#1
FTA: "It is not the first time the Guardian has done this. Earlier this year, it publicised a report which claimed to have found a rising tide of anti-Muslim violence in London – something simply not supported by the crime figures (which is presumably why the report coyly neglected to give any figures!) This report was co-compiled by a well-known sympathizer of Islamism, Robert Lambert, and funded by the Islamist Cordoba Foundation."
Would this be the Cordoba Foundation that want to build next the WTC in NY?
#2
One of the key techniques of extremists – of both the Islamic and the white Right – is to frighten and polarise their target audiences with exaggerated claims that they are widely disliked or are under attack. As well as helping recruitment, it furthers the extremists’ central lie that different races and faiths cannot coexist.
That is why it was so depressing to see today’s Guardian fall for a textbook distortion by one of these groups. A news story reported that “three quarters of non-Muslims believe that Islam has provided a negative contribution to British society, according to a new poll.”
The “poll” was not in fact a poll, using a representative sample of sufficient size and publicly reported according to the strict standards of the British Polling Council. It was a market research questionnaire of a small (500) and random sample. And though it appears to have been done by a professional firm, its results were totally twisted by iERA, the group which commissioned it, and whose claims the Guardian took entirely at face value.
The Al Jiz article is about a talk given by Mexican president Felipe Calderon at a security conference where he laments journalists under attack. The real story and problem for Calderon is one of the biggest murder cases broken in northern Mexico in weeks was done through Youtube and a blog with the help of a criminal gang.
by Chris Covert
Even as the international press highlights Mexican president Felipe Calderon's lament about Mexican journalism under attack, he can't explain how his government was alerted to corruption in a Durango state prison uncovered by a combination of a snuff video released by the criminal gang Los Zetas and a tip on a mass murder placed in a blog only two months ago.
Only three days ago two more journalists out of four were released unharmed by Los Zetas after being held until their respective news organizations released several videos purporting to show links between political leaders in Durango and drug cartels.
Four journalists, three electronic and one print, were kidnapped eight days ago while they were finished covering news at the CERESO No. 2 where it was found that the prison director and three of her staff as well as several guards were using prisoners to commit more than 30 murders at Los Zetas operated facilities in Torreon, Coahuila.
Rantburg initial reports on two of the massacres can be found here and here.
What the Mexican national news media hasn't reported is that Los Zetas made local media in Torreon report the news of the videos as well as the content. The fact is that local media did as good a job as it was allowed with the information on hand from the government. But that was not enough for Los Zetas, which precipitated the abductions and the subsequent release of the victims unharmed.
Apparently Los Zetas wanted the credit for the tips leading to the arrests of the CERESO prison staff last week.
The blog Blog del Narco which was responsible for much of the information the government now knows about the Torreon massacres, was also instrumental in releasing information about the intergang gun battle which took place in Tubutama, Sonora July 2nd. In a post was shown photographs which demonstrated the gun battle was in fact a one sided ambush, a detail not released by the Mexican government at any level.
Thanks to Blog del Narco, we now know the Sinaloa supported gang Command X ran into a Los Zetas buzzsaw in the mountains of northern Sonora.
Mexican press are for the most part vigorous and diligent when reporting drug and crime news inasmuch as they rely on state attorneys general for at least their initial information. State governments will release information about confrontations between government forces and drug gangs, but not much in the way of details, and apparently the Mexican press is fine with the arrangement.
The Durango CERESO story with the subsequent kidnapping may be changing all that. Now Los Zetas, as well as other criminal gangs, know they can get invaluable advantage in the information wars simply by pointing out where the corruption is, as they did with the snuff video.
Anti-American rage is whipped up by the Euromedia, of course, and they are run by the Eurocracy, so we know where it's coming from. We can even guess at the motivation -- after all, America is the only safe target available today. Europeans can't insult the Russians because they are still scared of Moscow. They can't criticize Muslims for fear of being stabbed or head-chopped by some kid on the street. They cannot criticize people who are lazy, who exploit the welfare system, druggies, Islamic fascists, radical leftists, criminals, sexually destructive people, or anyone else. The Nanny State has made itself the guardian of all those pitiable folk, and it will not tolerate a word of criticism. It is a kind of reign of terror -- an upside-down Victorian morality, but just as intolerant.
