Here are simply more examples of how politicians and financial folks take advantage of situations that one is not aware of.
If you take a look at the Post Office, they are having budget problems.
In 2006 legislation was passed forcing the post office to pay in 75% of advanced pension fund payments within a ten year framework to the federal government plus some additional billions more.
In this way the Bush administration had more money to fund the wars.
This of course will force over a hundred thousand workers to be laid off and hundreds of local post offices to be closed.
This is due to the last time the Republican Party held a majority in both houses.
In matter of fact during the Bush Administration, from my understanding, the wars were never placed in the budget.
The unseen advantage is to weaken this federal agency.
Again this was a set up, since it is the Republican Agenda to strip down the federal government in favor of privatization.
Of course we know that privatization only ramps up pricing, placing even more burden on the middle class and working poor.
You may ask why would anyone go along with this type of movement? Don't forget most of these politicians do profit personally and professionally from this type of activity.
People talk a lot especially business people.
Remember I said that you get misinformation and misdirection from these talking heads.
Sometimes you are aware of it and other times you are not.
A lot of talk lately about big corporate money that is being stashed overseas, politicians and corporate interest would like you to believe that by bringing it in, the money would be taxed.
This in some way would be too expensive for them.
In 2005, an amnesty was given for companies to bring in there off shore accounts, many companies did.
The result was no jobs created, bigger bonuses for CEOs, investment into stock market and asset management.
The money in foreign investment in 2005 from American companies went from 250 billion to almost nothing in that year, followed by 250 billion re-invested overseas in 2006.
Voter registration usually is an easy process.
You can get signed up by any organization or request voter registration forms from the State Board of Elections.
For the last 41 years, there have not been any significant fraud cases, when it comes to voter registration.
Yet in 14 heavily Republican led states there has been move to restrict if not ban registration by groups such as the League of Women Voters and Unions.
Photo IDs are being required even of those older citizens or younger voters who do not have drivers' licensees.
In the state of Texas one can show there gun license but a student picture ID is rejected.
There is a story out on a senior citizen who went to the DMV is her state and was asked for her marriage license, she was 96 years old.
She had voted every year since she was eligible and now she is being slowed if not stopped from voting since she has not needed it for decades for any reason.
The reason for such regulation is democratic voters tend to be senior citizens, young students, new voters.
If this is not enough then many states with Republican majorities have also repealed or restricted early voting, since it is noted that this may help the democrats win elections.
What happened to the idea of less government interrupting people lives? It is less government if it favors the 1% and it is more if it represses the rest of us.
These power plays will allow most of these Republican held legislations to continue to pander to special interest and dismantle public and private unions within the states.
This impacts wages, pensions and education for the middles class and gives most of the tax breaks other benefits to the wealthy.
It is also obvious that though one can not blame the Republicans for everything, the response from the other side has been weak at best.
Wisconsin and Ohio legislators have hit a big problem that people do care about these things and they have been standing up in regards to these matters.
They understand along with most of the unions that the less ability for unions public or private to collectively bargain that all will be lost for the middle class and more will be slanted in favor of special interest.
Here is the rub, why was this all necessary in the first place? Why is it that so many states have over run their budgets? The answer is criminal negligence on the part of these administrators, lack of fiduciary responsibility and corruption.
If one is to cut anything in the first place it is the salaries of those who were responsible for the deficit.
Investigations into special interest tax cuts or other "benefits" within each state should be looked at.
Why should the middle class be saddled and burdened with unfair taxation while corporations end up paying little to no tax overall.
Large corporations can buy elected officials.
In the Citizens United case special interest won, the result was unlimited and undisclosed sources of campaign funding.
This is just another way, to facilitate the purchase of our "representatives.
" A Hedge Fund Manager was replying to the 99% group, his statement was "the one percent pays forty percent of the taxes.
" To this statement I would reply that the 99% pays the other 60%.
The question then becomes why are they paying less, when they make so much more.
I am sure that you have heard from the Wall Street Barons that there is so much "uncertainty" in the market place so big business has trillions of investment dollars is being held on the sidelines.
On top of this we have banks also not releasing capital due to this uncertainty.
Well that is true but with a caveat, that is, that the bill (Dodd-Frank) which was passed during the Democratic held House and Senate, is being held up and unfunded by the current Republican House.
