Thursday, August 28, 2014
IMF Moves Chess Pieces before World War 3
Yes, shortly after the Rothschild - Prince Charles conference on Inclusive Capitalism, IMF head Christine LaGuarde is accused of financial crimes in France.
#WarAndBanking
#WarAndBanking
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
The True Meaning of Liberal, Leftist and Conservative
Liberal, lib¶-er-al; a. giving largely; munificent; generous; ample; large; not selfish or narrow; embracing others interests than one¶s own; favorable to liberty and progress; become a gentleman; refined; FREE;open; candid; not too literal: s. one who advocates greater FREEdom in political institutions, and more especially their greater popularization (L. liber, FREE)
The True Meaning of Liberal, Leftist and Conservative http://t.co/vlIDzSzbcr
— #WarAndBanking (@TwistedPolitix) August 27, 2014
Nearly 50% of Americans Living on Government Subsidies
The latest welfare statistics are from year-end 2012. Those figures show 35.4 Percent: 109,631,000 on Welfare.
109,631,000 living in households taking federal welfare benefits as of the end of 2012, according to the Census Bureau, equaled 35.4 percent of all 309,467,000 people living in the United States at that time.
When those receiving benefits from non-means-tested federal programs — such as Social Security, Medicare, unemployment and veterans benefits — were added to those taking welfare benefits, it turned out that 153,323,000 people were getting federal benefits of some type at the end of 2012.
Subtract the 3,297,000 who were receiving veterans' benefits from the total, and that leaves 150,026,000 people receiving non-veterans' benefits.
The 153,323,000 total benefit-takers at the end of 2012, said the Census Bureau, equaled 49.5 percent of the population. The 150,026,000 taking benefits other than veterans' benefits equaled about 48.5 percent of the population.
In 2012, according to the Census Bureau, there were 103,087,000 full-time year-round workers in the United States (including 16,606,000 full-time year-round government workers). Thus, the welfare-takers outnumbered full-time year-round workers by 6,544,000.
Breakdown by Category
82,679,000 Medicaid
51,471,000 Food Stamps
22,526,000 Women, Infants and Children Program
20,355,000 Supplemental Security Income
13,267,000 Public Housing or Housing Subsidies
5,442,000 Temporary Assistance to Needy Families
4,517,000 Other Forms of Federal Cash Assistance
109,631,000 living in households taking federal welfare benefits as of the end of 2012, according to the Census Bureau, equaled 35.4 percent of all 309,467,000 people living in the United States at that time.
When those receiving benefits from non-means-tested federal programs — such as Social Security, Medicare, unemployment and veterans benefits — were added to those taking welfare benefits, it turned out that 153,323,000 people were getting federal benefits of some type at the end of 2012.
Subtract the 3,297,000 who were receiving veterans' benefits from the total, and that leaves 150,026,000 people receiving non-veterans' benefits.
The 153,323,000 total benefit-takers at the end of 2012, said the Census Bureau, equaled 49.5 percent of the population. The 150,026,000 taking benefits other than veterans' benefits equaled about 48.5 percent of the population.
In 2012, according to the Census Bureau, there were 103,087,000 full-time year-round workers in the United States (including 16,606,000 full-time year-round government workers). Thus, the welfare-takers outnumbered full-time year-round workers by 6,544,000.
Breakdown by Category
82,679,000 Medicaid
51,471,000 Food Stamps
22,526,000 Women, Infants and Children Program
20,355,000 Supplemental Security Income
13,267,000 Public Housing or Housing Subsidies
5,442,000 Temporary Assistance to Needy Families
4,517,000 Other Forms of Federal Cash Assistance
In early September 2014, the labor force participation rate dropped once again to 62.8% from 62.9%, matching the lowest since 1978, as a result of the people not in labor force rising once again, and hitting a new all time high record of 92,269,000, up 268,000 from the prior month.
In fact, in August the number of people not in the labor force increased by nearly double the number of people who found jobs, which as we reported previously, was only 142K.
Of the 142K jobs created, just under half came from the lowest paying jobs possible: education and health; leisure and hospitality; and temp-help. The best paying jobs, finance and information, added a whopping 4K jobs between them. Finally, about that much delayed US manufacturing renaissance: stick a fork in it - in August the number of manufacturing jobs created was exactly 0.
According to the WSJ, roughly one in three U.S. workers is now a freelancer. Fifty-three million Americans, or 34% of the nation’s workforce, qualify as freelancers, according to a new report from the Freelancers Union, a nonprofit organization, and Elance-oDesk Inc., a company that provides platforms for freelancers to find work. These individuals include independent contractors, temps, and moonlighters, among others.