...Except for attacking Israel, that is, which is just as safe a target as America. If you insult a Muslim teenager who wants to pick your pockets, you might get stabbed. But it's fine to sneer at Israel because the Mossad is not going to come after you. They have other things to worry about. As a result, all the instruments of social control -- teachers, cops, politicians, media -- have turned tail in the most cowardly fashion. Cowardice is the reigning creed in Europe today. It is a poor substitute for Christianity.
Euromediots insist that attacking Israel is fine because that's not anti-Semitic, but that is a distinction without a difference. The Left in Europe has recruited radical leftist Jews to serve as fronts for anti-Israel agitprop, just as Obama has done with J Street. But of course, those genetic Jews are not Jews in the sense of feeling any real attachment to their people. They are leftist ideologues, like Leon Trotsky. They have found a secular religion, and they don't care whom they shoot as long as it promotes the agenda. In a very important sense, they are un-Jewish -- not because they are irreligious, but because they are hostile to the welfare of their own people. And the un-Jewish left peddles the bizarre notion that Israel doesn't allow for rational criticism of its policies. Go to Israel, and all you hear is political criticism. The Knesset sounds like a wrestling ring. Free speech is all over the place.
People like Chomsky truly hate Israel with a dreadfully emotional hatred. It doesn't look healthy. But it is enthusiastically applauded on the Left. Chomsky has made his leftist career out of it...which tells us all we need to know.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/04/2010 00:00 ||
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Link ||
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#1
Excellent Article!!
JudeoChristians values were once such a part of the fabric of Western society that we mistakenly believed that they were just a natural part of human nature and not learned behaviors right along with reading, writing, arithmetic and brushing your teeth. It is easy to see, looking back now, that the world is a much more cruel place when the ugly side of human nature is taught to be indulged rather than controlled.
But he really nails this one.
I don't see much to be hopeful about anymore. Middle Eastern and other countries have been able to use the trick of blame for thousands of years and their people still haven't gotten a clue. Same trick, works every time.
It didn't use to work in Western Societies because children learned the ten commandments as well as concepts of charity, forgiveness and that we are all equal under the eyes of God. No longer. Why is anyone really surprised?
Posted by: Martini ||
08/04/2010 1:45 Comments ||
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#1
It was supposed to have been the biggest fight of Chris Christie’s young administration: a May showdown over what Democrats in Trenton were calling the “millionaires’ tax,” designed, like each of the 115 statewide tax increases of the last decade, to paper over a small part of a yawning structural deficit by soaking the rich, one last time. Never mind that half the filings and a third of the revenue from the tax were to come from New Jersey’s business community, already battered by a perfect storm of overtaxation, capital flight, and recession. The Democrats were loaded for bear, and had the legislative majorities in place to pass the measure, having spent all winter threatening a government shutdown should Christie use his veto pen.
Next time, the Dems ought to try bluffing with something they are genetically able to do. Shutting down government isn't one of them.
Democratic senate president Stephen Sweeney had even admonished, in a turn of phrase eminently Trentonian in its sheer backwardness, that “to give up $1 billion to the wealthy during this crisis is just wrong.” He promised that the millionaires’ tax was where theDemocrats would “make our stand.”
A highly principled, well-thought-out, feel-good stand.
The tax passed on party-line votes in the assembly and senate on May 20. Sweeney then certified the bill and walked it across the statehouse to Christie’s office, where the governor — who had vowed to balance the budget without raising taxes, and who’d developed a bewildering habit of keeping his promises — vetoed it. The whole thing took about two minutes.
My, that was easy. A whole lot easier than, say, trying to lower a revenue-negative 6.25% sales tax. Oh, the debating. Oh, the tooth and hair pulling. Oh, the political favors that have to be called . . . . It's hard to do the right thing. Unless you don't have a political agenda, that is.
