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Tom, here is a letter that I hope to have in the mail during the next few days.
July 4, 2011
Bill Huizenga, R-Zeeland
Second District
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C.
Dear Mr. Huizenga:
I read your article in a Detroit newspaper rag. The article is dated, July 3, 2011. The title is “U.S. House has modern answer on Medicare.” Although your article highlighted Medicare, I am concerned that the Guardians of Privilege (GOP) will gut all social safety programs for Americans.
There are answers for our difficult time. Let me share with you how we can resolve problems that you claim are unsustainable. Do not bailout banks and Wall Street for incompetence! Gambling with the taxpayers’ money is a crime and these crooks and robbers must be prosecuted. Rollback the W. and Reagan tax cuts! Investment income should be taxed at 25 to 35%, like most Americans, who are paying in taxes. The investment income is taxed at 15% maximum but with tax loopholes the tax is more like 7%. Income, whether payroll or investment, up to $5 million should be taxed for the social security trust fund and not the $108,000 current limit on income. Eliminate the shell game of American companies off shoring jobs to foreign countries and not paying a tariff! All products entering our country must pay a tariff and not the 2% limit. Since corporations are considered persons, these corporations must be taxed as a person. A 25 to 35% tax is similar to persons paying current taxes. Off shore tax loopholes for politicians, the rich, and corporations is a crime and these persons need to be prosecuted for criminal behavior. Perks for politicians should be eliminated, such as free jet rides! Shared sacrifice, or I like to say Guarantor Responsibility, means that everyone pays taxes. There are many more tax loopholes, Ponzi schemes, and shell games that are in our corrupt political system but I cannot remember all of them.
The United States of Mortal Sin, aka the Anti-Christ, is not above the law. Our nation needs to join the International Criminal Court at The Hague, Netherlands. Commencing immoral and wrong wars is a criminal act and the perpetrators of these actions must be prosecuted. The killing of God’s children resolves nothing and it creates more problems. Our country needs to practice the “Golden Rule.”
What concerns me about politicians is that when brains were being passed out birth, they thought it was trains and they started looking for the caboose. The caboose is at the rear end of the train. It seems to me that our politicians have their brains in their rear ends.
Persons who are familiar with the State of Michigan know that the west side of our state is a Guardians of Privilege (GOP) stronghold and a stranglehold. Persons who know the state realize that the west side is also a massive, notorious “Red Light District.”
The use of brains in our heads and not in our rear ends can resolve our differences and problems.
Sincerely,
Gerald Socha
A progressive, a Democratic Socialist, and a Jesus Liberal
cc: Persona File
President Barack Obama
Congressman Gary Peters
Senator Debbie Stabenow
Senator Carl Levin
Thom Hartmann’s blog
If there needs to be a cut to gain the $20 B, the first place to cut should be Congress salary....all of them, their staff. Then cut some military contracts and if that doesn't get some fire under the Republicans, I'm sure there are who won't stand to have their contracts cut.
But start with Congress pay first. They are public employees and took oath to serve the common welfare of the country. So let them serve.
I think all of us, who still have "hope," are hoping that Obama is going to pull off the gloves in the next four years. After all, he'll have nothing to lose.
You said it, brother!
Well, Obama has tried doing things the "Bush" way and to appease the Republicans for almost 3 years now--I hope to hell that he is going to start doing things, if not more Progressively, at least more like the Democrat we thought we elected.
Since America and Americans are embracing Satan and his disciples, here is how we can counter Satan and his disciples complete takeover of America and Americans' mind, body, and soul.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTUBI_WFORY&NR=1
We must let Jesus take the wheel of our nation and of our lives!
The police state culture has a killer mentality. For each human being killed will draw us closer to Leo Strauss and his PROJECT FOR A NEW AMERICAN CENTURY theory and that our planet can only sustain 500 million human beings. It is America's goal to lead the world in the killing of human beings. That is one reason why we carry out endless wars. The killing of human beings means the glorification of the USA.
But the question is.....how did he ask for the quarter? Some of these people can get really scary and may not just be "asking". Did he even say "please?" There is a lot of nuances that often are not mentioned because of the slant that can be elicited, and making a good story that freaks people out. At least she didn't pump him full of lead like the police often do, did she?
