THE FAILURE OF THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM

Because he was totally naive by thinking he could help craft a bipartisan health care bill with a party (the Republicans) who had no interest in the matter except to see him fail, President Obama is now desperate to pass anything, even if it is a mutation which should go by the name of "The Healthcare Industry Bill." The insurance companies wrote the bill, paid off the right senators and congressmen and are now dancing in the streets. The people's interests have once again been sold down the river by those who we elected to represent us. The conspiracy, and, of course, that's what it is, has triumphed over all of us as it always does.

Whether the industry's bill passes now or not makes absolutely no difference. Their healthcare dictatorship is ongoing while the President's reputation rightly plummets along with that of the Democratic party.

Someone must have read Obama the "riot act" after he got elected. There's no other way to explain the profound contrast between the inspirational rhetoric of his presidential campaign and the dismal, right-leaning action of his presidency. The choice of his Cabinet should have been a red flag. But no one, no matter how cynical, could have foreseen his stunning lack of leadership on the vital healthcare issue for which he was elected. And we certainly didn't vote him into office to bail out bankers and automobile and insurance companies. That was not the change he promised.

It has become apparent that the two-party system in this country has failed. We, the American people, have become marginalized to the point of irrelevancy. We have become the victims of a government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations. Short of outright revolution, the only glimmer of hope is in the formation of an independent third party whose only mission will be to fight for everyone of us. Until that day comes, I, for one, will not walk into another voting booth in order to vote for a Democrat or a

Republican. They have no interest in us, and I will return the favor. This is some democracy we're living in. What a disappointment.

12/19/2009

PLAYING THE VIOLIN WHILE U.S. COLLAPSES

A great civilization is not conquered from

without until it has destroyed itself from within.

The essential causes of the Roman decline

lay in her people, her morals, her class struggles

 and failing trade, her bureaucratic depotism,

her stifling taxes and consuming wars.

                                     ---THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION III, 1944

Let's stop pretending and just plain tell it like it is. The essential equation has two components. 1- Large corporations run this country with a little help from their friends, our elected officials. 2- The American people are in denial and in a state of complacency and unconsciousness at the same time.

The bankers, who gambled in new and creative ways with other people's money, and, by doing so, brought the global financial system to the brink, were bailed out by their aforementioned friends. Since they play on the same team as the government, there were no strings attached to the money.

Although the sleeping public was told out of one side of the conspiracy's mouth that there was at least the implication that the banks would lend out the money to individuals and small businesses in order to reignite the economy, the "banksters" took the txpayers' money and started gambling all over again. After all, they were considered too big to fail by their same collusive friends and therefore could play with the public's dollars without incurring any risk. But greed knows no limitations. The next step was to maximize the use of our money by paying themselves $140 billion in bonuses at a time when the rest of us are trying to find jobs and make ends meet.

With no regulations in sight (wink, wink), the banks gamble on and exacerbate the size of the over-the-counter derivative time bomb while the government tries to cure the debt bubble by increasing its size by an order of magnitude.

Then there's the health care fiasco. It is obvious that the public wants a public option, as it is the only means to restore some semblance of competition to the health care industry, which to this day remains singularly free from any anti-trust legislation.

That there is even a debate about a public option shows clearly that our elected officials are owned by the industry instead of representing the people who elected them to do the public's business. Their blatant disregard for the citizenry in favor of the health insurance industry is so transparent as to be laughable if it were not so criminal.

Once again, where is the outrage? Corporate America, whether it's the banks, the health insurance industry, the drug companies, the oil companies and so on, is bringing down this country for its own greedy goals, and no one seems to notice. Nero fiddles on while the U.S. dollar continues its descent into the black hole of a darkening future. Remember, the dollar represents the common shares of the United States of America. Keep your eye on the dollar. It will tell you all you need to know. It's all in the dollar. And would someone please stop playing the violin and regain consciousness.

10/28/2009

PUBLIC OPTION IS THE ESSENCE OF HEALTH CARE REFORM

Conspiracy capitalism is alive and well. Not wishing to be outdone by the "banksters" who run the country, the health insurance companies have been flexing their muscles in order to maintain the stranglehold they have on their particular piece of the pie.

I first realized that Obama and the Democrats had caved on the public option issue when health insurance stocks went up on a day the stock market was down almost 200 points. After checking the news reports, the reason for their stocks' levitation in the face of gravity was clear. Obama was telling us that the public option was not the "entirety" of health reform, but merely a "sliver." Wrong.

The public option is the essence of health care reform. Without it, the authoritarians will not have to face the world they fear most: "competition."

Since the American people want the public option, it ought to be obvious to anyone with a living brain cell that most of our elected officials are bought, paid for and owned by Corporate America. The health insurance industry has hired six lobbyists for each elected official and is spending between one and two million dollars a day in order to kill health care reform.

And they work with the idiots of the far Right who turn up at presidential events with loaded weapons.