And how many people own their own farms and produce the food we eat? According to Voice of Agriculture, 2.2 million farms dot America’s rural landscape, 97 percent of which are operated by "families" – individuals, family partnerships or family corporations and farm and ranch families comprise just 2 percent of the U.S. population which continues to decline since the American Revolution.
Note that these "families" own massive acreage.
Note Nonfamily, Large Family, and Very Large Family ownership of farms is approximately 85%. That means for a family to get back into farming and leave the Matrix of the mega cities, they would face enormous competition from near monopolies.
In fact, in August the number of people not in the labor force increased by nearly double the number of people who found jobs, which as we reported previously, was only 142K.
Of the 142K jobs created, just under half came from the lowest paying jobs possible: education and health; leisure and hospitality; and temp-help. The best paying jobs, finance and information, added a whopping 4K jobs between them. Finally, about that much delayed US manufacturing renaissance: stick a fork in it - in August the number of manufacturing jobs created was exactly 0.
According to the WSJ, roughly one in three U.S. workers is now a freelancer. Fifty-three million Americans, or 34% of the nation’s workforce, qualify as freelancers, according to a new report from the Freelancers Union, a nonprofit organization, and Elance-oDesk Inc., a company that provides platforms for freelancers to find work. These individuals include independent contractors, temps, and moonlighters, among others.
And how many people own their own farms and produce the food we eat? According to Voice of Agriculture, 2.2 million farms dot America’s rural landscape, 97 percent of which are operated by "families" – individuals, family partnerships or family corporations and farm and ranch families comprise just 2 percent of the U.S. population which continues to decline since the American Revolution.
Note that these "families" own massive acreage.
Note Nonfamily, Large Family, and Very Large Family ownership of farms is approximately 85%. That means for a family to get back into farming and leave the Matrix of the mega cities, they would face enormous competition from near monopolies.
#WarAndBanking
I say WAR you say BANKING - http://t.co/z2K5ue4xKQ pic.twitter.com/LOj6xC5BJu
— #WarAndBanking (@TwistedPolitix) August 26, 2014
Monday, August 25, 2014
Canada's Largest Union Protest Pension Cuts
Published on Aug 24, 2014
Former CUPE senior research officer
Kevin Skerrett and political economist Michel Lizée explain the proposed
reform bill to pensions and how it will result in the transfer of risk
from employers to employees
Kevin Skerrett and political economist Michel Lizée explain the proposed
reform bill to pensions and how it will result in the transfer of risk
from employers to employees
Russian convoy crosses Ukrainian border
Published on Aug 22, 2014
A Russian convoy crossed the Ukrainian border on Friday to deliver humanitarian aid to residents of the conflict-torn region. The government in Kiev condemned the move, calling the unauthorized border crossing a direct violation of the country’s sovereignty, while Moscow said they could no longer stand idly by and let residents continue to suffer a lack of basic resources.
RT’s Ameera David and Paula Slier have the latest details.
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Friday, August 15, 2014
Building 7 – Putting a 9/11 Mystery on the Ballot
| by Jack Blood |
Skyscrapers don't commit suicide.....
By Russ Baker on Aug 14, 2014
I was standing blocks from Building 7 of the World Trade Center complex and staring directly at it when it collapsed.
Working for the Los Angeles Times, I had arrived at the World Trade Center as the South and North Tower were making their rapid and deadly descents in the morning. That afternoon, I called in a series of reports to a staffer in the New York bureau.
I was literally on the phone with the office at 5:21 p.m., describing the fires burning in the structure as the building began—and completed— its remarkably fast, smooth descent to the ground. I described the building neatly pancaking, and the Pulitzer Prize winner on the other end taking my dictation declared: “That sounds like a controlled demolition.”
Controlled Demolition
In fact, I have seen controlled demolitions before and since—and indeed, that was exactly what the destruction of Building 7 looked like, except perhaps for a marginally slower collapse of the top portion
As with most people, I was baffled by how Building 7—a smaller, 47-story tower that had not been hit by a plane and was separated from the Twin Towers by low-rise buildings–would come down at all. It just made no sense.
How exactly the building did come down has never been properly explained. An investigation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded that the building was hit by debris from the collapsing North Tower that started fires. However, it ruled out diesel fuel, structural damage from the debris and structural elements (trusses, girders, and cantilever overhangs) as causes of the collapse. It said the lack of water to the sprinkler system was an important factor in allowing fires to rage all afternoon. But the panel declined to state how the fires could bring down the building—and in such a rapid manner.
Reasonable Doubts
For many years, those who have been troubled by things that did not make sense regarding the 9/11 attacks have been marginalized as kooks. To be sure, some entertain enormously elaborate, complex scenarios that assume unspeakable evil carried out by a bewildering number of individuals, nations, and institutions.
However, fair-minded people who have carefully studied the evidence are troubled by the “official story,” just as they are troubled by the official explanations of the assassinations of American leaders over half a century, and other traumas ranging from the Oklahoma City bombing to the Boston Marathon bombing.
There is a reason so many people don’t trust the security apparatus and its allies in government, academia and the media, or the reassuring stories they tell us time after time that “there’s nothing to see here, folks.”Or to allow even the most reasonable question into the public discourse.
That kind of question hasn’t been possible with the mystery of Building 7. Until now.
A small group, NYC Coalition for Accountability Now (NYC CAN), run and largely staffed by a young man named Ted Walter, has come up with a solution: Get the public to legislate a formal inquiry into building collapses.
Noting that no high-rise building has ever collapsed as a result of fire, and seizing on the official position that the destruction of Building 7 cannot be definitively explained, Walter’s group has proposed that the city explore all building collapses since and including 9/11. The proposed inquiry pointedly excludes Buildings 1 and 2, the collapses of which have been much investigated and debated. It does not explicitly mention Building 7—but then it does not have to. Building 7 is unique in that it was not hit by a plane. Any serious investigation of building collapses would start with Building 7.
The mechanism for this is to seek to have New Yorkers vote on a ballot measure, the High-Rise Safety Initiative. Its supporters face a tough challenge ahead, and have already hit some formidable road blocks. Still they persevere.
Not Your Run-of-the-Mill “Kooks”
Ted Walter does not fit the caricature of the unshaven, grumpy, shouting activist. He’s a calm, thoughtful, precise fellow. He grew up in Wisconsin and Mozambique, where his father was an official of a private aid group, got a BA at New York University and a Masters in Public Policy at UC Berkeley, and then worked for San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors.
He’d arrived in New York from Mozambique at age 19 to attend college two weeks before the attacks. “9/11 was essentially my introduction to New York,” he says.
The first thing that struck him was to wonder why, so long after the first planes hit the World Trade Center, another plane was unimpeded in hitting the Pentagon. Where were the U.S.’s vaunted defenses?
He also found it odd that a building collapse would involve entire structures virtually vaporizing in the air.
It was not until the spring of 2006 that Walter began determinedly researching the events. “During the course of a couple months of reading everything I could find, I came to the conclusion that the official account of 9/11 was false,” he says.
In 2008, others launched something called the NYC 9/11 Ballot Initiative. Walter volunteered as a petitioner, then managed paid canvassers. The next year, he founded a group, NYC CAN, along with some family members of 9/11 victims, and assumed control of the ballot initiative. Although they submitted 80,000 signatures, more than the required number, the city successfully challenged the initiative in court and kept it off the ballot.
This was hardly surprising. In certain parts of the country, especially in many Western states and municipalities, major policy is often legislated directly at the polls. Not so in New York City, which has long made it virtually impossible to qualify such a measure for the ballot. In fact, New York City voters have only seen two of them in half a century.
Nonetheless, in the spring of 2013, Walter and his group talked with a top New York City election attorney, decided there might be a chance at prevailing despite the long odds, and began moving forward with another attempt. It became the High-Rise Safety Initiative.
Between May 1 and July 31, they gathered more than 100,000 signatures, far more than the 30,000 required to gain a place on the ballot. They submitted the first 67,000 of those on July 3, and plan to submit the remaining 33,000 on Sept. 4, which is more than double what’s required to override the City Council.
As anticipated, the City challenged the petition—claiming that not enough signatures are valid, and that the petition language is not legally valid. Walter and company filed suit against the City to have that determination annulled, and were due to go into court on Aug. 14.
The group believes that it has overcome the usual issue of invalid signatures by filing so many—and because even in its 2009 effort, it was able to prove that enough signatures did pass muster. Now, it must pass the arcane statutory hurdles the city created exactly to prevent such measures. Walter thinks they have a chance.
The case should be decided by mid-September. If the initiative is successful, it will be on the November ballot.
Officials Mortified
The mayor, a liberal named Bill DeBlasio, has not had kind things to say about the effort—presumably not unlike what his predecessors, Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani, might have had to say. As reported by Crain’s New York Business:
“From what I’ve heard it’s absolutely ridiculous,” a peeved Mr. de Blasio said in response to a reporter’s question. “And it’s inappropriate, after all the suffering that went on 9/11 and since. It seems to be this is a very insensitive and inappropriate action.”
Crain’s itself couldn’t help referring to the group as “conspiracy theorists,” an unfortunate term that instantly assumes no credibility to those asking what may in fact be legitimate—if uncomfortable—questions.
The speaker of the New York City Council, Melissa Mark-Viverito, a close ally of the mayor, lashed out: “Instead of wasting New Yorkers’ time and hard-earned taxpayer dollars humoring conspiracy theorists with wild fantasies, the City Council will continue to focus on passing sound legislation.”
A Skilled Communicator
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