I remember one story (I think it was in LA a couple of years ago) where this woman had locked herself up in her car and was not thinking very clearly, had been doing drugs the previous night, and was scared that someone was going to break into her car, and because she had a gun...the police surrounded the car and blasted her with nearly a hundred rounds. Then again, this might be yet another case where the news people don't tell everything in order to get a good story that will freak people out.
August 10, 2007
WHAT HAVE WE BECOME?
by Jack at Liberty Underground
http://www.opednews.com
This week, a woman shot and killed a homeless man in Cincinnati because he asked her for a quarter. This story was in our local, corporate-viewpoint monopoly newspaper this morning. "He asked her for a quarter," Police Chief Tom Streicher said. "That's apparently all there was to it."
One may, at first, shrug this story off by thinking Geraldine Beasley must be insane for murdering Donald Francis.
But, because of the massive bias by corporate media, homelessness and hunger are buried here in the Land of the Free, where most Americans are not aware that we have the most homeless and hungry among all major industrialized nations, by any measure. As a consequence of this, many citizens are angry at homeless people.
We have seen a great many articles in the mass media saying that these are lazy people who should go find jobs. What is never allowed is the facts on unemployment. Headlines everywhere echo the deceptive line that unemployment is low.
But the untold truth is that unemployment is quite high.
Not counted in official statistics are those who have given up trying to find work because they've had so many doors slammed in their face, and we have no idea how many millions are in this category because there is no official data, apparently by design.
Not counted are the tens of millions working part time because they cannot find full-time jobs. The government counts those working as little as one hour per month as employed.
Not counted are those making minimum wage and unable to provide for basic needs. There have never been as many Americans making minimum wage as there are today. All are counted as employed in government statistics.
Not counted are the millions in our record-sized prison system, there largely because the US economy works as it does to provide profit for transnational investors at any cost to the rest of us.
As a consequence, the propaganda blasted in corporate media has convinced citizens that there is a great deal of work available for those who want it. And, of course, you can pick strawberries for $20 a day if you are a person with other resources for survival.
But even where there is work, employers don't want people who are mentally slow or on drugs/alcohol. There is little pity for those hopeless people who try to escape with cheap wine. They are not seen as human beings. Even the good Christians who run the country, led by George Bush, ignore their own Jesus' "What you do to the least of them, you do to me."
Because of the way in which Americans are indoctrinated in capitalist rhetoric to the point of becoming zombies, we do not find it strange that a man was murdered for asking for a quarter.
@merf, people who read Thom's blog will agree with you. Please share some names for Obama to consider. Thank you!
Bernie Sanders, Yes!!! But Cuomo for Vice Prez???...I don't think so!!! Despite Cuomo's popularity....he looks to be yet another Obama....giving in to the rich and powerful.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/nyregion/cuomo-will-seek-to-lift-drill...
Not many people, especially environmentalists, are happy with HydroFracturing....especially if they have to drink the water! But, I guess on those cold New York nights in the wintertime all they would have to do to keep warm is to light the water...ever seen those videos where people ignite their water because of the petroleum pollution of the water due to hydrofracking?
What I am talking about is that link that Jimspy posted...the T-shirt is advocating that there be a Sanders/Cuomo ticket in 2012. But, I agree, that I would like to see Spitzer in there.... instead of Cuomo.
I vote he's replaced with Elliott Spitzer. Yes, seriously.
==JJS==
http://www.cafepress.com/CommonSensePress <- Get your Bernie Sanders for President T-shirt!
I've been wondering if Obama was going to morph into a Teddy Roosevelt (either Roosevelt, really) in his lame-duck term. Right now, he has to beg for corporate money to stay in business, and you can't bite the hand that feeds you. So he may start fighting back for real when he no longer needs the corporate cash to survive. I'm probably dreaming.
But even if he became a fire-breathing progressive, he cannot, alone, do what really needs to be done in America, and that is to separate business from government. To get that monumental job done (Oh, if we'd only listened to Jefferson) would take a populist revolt that transcended ideologies. That is, the now-raped middle class would all have to call government to account and demand an end to the monopoly-driven culture in Washington. That is, we need a real Boston Tea Party, not this phony one we have now.
I'm wishing President Obama appoints someone with a fresh,progressive vision for the nation's finances.3 years have been squandered holding on to the past.Now the president is more comfortable in his position.Will he be able to focus on our financial house;or will re-election become too distracting?