This is the same old Republican strategy of spreading fear among the masses  that has worked so well for them in the past. (There is the "moron factor," after all. You cannot underestimate the American people). The Republicans utilize insane, blatant lies, such as the proponents of health care reform want to "subsidize abortions" and "pull the plug on Grandma." That Americans can swallow this kind of B.S. is pathetic.

Obama's presidency and the direction of the country are all riding on the public option. To continue to try for a bipartisan agreement is a combination of naivety and self destruction. The Republicans are not interested. They are, after all, protecting their benefactors. Obama has to take a page out of Lyndon Johnson's playbook. There was a president who knew how to twist arms in his own party in order to get them aboard difficult legislation.

The rest of Western civilization has universal health care. If the Democrats fail to do what they were elected to do on behalf of the American people and do the bidding of the insurance companies instead, then they will become as irrelevant as the Republicans.

This is the moment. The people must regain consciousness, ceased to be treated as patsies by greedy self-interest corporations and demand representation by those they elected. Let them know that we can pull the plug, too. On them. To do otherwise is to remain the wimpy victims of the authoritarians and their co-conspiratorial friends in Washington.

09/03/2009

THE RECOVERY IS A FRAUD. WHAT'S YOUR PLAN TO PROTECT YOURSELF?

It has now been a year since Lehman failed, and nothing has been done to regulate Wall Street. They were bailed out with taxpayer money. Instead of lending that money to the public, they have used it to gamble in the great stock market casino. In that arena, through “flash trading, (front running individual investors, many of whom are their clients), Wall Street has all the advantages and the public has none. Don’t you feel good about financing the banks’ fraudulent speculation? And always remember, Wall Street produces absolutely nothing other than obscene paper profits for themselves at the people’s expense. Their outrageous bonuses come gift-wrapped from the American taxpayers.

This is just plain criminal activity described by the mainstream financial press as free market capitalism. The fact is the Wall Street Mafia, supported by our elected officials, are nothing more than elite bankers raping the American public. These financial bandits have taken control of the United States. Don’t forget, the conspiracy, the casino, always wins. You are witnessing the biggest bank robbery of all time; only this time the banks are doing the robbing.

There is no way to drain the Federal Reserve’s insane money printing. As the noose of more and more debt continues to tighten, the Federal Reserve has no option but to intensify their money creation in order to prevent a debt collapse and a sickening deflation. But in doing so, the Federal Reserve guarantees inflation and probably hyperinflation. And China knows this and has been diversifying out of the U.S. dollar for a long time. If the truth be known, China has no U.S. dollar problem while the West has an explosive over-the-counter derivative catastrophe it’s trying desperately to cover up. Thus, the center of the financial world is moving quickly to Asia.

The financial condition of the banks continues to worsen. Only their “wink-wink” collusion with the government regulators, which allows the banks to mark up their worthless toxic assets to whatever price they would like to assign to them, has allowed these “institutions” to make believe that all is well. Without this accounting fraud, up to 1000 banks would go under with the FDIC already running out of money.

The so-called recovery is a fraud. While the Government and Wall Street, through their PR firm, the mainstream media, want the American people to believe in their cheerleading that the recession is over, the facts indicate that foreclosures are increasing, housing prices continue to drop, malls are shrinking and even disappearing, unemployment remains on the rise, the consumer is toast and the dollar is doomed. Even more to the point, Americans are running out of unemployment benefits in large numbers. Pension funds are quickly becoming an illusion. Savings are disappearing through desperate usage and through the theft of inflation. Americans are losing their futures. What it all adds up to is that when people have nothing left to lose, they try to get even with the forces that destroyed their lives. No wonder CEO’s have security guards on the same level as the President of the United States, and a plan to escape to a foreign country when the system fails. What’s your plan to protect yourself against the inevitable?

09/27/2009

AMERICANS REMAIN SILENT ON WALL STREET TERROR

You would think we'd be in the midst of the Second American Revolution. The Wall Street terrorists are at it again. Not content with melting down the entire global financial system by greedingly gambling with shareholder money, this time they're screwing all of us by doing the same thing over again with taxpayer money. Take Goldman Sachs --- please!

The revolving door between Goldman and our elected representatives is lubricated with a brand new substance called collusion. One minute you're working for Goldman Sachs, the next finds you in the highest echelons of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Then back you go as a lobbyist for the same infamous Wall Street firm.

When Henry Paulson was CEO of Goldman Sachs, his company was selling over-the-counter to anyone and everyone in the world while his own traders were going short the same derivatives that Goldman was peddling and knew were worthless. Paulson's reward was to become Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. The man ought to be in jail.

As Treasury Secretary he let Lehman Brothers fail. After all, they were a significant competition to Goldman Sachs. But when Lehman's derivatives started blowing up all over the world, Henry had to bail out all of the big banks, including his own former institution, Goldman Sachs. Then AIG, the insurance company, now better known as a hedge fund, had to be bailed out because its derivatives were even more toxic and had metastasized even more than those of Lehman Brothers, and also because AIG owed Goldman $13 billion. By bailing out AIG, Paulson effectively and surreptitiously did the same for his beloved company.

Now that the banks were "flush" again, thanks to $12 trillion from the taxpayers, whose collective altruism was offered against their will, the banks began the game again. Congress allowed them to revalue their worthless garbage assets to whatever price they would like to fantasize they might be worth. Then the banks upped the leverage back up to 30 to 1, enabling their trading desks to relive the old old days, this time gambling with our money. Not a bad business when you know in advance head GS wins, tails the rest of us lose.

While Americans are losing their jobs, many of them falling through the cracks and living in tents or on the streets, Goldman Sachs are setting aside 18.4 billion dollars in bonuses for its employees ($700,000 per person). It is the largest bonus package in the 140-year history of the firm. How does that make you feel?

The bink banks' earnings are all lies. Their financial condition is as precarious as ever, and another day of reckoning waits in the wings.

Is there another "silent majority" loose in the land? Has laryngitis become the real pandemic? How else to explain why the citizenry will not even speak out, much less take to the streets. Conspiracy capitalism continues to render Americans impotent, comatose and without any representation. Is there anyone out there? Anyone? Anyone?

08/02/2009

ABOLISH THE FEDERAL RESERVE

“I sincerely believe… that banking establishments

are more dangerous than standing armies,
and that the principle of spending money to be paid
by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling
futurity on a large scale.”  Thomas Jefferson

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control

the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation,

the banks and corporations that will grow up around them

(around the banks), will deprive the people of their property

until their children will wake up homeless on the continent

their fathers conquered."   Thomas Jefferson

Having been thus forewarned, the Congress, in the middle of a night in 1913, when no one was looking, gave into the persistent lobbying and self-serving largesse of the banking industry, and created the infamous Federal Reserve. By doing so, our elected officials turned their backs on the Constitution and gave away their duty to mint the coinage of the United States to a cartel of private bankers.

The Federal Reserve, besides being unconstitutional, is totally beholden to its sole constituency, which, of course, is the same banking cartel mentioned above. Their every motivation is to protect, enrich and save the bankers. This is accomplished at the literal expense of the taxpayers (the people).

Since taking over the creation of our money, the central bank has engaged in the immaculate conception of money out of thin air. In so doing, it has managed to single-handedly debase the currency so thoroughly that it has lost 96 percent of its value and is on a fast track to losing its status as the reserve currency of the world. And I don't have to tell you what the "banksters" have done to us all.

With this in mind, I find it inconceivable that when Senator Dick Durbin came right out and told the country that "the bankers own the Congress," the mainstream press took this stunning remark and just plain buried it. We never heard another word about this remarkable admission.

It is clear to me that with our politicians and our media totally "bought" and united in selling us down the river, We, the People, no longer have any representation whatsoever. The Democrats embrace the establishment and, as such, are to the right of center, while the Republicans are so far to the right that they have become irrelevant. A meaningful third party that represents the majority of the American people is now absolutely crucial if we are to reverse our nation's ongoing tailspin.

Would somebody shock the unresponsive electorate into action? Do whatever it takes to get lazy, fat Americans to leave their couches and take to the streets like they do in other countries when their rights have been stolen from them. And while you're at it, tell them to get behind the bill now circulating in Congress to abolish the Federal Reserve.

06/25/2009

WHY CAN'T WE ALL 'MARK TO MODEL'?

Conspiracy capitalism has taken things to a new level. Have you heard of the expression: "marked to market?" Each day our investments are assigned the value that the so-called free market in their infinite wisdom have decided they are worth. (By the way, there are no more free markets. But that's another story).

The banksters and their bought-up political bedfellows have concluded that it would be best if they just did away with the abovementioned marked-to-market accounting and simply allowed the bankers to decide what their toxic assets are worth. This creative accounting maneuver is called "marked to model." If the market values an over-the-counter derivative at ten cents on the dollar, the bank can now raise the worthless piece of paper to fifty cents on the dollar. Thank you very much, says the bank, whose balance sheet has suddenly miraculously improved.

Inspired by the conspirators, (and remember I have no compunction about calling them what they are), I decided to call up my friendly local banker where I have a modest savings account and the two brokerage companies where I have equally unimpressive stock accounts. As you can probably guess by now, I insisted that they mark my accounts to model. My model. When they inquired what my model was, I told them that it was the one that added several zeroes to each of my holdings.

They assured me that they could not fulfill my request. I was shocked. "But the big insolvent banks, who just received trillions of dollars from the American people, are able to decide what the value of their pieces of paper are, why can't I?" I asked with proper indignation. My answer was the same from all three entities. "The banks are just doing what they do best: shifting the trillions in risk from themselves to the taxpayer." I was told not to worry about it. Everything would turn out OK in the end.

I found an old baby tooth of mine and put it under my pillow for the tooth fairy before retiring for the night.

04/07/2009