Disaster capitalism killed Detroit.
By Thom Hartmann A...
Republicans are thrilled that Detroit has filed for bankruptcy. Because - for the GOP - the fall of Detroit is a talking point goldmine. Over the past year , the American public has started to wake-up about the total failure of austerity both here in the United States, and across the Atlantic in Europe. So the chance to blame the decline of a great American city on Democrats, workers , African-Americans and big-government is an opportunity the Right doesn’t want to miss.
Conservatives like Neil Munro and Sean Higgins hope that maybe - just maybe - if they can convince the American people that big bad unions and Democrats are to blame for the death of Detroit, then they can get them to forget that conservatives have destroyed this country with 30-plus years of Reaganomics and voodoo economics. Union-bashing is bad enough - but there’s another, even uglier dimension to the GOP’s Detroit meme. The Motor City is eighty-five percent African-American. In fact, it has the highest black population - percentage wise - of any major city in the United States. So when Republican pundits and politicians talk about “mismanagement” and “bad governance”, what they are actually saying is that black-people aren’t capable of running a city.
Blaming minorities for social problems is a tried and true Republican tactic. Reagan had “welfare queens” and the air-traffic controllers. The modern GOP has Detroit. However, it wasn’t unions or black people that bankrupted Detroit - it was decades of pro-corporate and anti-middle class free-trade policies that gutted the city of its industrial core. Over the next few weeks, you’ll hear a lot of hand-wringing from conservatives in the media about how Detroit is a sign of things to come and how this is what happens when you give Democrats, workers and “disorganized people” (that’s right-wing doublespeak for African-Americans ) control of a big city. But remember, the Republican solution for Detroit is just more of the same: gutting social services.
This is disaster capitalism. It's an opportunity for wealthy white speculators to experiment with all of their austerity dreams. And if that comes with a chance to demonize poor people, black people, and unionized workers - well - that’s just the icing on the cake.
Comments
#2
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/02/03/business/reagan-set-to-ask-sweeping-ch...
REAGAN SET TO ASK SWEEPING CHANGES FOR PENSION RULES
By ROBERT PEAR, Special to the New York Times
Published: February 03, 1987
President Reagan will soon propose sweeping changes in the Federal pension law, making it easier for companies to take surplus money out of pension funds and use it for their own benefit, Administration officials said today.
The President also intends to propose stricter standards for determining how much employers must contribute to their pension plans, the officials said. Under these standards, many employers would have to set aside more money than they now do to cover a given level of promised benefits.
David M. Walker, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor, said ''the Administration believes it is time to make fundamental changes'' in the nation's 13-year-old pension law. Varying Impact Planned
The proposed changes, Mr. Walker said, would make the law more flexible in dealing with healthy pension plans and ''less lenient'' in dealing with employers who did not adequately finance their pension obligations.
Details of the proposals, which Mr. Reagan plans to send to Congress in a few weeks, were given in confidential documents from the White House, the Labor Department and the Internal Revenue Service. The proposals will be offered as an amendment to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, which sets minimum standards for pension plans covering more than 70 million people.
#3
For Years the Employees (non-union) of Cities Service over funded the company pension plan with the tacit understanding that it would be returned. All the employees from the CEO and Pension Fund Manager to the lowest janitor was vested.
I believe this all started with TBoone Pickens 1976 and later Lee Iaccoco 1979 attempted takeover of Cities Service Oil Company and its overfunded pension plan (explained as money not used for stock holders).Think of the movie "other peoples money"
The response was the "poisen pill" defense. Companies cried about how their pension plans made them targets by takeover "artists".
#4
As with most things it wasn't a single act
General Explanation Of The Economic Recovery Tax Act Of 1981, (H.R. 4242, 97th Congress, Public Law 97-34).
...Self-employed retirement savings
The Act increases from $7,500 to $15,000 the maximum annual
deduction for a contribution to a self-employed retirement plan
(Keogh or H.R. 10 plan), and for employer contributions to a simplified
employee pension, and makes other changes in tax rules applicable
to such plans, generally effective for taxable years beginning
after 1981...
#5
This is planned. It is not unintended consequences.
For the last couple of decades in Oklahoma The State Employees and Teachers Pension Plan(s) are woefully underfunded and every year the shortfall is brought to the state house and senate floor.