I believe he "can walk & chew gum" at the same time.All the surrounding(supporting?) players will be the key element.
more quotes from the same show:
Bonnie Falkner: "Criminals like Angello Mozillo, of Coutrywide Financial, are getting off scott-free. The justice department has dropped it's investigation of Mozillo saying that his activities did not amount to criminal wrongdoing. All he did was pocket over $500 million between 2000 and 2008 off the issue of sub-prime loans to low income borrowers and the sale of the securities to Wall Street Banks which sold them on as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). He also sold over $10 million of his own stocks in Countrywide just before the company collapsed while telling other company shareholders that the company was healthy. The Justice Department says that this is not criminal. Isn't the word “criminal” being redefined here? Who is in charge the financial sector, or the government?"
Michael Hudson: "Well, financial crime has been decriminalized...for two reasons...in order for the prosecutor to prosecute a crime, there not only has to be a crime but you need prosecutors and you need investigators. Under Bush and Obama, the staffing of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the FBI, and other criminal agencies has been cut so much that there are no lawyers, no investigators to actually do the research to prosecute. And essentially, the only person that has been arrested is Bernie Maddoff who walked into the police headquarters and (surrendered**). Nobody else has been sent to jail and my University of Missouri college William Black has written very extensively on this."
“Even all of the settlements by the SEC has been made without acknowledging any criminal wrongdoing. Just to make sure that in similar trials the victims are not able to recover from the fraudsters. The real aim of not prosecuting is not to let any criminal prosecution beginning from a civil case to make (people from above**) pay back the money that they got. They can say “look, we didn't (?????**)...then it would be much harder for a class action suit for the victims of their crimes to make any claim because the government is simply not supportive.”
More quotes:
Bonnie Falkner: "The three major outbreaks of North African unrest, Tunesia, Egypt, and Libya...toppling two dictators and threatening a third, was singled out by the IMF for praise as success stories of free-market restructuring....including large-scale privatization....scaling back national economic and financial regulation...and massive job and social spending cuts. Do you agree that the revolts in N. Africa were fundamentally uprisings against the neo-liberal, free-markets pushed globally by the US and allied financial powers?"
Michael Hudson: "Certainly the labor unions have taken a much stronger role, especially in Tunesia, than has been talked about in most of the cases. The problem is that these countries were educating a lot of people....are basically....this is a (social out**) revolution...not a lower class revolution. A lot of people were educated..sent to college...and then there is no work for them because the economies have been neoliberalized....and there is not much work in neoliberalized economies. So, needless to say, there was a lot of anger toward the government. But it was also just a reaction against the dictatorship that the Americans have been putting in power.
The IMF, the World Bank, and the US State Department praised these countries, basically, because they followed US policies. And US policies let foreigners take as much of your the raw materials as possible and dictators are good at controlling populations keeping the people quiet. So, they did keep their populations quiet for decades. In tunesia, for example, the families suffered quietly and were afraid to talk to each other about how bad things were. And once, all of a sudden, there was a spontaneous uprising against the dictator there.”
Revolutions occur because, all of a sudden, the people get so tired of being afraid and living in abject poverty and decide that “there's nothing more to lose” so “we might as well fight back”. Part of the problem is that many people don't realize that they are not alone and that even all of their neighbors are in the same boat and have the same frustrations and feelings. When they eventually talk and find out that they are all in great numbers being exploited unfairly then revolutions and uprisings happen....and they begin to fight back.
“There was such an anger throughout the country to what the US State Department, Hillary, her right-wing gang, thought was (accessing**) Mubarak, in keeping people quiet, actually was just suppressing an enormous pressure that simply exploded.”
**Note: I could not find a transcript for this show so I partially transcribed it myself...I could not understand a couple of words and noted them.
More quotes from the same show:
“The grip of state control is to be replaced by the grip of financial control. In other words, the grip of control by a western democracy is replaced by the grip of bankers and creditors who are immune from people's voting and can do whatever they want. So, what do you think is the tighter grip? That of the elected government representative or that of unelected bankers and Wall Street? Saying we will take whatever you have...pay us...or else..your money or your life. That's the choice that they are given and that's what they are told to do by World Bank and IMF as arms of the US treasury.” And that's the program all over Europe...and the world.
