Stop bailing the banks out and nationalize them, Robbing Hood

Posted on March 8, 2009 by Tony Logan

$173 billions of taxpayer money given to just one financial company, AIG! Thanks, Obama, you’re really doing great here. What has the American public gotten for this travesty of economics, as Obama and Bush (the Democrats and the Republicans) have taken from the poor and given to the rich?

Why, they have gotten absolutely nothing. Who has gotten anything besides AIG?

‘The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that about $50 billion of more than $173 billion that the U.S. government has poured into American International Group Inc since last fall has been paid to at least two dozen U.S. and foreign financial institutions.’ See Reuters… Who got AIG’s bailout billions?

What is this? Is there some sort of competition between American conservative loonies and America’s liberal loonies going on? Why don’t Americans call for nationalizing the banks since obviously the Feds can’t get the job done without all sorts of money being stolen from the poor? Enough of these Robbing Hoods! It’s time to nationalize the banks.

I found this looking for something else. (About Mayor Rivera)

Posted on March 7, 2009 by Brother Jonah

I couldn’t embed it but here’s the link to the video.

I was looking for something that came up in the inevitable angry political discussion on the City Bus yesterday.

Actually, nobody was angry with or against each other.

We’re all just a little teensy tiny itty bitty small bit P.O.’d about the “Lower Class” being bought and sold like so many hummm… what’s that Minor Piece in a chess game, you know, the ones that always get sacrificed to save or capture a Chessman of higher rank, oh yeah… Pawns…

But it seems Our Illustrious Mayor has once again applied his own foot to his own mouth…

On the subject of cutting bus routes.

The bus in question is to one of the medical districts.

Which is getting a large percentage of Budgetary axe.

The other parties to the conversation were a retired lady and a lady who makes her living as a Teacher.

The Mayor, allegedly (but, for some strange reason, I believe every syllable of it) His Dis-Honor has made what he thought was an unrecorded remark that he doesn’t really care what bus passengers think because “The only people who ride the bus are bums and alcoholics”

This was supposed to be posted to YouTube after having been caught on a cell-phone camera.

I haven’t found it, YET.

Strangely, I have a lot of confidence that I will, and I don’t doubt for a moment that His Dis-Honor said that, simply because he has a long and rich history of making disparaging remarks about the Lower Classes, who, unlike himself, actually do the Labor that provides the wealth of Our Nation and more directly, his own Portfolio.

AND, about the soldiers who came back with pieces missing, both of body and mind, from the War of Conquest which benefits, directly, His Stock Portfolio.

One of the ladies, the schoolteacher, is blind. I had located the information she wanted on the Bus Route and schedule changes she had tried to ask the bus driver about.

The bus is the one she and the other lady use to go between their homes and, well, Everywhere Else.

I, as usual, was going to a doctor’s appointment.

One of the other bus Route Cancellation, 3 of them in fact, involve getting within a half-mile of Peak Vista Health Care, the El Paso County Health Department, and a Memorial Health Systems facility across Parkside Drive from Peak Vista.

In other words, facilities that serve the Disabled and Poor.

It’s not really a coincidence that those two groups merge at several points.

Also, in an entry into Jonah’s Museum of Spectacularly Bad Ideas, it seems the budget crunch was made an order of magnitude Worse by the reversal of the usual order of the Financial Universe,

Instead of issuing Municipal Bonds and having OTHER PEOPLE invest in the City, the City has been using Our Tax Money to ~~GAMBLE~~ errr… “invest” in the Stock Market, under the tutelage of Our Own Resident Pre-Chimpanzee Douglas Bruce.

The one who makes Les Freres Bush et menages look like Intellectual Giants by comparison.

I wonders, yes I does, if these Parasite Class Heroes bought, with our money, a whole bunch of those Mortgage Notes?

They could sue me for “Definition of Character” and if they win they would get everything I own.

At a net loss of the vast majority of the costs of hauling it away.

I guess they’re used to losing investments anyway.

There is much grumbling among the Working Class to the tune of a Recall Election to unseat these vermin.

As usual, Jonah speaks only for Jonah, but I think we should take that idea and run with it.

KVOR advertising on Bus Stops…

Posted on March 5, 2009 by Brother Jonah

And billboards.

For those who don’t live in or near the Springs, that’s our Local Right Wing Talk Radio AM station.
Hosting Limbaugh, Beck, Gunny Bob, Hannity, you know the ones…

So they’re now paying out what looks like a couple of Million dollars so far to advertise on the bus stops, and billboards and taxis and the local “news” paper…

…Locally….

They consistently boast that they’re a Number 1 station in the local ratings.

Maybe so. Colorado Springs once advertised itself as the most “conservative” city in America.

You would think that the local outlet for such luminaries as Rush and Hannity wouldn’t need to advertise… except, they are.

And doing it expensively.

To quote Mr Dylan, “the times, they are a-changin’…”

I’ll go for that and order a second helping.

Colorado Springs own cloud maker

Posted on March 5, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Last week’s POWER SHIFT 09, where 12,000 student environmentalists converged on Washington, culminated with a protest of a DC power plant which still produced 40% of its electricity from coal. A threatened largest act of mass civil disobedience pushed Washington legislators to order the plant converted completely to natural gas. What a contrast to the awareness level in our own Colorado Springs, where the city wraps around a single coal power plant which consumes two coal train loads a day, its billowing stacks, local moms describe to their kids, give it the name “cloud maker.”

From a Capitol Climate Action PDF:

Ten Problems with Coal

1. Coal Fuels Global Warming
Coal is the largest single source of global warming pollution in the United States. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has reported that global warming threatens human populations and the world’s ecosystems with intensifying heat waves, floods, drought, extreme weather, and by spreading infectious diseases. Furthermore, it is conservatively estimated that the climate crisis will place a $271 billion annual drag on the U.S. economy alone by 2025. According to the IPCC, the United States and other industrialized countries need to reduce global warming pollution by 25–40 percent by 2025 to avoid the most severe impacts of the climate crisis.

2. Coal Kills People and Causes Disease
According to the American Lung Association, pollution from coal-fired power plants causes 23,600 premature deaths, 21,850 hospital admissions, 554,000 asthma attacks, and 38,200 heart attacks every year. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that 12,000 coal miners died from black lung disease between 1992 and 2002.

3. Coal Kills Jobs
The coal industry is one of the least job-intensive industries in America. Every dollar we invest in coal is a dollar we can’t spend creating jobs in the clean energy economy. In fact, the country’s wind sector now employs more workers than the coal industry. Investing in wind and solar power would create 2.8 times as many jobs as the same investment in coal; mass transit and conservation would create 3.8 times as many jobs as coal.

4. Coal Costs Billions in Taxpayer Subsidies
The U.S. government continues to subsidize coal-related projects despite its impact on health, climate and the economy.

5. Coal Destroys Mountains
Many coal companies now use mountaintop removal to extract coal. The process involves clear-cutting forests, using dynamite to blast away as much as 800–1000 feet of mountaintop and dumping the waste into nearby valleys and streams. Mountain-top removal has leveled more than 450 mountains across Appalachia. Mountain-top removal destroys ecosystems, stripping away topsoil, trees, and understory habitats, filling streams and valleys with rubble, poisoning water supplies, and generating massive impoundments that can cause catastrophic floods.

6. Burning Coal Emits Mercury
Coal-fired power plants are the largest source of man-made mercury pollution. Mercury can interfere with the development of babies’ brains and neurological systems. Elevated levels of mercury in Americans’ blood puts one in six babies born in the United States at elevated risk of learning disabilities, developmental delays, and problems with fine motor coordination. Already 49 U.S. states have issued fish consumption advisories due to high mercury concentrations in freshwater bodies throughout the country, largely due to coal emissions.

7. There’s No Such Thing as “Clean Coal”
Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), or what the coal industry is marketing as “clean coal,” is a hypothetical technology that may one day capture carbon dioxide from power plants and store it underground. However, the scheme has never been successfully demonstrated at a commercial scale, is wildly expensive, and can’t deliver in time to help with the climate crisis. Nationwide, approximately $5.2 billion in taxpayer and ratepayer money has been invested in the technology, but a recent government report found that of 13 projects examined, eight had serious delays or financial problems, six were years behind schedule, and two were bankrupt. Even if engineers are able to overcome the chemical and geological challenges of separating and safely storing massive quantities of CO2, a study published recently shows that CCS requires so much energy that it would increase emissions by up to 40 percent of smog, soot, and other dangerous pollution.