The failure to sufficiently fund the State Employee and Teachers Pension is a deliberate policy just as the yearly call for income "tax Cuts". (funny how the tax cuts are never for unemployment or sales tax on food).
This year the OK Legislature lifted the vail and called for the State employees and Teachers to be converted to IRA's and 401ks.
#6
USian whites are so racist, the vast majority, probably 75 percent, will accept without question the meme of African-American political ineptitude. Combine that with the presidential transformation from Obama the Orator to Barack the Betrayer -- already the greatest political betrayal in U.S. history -- and the cause of minority rights is being methodically positioned to suffer its most devastating setback ever. Nor, knowing the Machiavellian cunning of the One Percent, can I imagine even for a moment this positioning is accidental. The impetus for humanitarian change in the United States has always come from minorities, and African-Americans have been by far its most vocal and most effective advocates. Silence them and silence women -- note the parallel attacks on women's sexual freedom -- and the One Percent will not only have suppressed any and all hope for human betterment, but will have imposed a New Dark Age that will end only when our entire species is extinct.
#7
Just as the right may use the Detroit issues to push their agenda, so the left will do also. Unfortunately the people of Detroit cannot eat, live in, or warm themselves in winter on agenda, left or right.
I happened to catch a local event, a speaker addressing city planning for our area, but what he had to say about cooperatives and what was shown on a short video about changes in some neighborhoods in Cleveland was encouraging. Crime was reduced because everyone in the neighborhood had a stake in the community hydroponic greenhouse they had built. People were owners in the company that grows and sells organic herbs and vegetables, mainly lettuce. You can read more about them: http://evergreencooperatives.com/business/green-city-growers/
I think some folks from Detroit would benefit greatly, if they could get some grant funding or something to start something similar. I believe this is one great way to fight back!
.
#8
Hence the phrase "pulling apart the very fabric of our society"...the very well-educated concubine of intellectual prostitutes in the think tanks of ALEC and the John Birch Society---most of them educated on the backs and from the pockets of poor laborers--in places like the American Heritage Foundation, etc., very astutely understood the key pressure points at which to peck in order to pull this fabric apart...
If there was a social safety net which could keep a portion of "undesirables" among the citizenry, dismantle it (for the elderly, it was Social Security...for "blacks" and immigrants, the unions and the welfare system--of course, these also affected all of the middle class as well, but who cares about them)...and, if all else failed, they would find a way to infest the very heart and lungs of the system itself--the legislature and the judiciary--to ensure that those final defenses, those societal antibodies, were neutralized...
You've got to hand it to them...like any good pariah, like any superior virus, they analyzed the anatomy of our society and found the core values to attack... In some cases, they--like the Shingles/Chickenpox virus--found ways to lay dormant until the perfect moment to strike... (Personally, I feel their most egregious error was in allowing the VA and other veteran's support mechanisms to deteriorate, exposing them for the traitors they are--but, in a society with an "all-vounteer" military, where most serving are from the "underclass" of the economy and race, there would probably not be much furor from the bulk of the infected host...)
And, like most of us in the face of personal illness, we ignored the symptoms until they became so egregious, so overwhelming, that we knew we were in dire peril, and sought medical attention... Of course, then they decided to dismantle our access to that attention: Obamacare....
So, all hail the conquering Neocon Virus... Kneel before the new God of Oligarch, and praise his prophets... And kiss another city, another formerly-middle-class bastion, goodbye...
#9
Argon ~ Like I said before, Ronald Wilson (666) Reagan!
#10
Carlyle Group Lawyers, Trust Companies and Securities Traders are to blame. They want EVERYTHING, including your DNA. How insane is that?
#11
??? let us not forget the benton harbor fiasco, hmmm? while somewhet smaller it really is all about mis management and likely thievery. Detroit today? America tomorrow and not to far off in the future? we may well be the united states of china. The saddest thing about it all? i use to love my Michigan but like dust blowin' in the wind its gone from a place i once lived and wanted to return to, to ghetto after ghetto. My home town back in the 70s had kellogg, post, purina, clark equipment, michigan carton company and a number of other industries, several very large auto salvage yards a main trunk line for rail, a sizable stock yard that cattle traders would trade at and who knows what else i may have forgotten. much of it disappeared back in the 70s. memeory tells me it was somehting to do with michigan taxes? not quite sure. Last time i went back to bury my mom i went to the working/middle class hood i grew up in a lot of which now is just that, looks like the hood. I'm kind of thinkin another 15-20 down the road 91 Sherman road will look like some the deralict homes in detroit. But who can we really blame? I just work in America i didn't sell it out!
#12
Reprinted from last Friday's blog on the same subject:
Republican Austerity
A man walks into a bathroom and up to a urinal next to a very short hairy young man. While relieving himself he can't help but notice that the little man is incredibly endowed. "My God!" He exclaims. "You certainly are unproportionally endowed! Congratulations!"
In an Irish accent the little man explains. "Tis nothing, Lad. You see, I'm a Leprechaun. Such a condition is characteristic of my people."
"Oh, I see." Said the man. "Wait a minute! You're a Leprechaun? And I saw you. That means you owe me three wishes."
"Alright, you got me. What be ya wishes?"
"I want a Billion dollars!"
"Very well. Go to your bank and you'll see your account topped off at $1 billion. What be ya second wish, Lad?"
"I want a huge mansion on a hill with a beautiful wife."
"Very well, Lad. When you go home tonight, you will find your home has become a three story mansion and your beautiful Lass wait'in for ya. What be ya last wish, Lad?"
"I want to be endowed just like you."
"Oh, no Lad! I'm sorry! Can't do that. That would be against the code of the Leprechaun."
"I insist!" Demanded the man. "I saw you! You have to do anything I ask!"
"Aye, you got me." The Leprechaun sighed. "But to do it, I'll have to rape you."
"What?"
"It's the only way Lad. The code of the Leprechaun, you know."
After thinking about it for a minute, the man agrees, lowers his pants and bends over the sink. "I'll do anything to be hung like that." He says. The Leprechaun responds in kind. Several minutes later the Leprechaun finishes and immediately pulls his pants back up. The man still bent over the sink howls out in pain. Crying with tears streaming down his face he exclaims, "I can't believe I just let you do that too me!"
Walking out of the bathroom door the Leprechaun pauses and says, "Laddie, I can't believe you think I'm a Leprechaun!"
What have we learned from this story. Two things. First, If something sounds too good to be true it probably is. Secondly, people tend to be very gullible when you tell them exactly what they want to hear.
Austerity is nothing more than smoke and mirrors designed to rape the masses.
#13
Boston Brakes and thermite!
Michael Hastings' crash:
Quote article:Another significant detail pointed out by some members of law enforcement, is the intensity of the fire inside the car. It’s highly unusual since gasoline generally doesn’t burn that hot. Reviewing video footage from the scene, the intensity of the fire resembles a “thermite” burn.
http://www.examiner.com/article/information-regarding-michael-hastings-d...
-----------------------------------------
The concept of "Boston Brakes" (aka: "no skid marks") has been around for some time. Michael Hastings wasn't the first person to get assassinated in this manner.
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7/25/2010 article by Gordon Duff:
Quote Duff: I had never heard of “Boston Brakes” until two days ago. I had been on the Kevin Barrett radio show yesterday, discussing, among other things, the endless ways to gain control of an aircraft and plow it into a building, something I had been briefed on by my Air Force buddies.There are a dozen ways to gain control of a plane, in fact, the more “fly by wire” a plane is, the more ways to control it remotely. Now I am told the same thing works for cars, not exactly the same but close enough.
----
Quote article:The trail that led me to look into “Boston Brakes” involved the suicide in 2003 of Dr. David Kelly, a suicide now ruled a murder. Kelly was believed to have killed himself because he had been attacked in the press by Prime Minister Tony Blair. Kelly, a prominent weapons scientist had claimed, as we all know is true today, that Tony Blair had falsified intelligence to force Britain into what Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has called “the illegal invasion of Iraq.”With evidence finally, years later, piling in showing that Kelly’s body had been moved and a suicide scene staged, pathologist records falsified and that Kelly was murdered with broad complicity by more than one government agency, things have started to take on a life of their own.
----
Quote article:The assassination of Dr. David Kelly (in 2003) if prosecuted, and it is now under full criminal investigation, could lead to the highest levels of the British and American governments, the absolute highest. Kelly was that important and the secrets they thought they had silenced when he was murdered point to the heads of state of several countries, not just Britain and America but Israel, North Korea, South Africa and maybe a few more. This was a stupid and clumsy murder of a good and decent man. Selling nuclear weapons to North Korea isn’t a joke, not at least to Dr. David Kelly. This is what cost him his life.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/07/25/gordon-duff-boston-brakes-no-ski...
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Quote article:The illegal NSA spy-on-Americans program apparently “became necessary” several months before 9/11, not after 9/11. Why?In an interview entitled “NSA Whistleblower Russ Tice Alleges NSA Wiretapped Barack Obama as Senate Candidate” Russ Tice recently explained to FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds the real purpose of the NSA’s illegal spying on Americans: To collect blackmail material and other information that can be used to control influential citizens.
In short: The whole purpose of the NSA spy program was to enable 9/11, protect the perpetrators, and maintain the 9/11-triggered covert dictatorship.
Before 9/11, the neoconservatives of the Bush-Cheney Administration needed to ensure that no influential Americans would dare to stand up against the coming coup d’état. So they directed the NSA to begin wiretapping the American people.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/06/29/nsa-spy-scandal-its-even-worse-t...
NSA Whistleblower Russ Tice interviewed by Sibel Edmonds on the Boiling Frogs web site (podcast show #112):
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/tag/podcast-episode/
#14
...heres a good one to help gauge where things went wrong. I studied graphic art, was going to be a printer, worked in printing for 20 years. even back when i was a kid going to school in that small town there was any number of printers, PIP, Minuteman press, Quicky print as well as Lyman print and a number of small private shops and a few industrial type printers as well as the local newspaper. So comes the digital age and Kinko's is a boom. I'm in socal now. A great business model until?Greed got hold of someone and the owner, who shall be nameless, who was wealthy enough by far sold out his business model and basically shafted all his partners. Sure they were well compinsated as many jumped ship but what of the up and comers? cats like me in management who were so close to being invited to be a partner and what of the co-op like way the staff were paid, a decent wage with benes, 401k as well as profit sharing. "it was" the America i wanted to be part of. So he sells out in an effort supposedly to offer an IPO but...winds up evolving into FED EX office? Just walking into one of those places today you can tell it's all about bottom line. Scarce staff and when you do get some help? Minimum wage attitude from the new working class! But what really makes me puke? Every time i pick up a book and read, "printed in china." Hells belss and ginger snapps i just found out today that one of the most classic papers for letter head and envelopes is no longer avaiable!!! Makes ya wonder, huh?
#15
Palindromedary ~ The audacity and arrogance of these people to think that they have the right to put themselves above God and the law of man. I can't wait to see their house of cards collapse and justice prevail.
#16
it must be the trickle down effect working in detroit. like the actor said-
hang in there it's going to get better!!!!
good luck detroit- fight back!!!
#17
I'm too pissed to play defense so I choose offense tonight. Let's talk about "mismanagement" and "bad governance." I can think of a few old white guy examples. How about banks too big to fail so we bailed them out? How about the Cheney Administration's for profit, illegal, and unfunded wars? How about Rick Scott ripping off the tax payers with record Medicaid fraud? How about Romney stealing retirements from citizens with nothing else but poverty to replace it with? How about him and his type socking the loot in offshore bank accounts for purpose of tax evasion? How about the Kochs driving up the price of gas during record surplus and low demand? How about the Teabag House, their alcoholic speaker, and the Senate's Turtleman, all obstructing economic recovery and wasting our tax money? These are is all white boy scoundrels and Detroit isn't even one raindrop in the pond compared to their "mismanagement" and "bad governance." The corpse media won't tell you this though.
#18
Do we not all agree all the problems are do the the 1% (AKA 0.01%)? Reagan was able to delude the 99% into thinking there was no class warfare going on. Meanwhile he was coming up the the Powell dictrine, Jude Winewski (sp?) two Santa Claus theory, permanent trade relations with China, non-enforcement of the anti-trust law, firing air traffic controllers etc.
#19
My father, a life long strong union man, told me over 45 years ago that the UAW would kill the auto industry in this country with their demands!
#20
Quote DAnneMarc: I can't wait to see their house of cards collapse and justice prevail.After I listened to Russ Tice on Sibel Edmonds Boiling Frogs show, I suspect that it will be a very long time before their house of cards will collapse or justice prevail. They are just getting started in what they can and will do to us all....they, the NSA, has apparently got blackmail material on just about everyone in power, including Obama, and most of the rest of us as well. Now that they have the new NSA spy center in Utah and are spending another $7billion on another 500,000 sq ft addition to the Ft Meade headquarters in Maryland science fiction is becoming a non-fiction nightmare.
What they claimed, initially, was that they only collected and stored meta data for 6 months then to be destroyed if they couldn't find anything useful (ie: no violations)...went to 5 years...and now indefinite storage of every single word, every single comma, we type...every single word we speak on our land lines or cell phones, every text message, every web site we visit..every video or photo of your license plate, occupants of your car, video or photo of your walking in front of surveillance cameras in stores, etc. The indexed meta data makes it easier for them to find the actual data they need..actual information about you..ie: names, phone numbers, IP addresses and MAC addresses that you used when you visited other IP addresses, emails, photos, videos, etc. Being able to blackmail politicians and other people in power...news media...gives them the dictatorial powers that Hitler never had. Is there another "America" out there, somewhere, that will invade and save us from our oppressors like America did for the Germans during WWII? Don't think so! I wonder what they have on Obama? I can guess but I won't say it! The NSA was spying on Obama since before he became a Senator. Was the Rezko affair the only thing they had on Obama? According to NSA Whistleblower Russ Tice, the NSA was spying on most of the politicians both Democrat and Republican.
Here is a shorter video program (about 12 minutes) on Breaking the Set interview of Russ Tice telling how the NSA has been "going after" (spying on..possibly blackmailing?) high ranking military/pentagon officers, Colin Powell, even members of the Supreme Court. Question is: is the intelligence community, or someone controlling the intelligence community, running this country and not our government? Russ Tice said that even most of the people that work at the NSA do not know what exactly is going on. He said that during the Bush administration, it looked like Vice President Cheney was controlling things at the NSA. The shadow government is being run by the upper echelon of the intelligence community and some very wealthy and powerful people beyond that. Tice said that Snowden has the tangible proof...the paperwork...that proves what Tice has been saying these last 4 or 5 years is true. Snowden has now codified the truth of what has been going on. Everything, now, is being watched, including the addresses and return addresses of every letter that goes through the post office and stored for future reference or immediate flagging for attention...at which point the letters can be intercepted and read, I suppose. We are living in an Orwellian Police State and it will only get worse.
In the old Soviet Union, they came for you and you may be shot or sent to Siberia for life. Today, all they have to do is take remote control of your car and crash you into a tree at high speed. People knew that the government was responsible for the disappearance of their loved ones in the old Soviet Union. In today's AmeriKa, seig heil!, people can be fooled into thinking their loved ones recklessly crashed their cars...they can be fooled into believing that 19 Muslims, with box cutters, hijacked and rammed airliners into tall buildings. They can be fooled into watching tall buildings demolished, falling at near free fall speed, and believing that that airplane crashing at upper levels caused all of the supporting structures to immediately disintegrate. Maybe if more people would have spent more time learning physics in school than watching ridiculous movies of impossible, or at least very improbable, feats then their sense of reality would be intact enough to recognize an impossible feat for real. Buildings don't collapse at near free fall speed unless the supporting structures are rapidly removed by some force. The resistance to free fall would have prevented free fall speeds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6m1XbWOfVk
DAnneMarc: my apologies for "preaching to the choir" but there may be some other people who, perhaps, may read this and be convinced that they should not just accept the official government conspiracy theory. ;-}
#21
The founding fathers.
When this country was set up by a set of men who wanted to move the 13 colonies from a controlling monarchy and government, to form a country that was not under the control of a single powerful man like a king and the king’s parliament, but to a form of government that was set up and ran by elected officials of its own people. Alexander Hamilton expressed this in his writings of the Federalist papers number 17 when he said.
The barons, or nobles, equally the enemies of the sovereign and the oppressors of the common people, were dreaded and detested by both; till mutual danger and mutual interest effected a union between them fatal to the power of the aristocracy. Had the nobles, by a conduct of clemency and justice, preserved the fidelity and devotion of their retainers and followers, the contests between them and the prince must almost always have ended in their favor, and in the abridgment or subversion of the royal authority.
The founding fathers truly believe the government should have been set up by the common people, in which they believe the government of the people would create an environment for equal growth instead of a monarchy. Little did they know or realize that they left a pathway that would permit a major organization or a corporation to succeed in a Monarch type authority, that would take the power from the common people away then spread it among the small amount of the elite. That would drive a division that will separate different types of classes of people like it was set up in a monarchy. The Republican Party that is also known as the Conservatives supports this type of divisions of classes among the people of America.
The beginning of the Reagan era.
The beginning of the Pres. Reagan’s administration started the downward fall of the American working family, to a life of struggle under the control of the corporations in this nation, who takes profit over the working family instead of uniting this nation with equal opportunity. In the writings of some of our famous founding fathers, one of them Thomas Jefferson’s quotation of, “All men are created equal” which is found in the Declaration of Independence, one of the countries best known documents that started this country departure from the ruling factor of the monarchy and his parliament. We are now at the point in this country’s history we are heading towards a structure that Alexander Hamilton mentioned in the Federalist papers number 17, of a monarch like structure that now we give onto the corporations with such titles as Chief Operating Officer, Chairman of the Board, or the President of the Company, than titles like The King, Queen, Prince, Princess or any other of the royal authority.
The Bush administration bailed out major corporations as did the Obama administration, the public employees of this city will probably lose their pension and they are not eligible for social security. It’s always the small guy, the common working man that gets sold out while these kingdoms of the top elite in this country that flourish. It is just not right.
#22
You're so right. Definitely The Shock Doctrine will be applied. The plan is to pay back the backs before the pensioners. I believe there is a corporate board running Detroit like in Benton Harbor. Michigan will become the prototype for direct corporate rule. If the TPP is passed, it will complement this.
#23
Quote article: Glenn Greenwald is going to publish a book based on the revelations of Snowden and warns those who may wish to silence the "whistleblower": "He has already distributed thousands of documents and made sure that different people around the world have the full archive. If anything happens to him, these documents will be made public. This is his insurance. The U.S. government should daily pray on their knees no harm happens to Snowden. Because if that happens, all of this information will be released and it will be the worst nightmare for the United States."And Snowden, according to Greenwald, "has enough information that in just one minute could cause more damage to the U.S. government than anyone else has ever done in the history of the United States."
http://cryptome.org/2013/07/gg-snowden-leak-halt.htm
Gee, what in the world could it be? What does Snowden/Greenwald have on the US Intelligence agencies/US government that we don't already know? What? Do they have death camps hidden in the woods scattered throughout the US with "Arbeit Macht Frei" signs above the gates? Or, do they have evidence that the US government is collaborating with an extraterrestrial race who kidnap and impregnate earth women for the purpose of creating hybrid human/alien beings? Man, I'm certainly glad Snowden is seeking asylum in Russia! But, I'm afraid the NSA probably already has tracked down all those repositories of Snowden revelations and they are likely sending out their jackals to rig more cars to crash into more trees at this very moment. I just hope that Snowden isn't sold out by some trickery of some sort in Russia. After all, if they sell nuclear materials on the black market, they'll sell out Snowden.
#24
So the US uses drones to kill civilians in Pakistan...and now Pakistan is designing and developing the world's smallest "smart weapons, i.e. nuclear weapons that have a dynamic and compact form, and which can easily be transported from one location to another." Blowback is such a bitch!
Article: Pakistan's Strategic Forces Develop World's Smallest Nuclear Weapons"
#25
akunard -- The economic numbers seem not to support what your father was implying was the root cause. He was right in that the 1% used your father's sentiments to kill the US auto industry. All the time the UAW was asking for more and more the economy was growing. Reagan and his buddies said look at these greedy workers and established permanent trade relations with China. The economy is failing ever since. Reagan used the Powell Doctine (control of the media) to sell his destructive ideas.
#26
Is it just an illusion that Detroit's problems have been caused by non-Republicans, by non-whites, by non-wealthy people...the workers...the laborers...the retirees?
It seems to me that Detroit is surrounded by some very opulent, mostly-white, exclusive gated communities that have been sucking Detroit dry all these years. It wasn't just the Uncle Toms that were ushered into positions of faux power, ostensibly running the city, to end up taking all the blame. It was the real powers that created the illusion of a progressive facade that beguiled so many people into swallowing the bait. While all these "white guys" have stashed their ill-gotten gains in off-shore accounts they try to blame their victims and expect the nation to believe their lies and deception.
The mega corporations, headquartered in Detroit, have exploited the masses..the quasi-slave labor market of the Detroit metropolis, drained them dry with promises of heaven in their retirement years but leaving them with hell instead.
