Goldman, Other Welfare Queens Tell Us Forget Social Security-Medicare Until 70
Michael Collins
(Washington, DC 1/21) A long standing Money Party front, the Business Roundtable, wants you to wait until you're 70 years old before you get Social Security and Medicare benefits. This is just a reprise of the November 2012 dictate from the king of corporate cronyism, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. (Image: DonkeyHotey) (Greenspan statement)
The boss announced, "So there will be things that, you know, the retirement age has to be changed, maybe some of the benefits have to be affected, maybe some of the inflation adjustments have to be revised. But in general, entitlements have to be slowed down and contained." Lloyd Blankfein, CBS News, November 2012
That's easy for Lloyd to say. He makes tens of millions of dollars a year without so much as lifting a finger. You can be sure that Blankfein has a deluxe health insurance and retirement plan.
PermalinkReal Unemployment at 23% - Dampening the Excitement
By Michael Collins
There was a shadow over the national conventions of both political parties. The people know that the economy is much worse than anyone in the power structure will admit. As usual, the people are right. The real rate of unemployment is 23%, not the official figures we hear on a regular basis. The 23% figure represents all of those unemployed no matter how long, the involuntarily under employed (part time), and those who have given up looking, the discouraged, due to an chronically arid job market. If either wing of The Money Party, Democratic or Republican, admits to the the real unemployment situation, they would be forced to admit a complete system failure and compelled to act now. There would be no choice but to drop the nonsense about austerity and balanced budgets.
Here is how the fantasy of the official unemployment figure works.
Official unemployment includes those who are both unemployed during the week of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) survey and without a job for the prior four weeks.
The official unemployment number we see excludes those marginally attached to the labor force, discouraged workers, and those working part time due to the absence of full time work. The Alternative unemployment statistic is always higher than the official version. It includes most of the unemployed but excludes discouraged workers after twelve months without a job (See Appendix). In the chart above, you will see the official government unemployment number (U-3), the alternative number (U-6), and the shadowstats.com figure, which includes U-3 and U-6 plus all those unemployed who have given up. That represents 23% of the work force. (Graph Courtesy of Shadowstats.Com Shadow Government Statistics - John Williams)
Bilderberg Meeting a Wrap, Who Would Trust these People?
By Michael Collins
(Chantilly, VA 6/3/2012) The Bilderberg Group completed its annual meeting today in Northern Virginia. The group was founded in 1954 by the financial, political, and military elites of Europe and the United States. Annual meetings provide for "regular, off-the-record discussions [to] help create a better understanding of the complex forces and major trends affecting Western nations in the difficult post-war period." Bilderberg Meetings, Official Website
The inherent contradiction in this mission statement is glaringly obvious. These are the very same people who put in place and control the governments and programs that they're meeting in private to "discuss." Don't they discuss these things before and during their masquerade of governance?
The group's official meeting website says, "What is unique about Bilderberg as a forum is the privacy of the meetings, which has no purpose other than to allow participants to speak their minds openly and freely."
When the world's ultra-rich and powerful meet to address major sociopolitical problems in a forum based on privacy, it's time to take a closer look.
Trust the Bilderberg Group at your own peril
This Beat Down is for Your Health - the Money Party Must Stop Occupy Movements
By Michael Collins
"The problems we are facing were not created by us, but we deign to shed light on them and so we are blamed for them. The truth is, every person at our protest is there because the system is broken." Samuel Rutledge, Open Newswire, Portland Indymedia
The fascist financiers of the Money Party are growing restless. Occupy Wall Street began with a call to action from the activist online group Anonymous in August. It was barely featured in the mainstream or alternate media. Instead of a small crowd that could easily be ignored then disbursed, fifty thousand citizens showed up at the headquarters for the world financial system, Wall Street. Despite the best efforts of Mayor Bloomberg and NYPD, the Occupy Wall Street continues. The message went out to the country and the world. Now, there are over 100 occupy events in Oakland, Kansas City, Washington, DC, and elsewhere. (Image: K. Kendall)
Occupy Portland began on October 6, 2011. It has maintained a steady presence in downtown Portland, a major West Coast center of commerce. The participants refuse to leave until the government addresses their grievances. Police scare tactics, planted provocateurs, and the elements are no barrier.
Abandoned Youth - No More Future
By Michael Collins
If you are twenty four or younger, you are likely either under or unemployed. Only about 60% of those 16 to 24 years old are in the labor force (those employed or seeking jobs). Their unemployment rate is 18%.
For years, Money Party lackeys, our (s)elected officials, put out a propaganda line that said, Get an education or there's no future for you. Well, lots of people got a college or trade school education or on the job training and there are no jobs for them.
Here's why.
There has been no increase in jobs in the United States since 2000. In fact, the number of jobs relative to the total workforce has actually declined. Negative job growth for eleven years shows that the current economic system has failed miserably. Here's the ugly picture the rulers won't talk about.
IMF Rates Up Dictatorships Just Before Revolutions
By Michael Collins
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) made an embarrassing error just two days before the start of the Libyan people's revolution on February 17. This quote from an IMF country study appeared in a previous article: "The outlook for Libya’s economy remains favorable." IMF Feb 15 This advice was 180 degrees off target. The Libyan economy has ceased functioning as protests and popular demands imploded the Gaddafi regime. (Image)
Further investigation unearthed a specific pattern of positive IMF endorsements for each of the nations experiencing popular uprisings that are sweeping the region. When the IMF blesses a nation's progress for conforming to the economic policies underlying globalism, watch out! There is a popular rebellion in the wings.
Decline and Fall (Maybe) January 1, 2011
The Happy New Year Edition (with some good news about 2011)
Michael Collins
The Money Party. Lots of fiddling while Rome and the rest of the world burned. Knowledge is power and among the ruling elite in the United States, the power was off. Somebody forgot to pay the bill or paid with a bad check, no doubt.
A Decade of Job Stagnation In 2000, 135 million citizens were employed. In 2010 there were 139 million Americans employed. Given the 9.7% increase in population since 2000, we would expect to see at least 148 million citizens with jobs. Nobody much wants to talk about this or the true unemployment figures produced by the US Census called "U6". That measure accounts for, "Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force." Bureau of Labor Statistics
The "U6" unemployment figure is 17%, well above the official 9.8% we hear all the time. The official number accounts for 15 million citizens. But when we use U6, we add 9 million citizens forced by economic conditions to work less than they want in part time jobs and 2.5 million marginally attached to the work force - those who gave up looking and get no benefits. That gives us a real world total of 26.5 million citizens out of work or working part time against their will.
The Happy Birthday of the Death Tax - Perpetual Estates
...the stealth program to destroy the estate tax is funded by the children of entrepreneurs.
Merry Christmas to All! If it be more blessed to give than to receive, what better time than Christmas Day to discuss the Estate Tax.
You might say to yourself: How dry, how dull – leave me to my eggnog and on some other day I will look into this subject. But there is no better day than Christmas Day to think about what any citizen of a democracy owes to his or her country, and this is especially true about the wealthier, and especially the wealthiest, among us. Image: Mark Fiore
My first Christmas gift to you is my most favorite of all quotes, from that most astute observer of democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville. He was a man who was intimately familiar with the social sclerosis that resulted from aristocracy, and he had a chance to compare it in the 1830s to the newly-invented American democracy. He said the following in Book I of his Democracy in America.
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