One of the major Republican figures Paul Ryan had already stated to a group of Wall Street and Big Business types that Republicans are effectively going to ensure that it doesn't get implemented.
So what is this? The solution to fix what brought us to this economic disaster is being held back so that Wall Street "Robber Barons" can continue to feast on the 401Ks, IRAs, equity and pension funds of the American Middle Class and working poor, through speculation, price and interest gouging.
Since 2007 to current 4th quarter, there have been 401 bank failures at the cost to the American Taxpayer of over Eighty Billion Dollars to the Deposit Insurance Fund.
According to the FDIC: "These bank failures are generally due to inadequate capital and mounting loan losses as defaults on commercial loans and residential mortgage loans continue to impair the liquidity and capital reserves of these less capitalized regional banks.
" This again is the destructive nature of the notion that the free market will take care of itself, Can you imagine without the FDIC the bank customer base could have been literally wiped out with no ability to recover losses.
Since the implementation of new regulations the amount of bank failures went from 157 in 2010 to 76 in 2011.
One bank failure is already too much, and though it slowed down the effects, this is not over yet, currently there are 865 problem institutions on the FDIC watch list this is up from 110 in 2003.
I guarantee you that not one Bank President or CEO in these failed institutions had voluntarily lowered their salary.
If you have tuned into any news broadcasts lately, Wall Street is reacting and Guru's are directing their statements about European Financial Crisis.
Most of the Wall Street types along with the media are harping on that crisis, yet as I mentioned above we have 865 problem banks here at home.
This is the essential misdirection before the disenfranchisement of the American Middle Class by those who will benefit financially by keeping others unaware of what is happening behind closed doors.
The national debt is pretty scary but how does it actually relate to the total net worth of the United States.
As far as I can estimate, the US has a net worth of about 65 Trillion dollars.
Which means when you add the public debt (14 trillion) back into the net worth, our public debt is running around 18% of net worth (14 Divided by 79).
This is still not that good, but it is manageable, we only need to shave off about six to seven trillion over the next twenty years to be in an acceptable range of debt to equity.
Let us not forget that when tax rates were lowered in 2001 by the Bush Tax Cuts, it increased the net income and net worth of the 1%.
In the meantime, the 99% ended up paying more tax.
While the wealthy "Job Creators" were enjoying this windfall, they were sending jobs overseas to better there bottom lines.
At this point more of the 99% then became displaced through the job market, of which now are paying higher percentages of taxes in relation to the 1% which have increased their wealth by about 400%.
Would it not profit this 1% to bring jobs back to the US and get demand up for exporting American made products, in American made factories? What we have seen instead after certain free trade agreements an export en masse of American jobs.
These companies put stockholders' interest and profits ahead of any social responsibility.
Today's big corporations are not satisfied with modest gains in the bottom lines; they want to see fantastic gains only.
Mind you that these gains transmit themselves into personal wealth, greed is king.
Just to show you how low these politician will go for special interest, they held back the appointment of the new Director of Commerce until the Democrats agreed to this job exporting bill.
The Koch Brothers are now being investigated in regards to their business dealings with Iran.
Yes, Iran the government that wants to destroy Israel and the US.
Allegedly, A Koch Brothers foreign subsidiary was trying to bribe government officials in many countries to assist with some sort of business dealings.
In addition to this Koch Industries has paid hundreds of millions of dollars for environmental violations in the US alone.
Now isn't it interesting that the Political Actions Committees, The Tea Party and many politicians, are those carping for eliminating many of these environmental regulations.
Accordingly, if this is found to be true, nothing will happen, they will get a slap on the hand, with fines and never see themselves being prosecuted in a court of law due to their financial support of many politicians and the corruption goes through to the Supreme Court.
Yet if a poor man steals a loaf of bread, because he is hungry or trying to feed his family, he could find himself in jail for at least five years.
Yet those who support the Koch brothers on the ground are not even aware of who they are really supporting.
Just one more point here, most of the legislation was passed with a republican held majority in the House and Senate passed either before or during the lame duck sessions, prior to the change where democrats took majorities in both houses.
It is a sad state of affairs, but we need to change the personal bad behavior of these politicians and corporate vampires.