Money managers in Europe and America are engaging in a capital flight out of their own economy. They are putting their money into the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, S. Africa, Singapore)...countries that don't bend to this non-sense. So it's a capital flight out of Europe, out of N. America at the same time this is happening. So the financial managers, themselves, know that this won't work, but they say “Well, but we will grab as much as we can, for as long as we can...why not?”
So Governor Walker in Wisconsin is trying to do what they did in Russia....not only is he trying to bust unions but he is trying to privatize everything. Resulting in the biggest land or asset grab since the 19th century.
Quotes from Michael Hudson, the economist in his interview by Bonnie Falkner on Guns and Butter of March 16, 2011. Show titled: "The view from Europe"
“The bankers want the economy to fail so that they can get governments to privatize in order to get out of debt. This is essentially, a grab for the assets...so there won't be a government anymore...the bankers will be the government. That's basically, what free-market economics is all about...it's centralized planning in the hands of Wall Street and the banks. The banker's eye-view of the world is to lower living standards until you have what happened in Russia where Vladmir Putin said that the neo-liberalization there had killed more Russians than WWII. It has shortened the life spans, reduced public health, led to lower birth rates, lower marriage rates, and increased immigration, and the effective neo-liberal economics is just as devastating as war. So essentially, finance is a new form of warfare in a non-military sense. It's cheaper, it makes money, and people don't even seem to realize that they are under attack.”
“Social Democracy is supposed to be based on democracy and people are supposed to vote. But the financial sector wants to make central banks, as they are in the United States, outside of the voting processes. It has been the hallmark of democracy as an independent central bank meaning: we will screw you no matter what you vote...no matter who you vote in....you can't stop us....you can't do anything because we are appointed by politicians, for long periods of time. There is nothing you can do to bring us under control...and we can kill you if we want....and that's just exactly what we intend to do. Just try to stop us! That's why democracy and finance are anti-thetical.”
The 1990s in Russia, when it was carved up and they experimented in capitalism, with “junk economics” with “the Harvard Boys” very much like “The Chicago Boys” did in Pinochet's Chile where in 1973 there was a military coup there....and the western capitalists got rich exploiting them. A few in Russia got extremely wealthy but most people were driven into destitution and many died as a result. They are doing pretty much the same thing now around the world in other countries and here in the US as well.
http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/68300
A. Yes and no. Q. Treasury Tim Geithner leaving...are the rats fleeing the sinking ship or will there be change we can believe in?
Rats leaving a sinking ship? I wouldn't be surprised if they have bought French Villas or Argentina Haciendas by now. Our only hope is that their country of refuge sees them as criminals too and throws them in their dungeons for the rest of their lives. As the banksters, and their minions, scatter about like any evil Nazi did after the end of WWII, they might find it hard to find a place that has not been disastrously ruined by their neo-liberal crimes. Remember, neo-liberal has nothing to do with liberalism...it is just the opposite...they are definitely not progressive or liberal. Remember, Phil Gramm?
So, who could replace Tim Geithner and do a better job? Well, let's make a list:
1) A hyena.
2) A melanogaster drosophilia.
3) A monkey- it doesn't really matter what kind or which one, or even whether it's alive.
4) A clod of dirt.
5) A rhododendron.
6) A beer keg.
7) A garbage can.
8) Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, or- better yet- Goofy.
9) A crumpled-up piece of paper on which a bunch of lies are written.
I've noticed the gross lack of concern shown for citizens in all of the republican controlled states. It seems to me to be more than just ideology. It's closer to inhuman in the literal sense of the word. These politicians and their handlers act as if they are not human themselves. Not possessing any compassionate characteristics of humans at all. These politicians instead, display a hatred toward people.
What's not being given the proper attention are the many people suffering most along with their families including children by any in the media, who supported the GOP. Those are the people who need to be brought to the forefront.
I have lots of sympathy for those who are not enablers or simply through no fault of their own, are caught up in the turmoil. But for those at fault, they owe all of us an apology. and I have no sympathy for them.
We elected the President because he promised hope and change. He has been a Great Dissapointment, bowing to the Republicrooks in everything. Was he working for the Dark Side the entire time? Has he been bought off, or blackmailed into submission? It appears that Our Nation has been destroyed by the forces of EVIL, to be replaced by a return to the Feudal System!!!
Obama is a closet neocon! Why should he appoint any progressives?
I agree with you one hundred percent. Will he call the republicans bluff on the debit limit? I hope so or we are doomed.