The demise of America is upon you and me.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/04/21/the-shocking-collapse-of-the-middle-class.aspx

The collapse of the middle class!

The poem below by Langston Hughes reveals his feelings and thoughts and his feelings and thoughts are similar to my personal feelings and thoughts.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15609

Great to see this topic highlighted. This is similar to what I brought up to Thom during my one call-in to the show in Feb. 2011. We need to have a metric so we can measure how much individual and US businesses as a whole are outsourcing. My suggestion was something like an "American Employee Index", call it AEI since people seem to remember 3 letter acronyms better (GDP, AGI, etc.). This gives the public the ability to pressure companies over time so we can see IBM moving from some number like 41% US-based employees and if they improve this to 43% over a couple of years, then great. Furthermore, the president can discuss the combined US company metric as a whole and shift some of the responsiblity to how well "US Companies" are doing. It will also drive home this point to more of the US population that many of these companies aren't really "US companies", they are transnational.

We won't win this in the courts within the next decade or more... it has to be grass roots.

I worked for a medium sized construction company for many years. The owner (a good boss) built up the company for about 35 years. In the last 10 years he benefited from Bush tax cuts. In 2005/06 there where about 400 employees, today there are about 70 left. Is this because of the tax cuts. No, it's besause the housing bubble broke. The robber barrons (moneychangers) have almost ruined his business and a lot of jobs, to enrich themselves.

They’re on a roll, a bankrolled roll. The money changers define greed as a virtue. Things have been changing in their favor for three decades, but the change has been so slow that it was hardly noticeable. Now we are in three permanent wars and the banksters are selling off everything that was once held in common. Even the fucking wars are privatized with more “contractors” in the field than soldiers. Service guys no longer even have to do KP. Civilians get paid to do it now.

Gas prices are through the roof because of speculators. It has nothing to do with supply and demand. It’s been said that if Wall Streeters had to actually take possession of the commodities that they buy and sell, gas would return to $1.00 over night. They buy millions of barrels of crude, and all kinds of quantities, but only to manipulate the market and sell it again. “Here you go Mr. Greenspan, the trucks of oil are waiting. Where do you want it?” Make the motherfuckers keep what they buy for at least a year. In reality, Wall Street is a casino. I used to play the lounges in Vegas. Maybe I could get a lounge gig at Caesar’s Wall Street Palace. I would be right at home working for the mafia again.

I think they are traitors mixed with enemies who are taking us from the inside as foretold. Hundred-year bonds sustain long-range plans and schemes, like Bush III.

Our corporations were All American in 1945, year of chaos. Like Continental Can and American Can, for example, which when not canning food and Pepsi were engaged in canisters used for military combat, or even to hold cyanide. Then, American Generals were made head of the can companies after getting Alfried Krupp out of jail and making sure his property was returned to him. Cans and steel, and steel railway tire patents, (polio vaccine) and cyanimid all under one control?

25 years from 1945 was 1970; new bank charters are made every twenty five years. We, however, dizzy and reeling from the sixties, were finally done in by the timed multi-bank holding legislation of 1970, which coincided with the Penn Central bankruptcy and the creation of Freddie MAC.

This allowed the hidden money and hidden securities swapping across the waters which has allowed power to shift to the present oppressive regime. This is their due.

According to their formulas, we shall be in total financial chaos 45 years from 1970 which will be 2015.

In 2015, 2300016348 HOOSIER OIL, GAS AND OPERATING COMPANY. MCCAFFERTY , OK Effective Date: 3/8/2015

FDIC #16348=Wells Fargo #3011=Wells Fargo #3511

NORTH AMERICAN SECURITIES CORP. 8810 FROST AVENUE ST LOUIS, MO 63134 I formed [09/08/1965]to expire [09/08/2015] (Note, 50-year mortgage bond; 50 year real estate corporation)

The Seaboard Airline Railway mortgage bonds of 1940 will become due; note 1940 changes in Securities Holding Act.