These Mammon, Moloch and Ayn Rand worshippers (WAR shippers) sacrifice their children for a few shekels every chance they get. They are having one of their sacred ceremonies as we speak in Monte Rio, Ca...at Bohemian Grove...where they make a symbolic sacrifice to the concrete statue of a hollow giant owl called Moloch. "As a god worshipped by the Phoenicians and Canaanites, Moloch had associations with a particular kind of propitiatory child sacrifice by parents." --Wikipedia.
And then, like the pitiful cowards that they are, they try to make their sacrificed children, their slaves, out as irresponsible reprobates to take all the blame for their own destitution.
So, think about that every time you see a commercial on TV, or at the movies, or see a bill board advertisement....they have used all the psychological marketing wizardry they can think of to cajole people out of their well being for yet more junk to buy.
Who's houses or apartments are not full of junk they no-longer use, just collecting dust and taking up space, like discarded toys. Toys we all once just had to have because our minds were hypnotized by some cute commercial into owning...just had to have it! Then, these tempestuous, greedy marketing cowards turn right around and blame their victims...blame the suckers who gave in to the urges to buy, buy, buy. Blame them for being weak and irresponsible...or being lazy and unproductive.
We were all made to believe that life was good and would only get better...just keep spending...or, conversely, risk your savings in various savings, investment, or retirement funds (scams)...trust in financial experts with your money. While many of those who were trying to be frugal and "wisely" "investing" their savings for the long term, the crooked weasels were slipping out the back door (in the short term) with our savings and stashing them in their offshore accounts.
The world was touted to be a gigantic bubble that would just keep growing forever and never burst and you'd better get in now before it is too late. If you don't take the plunge and go along with "liars loans", hyped and encouraged by the "experts", the loan companies, the banks, you would miss your chance forever to experience the American dream...home ownership.
It's time to get very, very cynical and wary of everything and everyone promising gold at the end of the rainbow. It is just not going to happen. These proselytizers will cheat you out of your money and then, later, try to blame you for being stupid and unworthy of having any money.
#27
Palin - I think this is one of your best posts.
#28
Once again Republicans can only see what's within their arm's reach. Motor city pensions may have been the last straw for their immediate economy but that is no more to blame for their collapse than a murder victim's huge loss of blood is to blame for why he's dead. I believe that it's the three bullets in the victim's chest that caused him to bleed too much which ultimately caused him to perish. As usual, republicans are correct, but only on the surface. I wonder what it's like to be so black and white with real life comprehension, perhaps it's very gratifying. Or is it 'white then black' for our infamous whigs of the right?
#29
It started with the assassination of JFK and the ascendency of the treasonous Tricky Dick.
#30
At that time my father said that in econmic down turns a company needs to layoff workers. The union workers were paid 80% of their pay when laidoff. Check your facts on this and other details.
#31
Thank you, Chuckle8!
#32
I realize that I am one day late - and hopefully not a dollar short. We heard on the Kaiser Report on Russian Television on Tuesday the 23rd that the city of Detroit had made some dealings with Wall Street in the aught years between 2002 and 2005. Stacy Herbert (sp?) who is on the show with Max Kaiser said that in 2002 the pensions funds were in the positive. In 2005 - they were in the negative.
If I remember correctly - the city was trying to borrow money each year to pay for what they had to pay to their Wall Street creditors for the previous year's borrowing.
This is the only place that I have heard this story - so I am not sure of it. If it is true - I guess we have heard this story before .
Thank you, Thom.
#33
Guess the US has not figured out that being a "Good Neighbor" to these countries - dealing with them with some common courtesy and good sense - might actually have them look at us as friends rather than people to retaliate against and to kill.
My sense about the people in these countries - as they are so emotional - is to treat them fairly but to have very little to do with them. Saying that - we need to have our own green sources of energy.
#34
akunard -- How long was that downturn? What was the metric for that downturn? The average lag time for economic policy to effect the economy is about 7 years (e.g. stimulus a few months, education 20 years). The time span I think one should look at is a decade. Ravi Batra in his book "Greenspan's Fraud" had these measurements. Incidentally that 80% layoff pay may very kept our economy crashing.
The problem you are describing and your response is similar to how the republicans can sell austerity when it has been shown to never work. The IMF has been trying austerity in the Eurozone for about a decade and finally they have said this doesn't work. The republicans, via the billionaire Pete Peterson, generated a report by 2 well-respected (at least, previously) economists showing that no economy in the world could sustain a 90% debt. Just recently, a graduate student at U Mass, Amherst, obtained the spreadsheets from their study after much badgering. He pointed out cherry picking plus errors. Thom has pointed out it was a scam. Since Pete Peterson wants to privatize socail security one can understand the motivation for this scam.
#35
BlackKnight -- You imply we need green energy in order to be a "Good Neighbor". We do need green energy, but not for that reason. I say that because the No. 1 export for the US is fuel (at least it was in 2011 and 2012). All we need to do for energy is keep the Kochs and others from sending our fuel out of the country. Of course if we do that, we would have a glut of oil in the US and Koch's profits would plummet. Since they own the republicans in congress, there is very little chance of any laws being passed to restrict the export of fuel.
#36
BlackKnight: That Max Keiser is a real funny guy sometimes. I love the show along with Breaking the Set and, sometimes, other shows as well. Oksana Boyko had Dr. Michio Kaku on in an episode called the Science of Democracy. I have always liked Michio Kaku when talking about physics but he really went bazzaro when trying to defend US Democracy... which is not a real democracy at all. It's a sham Democracy. A corrupt Democracy. Democracy has proven to be as much of a failed Utopian dream as Socialism and Communism. Just another tool by a ruling elite to control and exploit and abuse the masses.
At least one thing he said was that he disagreed with the US dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagaski (he had relatives killed in those cities). He said he disagreed with the reasoning behind dropping the bombs. He maintained that it was not really necessary to end the war with Japan by using atomic bombs... they were already about to surrender. He was, however, an apologist stooge for the aggressive jingoist nation's hegemonic history and justified war as a necessary action.
He seems to swallow the official US government's conspiracy theories about 9/11 which is really odd..except when you take into consideration that many very intelligent and public individuals whose livelihood (read popularity..selling books..government contracts, perhaps) depends on towing the line for the man. And also: avoiding a can of worms...in trying to defend oneself against attacks by agents of the traitorous insider bastards that did 9/11...like the major news media and their propaganda machine....avoiding being believed by many to be just another conspiracy kook...all may contribute to reasons why one may not say things that they really believe. Lots of people had to "shut up" in Nazi Germany as well!
It is really amazing how anyone smart enough, especially one who is among those sitting at the pinnacle of physics (albeit: astrophysics) can watch those videos of the collapsing WTC towers and not know that something is really amiss here..something very contradictory to the official explanation.
#37
BlackKnight: I would imagine that Americans would be very emotional too if some powerful foreign country invaded, killed off millions of civilians, imposed their force and will upon our country. I suspect that there would be more than a few Americans that would be willing to strap on an explosive device and sacrifice his life as a way to fight the much greater, technologically, occupation forces. Then again, maybe not! Maybe it would take a fundamentalist Christian who believes he will be going to a better place (sans the 69 virgins of course). I don't know. It is so easy to NOT put oneself in the place of what many victims in the Middle East have gone through.
By the way, since the 500, or so, prisoners at Abu Ghraib were liberated from their cells by invading rebels, I wonder if we are all any safer now than before we invaded and murdered all those civilians. They have got to be some really ticked off guys. Blowback is such a bitch!
And something I heard...that they may be joining the rebels fighting against the government of Syria...and the US wants to send more arms to the rebels...so, quite likely, the US will be arming the radicalized rebels that may very well, like the Mujahadeen, after the US supplied Afghanistan rebels turned into Al Qaida and the Taliban which led to Usama bin Laden and his alleged 19 merry box-cutter wielding hijackers. But they were just patsies without the skill to fly into the WTC buildings or the Pentagon. The planes were electronically hijacked and guided by insiders. The MIC will continue making terrorists because it is in their interests for the world to be very scary.
And now that Pakistan is developing very small and mobile nuclear devices...are they smaller than suitcase nukes..I wonder...the next underwear bomber may radiate his nuts all over New York City some day.
#38
There is a book by Ellen Schultz that is REQUIRED reading if you want proof that this is planned. Retirement Heist explains the systematic theft of the pensions of millions of retirees. Here's a link to download it for free.
Seriously, if more people just read the Introduction to this book, it would be a best-seller and our whole conversation about "expensive" pension plans would completely change overnight.
Here's Ellen discussing these issues on Booktv.
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