8. Coal Kills Rivers
Last December, a billion gallons of toxic coal sludge broke through a dike at the Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee and flooded the Emory and Clinch Rivers, tributaries of the massive Tennessee River system. Within hours, ash laden with mercury, lead, arsenic, benzene, and other toxic chemicals had contaminated the river and fish were washing up dead on the shore. The spill, which was followed days later by another coal ash spill at a TVA facility in Alabama, soon became a national symbol of the reality of “clean coal” and led to hearings in Congress; legislation is pending to regulate coal ash as a hazardous waste. The TVA recently estimated the clean-up costs from this one spill to be up to $825 million, with higher costs possible as a result of a variety of pending civil suits against the TVA.

9. Coal Plants Are Expensive
Communities considering construction of new coal-fired power plants are seeing these impacts first-hand. During a recent debate over building a new coal-fired power plant in southwest Virginia, state officials estimated that building a new plant (which would employ just 75 people permanently), would cost 1,474 jobs as businesses laid people off to pay the higher electricity costs from a new coal plant. With the United States running a huge deficit, we’ve got to make sure that whatever investments we do make pack the biggest job-creation bang for the buck.

10. Acid Rain
Acid rain, a byproduct of burning coal, destroys ecosystems, including streams and lakes, by changing their delicate pH balance. It can destroy forests, devastate plant and animal life, and eat away at man-made monuments and buildings.

Ft Carson is Burnt Acres not Green Acres

Posted on March 4, 2009 by Tony Logan

For several years now Colorado Springs has watched in incredulous dismay as the Pentagon has tried to represent its local terrorism training center, Fort Carson, as being some sort of Green Acres to Coloradans. Incredibly, the local group of Democrats at the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission have done their part in playing part of the game with the military in this regard, as they held joint meetings with the military and even printed up some of their propaganda about being ‘Green’ in their quarterly newsletter.

But what’s the real story about this supposedly lean, green, terrorist cell near by? Are they out to save Mother Earth through the military-industrial complex as they claim? If you are a True Believer in this Pentagon propaganda offensive, then take a look at this news item then… Fort Carson fire consumes 6,500 acres

It turns out, not surprisingly, that the military dropping bombs during heir ‘exercises’ is what started this fire out. These boy toys are noted for being just like that, but burning money off through weaponry is the American economy and so this Blood Red group must expand! Nothing green about it except for the American dollars being consumed so stupidly. It’s simply time to stop this bombs away, burn Mother Earth away machine. If you care about ecology, get out and show your concern by protesting the continuous and constant US military presence here in Colorado Springs.

It takes a lot of nerve to try to pass the pentagon off as Green, humane, and Earth loving, doesn’t it? But these Pentagon lairs get a humongous propaganda budget from American taxpayers to do just that. If your military backed job depends on it,t hen you might be the type of dunce to buy into this hogwash? If not, it’s just another reason to be sick of what the total militarization of America is doing to us.

*** Note that the fire pictured was a wildfire from last year at Fort Carson and not this year’s fire.

Mark 6TH YEAR of Iraq Occupation with profiteers Boeing, Lockheed, GD and KBR

Posted on February 27, 2009 by NMT

A.N.S.W.E.R.’s March 21 MARCH ON THE PENTAGON to mark the sixth year of the War in Iraq will be directed not only at the US Department of Defense, but at the war profiteers for whom 2007 was a record year, among them Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and KBR. In Colorado Springs the merchants of death can be visited on one corner.

On March 21, 2009,
March on the Pentagon and the Corporate War Profiteers

The March on the Pentagon on Saturday, March 21 is shaping up to be a dramatic and highly significant demonstration. Many thousands of people are coming to Washington, D.C. to make their voices heard.

March 21 will culminate in a dramatic direct action where hundreds of coffins—representing the multinational victims of militarism, Empire and corporate greed—will be carried and delivered to the headquarters of the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death.

From the Pentagon, we will march to the nearby giant corporate offices of Boeing Company, Lockheed Martin Corporation, General Dynamics and KBR (the former subsidiary of Halliburton).

The march will start close to the State Department in Washington, D.C. (assemble at 12 noon at 23rd St. and Constitution Ave. NW).

Please make an urgently needed donation today by clicking this link to donate online through our secure server, where you can also find information on how to donate by check.

These are the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death. They are the vultures who profit off the death and suffering of the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, and off of the thousands of U.S. soldiers and marines who have died or been wounded in these wars of aggression. They are anti-worker and anti-union.

The march will be led by a large contingent of veterans and family members of veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and from earlier conflicts.

Militarism and Corporate Capitalism
We will march on their slick-and-shiny corporate offices that are located less than a mile from the Pentagon. Their location in the very shadow of the Pentagon speaks volumes about the intimate connection between militarism and corporate capitalism.

When the Pentagon brass retire, they rotate out of their Pentagon offices and directly into the Corporate boardrooms and office suites of the Death Merchants. It is a very cozy and very profitable relationship for the elites—in and out of uniform. They make the profits, others do the bleeding.

Last year was a great year for the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death. Profits soared even as the rest of the economy neared collapse. The CEOs of the four corporations that we will be visiting on March 21 received more than $319 million in compensation in 2007 alone (and remember, that’s just for four individuals). “We the People” paid the bill for the high tech weapons that were used against occupied people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. The Corporate Executives laughed all the way to the bank while grieving parents and children buried their loved ones from Baghdad to Kabul to Gaza to Detroit.

A quick examination shows that the CEOs of the Military-Industrial Complex contributed to both the Democratic and Republican Party candidates in almost equal amounts. They favor a system that ensures that politicians will come and go every four years but the military machine—that fusion of industry, banks and the Pentagon brass—will remain as is.

We Need Jobs & Schools – Not War!
The same banks that are being bailed out to the tune of trillions of dollars even while they foreclose families who can’t pay their mortgage debts are double-dipping from the national treasury by making huge profits in their investments in Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and KBR.

War is just good business for these corporate executives. Every F-16 bomber, attack helicopter, cruise missile and Drone bomber is a source of profit. If the wars stopped they would be out of business.

The people of this country are fed up with the status quo. They want decent-paying jobs, and affordable health care and housing for all. Students want to study rather than be driven out by soaring tuition rates. People want a complete—not partial—withdrawal of ALL troops from Iraq. They want the war in Afghanistan to end rather than escalate. They are increasingly opposed to sending $2.6 billion each year to Israel.

People are coming to Washington, D.C. on March 21 from college campuses, high schools, and cities and towns throughout the United States.

It is time for real change. Unless the movement for change stays in the streets, the powerful corporate and banking interests will certainly dominate the politics of this country. That is unacceptable. That is a path toward endless war and occupation abroad, and a massive transfer of wealth to the already rich at home.

All out for March 21! Jobs Not War! Schools Not War! Occupation is a Crime!

From pentagonmarch.org:

Meet the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death

W. James McNerney Jr.
CEO of Boeing.

2007 Total Compensation: $19 million. Value of Boeing Stock Owned: $25.7 million

Facts about Boeing:
Boeing currently produces numerous jets and bombers, including the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber and the F/A-22 Raptor, as well as multiple surface-to-air missiles and various bombs. Boeing also produces the bolt-on JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) that turns gravity bombs into “smart” munitions.

Boeing supplies Israel with various weapon systems, including the F-15 Eagle fighter jet and A-64 Apache attack helicopter, as well as numerous types of bombs and missiles. It was these weapons that helped to kill 1,017 Palestinians killed in the Israeli invasion of Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009.

In 2008, Boeing made $2,225,947 in campaign contributions. 58 percent of these contributions were to Democrats, and 42 percent were to Republicans. In 2008, they spent $16,610,000 on lobbying.

Despite massive profits, Boeing opposed raises for plant employees, and attempted to outsource union jobs so that the company could be “more flexible.”

Robert J. Stevens
CEO of Lockheed Martin

2007 Total Compensation: $37 million. Value of Lockheed Martin Stock Owned: $33.8 million

Facts about Lockheed Martin:
Lockheed Martin currently produces the F-117 Stealth Fighter that was used in the brutal “Shock and Awe” bombings of Iraq, as well as the F/A-22 Raptor fighter jet. They also produces various missile systems, including the Hellfire and Javelin, and various nuclear weapon designs. Lockheed supplies fighter jets and other weapon systems to Israel.