“We’ll be back, governor,” Sweeney told Christie on being dispatched with the dead letter.
... his lip quivering.
“All right, we’ll see,” came the reply.
IOW: Up yours, you over-complicated politcal a-hole.
And just like that, the biggest obstacle standing between Christie and the realization of his sea-changing, fiscally conservative first-year agenda was gone.
Yep. Just like that. And I'm thinking about moving to NJ just to be near the guy! :-)
“We have not found our footing,” Democratic state senator Loretta Weinberg later said, still reeling from the decisive defeat. “I think a lot of people underestimated Chris Christie.”
He thinks like the peasants. Be careful of them, too.
Christopher James Christie is fond of saying that he’s been underestimated his whole professional life. The Newark-born son of an Irish father and a Sicilian mother, Christie is the product of respectable but middling schools — the University of Delaware and Seton Hall Law — and enjoyed a successful, if not spectacular, career as a partner in a small New Jersey firm. He served a single term as a Morris County freeholder, but was primaried, and soundly defeated, in his bid for reelection. When, despite a lack of criminal prosecutorial experience, he was appointed U.S. attorney in 2002, some detractors thought it a bit of cronyism — the Bushadministration rewarding Christie for the fundraising work he’d done during the 2000 election.
Sometimes even the blind squirrel finds its nuts.
They were wrong. By the time Christie left the job six years later, he had put over a hundred crooked pols — “from the school board to the state house and of both political parties” — behind bars, without losing a single case. And he had tried and convicted terrorists, Mafiosi, and child pornographers; arms dealers, gang members, and corporate hacks.
But it's so hard to know what to do with these guys. It's more complicated than it seems. Especially if you have relative morals. Or are looking at it from an effed up political perspective.
#2
PIMF, I know. Something bad happened with the html tags on the last one. Here is what it should have looked like. :-)
It was supposed to have been the biggest fight of Chris Christie’s young administration: a May showdown over what Democrats in Trenton were calling the “millionaires’ tax,” designed, like each of the 115 statewide tax increases of the last decade, to paper over a small part of a yawning structural deficit by soaking the rich, one last time. Never mind that half the filings and a third of the revenue from the tax were to come from New Jersey’s business community, already battered by a perfect storm of overtaxation, capital flight, and recession. The Democrats were loaded for bear, and had the legislative majorities in place to pass the measure, having spent all winter threatening a government shutdown should Christie use his veto pen.
Next time, the Dems ought to try bluffing with something they are genetically able to do. Shutting down government isn't one of them.
Democratic senate president Stephen Sweeney had even admonished, in a turn of phrase eminently Trentonian in its sheer backwardness, that “to give up $1 billion to the wealthy during this crisis is just wrong.” He promised that the millionaires’ tax was where theDemocrats would “make our stand.”
A highly principled, well-thought-out, feel-good stand.
The tax passed on party-line votes in the assembly and senate on May 20. Sweeney then certified the bill and walked it across the statehouse to Christie’s office, where the governor — who had vowed to balance the budget without raising taxes, and who’d developed a bewildering habit of keeping his promises — vetoed it. The whole thing took about two minutes.
My, that was easy. A whole lot easier than, say, trying to lower a revenue-negative 6.25% sales tax. Oh, the debating. Oh, the tooth and hair pulling. Oh, the political favors that have to be called . . . . It's hard to do the right thing. Unless you don't have a political agenda, that is.
“We’ll be back, governor,” Sweeney told Christie on being dispatched with the dead letter.
... his lip quivering.
“All right, we’ll see,” came the reply.
IOW: Up yours, you over-complicated politcal a-hole.
And just like that, the biggest obstacle standing between Christie and the realization of his sea-changing, fiscally conservative first-year agenda was gone.
Yep. Just like that. And I'm thinking about moving to NJ just to be near the guy! :-)
“We have not found our footing,” Democratic state senator Loretta Weinberg later said, still reeling from the decisive defeat. “I think a lot of people underestimated Chris Christie.”
He thinks like the peasants. Be careful of them, too.
Christopher James Christie is fond of saying that he’s been underestimated his whole professional life. The Newark-born son of an Irish father and a Sicilian mother, Christie is the product of respectable but middling schools — the University of Delaware and Seton Hall Law — and enjoyed a successful, if not spectacular, career as a partner in a small New Jersey firm. He served a single term as a Morris County freeholder, but was primaried, and soundly defeated, in his bid for reelection. When, despite a lack of criminal prosecutorial experience, he was appointed U.S. attorney in 2002, some detractors thought it a bit of cronyism — the Bushadministration rewarding Christie for the fundraising work he’d done during the 2000 election.
Sometimes even the blind squirrel finds its nuts.
They were wrong. By the time Christie left the job six years later, he had put over a hundred crooked pols — “from the school board to the state house and of both political parties” — behind bars, without losing a single case. And he had tried and convicted terrorists, Mafiosi, and child pornographers; arms dealers, gang members, and corporate hacks.
But it's so hard to know what to do with these guys. It's more complicated than it seems. Especially if you have relative morals. Or are looking at it from an effed up political perspective.
#1
...Article starts out well enough but then spirals into absurdity with the "America can be destroyed by one Iranian nuke" part. Add to that the fact that one of the authors runs " a non-profit organization for citizens dedicated to protecting America from man-made or natural electromagnetic pulse (EMP) catastrophe", and they pretty much lost me."
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
08/04/2010 8:06 Comments ||
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#2
A single EMP strike on the US would devastate its economy but would not destroy the US. AFAIK, nothing has been done to mitigate possible losses. But a real EMP strike requires a nuclear explosion at just the right high altitude over the US.
#3
Without a test, they don't have a nuke bomb. The moment a test is detected, within 30 minutes of confirmation, a chain of events would ensue ensuring they would regret the test retroactively.
Then Israel would already have been destroyed, they would have ten more under their belt, and they would ratchet up their already insane rhetoric, and oil prices just so they could pay for some more.
#6
It was called INTERNATIONAL = INTER-STATE GEOPOL "FRANCHISING" during the POTUS Bush 1 + Clinton Admins.
IRAN HAS THE BOMB > ITS CALLED PAKISTAN + NORTH KOREA, ETC. + "BLACK MARKET" COLD WAR EX-SOVIET NUKES [+ WMDS].
Again, as per the MSM-NET + Perts > Islamist Iran had already procured "dual-use" CHIN SILKWORMS + ditto UKRAINIAN TLCMS + of course the proverbial NOKOR SCUDS.
The ISLMAIST JIHAD is being expanded into CENTRAL-EAST-SOUTH ASIA, IN PART, BECUZ RADICAL ISLAM BELIEVES THEY CAN SUCCESSFULLY DESTABILIZE RUSSIA + CHINA + INDIA, ETC. ENOUGH TO GET CONTROL OF SOME OR ALL OF THEIR NUCWEAPS ARSENALS + ADVANCED MILTECHS, espec iff IRAN + even PAK get invaded by the US-NATO = US-LED ALLIED COALITION.
Again again, 2012-Plus > IMO the REAL DABGER from Iran declaring it is not only a NUCENERGY STATE but also a NUCWEAPS STATE IS NOT IRAN PER SE, BUT THE SPREAD OR PROLIFERAT OF NUCTECHS + ADVANCED MILTECHS TO ISLAMIST + OTHER HIGHLY DECENTRALIZED, ARMED REGIONAL, GLOBAL MILITANT-INSURGENT GROUPS [individuals, Nons, + Cells].