-I may have more on this...

......quick, tell me......does obama know?

I have said they are "unAmerican" but traitor works for me

SHOULDN'T people who protest illegal immgrants taking AMERICAN jobs also be protesting corporate headquaters for outsourcing AMERICAN jobs out ot the country??

THERE really is not much difference between losing your job to an immigrant coming north illegally - or - corporations legally moving AMERICAN jobs out of the country.

CORPORATIONS have one purpose and one purpose only - to maximize profits for shareholders. NOT patriotism, the enviroment, workplace safety - and for health care corporations not the premium paying patients!!!

We always blame the GOP and the neocons for being greedy money cruppers but even worse many of them would also consider themselves Christians. I feel that it must be known that the majority of the Tea Baggers would probably call themselves Christians. When I talk with Christians they see absolutely nothing wrong with taking away medicare, social security, jobs and not paying their fair share in taxes. My question to them is "what would Jesus say and do? They then quote bible and verse evidence that Jesus came to let them do whatever they wanted as long as they can ask for forgiveness. Disgusting and disingenuous to say the least. I believe that progressive talk shows should point out more often the fact that these greedy and selfish people also dare to call themselves Christians.

Harsh but True Words

I have come down hard on the GOP as Satan’s disciples. I won’t give you a litany of reasons for them being Satan’s disciples. I will give you names and you must remember and study their policies and practices. Here are some names – Limbaugh, Bush, Cheney, Beck, O’Reilly, Hannity, Cantor McConnell, Boehner, Ryan, the Koch Brothers, Snyder, Walker, Scott, Kasich, the governors of Maine, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Arizona. There are many more names but why belabor naming all the fascist-Nazis in the United States of Mortal Sin. You know them by their actions, behaviors, and evil deeds and they are also rotten to the bone.

Fundamentalism is the root of all evil - any fundamentalism! When a fundamentalist believes something, it's their way or the highway.

And so anyone else who does not believe in the strict beliefs of a fundamentalist, they are "Other", someone who needs to be converted or destroyed or ignored.

This is what permeates the religious consciousness of most Americans today. And there are many fundamentalists and there are many hates. This type of mentality is ripe for exploitation from those who have a Machiavellian view of the world - and this is exactly what has been exploited by the neo-cons and the fascist corporate elites. Fear and Hate. And look where we are today. Half of America spewing out hate and rage against the other half. 90% are probably all Christian! They all have bibles and they all spew Christian values while simultaneously practicing the exact opposite!

I don’t need God to drive my ethics or morals. I don’t need the bible to tell me how to act toward my fellow man. I don’t God to teach me empathy. It’s in me already.

Religion is the root cause for most that is good in the world and also the root cause for most all that is evil. Nothing like fundamentalism can mobilize a people to create unimaginable atrocities and genocides, where one fundamentalist group wipes out another: A Million Armenian Christians by the Turks, 6-7 million Jews and Gypsies by the Nazis, 2-3 million Cambodians by the Kmer Rouge, Millions of witches, heretics and Protestants by the Catholic Church during the middle ages - on and on! All committed in the name of some fundamentalist god or belief or other. Millions and millions slaughtered because one fundamentalist group thought they were the one and only chosen ones and thought they had the right to annihilate the other.

And we all still live with this fundamentalist disease! The Christian against the Islamist. The white American against the Mexican and the Afro American. The Communist against the Capitalist. The rampant racism built into any fundamentalism is endemic in that fundamentalism. And no one is immune from it. The GROUP shapes ones view of the world, and when one group believes it is the one and only chosen one, every other group is logically of “The Other”, and therefore expendable and disposable.

The fundamentalist logic is concise: My belief is TRUE. If you believe otherwise, than you are not one of US. Until you become one of us, you are Other. Since you have beliefs that are completely opposite of ours, you must of necessity be against us because if it were otherwise my beliefs would not be true. So I must oppose your beliefs which threaten mine. Since our group is the chosen one, I have every right to oppose you, even if I have to destroy you if I have to. And since we are the chosen group, we have the moral right to so destroy you without any moral or ethical or moral repercussions.