Lockheed’s 2008 first-quarter revenue was $9.98 billion–an increase of $700 million from the year prior. By 2015, the F-35 program alone could represent more than $16 billion in annual revenue for the company.

Lockheed’s former vice-president, Bruce Jackson, headed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.

In 2005, Lockheed received $65 million every single day of the year from the U.S. government. That year, Lockheed garnered $228 in federal tax money from every household in the United States.

In 2008, Lockheed made $2.6 million in political contributions—49 percent to the Democrats and 51 percent to the Republicans.

In 2004, Lockheed spent nearly $10 million on more than 100 lobbyists. From 2001-2005, only Philip Morris and GE spent more money lobbying Congress. By 2008, that number was $15.8 million.

Nicholas D. Chabraja
CEO of General Dynamics

2007 Total Compensation: $60 million. Value of GD Stock Owned: $154.2 million

Facts about General Dynamics:
General Dynamics currently produces dozens of weapon systems, which include the Stryker Armored Combat Vehicle and the M-1 Abrams Main Battle Tank series, as well as other highly devastating artillery systems and the Trident Nuclear Submarine.

General Dynamics has supplied Israel with various weapon systems, including the F-16 Falcon fighter jet.

In 2008, General Dynamics made $1,682,595 in campaign contributions—58 percent to the Democrats and 42 percent to the Republicans.

Also in 2008, General Dynamics spent $8,562,439 lobbying for government contracts.

Fueled by sales of business jets and military-combat equipment, General Dynamics reported a 32 percent jump in first-quarter profits for 2008, to $573 million. The backlog of work not completed far outpaced revenues, growing by 14 percent to nearly $50 billion.

Analysts think General Dynamics and Mr. Chabraja will do even better next year, noting the “upside potential” of the combat-systems group, which is benefiting from the U.S. Army’s restocking of equipment lost, damaged or worn by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, in addition to a $12 billion backlog of orders for corporate jets.

William P. Utt
CEO of Kellogg Brown & Root.

2007 Total Compensation: $3.29 million. Value of KBR Stock Owned: $6.5 million

Facts about KBR:
There are roughly 14,000 KBR employees inside of Iraq that provide logistical support to the U.S. military. KBR has made billions off of “reconstruction” contracts within Iraq.

KBR is the largest non-union construction company in the United States. It has won many contracts with the U.S. government, including $100 million to build a U.S. embassy in Afghanistan, as well as $216 million for the construction of several base camps and training foreign troops from the Republic of Georgia.

Despite at least a dozen former employees alleging they had been raped by co-workers in Iraq and other employees saying co-workers regularly stole gold, artwork, and weapons, KBR remains in the Pentagon’s good graces. In mid-April, it received a 10-year, $150 billion contract to support the military overseas.

CEO William Utt called 2008 an “outstanding year,” saying KBR posted record profitability.

Despite many scandals and controversies, KBR reported that its first quarter net profits for 2008 more than tripled, from $28 million the previous year to $98 million.

ANSWER Coalition Responds to President Obama’s Iraq Speech of Friday, February 27

With his speech today, President Obama has essentially agreed to continue the criminal occupation of Iraq indefinitely. He announced that there will be an occupation force of 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq for at least three more years. President Obama used carefully chosen words to avoid a firm commitment to remove the 50,000 occupation troops, even after 2011.

The war in Iraq was illegal. It was aggression. It was based on lies and false rationales. President Obama’s speech today made Bush’s invasion sound like a liberating act and congratulated the troops for “getting the job done.” More than a million Iraqis died and a cruel civil war was set into motion because of the foreign invasion. President Obama did not once criticize the invasion itself.

He has also requested an increase in war spending for Iraq and Afghanistan, and plans to double the number of U.S. troops sent to fight in Afghanistan.

President Obama has asked Congress to provide more than $200 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars over the next two years, in addition to increasing the Pentagon budget by four percent.

Based on President Obama’s new budget, the Pentagon would rank as the world’s 17th largest economy—if it were a country. This new budget increases war spending. Total spending in 2010 would roughly equate to an average of $21,000 a second.

This is not the end of the occupation of Iraq, but rather the continuation of the occupation.

There is only one reason that tens of thousands of troops will remain in Iraq: It is because this is a colonial-type occupation of a strategically important and oil-rich country located in the Middle East where two-thirds of the world’s oil reserve can be found.

Obama’s speech was a major disappointment for anyone who was hoping that Obama would renounce the illegal occupation of Iraq. Today, the U.S. government spends $480 million per day to fund the occupation of Iraq. Even if 100,000 troops are drawn out by August 2010, that means the indefinite occupation of Iraq will cost more than $100 million each day. The continued occupation of Iraq for two years or three years or more makes a complete mockery out of the idea that the Iraqi people control their own destiny. It is a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty and independence.

It is no wonder that John McCain came out to support President Obama’s announced plan on Iraq. McCain was an supporter of former President Bush’s and Vice President Cheney’s war and occupation in Iraq.

Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld—the architects of regime change in Iraq—never had the goal of indefinitely keeping 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. They wanted to subdue the Iraqi people and exercise control with a smaller force. The Iraqi armed resistance prolonged the stationing of 150,000 U.S. troops.

Bush’s goal was domination over Iraq and its oil supplies, and domination over the region. This continues to be the goal of the U.S. political and economic establishment, including that of the new administration.

President Obama decided not to challenge the fundamental strategic orientation. That explains why he kept the Bush team—Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and Generals Petraeus and Odierno—on the job to oversee and manage the Iraq occupation. They will also manage the widening U.S. war in Afghanistan and the aerial assaults on Pakistan. There have been over 30 U.S. bombing attacks in Pakistan in the last two months.

We are marching on Saturday, March 21 because the people of this country are fed up with the status quo. They want decent-paying jobs, and affordable health care and housing for all. Students want to study rather than be driven out by soaring tuition rates. The majority of people want a complete—not partial—withdrawal of ALL troops from Iraq. They want the war in Afghanistan to end rather than escalate. They are increasingly opposed to sending $2.6 billion each year to Israel and want an end to the colonial occupation of Palestine.

From Iraq to Afghanistan to Palestine, Occupation is a Crime!

Posted on February 23, 2009 by Eric Verlo

A.N.S.W.E.R. has 7 Reasons to March on DC. We can borrow them!
– The war in Afghanistan is expanding and widening.
– 350,000 U.S. troops and US-paid contractors still occupy Iraq.
– Israel’s Siege of Gaza remains in place, with backing of Washington.
– Obama’s Justice Department is continuing the policy of renditions.
– Air strikes on Pakistan are killing an increasingly number of civilians.
– The real Pentagon war budget is over $1.3 trillion annually.
– More than 20 million people are now unemployed and under-employed.

7 Reasons You Should March on the Pentagon on March 21, 2009

1
The war in Afghanistan is expanding and widening. President Obama announced last week that another 17,000 troops are on their way to Afghanistan. Only 18 percent of Afghanis support this escalation and only 34 percent of the people of the United States approve of the added troops despite the president’s popularity, according to the Washington Post/ABC poll announced on February 17, 2009. This is a colonial war. The president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, was not involved in the decision to add more occupying troops into his country. Rather, he was “informed of the deployments in a telephone call with Obama” on February 17, according to the Washington Post (February 18, 2009).

2
About 350,000 U.S. troops and U.S.-paid private contractors (mercenaries) still occupy Iraq. The Iraqi people want the occupation to end. Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is insisting that only two of the 14 combat brigades in Iraq exit in 2009. The war and occupation of Iraq costs $430 million each day. If the U.S. government were to end the military occupation, any and all future Iraqi governments would return to a position of political independence from the economic and political dictates of the United States. Iraq’s anti-colonial legacy has created a political reality that prohibits the country from becoming like Kuwait or Saudi Arabia–an out-and-out dependency on U.S. imperialism. That is the real reason that the U.S. government fears a complete disengagement from Iraq and an end to its military occupation.

3
Israel’s Siege of Gaza remains in place, with the full backing of Washington. The U.S. government has continued to fund Israel’s war and blockade against the people of Gaza. The Pentagon provided the funding, and technical and logistical support for the establishment of the Israeli war machine, including its massive cluster and white phosphorous bomb arsenal, and the country’s large cache of nuclear bombs.