REGIONAL, GLOBAL NUKE-WMD MILITANCY-TERROR THREAT + is why I had said or inferred in past that, as per the 9-11 Event + WOT + "Islamist/Jihadist/Militant Bomb", THE NATURE OF THE THREATS ARE SUCH THAT THE US [+ Allies] MAY HAVE TO DE FACTO CONQUER THE WORLD WHETHER IT WANTS TO OR NOT, + IFF ONLY BECUZ AMER'S ENEMIES DESIRE TO WAGE A PCORRECT/DENIABLE COVERT OR SUBTLE "WAR OF ANNIHILATION" [aka "Aymmetric" = Unilateral Warfare] AGZ THE US WHILE DEMANDING THE US DOESN'T + CAN"T DO SAME AGZ THEM, i.e . THE US MUST BE MORAL WHILE ITS ENEMIES CAN BE IMMORAL.
Taxing the rich, except in my district. AKA: The Nads of Nadler
One irony of the tax increase that arrives on January 1 is that the it will hit residents of high-income, Democratic-leaning states like California, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York the hardest. This is a problem for pro-tax Democrats.
Enter New York Representative Jerrold Nadler, who wants to exempt his own six-figure constituents from the tax hike he supports. Mr. Nadler's bill would "require the IRS to adjust tax brackets proportionally in regions where the average cost of living is higher than the national average."
In other words, the various tax brackets would apply to residents in certain regions at higher income levels versus other parts of the country. A family with an income of $50,000 or even $1 million in Manhattan would pay less federal income tax than a family with the same earnings in Omaha. The bill is called the Tax Equity Act, but a more accurate title would be the Blue State Tax Preference Act.
"The basic costs of life in the New York region are much steeper than in most parts the country," says Mr. Nadler. "The reality is that a dollar in New York isn't worth nearly as much as a dollar in Spokane or Knoxville or Topeka. It's time for our tax code to take reality into account when assessing someone's tax liability."
That point about "reality" and the tax code could certainly use some fleshing out, but leave that aside. A big reason the cost of living is so high in Boston, Manhattan and San Francisco is because of high state and local taxes, union work rules, and heavy business regulation that make it more expensive to produce, sell and buy things.
Why should someone in Spokane or Knoxville or Topeka be penalized because New York and California impose destructive policies? Mr. Nadler also conveniently forgets that the federal tax code already subsidizes high-cost states through the deductibility of state and local income and property taxes.
An all-star line-up of liberal class warriors has nonetheless endorsed Mr. Nadler's effort to raise taxes on the rich everywhere but in their own districts. New York House Members Tim Bishop, Steve Israel, Nita Lowey, Carolyn Maloney and Carolyn McCarthy are cosponsors. Ms. Lowey, who has voted to tax anything that moves, now says that "When it comes to the tax code, one size just doesn't fit all" and laments that New York has "some of the highest property taxes in the country." But whose fault is that?
So welcome to the brave new world of "tax equity." If you live in a state that voted for Barack Obama, you get a tax cut.
#3
I thought if you could make it there, you could make it anywhere.
Guess not.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/04/2010 15:39 Comments ||
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#4
More seriously, it represents yet another transfer of wealth from the politically unconnected to the politically connected.
The Russians had words for this: the nomenklatura. The apparatchiks. These are the people who will run our country, and their first job will be to ensure that they and their friends do well. If that means you do less well, not only is that not their problem, it's a design feature.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/04/2010 15:43 Comments ||
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#5
perhaps a bill to lessen the value of their votes by geography as well? Say 3/5ths?...hhmmmmm. 1/5 sounds fair to me. And they get the same "lesser value" on their electoral votes?
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/04/2010 19:24 Comments ||
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#6
Let him know what you think of his article. I do not see how biased opinion counts as news. Oh wait.
He doesn't care what you think.
Navarette used to write opinion pieces for the San Diego Union-Tribune. It was sickening. I've kept my subscription because Mrs. Uluque reads the Travel and Entertainment sections. But I never read any of it anymore.
#8
Actually, Fear wears hot pants, and walks the street of Van Buren in Phoenix. And always remember to take Fear back to your motel room, 'cause Fear's pimp, Pedro, is waiting back in Fear's apartment to rip you off and shank you, if you go there.
And don't even think for a moment that the Phoenix PD will be fooled into thinking that Fear is your cousin from Puerto Rico. They know all about Fear, and her girlfriends Hate, Envy and Shanice (the fat one).
