way the electoral game is played. These people - and the movements that support and try to convey their ideas - are often labeled as being "anti-politics."
But, in truth, these people and these movements are not against politics as such.
Rather they are against the (often perverse) form of political decision making that finds expression in contemporary democracies.
These people and these movements are in favor of another way of doing politics, one that embraces genuine popular control.
They are against fake democracy and in favor of real democracy.
Their "anti-political" attitude is itself a noble political stance.
The current prospects for real democracy are bleak. But the future of democracy will also depend on the way this attitude, and the democratic craving for real democracy that underpins it, will develop and find expression in our fast-evolving world.