4
The new Justice Department has announced that it will continue the policy of renditions, meaning the CIA and Pentagon will capture and kidnap individuals anywhere in the world and transfer them to other countries. “The Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.” (LA Times, Feb. 1, 2009)

5
The new administration has stepped up the air strikes that are killing an increasingly large number of Pakistani civilians. Unmanned drone bombing attacks violate Pakistani sovereignty and are creating an ocean of resentment and anger inside of Pakistan. The U.S. government has no right to carry out these drone bombing strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. The people of the United States would not accept the legitimacy of other governments ordering air attacks in the United States. We must openly and loudly reject such tactics by the government that speaks in our name and spends our tax dollars for such aggression.

6
The real Pentagon war budget is over $1.3 trillion annually. This is greater than the combined total of most of the other countries in the world, including all the NATO countries, and Russia and China. Some label this “waste spending” because it spends precious resources to build exotic and high cost weapons, a new generation of nuclear weapons, and space-based war fighting capabilities, while filling the coffers of the big investors (i.e., the biggest banks) in the war corporations. Pentagon contracting is often based on guaranteed “cost-plus” contracts that reward price gouging since corporate profit is based on a fixed percentage above their expenses. Another label for this process is “extreme corruption” and theft from the public treasury.

7
More than 20 million people are now unemployed and under-employed. Nine million families are either in foreclosure or are at risk of foreclosure this year, according to the statistics just released by the government. Forty-seven million people are without health care. College tuition hikes are soaring and millions of students are at risk of being forced out of school. The people want change. They don’t want a simple tweaking of Bush’s criminal foreign policies. They want to put people’s needs before corporate greed. They want an end to wars of aggression that are wreaking havoc, death and destruction abroad, and diverting urgently needed resources in the service of semi-colonialism and Empire.

Obama talks of lowering the deficit even as he does the opposite

Posted on February 22, 2009 by Tony Logan

Obama sure knows how to talk out of both sides of his mouth at once! And that’s exactly what makes him and the Democratic Party so dangerous to the American people. With the Republican Party of Open Violence everybody knows what’s coming down, but with the Democrats it’s quite different.

Here’s the latest Obama-con as the mass media hits us with… Obama Seeks to Halve Deficit to Half Trillion Per Year by 2013 all timed to hit us with headlines across the nation in the corporate dailies’ Sunday issues today.

So how is Obama, with as corporate loaded a Cabinet as ever was, going to reverse course from his new give outs to the corporate big guys, and now tax them as he says he will? How is he going to cut the military spending even as he sends 17,000 or so new troops into Afghanistan? How is he going to tax corproations more even as he gives out more tax refunds to everybody right away? Barack Obama surely is the guy who can talk out both sides of his mouth at one and the same time, isn’t he? It’s amazing! Slick Willie and his triangulation abacus had nothing ever at all that the duo team of Barack and Hillary we now are stuck with for 4 years can’t match and even double in shenanigans.

We should all be very concerned with this double talk. Barack is setting the deck for a ruling class attack on what the rich call ‘entitlements’, but what we know as social programs… programs like Social Security… for just one example. Yes, General Barack is not going to cut the real billion ton gorilla entitlement program that is known as the US military, but is going to go after social programs, even as he double talks to us about expanding them! We are being scammed. The Democratic Party with Barack Obama at the helm might just be running the biggest ponzi scheme of them all on the American public?

How does it all work? Well just study the cartoon picture that leads this commentary off. Say one thing and do another.

Billionaire bank robbers do not go to jail

Posted on February 22, 2009 by Eric Verlo

I thought there was something odd with a headline about a recent break in a 2001 murder case: Arrest of inmate imminent. Probably it makes perfect sense to hasten with the arrest of someone already incarcerated. Meanwhile, Allan Stanford, suspected of an $8 Billion dollar fraud, is “laying low” and not under arrest. And Bernard Madoff, of the $50 Billion fraud, is free in his penthouse.

Really. It’s probably too soon to know how the Guinness Book of Records will rank these crimes, but we might guess these are the biggest, even if you include the S&L heists. Although record keepers will note the bank “bailout” heist, the GWOT military industry heist and the Tax Cuts For The Rich heist will eclipse all.

What distinguishes the earlier crime record holders, from these break-the-bank blockbusters, is the urgency expressed, in familiar days, about bringing the guilty to justice.

If asked to name the biggest heist of all time, most of us think of the Great Train Robbery, maybe just because it still has a ring to it. The take was peanuts by today’s standard. Buster Edwards and company stole $3.7 million from the mail train, (today it would be equivalent to $58 million). Still the offenders were undone.

The record before that, thirteen years before, was the 1950 Brinks Robbery for $2.7 million.

Since then: Brinks Mat; Société Générale heist, Nice; Lufthansa, $6M; Heathrow Airport security vehicle $6.5M; the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston 1990 $300M; the Oslo National Museum, Oslo 1994 $58M; and the Carlton Hotel Jewelry store, 1994 $44M.

This millennium there was: the Northern Bank Robbery, Belfast, Ireland 2004 $50M; Fortaleza, Brazil bank, 2005 $65M; Securitas Depot robbery, 2006 $92.5M; and I’ve gone a little out of order to list last, the only heist to reach one billion: the Central Bank of Iraq, Baghdad March 2003 $1B;

Does that explain why Messrs Stanford and Madoff are reclining in the luxury of their own abodes, except to illustrate that the rich are different from you and me?

Murdoch puts Obama on public notice: white men licensed to kill bad monkeys

Posted on February 20, 2009 by Eric Verlo

The page in the New York Post before this cartoon featured a photograph of President Obama signing [writing] the Stimulus Bill. Putting aside the offensive connotation, does the cartoon work on any level? Is there a joke in linking the Chimpanzee gone native in Connecticut to the Stimulus Bill? What is it?

Is the cartoonist drawing on a third association, to the big laugh line from Die Hard, when an helicopter full of FBI guys, snotty agents who didn’t want the assistance of our hero, explodes, and an LAPD regular says: “I guess they’ll have to get some more FBI guys.”

What is it? The Stimulus Bill was written by a monkey? It was argued and reshaped by a dueling phalanx of legislators. It may have become disfigured, but was it by any stretch engineered by a monkey?

Certainly the moneyed class, which Murdoch represents, objects to giving any of the treasury to middle America. It can go to banks, or CEOs, or in the form of tax cuts to the multi-billionaires, but craft an economic solution that puts jobs or financial relief in the hands of ordinary people and the corporate press is not interested. So the bill author would be a bleeding-heart, or a sentimentalist, or Rainman for that matter. But where does the analogy work as a monkey?

A chimp-faced lampoon worked for Bush, because of the resemblance, and the mental acuity, and verbal skills. The Stimulus Bill can be plenty of wrong things, was it dumb?

II.
Here’s the apology the NYPost offered for their cartoon. What they said, or left unsaid, certainly didn’t match their bad taste to argue their cartoon wasn’t about Obama, but naming the piece THAT CARTOON.

Wednesday’s Page Six cartoon – caricaturing Monday’s police shooting of a chimpanzee in Connecticut – has created considerable controversy.

It shows two police officers standing over the chimp’s body: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill,” one officer says.

It was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill.

Period.

But it has been taken as something else – as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism.

This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize.

However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past – and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback.

To them, no apology is due.

Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon – even as the opportunists seek to make it something else.

III.
This note came in from Rita Ague:

What’s wrong with this picture?

Of course there’s racism out there, but be careful not to fall victom to spin. Rupert M. is one of the giants in the neo-con coup d’etat. The loss of a free press to military/industrial/corporate interests, and resulting news being turned into spin and hate mongering, is but one of many reasons I’ve put back on my old legal and journalist hats.

We are in such a hell of a mess, and we’re passing that mess onto and into the rest of the world. I’m not sure we can dig ourselves out. We may not see relief, and the kind of change we of good hearts and good minds so long for, come about in our lifetime.

Let’s pray constantly that some Karl Rove and Rupert Murdoch induced bigot, or a neo-con agent posing as same, does not shoot or do away with Obama. The cause of the killing will, of course, be blamed on racism. But the real reason will be the fear the neo-cons have that our new president is going to take away their power and control, and quash their currently-being-exposed incredible greed.

My fear is that Murdoch, by and through his New York Post newspaper, FOX spin and hate channel, and all the other mass media he and his Neocon cohorts own and/or control, is spinning us to believe that some forthcoming assassination, when it occurs, was inevitable and based on a rise on racism and hatred, when it was truly based on more evil, Karl Rove-like Machiavellian (the end justifies any means) manipulation.

God help and protect us all, particularly Barack Obama.

Rita followed it up with this plea to MoveOn.org:

I need your help, Marc, in getting out the warning through Move-On’s far reaching Internet connections:

BEWARE! THE GIANT (military/industrial/corporate) NEO-CON SPIN MACHINE (formerly known as the “liberal mass media”) IS CRANKING UP

OBAMA, BAR THE DOOR!!!

I’m scared, Marc. It wasn’t accidental that the Post ran the dead ape cartoon with it’s deadly caption. Nor is it an accident that we are suddenly hearing more and more about all the racism and all the ‘racist’ assassination attempts being planned and made on Obama.

My intuition/precognition will be supported if and when we hear more of this racism and hate against “The Man” jive. As the old advertising saying goes: ‘When you think they’re tired of hearing about it, that’s when they’re just beginning to catch onto what you’re trying to tell/sell.”

I could be wrong about this “IT WAS A RACIST THING THAT DID HIM IN” campaign, but just in case I’m right, shouldn’t we be safe rather than sorry, and get a Move-On Campaign and heavy duty word of mouth going through the net, that we’re onto what’s being spun in the mass media, and why it’s being spun.

For sometime now, my slogan has been UNDO THE (military/industrial/corporate) COUP! Now I think we’d better come up with a new slogan, and start spreading it, as far and as wide as we can. It could be something like:

KEEP OBAMA ALIVE AND WELL – TELL THE PRESS TO GO TO HELL!

Welfare for the rich at GM, Ford, and Chrysler as they cut jobs?

Posted on February 18, 2009 by Tony Logan

strange-car-wreck US car giants seek $21bn funding. That would bring them close to $40 billion handed out to them by the Bush-Obama team if they succeed! And Obama, the No Change President, will make them do a few tricks to get their new billions, but that’s about it. Who can actually think that a top dog welfare scheme like this which will eventually be paid for by the newly unemployed taxpayer poor is something called a ‘stimulus package’? Hey! A liberal Democrat would!

With no solution for America’s economic woes, Obama steers the country towards yet more Resource Wars

Posted on February 18, 2009 by Tony Logan

Barack Obama is playing a giant con game with the American people, as he gives away tax monies right, left, and center without any ability to really solve America’s economic woes by the framework constructed through his giveaways. At the center of this fraud is his camouflaging of the entire military industrial governmental complex’s constant appetite for yet more Pentagon based welfare. He’s pouring more troops into Afghanistan, maintaining US military presence in Iraq, and upholding the use of torture behind the pretense (GWOT) of waging a war against non US State or Israeli State Terrorism. Why?

The US government is simply engaged in a gigantic geopolitical contest, better thought of as economic warfare, to control the world’s declining natural resource base. Barack Obama is now the US Commander in Chief in this war, and he is not about to end it. He is no new thinker for the US ruling elites in their war games.

Meanwhile, the US government of Obama is churning out new debt like no end, but there will be an end and it will not look pretty to those who will suffer this latest world capitalist economic collapse. There is no current US government stimulus that can actually change the overproduction and excessive world stock piles of goods that has occurred. People will get laid off, and with normal capitalist market operations as before and now, they will in turn add to the problem of overproduction and declining purchasing power to get those warehoused goods moving out.

War though can destroy economies, nations, and peoples. It can change the entire picture when the destruction really gets going at full speed. Jobs then will get created…. but they will get just get created the hard way. Obama is steering the country, and in fact the entire world, toward yet more Resource Warfare. He is just plain bad news, as the entire US liberal and Left is just plain left flat footed in being The Reply that is so needed.

History Begins at Sumer

Posted on February 15, 2009 by Eric Verlo

I’m reading about the Sumarians (5,300 – 2,000 B.C.) FROM THE TABLETS OF SUMER: 39 Firsts in Man’s Recorded History. The Sumarians originated civilization as we know it, and their demise may look a lot like ours too. In case you missed the memo, Sumer was earliest Mesopotamia in southern Iraq.

Until the mid 19th Century, we didn’t know Sumerians from Adam. Their history is traced by now deciphered cuneiform writings on clay vessels. Now thanks to Bush’s Folly, we may learn very little more.

Until I have more to relate, I’ll treat you to the table of contents, where Princeton Assyriologist Samuel Noah Kramer lays out his thesis. You might be surprised at which cultural themes are apparently elemental.

From the Tablets of Sumer was published in 1956. The latest edition, History Begins at Sumer can be read online. Kramer also compiled an 18-volume Sumerian dictionary.

Thirty-Nine Firsts in Man’s Recorded History

1. EDUCATION: The First School
2. SCHOOLDAYS: The First Case of “Apple-Polishing”
3. FATHER AND SON: The First Case of Juvenile Delinquency
4. INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS: The First “War of Nerves”
5. GOVERNMENT: The First Bicameral Congress
6. CIVIL WAR IN SUMER: The First Historian
7. SOCIAL REFORM: The First Case of Tax Reduction
8. LAW CODES: The First “Moses”
9. JUSTICE: The First Legal Precedent
10. MEDICINE: The First Pharmacopoeia
11. AGRICULTURE: The First “Farmer’s Almanac”
12. HORTICULTURE: The First Experiment in Shade-Tree Gardening
13. PHILOSOPHY: Man’s First Cosmogony and Cosmology
14. ETHICS: The First Moral Ideals
15. SUFFERING AND SUBMISSION: The First “Job”
16. WISDOM: The First Proverbs and Sayings
17. “AESOPICA”: The First Animal Fables
18. LOGOMACHY: The First Literary Debates
19. PARADISE: The First Biblical Parallels
20. A FLOOD: The First “Noah”
21. HADES: The First Tale of Resurrection
22. SLAYING OF THE DRAGON: The First “St. George”
23. TALES OF GILGAMESH: The First Case of Literary Borrowing
24. EPIC LITERATURE: Man’s First Heroic Age
25. TO THE ROYAL BRIDEGROOM: The First Love Song
26. BOOK LISTS: The First Library Catalogue
27. WORLD PEACE AND HARMONY: Man’s First Golden Age
28. ANCIENT COUNTERPARTS OF MODERN WOES:
The First “Sick” Society
29. DESTRUCTION AND DELIVERANCE: The First Liturgic Laments
30. THE IDEAL KING: The First Messiahs
31. SHULGI OF UR: The First Long-Distance Champion
32. POETRY: The First Literary Imagery
33. THE SACRED MARRIAGE RITE: The First Sex Symbolism
34. WEEPING GODDESSES: The First Mater Dolorosa
35. AU-A A-U-A: The First Lullaby
36. THE IDEAL MOTHER: Her First Literary Portrait
37. THREE FUNERAL CHANTS: The First Elegies
38. THE PICKAXE AND THE PLOW: Labor’s First Victory
39. HOME OF THE FISH: The First Aquarium

the short end of the stick

Posted on February 11, 2009 by Marie Walden

hazelwood tally stick It was one of the greatest heists in history. The scene? London, 1660. The perpetrator? England’s King Charles the II. The loot? All the gold he could con out of the country’s goldsmiths, bankers and businessmen. The tool?

A tally stick.

Tally sticks were a brilliant invention, but they were also insidious as they formed the foundation for the fiat currency systems we still have today. One where the root of a currency’s value is in a promise from a faceless institution, and not in the actual value of an object.

Put into use about a thousand years ago, they were a common sense solution for a young gold-and-goods economy where gold was scarce. By the time of the heist they were used in everyday transactions.

Here is how it worked. When a loan was made, the debt was carved in a standard fashion on the surface of a small (preferably hazelwood) stick, and then the stick was split in half through the center of the carving. The longer end of the IOU was given to the purchaser, and its handle was called the “stock” — the root of the word’s use in today’s markets.

Even a mostly illiterate public could read the amount scratched into the wood, and the stick would only fit perfectly with its original other half. That way, when the debtor returned with the money (or goods) owed, the sticks would be matched and the debt would be “tallied.”

In that fundamental use, they worked perfectly. But of course, as is governments’ way, the King was tempted to stretch those bounds.

Charles II ruled at a time when royal power was still based on a divine mandate. His government and institutions — and indeed he himself — saw the king as the Chosen One, which was a real shame for him because it bound him to the laws of Christendom. And Christianity at the time still forbade lending or borrowing with usury (interest). When financing several failing wars against neighboring countries depleted royal coffers, Charles II needed some quick cash to continue living in kingly fashion.

King Charles II turned to the trusted tally and the keen idea of selling his (government) tallies (debt) at a discount. That way he could allow his lenders to profit without charging interest — the basis for government debt being sold at a discount today.

And the King could issue advance tallies for emergency spending, an idea that proved all too tempting. He sold the tallies collected by his Exchequer (tax collector), essentially trading future tax receipts to the country’s goldsmiths (bankers) for quick cash.

The tallies were receipts for taxes to be paid later in the year. This is a crucial part of the story: they weren’t trading on the value of the objects being traded, but on the cost of waiting for a return and the government’s ability to collect taxes and stay honest. If the government is not honest, this is an outright Ponzi scheme, one where new debt issue could theoretically pay for passing bills. For a while.

The King realized that he’d stumbled onto something big. He could wage all the war he wanted and pay his bills with the gold he got for hazelwood. The King spent and spent, and the goldsmiths’ vaults filled up with more and more sticks.

Goldsmiths were handing out certificates for fractional gold reserves and inflating the young economy in a con all their own. And since the King played along with their early building of a banking system, they played along with the sticks-for-gold investment strategy.

Over time, the market got wise to the game. Buyers started attaching larger and larger discounts to the King’s debt to offset the perceived risk in loaning money to the King. The discounts prompted the King to issue even more tallies, promising out more future tax revenues just to meet his short-term spending desires. But remember only the discount was changing here. So the mountain of taxes to be redeemed in order to pay off his debts grew in comparison, soon overwhelming the King’s income.

By the time the whole Ponzi scheme came to an end, the King’s sticks were trading at a 10% discount (to put that into perspective, short-term T-Bills are currently trading with discounts of one-tenth of one percent or less). The payments on his newer issues trading at that discount soon outmatched all the Kingdom’s tax revenues, effectively bankrupting his Exchequer and threatening to put the monarchy in the poorhouse.

So with the stroke of a pen, the King simply declared those debts illegal and ceased payment.

With that single stroke he stole most of England’s gold — having already spent it — and forced the young economy to fall flat on its face. The King’s various creditors ended up on “the short end of the stick” and all credit in the country evaporated very nearly overnight.

Pretty scary, huh? I’m glad such a thing could never happen today.

Iraqi Occupation, Abomination! Iraqi Occupation, Obama Nation?

Posted on February 6, 2009 by Tony Logan

APUAN HOSTS JOBS AND THE ECONOMY TOWN HALL sez the El Paso County Democratic Party website here in Colorado Springs! Dennis Apuan is a very nice former head honcho of the local Peacecrat grouplet called the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission.

Special Guest Speaker Terrance Carroll to Join and he is a very nice man too, who has so very little power despite being Speaker of the Colorado State House of Representatives.

WHEN:
Saturday, February 7, 2009
12:00 noon to 1:30 PM

WHERE:
Ruth Holley Public Library
685 North Murray Blvd.
Colorado Springs, 80915

Both these Democrats are very nice folk, and I believe that Dennis Kucinich is, too. However…..?

Aren’t they also now shills for Obama? Aren’t they also loyal members of a War Party? Aren’t they both essentially silent on the major issues of the day? In fact, don’t they both pretend that the Democratic Party is something much better than it really is? That’s their job as Democratic Party decorations.

According to Dennis Apuan and the local chapter of the DP, As Democrats We Believe:

Defending all of the human rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.
A clear separation of Church and State.
Swift and appropriate punishment for criminal behavior.
Freedom from undue government interference in our private lives and personal decisions.
Fiscal responsibility in government.
Equal opportunity for all citizens.
A quality education that gives all individuals the opportunity to reach their potential.
A quality environment in which to raise our children.
The value of diversity within the community.
Rewarding honest, hard work with a living wage and fair taxation.
Community support for strong families.
Security in our homes, our communities and our nation.
A nation that will serve as a model of economic and social justice to the rest of the world

Really now? Is that anything like the national program of the Democratic Party or is it in fact the polar opposite of the positions that Barack Obama and his herd of Slick Willie retreads takes? A message for this meeting would best be…

Iraqi Occupation, Abomination! Iraqi Occupation, Obama Nation!

Neither one of the keynote speakers seems to even remember anything about Iraq? Why is that? The Democratic Party is still keeping Iraq an occupied nation and by doing that, gives the lie that the national Democrats actually believe in all those nice things the local folk say they believe in.

Afghanistan Occupation, Abomination! Afghanistan Occupation, Obama Nation?

Get the message, Dennis? Your political party stands for bad times every much so as the Republicans do.

(There is Dennis Third from the Right in the picture… Black banner behind him)

Stop Obama’s Wars!

Barack’s 1/2 measures, 1/4 measures, 1/8 measures and… his new health care ‘reform’

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Tony Logan

cancer child Obama signs bill for kids health care program. But look again! Like Obama’s ‘withdrawal’ from Iraq, his ‘renouncement of torture,’ now his new health care measure is a fraud too! Everything about Barack Obama is a fraud! Here is the gist of his public pretense regarding giving kids health coverage. Obama is going to leave 4,000,000 children uncovered, even 5 years down the road!

Sure, this is better than worsening the situation as the Bush murderers did, but why such a 1/2 measure. Wait! It’s not even that, is it? These parents need coverage, too. What happened? This is not even a 1/4 measure! Might we have a 1/8 measure being announced by Obama then?

When it came to bailing out the gigantic fraudulently operating Bug Guys out, Barack Obama is not for any 1/2 measures, 1/4 measures, nor 1/8 measures or less. He goes all out at throwing public tax monies their ways. Can’t let the Big Guys suffer, he says. But he feels a little different about the poor kids, does he not? They can wait! That’s the Barack Obama con game in full measure.

Shame on you, Democrats!

The tax problems of evasive fraudsters

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Before Tom Daschle stepped down to circumvent further disgrace, there were accusations of a double standard with regard to overlooking the tax problem of the nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary versus Nancy Killefer’s tax problems which led to her failed appointment to the OMD. “Double standard” is right. “Tax Problem” is right. But not in comparison to Daschle. The DOUBLE STANDARD is about how the misdeeds of politicians, compared to those of common citizens, are regarded. The TAX PROBLEM, is just a problem of syntax. When it involves common citizens it is more commonly referred to as TAX EVASION or TAX FRAUD.

The media is complicit in application of this double standard, more than minimizing it with problematic wording. Why is there no follow-up investigation to the tax evasive activities? Are these cabinet nominees stepping down for consideration in apology for their fraud, or because they want to avoid being confronted about why they did it? Al Capone was convicted of tax evasion, but that wasn’t touching on the extent of his crimes, was it?

Instead of having forgotten to pay the taxes, might Tom Daschle have been trying to obscure the benefits he was receiving, lest he face accusations of CORRUPTION?

There are suggestions that Nancy Killefer withdrew her nomination for more tax problems than merely having failed to withhold income taxes for her domestic workers. But what of that charge? Was that a memory lapse, or a purposeful accounting standard to keep her transactions under the table, in order to pay the lower wages of an undocumented worker?

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s failure to pay Social Security taxes on income he received while employed by the International Monetary Fund, may have been an oversight, after all, it amounted to peanuts compared to what these bureaucrats earn otherwise, but why not ask, whether the IMF is right not to withhold payroll taxes. It’s usually the law for all businesses who are the immediate supervisors to workers. Small businesses can’t get away with filing 1099s for contract employees if in fact the company held direct supervisory authority over them.

For policy makers and policy abusers, apparently it’s punishment enough to deny them cabinet positions. Expecting them to obey the law is too much.

Corrupt Donkey pounds the Corrupt Elephant

Posted on February 1, 2009 by Tony Logan

Republicans and Democrats WASHINGTON (AP) — Tom Daschle collected nearly a quarter of a million dollars in fees in the last two years speaking to leaders of the industry President Barack Obama wants him to reform as the administration’s health secretary. Daschle earned $220,000 from health care industry

And then there’s that other Barack Obama appointed ruler and tax cheater caught named Timothy Geithner, the tax code’s poster boy, as an LA Times opinion piece calls him. Democratic Party corruption rises to the top under Obama!

The National Rifle Association and Republican Party corruption of the Bush Klan was ahead of Tom Daschle in the matchup in the past, but Tom is now once again pounding away at the elephants!

We are but the mere spectators and well taxed at this point of the contest, in who is the most corrupt, Donkey or Elephant? Do we have a winner? Tom? Are you OK?

A little break for the AIPAC ChickenHawks Flooding the Site..

Posted on January 30, 2009 by Brother Jonah

Something more the War-mongering Freaks can bitch whine and snivel about, Welcome back, David Haddad errr “Mary”

So, since unabashed ChickenHawks like Glenn Beck like to “donate” Tax Deductible stuff like free airtime on their “news” shows, and the USO is begging for money for the families of the troops…
How, then, can the Recruiters claim in other (taxpayer funded) advertisements that the Military is a Good Career?
A few background items, if you will.

Glenn Beck, Chickenhawk, in 2007 participated in a “charity” Auction and one of the articles he donated (For a Tax Break…) a really really butt-ugly painting.

The bidding on it at the point where I tuned in, was 3400 dollars.

That means, for a few minutes of his time, about $10 worth of paint and a $30 canvass, he was getting a Tax Break to the tune of $3400.00

And publicity for his show, which consists almost entirely of licking Government Boot for an hour at a time.

He ~~earns~~ Is GIVEN his pay for Promoting The War and thus the very poverty/slash/hardship conditions the Military Personnel have to endure.

An Establishment Media Whore like that then gets to Pretend that he gives a damn about the Soldiers, their wives and children/slash/widows and orphans…

Gets paid to spew his drivel on the Air and then gets paid again by “donating” something to the USO.

His equally Cowardly Loud-mouthed War-Monger Friend who bought the painting also got to take an equal tax deduction

So far, that was $6800 dollars taken off their taxes,

The Same Taxes Which Form The Basis For The Costs Of The War

So they’re not only getting OTHER People to Fight for their ~~Obscene profit Margins~~ Ooops I was supposed to say “our Freedom”, thus putting the Soldiers and their families in dire financial straits…

They’re Getting Paid To Sell the “necessity” of THEIR War to those of us who DO pay taxes, and thus PAY THEIR BILLS for THEIR War…

On a show that gets Government Subsidies as well,

And make a huge Show of Concern for those poor families of the Soldiers.

The Soldiers who are being aggressively recruited even before they leave high school, whose Parents are being told several times an hour to ~~support the decisions of their sons and daughters~~ Sign The Papers Allowing Their Underage CHILDREN to drop out of school and join the Killing Machine.

Because being an Imperial Storm Trooper is such a Good Economic and Educational Opportunity.

It’s Payday today. because the 1st is on a weekend.

Since the middle of the month Military families have been seeking donations to just feed the kids until the end of the month.

People who get Food Stamps.

That’s not a slur against the families or the soldiers themselves.

The “Welfare Cadillac” Food Stamp Queen (who is invariably depicted as Black, although our Republican “Friend” tells us that the propaganda they put out is not Racist at all in any way, shape or form) Is And Always Was a Mythological Construct.

People don’t get rich off being on welfare.

Although the Right Wing Professional Liars, like for instance Glenn Beck, tell us that they do.

Remember though, in the Information Age, their lies about How Righteous and Noble the War is, how we’re obviously Winning the War, how Everybody in the Army Loves The War, How Great a Career The Army is…

Get shown simultaneously with advertisements begging for relief for their families, ads for the Army recruiting CHILDREN to quit school, give up any chance of a real educational opportunity, and Join The Storm Troopers… because they can’t retain enough of the soldiers who are already in their Glorious Wonderful Marvelous Career to keep fighting a war that was supposedly won 5 years ago.

Excuse me, that last figure is inaccurate… it was 5 1/2 years ago.

I wonder if the AIPAC Anti-Semitic types who post all these long letters that say “blah blah blah Israel is always right blah blah blah you’re ignorant to say otherwise blah blah blah how DARE you criticize people for being Babykillers blah blah blah”

I wonder if they’re getting a tax-break for it, or maybe just making money from the “Defense” Industry which is supplyin’ the (Israeli Puppet) Army with the tools of the Trade?

Or is it

D) All Of The Above.

Pardon, your hypocrisy is showing.

The Democrat Party’s magic math

Posted on January 29, 2009 by Tony Logan

$magic math$ US House passes economic package without a single Republican vote reads the Headline. The Republicans also have their own magic math ‘economic recovery’ giveaway for the super rich, but they are smart enough not to be caught together with the Democrats ‘winning’ now, but later to be caught by the public holding the burglary bag of new national debt created! They can say they ‘opposed’ The Grand Give Away, and they will have, too, since they were not in charge of doing it their way.

So let’s take a look at how the Democrats are using their magic math to try to deceive the newly going-to-be-unemployed/ underemployed.

In 2008, 2.6 US jobs were lost. This year the loss will be 3 million or more per relatively optimistic forecasts. Barack Obama’s most recent victory in the House called for spending greater than $800 billion to create what he says could be up to 4 million jobs (his words, not mine). Wait a sec? Then where will all the other money be going to be spent?

Let’s imagine these new jobs paying $20,000 per year and times that 4,000,000, shall we? That’s only $80 billion and the Feds could just give that money away to these 4,000,000 happy theoretical new workers for 10 years for a cost of 800 billion? Is that Obama’s plan? No, it is not. He is not even going to create 4 million new jobs for one whole year with that $800 billion of tax money obtained, and where will that money come from anyway? Eventually it has to come from public taxes.

But wait a second now? Most of that money will actually go to financial bailouts of institutions going under, as the Federal Government takes on their bad debts AND their top execs’ ill gotten profit making, all bills now due. The government will be ‘giving’ with one hand (a little to the small fok, and a much greater amount to the really large folk) and taking away yet more with the other hand, and almost all of that to be taken coming out of the small folks accounts! And then there will be the interest to forever pay back…

So this whole new Obama game plan will become the financial re-foundation of the New World Economy restabilization? Hardly! It can only be the new foundation for a total disintegration of the entire US national government into having to make foreign debt payments for an eternity. Forget the mirage of 4 million new jobs which is nothing more than a sugar coating for the Grand Theft. It’s not icing onhte cake but the cover-up for the theft!

It is increasingly becoming clear worldwide, that the business community has no real answers for anything these days. All problems the world faces are without current economic leadership having any real solutions to propose. They are simply glued into The System and the System is simply glued into one of its gigantic and periodic downturns. And since the Chinese and Russians are now glued into that System themselves, they have little to nothing constructive to offer as alternative either. In fact, their world looks even grimmer than ours does.

Now here’s the real math from Barack Obama… New bank bailout could cost up to $2 trillion: report from the Wall Street Journal. I thought these were the fundamentalists who were utterly opposed to just throwing money at problems? I guess not. And after the thrown money fails to solve anything, then what? Well it might come down to many people wanting to hang Obama in a couple of years? Why? Because then all there will be is a huge governmental debt on the $2 trillion spent, and a still totally dysfunctional economy. Beware the man who’ll leave you with just small change. It’s still welfare time for the elite guzzlers of that most important commodity.

Cutbacks hit Colo. Springs as corporate special interest pigs run the trough

Posted on January 27, 2009 by Tony Logan

colorado-springs-city-council I went down to the City Council meeting today to speak out against all their coming proposed property tax increases, service cutbacks, and increases in utility bills and was met by the corporate interests pigs at the trough. I’m talking about the City Council members themselves. Actually the pigs at the trough in Colorado Springs run the trough… and mainly for themselves. For others they want to cutback everything but they hide that agenda in every way they can. Who runs the Colorado Springs City Council? Why is there no appealing to their possible good judgement?

The answer is that special interests run the city and I identified just who they were to the public when I addressed that public meeting for my 3 minutes worth today. It was rather obvious since they always herald and celebrate corporate interests for supposedly ‘helping’ out the city. Today they waxed on about how Walmart had ‘generously’ donated a whole $2,000 to the city’s Fire Department. Like , WOW! How impressive can you get? I asked them if Walmart had some left over change from their union busting campaigns and whether that is where their huge donation came from out of their hundreds of billions of dollars worth of profits? Their answer? I was then described as being ill informed about Walmart! Yeah? Go figure?

I told the public at this public charade of a meeting that they had no recourse to stop all these proposed cutbacks with Mayor Fort Carson Captain Lionel, Vice President Larry Lockheed Small, and Tom ‘Kill the Mouse’ Real Estate Industry Gallagher running the municipal show and trough. Response? Two other city councilmen spoke up saying that they were hurt that I had not correctly added them on as being solid military-industrial complex men in Pentagon pocket! They’re military, too! Case made as the Pentagon-military-industrial welfare guzzling machine self-identified themselves for the public here. Mayor Rivera then went on to claim that there wouldn’t be a Fire Department in the city if it weren’t for the military, so don’t blame any War Machine for cutbacks he implied. Huh? The US government military spending is bankrupting not only the US, but the whole planet as well!

I could go on, but you really have to attend these meetings in Wonderland… I mean Special Interests Land, Alice. They are always bizarre to the max. Until people start getting really angry and start drawing some connections, then we’re going to pay, pay, pay, and pay some more. The corporate interests pigs simply are running City Government in this city and all for themselves. Nobody holds them accountable and that’s a crying shame. Meanwhile Barack is out there occupying 2 whole countries, bombing them and more, and threatening the starving Palestinians with yet more violence. And all the while around the country there is no money to go around? Pretty stupid stuff, America, and you’re still playing along, aren’t you? The special interest pigs are going to bankrupt you but for good.

NAZI ISRAEL PREPARING FOR “FINAL SOLUTION”

Posted on January 27, 2009 by Thomas Mc

100

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, when Israeli Jews celebrate the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians they stole the “land of Israel” from.

Can the world survive the NAZI State of Israel?

Why Israel is bad for the Jews. Not that Israel gives a damn about Jews outside its borders.

How Israel created Hamas.

The hanged Mussolini, didn’t they? UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak told CNN in an interview on Monday that they have enough evidence to try Donald Rumsfeld for war crimes.

40,000 Americans a day are now losing their jobs, and all the GOP can think about is more tax cuts for the filthy-rich.

Demon Democrats. Hope for justice and peace in the Middle East died this morning, as AIPAC puppet and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that Israel has a right to commit genocide if Hamas sends a bottle rocket over the border.

Never forget: Terrorism did not exist in the Middle East until the Zionists introduced it to steal the “land of Israel” from the Palestinians.

Sideways talking Yoda-like am I…

Posted on January 24, 2009 by Brother Jonah

but realized this did I suddenly…

That would be how translating ANY non-English language into English word by word and ignoring syntax.

When you don’t pay ‘war taxes,’ is it ‘peaceful nonviolence’ or more like smug self-righteous religious complacency?

Posted on January 21, 2009 by Tony Logan

Monday night I got asked out of the clear blue sky at a meeting of self described ‘Peace’ advocates if I paid taxes? I was kind of drowsy from shift work I had just finished doing, and didn’t really consider the fact that Jesus was asked just about the same question in his time, but by those he considered to be spies of the Roman Empire. I was being asked the question though from a self righteous and complacent ‘Quaker’ woman who was in the process of giving me her idea of a litmus test, for whether I would be allowed by her and her husband to be in one local antiwar grouplet here in Colorado Springs called the PPJPC?

I failed her test when I answered that I did indeed pay taxes (too much so IMO), and my statement that it was so was soon followed by a self righteous and complacent harangue about her opinion that the woman and her ‘leader’ husband did not pay ‘war’ taxes and that that was that and why did I not do as they do? The implication was that I should just shut up and let them run things in the group and keep my mouth shut up for good. Why? Well because I pay my taxes!

Further I was told at the meeting by the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission that I was not ever going to be considered a member of the group, no matter what. I was told that I gave neither time nor money to the group!, and that I was out of it in their eyes because I had written previously in the local press about how the leader of the group had called the cops on us for trying to hold a meeting to plan antiwar activities outside the locked doors of the group’s offices.

“All those bad things you said about us of the PPJPC!”

Locked out, because as members of the group we wanted some democracy inside an organization that has but one pretend membership meeting per year and is run by salaried office folk who want to be small business adminstrators instead of anything much else!

I have been told too that I must sign onto some sort of ‘adherence’ statement to the ‘non-violence’ aim of the group. Further the religious pacifists running the show have stated to the press that I and others, too, do not adhere to their Christian motivated ‘nonviolence’, implying to the police and press that we are time bombs about to go off! Meanwhile, they continually invite representatives of the police to ‘meetings’ with themselves so that they can supposedly make their events more ‘nonviolent’, I guess? A hug here, a handshake there, and let us know what you want us to do, Peace Officers?

So back to the question of whether it is peaceful nonviolence’ or self righteous complacency when one does pay taxes at this time of the year? Let us go to The War Resisters League and examine their understated list of the Consequences of War Tax Resistance some. What can happen if you just opt out and tell IRS to shove it? Here, these Christians tell you that you can go to jail but not to worry about it because almost nobody does (in the US). Go figure? To the feds it is more trouble to jail these few religious ‘resistoes’ than to just harass them in other ways. Why shoot down a gnat with an elephant gun?

However there are other consequences, including your right to travel freely outside the US terminated (one of local pacifist families has been confronting just such a restriction imposed most recently, as they were barred from visiting relatives in Canada). You can lose your income through a restriction coming about on licensing in the line of work you do. You can lose your property, much more of it than if you had actually paid those taxes to the government. That happens a lot per the War Resisters League, but they assure us that it all looks good on their own balance sheet of pros and cons! Well not on mine. Nor on Jesus’s balance sheet either! He was resurrected but I don’t know really whether that would happen to me if IRS decided to crucify?

But back to the case of the Quaker woman and her ‘leader’ husband who don’t pay taxes as they assured me that was the case. Her husband actually was in the military and supposedly gets some special pension for that, that I guess I am stupidly paying taxes for them to then lecture me about what a supposedly moral cretin I must be? Kind of a weird situation, ay?

But then again, let’s say that I’m wrong about that, and that these 2 Quakers get no income for that military ‘service’ at all? Where do they get their money from then? Stocks and bonds? Social Security? God? Plus, how can you draw a line between taxes for the military and taxes for other things, since Quakers do most often pay taxes for ‘other things’ and actually most just subtract some percent away (43%) from the taxes they in fact do pay to the government? Does that make it all Kosher then???

It really does not do anything at all from an individual angle, since the government just ‘garnishes’ the wages with interest added on directly from the salaries of religious protesters. However, non religious tax ‘protesters’ are often time not even given such benign treatment at all, since the government has codified well the idea that all ‘conscientious objection’ comes mainly about because ‘God forbids Believers to do something or other?’

No belief in God? Then you got no ‘Right’ to state morality coming from God as motivation, and no Right to really object, you damn atheists!

Does erecting this artificial accounting wall between supposedly taxes for good purposes and taxes for bad purposes help grind the War Machine down and then out? The AFSC (Quakers/ Friends) thinks it does, and is pushing to have 2 tax barrels put into Federal Law, where their religion’s membership can deposit funds into a ‘Peace’ Barrel, while the other religious folk can get the War Barrel! Is this really all that ‘peaceful non-violence’ comes down to in the concrete? Like it makes some dimes bit of difference to the government to separate ‘war taxes’ from a ‘Peace tax’?

Let’s say though, that you do not pay a cent to the government and some how keep them from garnishing your income with interest added in on top? That’s nice, and some few actually do just that and get away with it without being jailed. That is about as effective a route to fighting war as doing nothing though. To stop the war mass action is necessary, and not just becoming the one or two individuals here and there who sneak by the IRS.

So where does this Quaker couple now get their income from? Due to a successful career perhaps from stocks, and not a dime from military pensions or social security, they’re living off corporate dividends and previous savings not garnished by the government for ‘nonpayment’ of taxes? I can only speculate, however, I don’t think they have accomplished much at all, other than to make themselves smug in their religious complacency, as they drape themselves in flag and ‘peaceful’ Christian mantle for cops and other agents of the Roman Empire.

There are ways of resisting the War Machine but I do not think that trying to withhold tax monies is one of them? Neither did Jesus from what I gather from rather unreliable documentation, but he did try to evade the question of whether one should pay taxes with tricky ‘sayings.’ Ultimately that cleverness and not paying the tax are maybe the issues that got him the death penalty? I wasn’t there so I cannot really say.

In other news…

Posted on January 20, 2009 by Brother Jonah

Bush is on his way back to Texas, Preston Hollow in Dallas to be exact… aboard Air Force One

Seems that even though he and his Merry Band of Thieves stole every last real dollar in the known world, he’s still such a cheap son-of-an-ugly-bitch that he can’t pay his own way home, and is once again bumming a free ride off the Taxpayer Account.

As he was getting on board the Marine Helicopter to take him to Andrews AFB the crowd started chanting “Nana na na, hey hey hey, GOODBYE”

Miss Johnnie says Dallas is going to smell real bad now.

(it usually does anyway)

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