Oh, and yes, Fear will give you a nasty dose of some Mexican strain that can eat through latex.
#11
"That's not true," says the husband, who's worked his way up from manual labor to an office job for a jeweler. "Americans are lazy. They don't want to work."
"At least that's what I choose to believe. Hey, watchoo lookin' at? It gives me all the excuse I need to take someone's job. Besides, we're all North American, man!"
But then, he catches himself -- and corrects himself.
IOW: Here comes the BS ....
"I shouldn't say that," he says. "They're not all like that, but some are. They're spoiled. They think it's easy to come to the United States legally, and they speak from ignorance."
They're not lazy. They are purchasing the cheapest product. To their own personal benefit but to society's detriment. Happens a lot these days.
Prof. Hansen nails a topic that I've often discussed with my colleagues at the University.
The American poor live better than many, many people on this planet. We have more affluence and use that, in the ways Prof. Hansen describes, to provide our poor, even our illegal immigrant poor, with a live that they simply couldn't have in most of Africa, much of South and Latin America, and big chunks of Asia. Be it medical care, food, clothing or cell phones, our poor do better than the poor of the world, and as Prof. Hansen notes, better than the upper middle class of the 1960s.
It's progress, I suppose, though at some level it is also grating, since as an upper middle income person (for which I make no apologies) I am to a fair extent supporting this. A progressive person would point out that it's the price I pay for my own success.
But I fear that our poor, precisely because they live a life in America that they couldn't live elsewhere, are being robbed. Robbed of their incentive, robbed of any desire to get ahead, robbed in the end of their own dignity.
I take care of the poor in my clinic at the University. Frequently my interview with such a patient is interrupted. By their cell phone. "I'm with the doctor now, honey, hush," they say, as they answer and then look at me with some embarrassment. I shrug. It's just the way things are.
I'm grateful that we don't have starving beggars on our streets (we do have professional beggars in our intersections, and I wish the Chicago cops would do their jobs). I appreciate that only the hard-core are homeless. I pitch in and provide medical care. This is all good.
But I wish we had a better ethic about it. In that I think Prof. Hansen and I would agree.
It has always bothered me when some limo lefty who can't imagine not living in their lovely suburb in a 4000 square foot house with all the accoutrements spouts self righteously about how being on welfare brings its own shame and disincentive to continue living in "squalor". Based upon the experiences of humans over millions of years, EVERY welfare recipient in the U.S. is living better, with better nutrition, medicine, and shelter than about 98% of all the people who have ever lived.
For individuals who only care about being clothed, fed, and housed, welfare is paradise, and there is NO incentive to do anything else. As long as welfare in its current state exists, they'll literally never do anything to change or improve.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
08/04/2010 6:09 Comments ||
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#3
If you go to the four corners area to see the Navajo or the Dakotas to see the Sioux, there in the hinterland you can still see and feel real 'traditional' poverty, greatly assisted by one of the oldest 'progressive' governmental organizations, the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The problem for society in addressing such poverty is 'guilt'. It obstructs real progress which can not come without some pain.
Now there are other locations which have such 'traditional' poverty but in such small numbers as to be blended into the social economic landscape. The fundamental problem with 'traditional' poverty is that to over come it requires that the individual take responsibility to do just that. The bulk of such poverty can be distilled in four major categories; substance abuse, creating children before one has the means to support them, wasting one's existence (being a zombie) in educational opportunities, and keeping to the 'old' ways. Each is a choice for there are others in the exact same social economic conditions who 'choose' not to follow those patterns who do succeed. Other people's choices should never be your guilt.
Seven trillion dollars spent on anti-poverty programs and initiatives since the War on Poverty was declared by President Johnson in the 60s. Time past to declare victory and get out.
#4
But we don't have enough money to treat the mentally retarded properly. We just turn them out on the streets to meet whatever fate awaits them with no protection. Maybe they should vote more often.
#5
Steve: There is one element of all of this, of which most people are blissfully unaware. This is that we are now, since the end of WWII, living in a Keynesian economy, an experimental economy, fundamentally different from the economy that existed before the Great Depression.
And the experiment is collapsing.
This is not so much because of the generosity of the wealthy, but generosity far beyond anyone's means. Easy credit taken to a nonsensical degree, and indifferent to the debt it created.
For a long time it worked. It was responsible for America's profound growth after the war. It allowed us to build a military that dominates the world, while at the same time giving vast largess to everyone.
And for a long time it worked. The money was used for tangible and efficient ends. But ironically, its death knell began, not with uplifting the poor, but efforts to equalize their prosperity with those that had earned their prosperity.
No sane or tangible reason to do this--it was based in a flawed and failed philosophy of equalized ends, not equalized means to different ends.
Things like subprime loans come to mind. But at the same time, and far worse in consequences, the wise investment of careful debt was forgotten. Instead, vast debt was accrued solely to satiate the gambling of speculators.
There was no will or effort to stop this, or even to get control over it, or mitigate it. It became an orgy of spending, for the sake of spending. Of debt accumulation for no reason. Because if you are in such debt that you can never repay it, why not double, triple, or quadruple that debt?
So what will come of this, because most certainly it is soon coming to an end? To start with, the poor were given their chance. And for most of the poor, they blew it, as one would expect them to do, having already shown incapability for prosperity. But some succeeded.
Yet at the same time, there are now in the middle classes many people who are themselves too incapable to remain in the middle classes without support. And many of them are soon to augment the poor.
Millions of people, right now, are becoming "99'ers", in that they have used up all 99 weeks of extended unemployment compensation. And each one of them now has only their meager resources left before they become part of the poor.
Now someone, likely the government, is blatantly manipulating the stock markets to sustain stock prices. With little effort at concealment, offers for huge blocks of shares are made by computer, driving up prices, then the orders are canceled within a few fractions of a second, before sell offers arrive.
But this highly illegal technique only works until there is some economic crisis. These days, most likely, something like a sovereign default by some country.
So, what of the poor? The gravy train is ending, so they will be in a sink or swim proposition, and soon. Likely there will be an end to cash payments, free medical care, perhaps all other aid but food aid.
They will back where they started from, before the government decided to uplift them.
#6
-- #5 - excellent summary of the current crisis
--- But this highly illegal technique only works until there is some economic crisis. Lots of other highly illegal things have been &/or are continuing to be done to perpetuate and exacerbate the current crisis. The administration and DOJ is doing nothing to stop the looting and start prosecuting using the laws we already have against some of the greatest malefactors in world history (based on dollar value of their crimes). The recent financial regulations passed have been carefully devised to look good on the surface and do essentially nothing about the core of the problem.
-- Should the gravy train Steve mentioned run out for a sufficient number of our poor, life in the US will take a turn for the worse, for all of us.
#11
This is that we are now, since the end of WWII, living in a Keynesian economy, an experimental economy, fundamentally different from the economy that existed before the Great Depression.
Not quite true. We have been debasing our currency since 1916, the era of the glorious segregationist and warmonger Wilson. We did not deflate after WWI as we had after all our other wars. We did suffer some deflation in the early Depression, but it's been inflation ever since. It is inflation and the growth of the credit (as opposed to the savings) economy that have been our Achilles heel. The rest of the results come from having too much money as a result of being able to print it with a press instead of earn it with labour.
No worse than in the past. The usual 'bright spots' will ignite themselves. There may even be some spreading of the behavior into 'gun free zones'. However, the last big riot in LA, the Koreans who armed themselves were generally left alone. One can see the effect come into play when the local 'authorities' are unable to deal with the situation. The distribution system will certain collapse in some neighborhoods as it did in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina, but this will be a self inflicted wound. Unlike Katrina, the only sympathy the perps will find, regardless of color, race or creed will be the entry in the dictionary between sh*t and syphilis. Collective guilt will have have a zero effective range in those conditions. Push the middle class into self preservation and just step back and watch the show. It won't be nice but it is predictable.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