But this is a different topic of which I will follow up in my next article.
If you take a look at the Post Office, they are having budget problems.
In 2006 legislation was passed forcing the post office to pay in 75% of advanced pension fund payments within a ten year framework to the federal government plus some additional billions more.
In this way the Bush administration had more money to fund the wars.
This of course will force over a hundred thousand workers to be laid off and hundreds of local post offices to be closed.
This is due to the last time the Republican Party held a majority in both houses.
In matter of fact during the Bush Administration, from my understanding, the wars were never placed in the budget.
The unseen advantage is to weaken this federal agency.
Again this was a set up, since it is the Republican Agenda to strip down the federal government in favor of privatization.
Of course we know that privatization only ramps up pricing, placing even more burden on the middle class and working poor.
You may ask why would anyone go along with this type of movement? Don't forget most of these politicians do profit personally and professionally from this type of activity.
People talk a lot especially business people.
Remember I said that you get misinformation and misdirection from these talking heads.
Sometimes you are aware of it and other times you are not.
A lot of talk lately about big corporate money that is being stashed overseas, politicians and corporate interest would like you to believe that by bringing it in, the money would be taxed.
This in some way would be too expensive for them.
In 2005, an amnesty was given for companies to bring in there off shore accounts, many companies did.
The result was no jobs created, bigger bonuses for CEOs, investment into stock market and asset management.
The money in foreign investment in 2005 from American companies went from 250 billion to almost nothing in that year, followed by 250 billion re-invested overseas in 2006.
Voter registration usually is an easy process.
You can get signed up by any organization or request voter registration forms from the State Board of Elections.
For the last 41 years, there have not been any significant fraud cases, when it comes to voter registration.
Yet in 14 heavily Republican led states there has been move to restrict if not ban registration by groups such as the League of Women Voters and Unions.
Photo IDs are being required even of those older citizens or younger voters who do not have drivers' licensees.
In the state of Texas one can show there gun license but a student picture ID is rejected.
There is a story out on a senior citizen who went to the DMV is her state and was asked for her marriage license, she was 96 years old.
She had voted every year since she was eligible and now she is being slowed if not stopped from voting since she has not needed it for decades for any reason.
The reason for such regulation is democratic voters tend to be senior citizens, young students, new voters.
If this is not enough then many states with Republican majorities have also repealed or restricted early voting, since it is noted that this may help the democrats win elections.
What happened to the idea of less government interrupting people lives? It is less government if it favors the 1% and it is more if it represses the rest of us.
These power plays will allow most of these Republican held legislations to continue to pander to special interest and dismantle public and private unions within the states.
This impacts wages, pensions and education for the middles class and gives most of the tax breaks other benefits to the wealthy.
It is also obvious that though one can not blame the Republicans for everything, the response from the other side has been weak at best.
Wisconsin and Ohio legislators have hit a big problem that people do care about these things and they have been standing up in regards to these matters.
They understand along with most of the unions that the less ability for unions public or private to collectively bargain that all will be lost for the middle class and more will be slanted in favor of special interest.
Here is the rub, why was this all necessary in the first place? Why is it that so many states have over run their budgets? The answer is criminal negligence on the part of these administrators, lack of fiduciary responsibility and corruption.
If one is to cut anything in the first place it is the salaries of those who were responsible for the deficit.
Investigations into special interest tax cuts or other "benefits" within each state should be looked at.
Why should the middle class be saddled and burdened with unfair taxation while corporations end up paying little to no tax overall.
Large corporations can buy elected officials.
In the Citizens United case special interest won, the result was unlimited and undisclosed sources of campaign funding.
This is just another way, to facilitate the purchase of our "representatives.
" A Hedge Fund Manager was replying to the 99% group, his statement was "the one percent pays forty percent of the taxes.
" To this statement I would reply that the 99% pays the other 60%.
The question then becomes why are they paying less, when they make so much more.
I am sure that you have heard from the Wall Street Barons that there is so much "uncertainty" in the market place so big business has trillions of investment dollars is being held on the sidelines.
On top of this we have banks also not releasing capital due to this uncertainty.
Well that is true but with a caveat, that is, that the bill (Dodd-Frank) which was passed during the Democratic held House and Senate, is being held up and unfunded by the current Republican House.