That is how those who commit genocides on their fellow human beings justify their evils – they are the chosen ones and certainly their GOD finds it right in his eye that you who believe in him would logically follow his edicts and demands – thou shalt not worship any OTHER Gods but ME!

No, God is not the answer. Fundamentalism is not the answer. These are at most the engines that wreak havoc on the world. Any religion or belief works just fine, until “Another’ competes with it. Then all hells break lose. It is no accident that there is a separation of State and Church in our Constitution – we would as a Nation have disappeared long ago without it!

And now the evils of Fundamentalism are again banging on the doors of our Nation! Fundamentalism is again trying to insert itself into our government. Again fundamentalism is trying to eliminate the separation of state and church. And Fundamentalism is again rearing its ugly and hateful rhetoric against the other in this nation, any other!

I beg to differ on needing God. I beg to differ that He is the Answer. I beg to differ He will somehow solve all our problems! He IS the problem. And the problem we all have to solve as a people is how are we ALL going to solve that problem before it destroys us ALL!

http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2011/04/22/which-is-the-guilty-dog.aspx

http://www.opednews.com/Podcast/John-Perkins-Best-selling-by-Rob-Kall-110420-124.html

Thom should start a list of companies that have exported a high percentage of their jobs. The only way we can put such firms on notice there is a price to pay which is that we encourage everyone to boycott buying their products. I can think of no better way to get the message across.

I think we need to start using the term "economic patriotism". Republicans love to wave the flag and get us into expensive wars which profit the big defense corporations. They turn a blind eye to economic traitors who are selling this country out to foreign interests, out-sourcing our jobs and getting us into debt to foreign countries!

We need to change the laws and get our tariffs back! We need to start calling out the economic traitors!

Amen on this...this is the thought process that make's the Tea Baggers choke and puke but it is the heart of this great nation. Thanks for this post.

We love puppies . I inject a small but significant factor in your argument. British Petroleum has created thousands of jobs dealing with the toxic waste in the golf region. These jobs are being ignored. Nobody is doing them. British Petroleum is leaving it up to a underfunded EPA and a strapped federal budget under attack by the rich insurgents of our political arena. We need to as Americans push government to hold British Petroleum responsible for ongoing residual affects in the gulf. They need a couple of teams cleaning up constantly, until this stuff quits, ashore.
Every dog has his day. Let us make sure British Petroleum savers It.

WELL SAID! KUDOS!

As Robert Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, states (see http://foreconomicjustice.org/3767/the-problem-isnt-outsourcing-its-that...) : "The problem isn’t outsourcing. It’s that the prosperity of big business has become disconnected from the well-being of most Americans.

What Romney and Obama both fail to address is the exponential concentration of ownership among a minority, while at the same time destroy American jobs or degrading them and outsourcing jobs in other countries. While new jobs can be created by new technology applications, by the year 2050 most products and services will be provided by digital computerized superautomated machines, and non-human intelligent-based operations. Thus far, economic growth in past decades has disguised the destruction of jobs and degradation of jobs that have occurred as a result of technological innovation and invention. As such technological advancements push forward, this will present a serious problem for the masses who remain solely dependent on a job for income.

Both Romney and Obama and their advisors fail to acknowledge that full employment is not an objective of businesses. Companies strive to keep labor input and other costs at a minimum. Private sector job creation in numbers that match the pool of people willing and able to work is constantly being eroded by physical productive capital’s ever increasing role.