One of the major Republican figures Paul Ryan had already stated to a group of Wall Street and Big Business types that Republicans are effectively going to ensure that it doesn't get implemented.
So what is this? The solution to fix what brought us to this economic disaster is being held back so that Wall Street "Robber Barons" can continue to feast on the 401Ks, IRAs, equity and pension funds of the American Middle Class and working poor, through speculation, price and interest gouging.
Since 2007 to current 4th quarter, there have been 401 bank failures at the cost to the American Taxpayer of over Eighty Billion Dollars to the Deposit Insurance Fund.
According to the FDIC: "These bank failures are generally due to inadequate capital and mounting loan losses as defaults on commercial loans and residential mortgage loans continue to impair the liquidity and capital reserves of these less capitalized regional banks.
" This again is the destructive nature of the notion that the free market will take care of itself, Can you imagine without the FDIC the bank customer base could have been literally wiped out with no ability to recover losses.
Since the implementation of new regulations the amount of bank failures went from 157 in 2010 to 76 in 2011.
One bank failure is already too much, and though it slowed down the effects, this is not over yet, currently there are 865 problem institutions on the FDIC watch list this is up from 110 in 2003.
I guarantee you that not one Bank President or CEO in these failed institutions had voluntarily lowered their salary.
If you have tuned into any news broadcasts lately, Wall Street is reacting and Guru's are directing their statements about European Financial Crisis.
Most of the Wall Street types along with the media are harping on that crisis, yet as I mentioned above we have 865 problem banks here at home.
This is the essential misdirection before the disenfranchisement of the American Middle Class by those who will benefit financially by keeping others unaware of what is happening behind closed doors.
The national debt is pretty scary but how does it actually relate to the total net worth of the United States.
As far as I can estimate, the US has a net worth of about 65 Trillion dollars.
Which means when you add the public debt (14 trillion) back into the net worth, our public debt is running around 18% of net worth (14 Divided by 79).
This is still not that good, but it is manageable, we only need to shave off about six to seven trillion over the next twenty years to be in an acceptable range of debt to equity.
Let us not forget that when tax rates were lowered in 2001 by the Bush Tax Cuts, it increased the net income and net worth of the 1%.
In the meantime, the 99% ended up paying more tax.
While the wealthy "Job Creators" were enjoying this windfall, they were sending jobs overseas to better there bottom lines.
At this point more of the 99% then became displaced through the job market, of which now are paying higher percentages of taxes in relation to the 1% which have increased their wealth by about 400%.
Would it not profit this 1% to bring jobs back to the US and get demand up for exporting American made products, in American made factories? What we have seen instead after certain free trade agreements an export en masse of American jobs.
These companies put stockholders' interest and profits ahead of any social responsibility.
Today's big corporations are not satisfied with modest gains in the bottom lines; they want to see fantastic gains only.
Mind you that these gains transmit themselves into personal wealth, greed is king.
Just to show you how low these politician will go for special interest, they held back the appointment of the new Director of Commerce until the Democrats agreed to this job exporting bill.
The Koch Brothers are now being investigated in regards to their business dealings with Iran.
Yes, Iran the government that wants to destroy Israel and the US.
Allegedly, A Koch Brothers foreign subsidiary was trying to bribe government officials in many countries to assist with some sort of business dealings.
In addition to this Koch Industries has paid hundreds of millions of dollars for environmental violations in the US alone.
Now isn't it interesting that the Political Actions Committees, The Tea Party and many politicians, are those carping for eliminating many of these environmental regulations.
Accordingly, if this is found to be true, nothing will happen, they will get a slap on the hand, with fines and never see themselves being prosecuted in a court of law due to their financial support of many politicians and the corruption goes through to the Supreme Court.
Yet if a poor man steals a loaf of bread, because he is hungry or trying to feed his family, he could find himself in jail for at least five years.
Yet those who support the Koch brothers on the ground are not even aware of who they are really supporting.
Just one more point here, most of the legislation was passed with a republican held majority in the House and Senate passed either before or during the lame duck sessions, prior to the change where democrats took majorities in both houses.
It is a sad state of affairs, but we need to change the personal bad behavior of these politicians and corporate vampires.
But this is a different topic of which I will follow up in my next article.
Source...