The non-human factor of production is the product of tectonic shifts in the technologies of production. Human-level artificial intelligent machines and digital computerized operations are and will continue to destroy jobs or degrade job opportunities because increasingly machines are providing skills and abilities previously unique to human workers. The advent of truly intelligent systems of production is effectively increasing the size of the work force beyond that provided by human workers. Thus, the idea of job creation for humans is a dead-end proposition and calls for big jobs programs such as WPA-type projects to rebuild America's infrastructure are worthwhile but the resulting jobs, financed by borrowing or tax redistribution, are temporary and disappear once the project work has been completed. Corporations embracing technological innovation and invention in the form of the non-human factor of production understand that their profitability increases because machines work for nothing more than the cost of their manufacture and maintenance. When "cheap" labor becomes scarce, then corporations will pursue aggressively employing "machines" to replace human labor and the impact will be catastrophic for ordinary people dependent on jobs alone. As the cost of computer-controlled machines become less than the cost of human workers, and the job sills and productivity of the machines exceed those of human workers, intelligent "machines" will rapidly replace human workers. The increase will be exponential, and each generation of intelligent machines will be more powerful and less expansive than the one before.

It is the full utilization and application of technological innovation and invention in the form of intelligent machines that is the future and the economic engine that can result in growth of 15-plus percent of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product). But unless we restructure the mechanisms by which people acquire ownership in these "machines" the resulting levels of productivity growth via technology would be devastating to human workers whose income from wages and salaries would no longer exist or be limited, except for a minority of top-echelon educated individuals necessary to the design, engineering, and operation of the machines. As for the masses, the middle-class and poor, the current job-focused economic model relies on the sale of their labor as their primary source of income.

Ronney and Obama, as well as conventional wisdom thinking economists and public policy experts do not address the fact that the economic value of labor is being constrained by the rapidly increasing capabilities and falling cost of advanced digital computerized automation. Simply stated: if what labor can earn is based on supply and demand, and the supply of workers is rising due to growing world population, while the demand for workers if falling because of improved productivity, the market value of labor can only go down. Compound this with the exponential growth of job-destroying and degrading technology and the result will be the disastrous collapse of middle-class income.

What is needed is a modern-day Homestead Act, which I and others refer to as the Capital Homestead Act (see http://cesj.org/homestead/index.htm).

The policies and programs recommended (also see my article "Democratic Capitalism And Binary Economics: Solutions For A Troubled Nation and Economy" at http://foreconomicjustice.com/11/economic-justice/ or follow me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/For-Economic-Justice/347893098576250 and http://www.facebook.com/editorgary) provide mechanisms for achieving rapid economic growth and widespread private, individual ownership of future productive capital investment in the form of intelligent machine technologies, robotics and superautomation in a manner such that everyone benefits and no one loses. Under this platform, those who are ambitious, hardworking, and successful wold continue to be rewarded for their achievements, with rapid growth providing opportunities for prosperity and affluence. Jobs, at least in the short term would be plentiful and due to rapid and sizable economic growth deficits would shrink. Financing for small businesses and opportunities for entrepreneurship would abound. And owner-consumers would have plenty of money for consumption so that market demand for the products and services produced would be strong and steady.

Our present scenario relies on jobs ONLY for the 99 percent. No jobs equals no income and thus no consumer demand. As businesses minimize labor costs, a further shortage of consumer-customers result. And with fewer customers, businesses need fewer workers, which leads to fewer jobs. The result is a downward spiral that can only be fixed by a upward spiral reversal of economic growth simultaneously with broadened private, individual ownership in future productive capital investment. By stimulating economic growth in this manner, in the short term, increased investment would create demand for labor workers to build new machines, factories, plants, and infrastructure to facilitate commerce. Thus, jobs would be created that generate income and market demand increases, and such investment would cause business corporations to hire and invest even more. As investment spending pays for itself, once paid for it creates income for investors from dividends, interest, or rent. Thus, ordinary Americans would benefit from dividends through investments made through Capital Homesteading, which would be used to buy the new products and services that their investments produce. Dividend income to every man, woman and child leads to more customers, which creates more profits, which creates more dividends, which creates more customers. The result is an upward spiral of economic growth putting ALL Americans on a path to prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice.