Just for a change of pace.
Someone said something about welfare. I know people complain about poor people getting welfare and people getting it who don't deserve it. Yet I rarely hear complaints about corporate welfare, which is giving money to huge companies that are already making a nice profit.
This is before, and beyond, any bailouts.
Here is a quote from the Boston Globe, and then a few links for your reading enjoyment.
"The $150 billion for corporate subsidies and tax benefits eclipses the annual budget deficit of $130 billion. It's more than the $145 billion paid out annually for the core programs of the social welfare state: Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), student aid, housing, food and nutrition, and all direct public assistance (excluding Social Security and medical care
--Boston Globe series on Corporate Welfare
http://www.corporations.org/welfare/
http://www.progress.org/banneker/cw.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989508,00.html
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Check out the link below...
These data suggest that wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small number of families. The wealthiest 1 percent of families owns roughly 34.3% of the nation's net worth, the top 10% of families owns over 71%, and the bottom 40% of the population owns way less than 1%.
http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/Courses/so11/stratification/income&wealth.htm
Who do you think makes the decisions. And who gets the tax breaks, best interest rates, bailout money...
In 1960, the average CEO made 25x what the average worker made.
In 2000, that figure rose to nearly 800x the average worker.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/04/08/business/pay.graphic.jpg
in 2000, the average CEO made 800x the wage of the average worker.
Where is the morality in that?
800x
And this is exactly why I do not understand people who support politicians who allow this nonsense to happen.
I don't care if you are a republican or a democrat, people need to pay attention to what our politicians are doing. Tax cuts to corporations, the wealthy or deregulation - none of it benefits the working man, woman or family.
Also, a good argument for the necessity of unionization.
Shouldn't punishment for these kinds of actions be implemented? I view it as treason due to the fact that these greedy CEOs are tearing our nation apart.
I saw something on TV the other night that said each American will be responsible for $36,000 of the bailout. I wonder where my share is coming from.
Dead Rabbitt,
You would think, but how lobbying is done is an absolute shame that its allowed. What politician is going to vote against something that they get benefit$ from. That takes some chutzpa that few seem to have in DC these days.
An interest group that takes a boatload of money to get legislation passed through on an earmark. Disgusting!
What happened to the will of the people? I don't think the gov. fears us, I think they laugh at the vast majority of the 'have nots'
I think our political system in DC is a monumental joke.
Not everyone in DC is like that, but a vast majority seem to be more interested in whats in it for them and not genuinely for the people. The ones that take their job seriously get skewered to no end it seems by the media that influences public opinion.
BD,
Point well taken. Why do we elect the same type expecting different results?
If thats the definition of insanity, whose is more insane, the politicians or the ones who keep electing them?
Guess that makes me nuts for thinking things could be different this time. or wishing they would.
This past election was frustrating for me as a voter feeling like I had to decide between the lesser of 2 evils.
We need more people on a national level that are non politicians.
Or in the least can't be bought off so easy.
getting off my soapbox now.
I think there are a growing number of people who are dissillusioned, and disenfranchised.
In fact, they will soon be the majority.
Our economy/government is headed for a MAJOR collapse.
There will be anarchy, and perhaps revolution...
Until then,there can be no change.
Elections, and politicians are bought in this country, and the vast majority of us don't have the capital to do so. So, we are ignored.
Speaking of big business, I understand 750 jobs will be eliminated or transferred from Conoco - Phillips Ponca City plant.
All the technical jobs. Half the plant. About $30-$40 million annual payroll. Announcement today.
You know... $3 million per month in the PC economy.
I was really excited about McCain's talk of eliminating "pork" until he voted yes to the bailout. He suddenly became a hypocrit.
He suddenly became a hypocrit.
>
WHAT ?"????????? !!!!!!!
a politician being a hypocrite ?
say it aint so joe.
:)
Anonymous said,
Why do we elect the same type expecting different results?
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We keep electing the same types because that is the only type that ever runs.
Found this while poking around.
One way to ‘see’ the distribution of wealth in the U.S. is to imagine a group of 100 people who have a $100 between them. Evenly distributed each would have one dollar of wealth. Alas, that is far from the actual distribution. According to the most recent study, Currents and Undercurrents, by the Survey of Consumer Finance (Federal Reserve, Department of Treasury, 2006) wealth is distributed accordingly:
50 individuals at the bottom have a nickel. ($0.05 times 50 = $2.50)
The next 40 each have $0.70 of wealth (40 times $0.70 - $28.00).
The next 9 each have $4.00 of wealth (nine times $4.00 = $36.00)
The last richest individual has $33.40 (one time $33.40).
The problem is greater on a global scale. Corporations exploit workers from less developed countries to produce cheap goods, and increase their bottom line.
Cocoa farmers, coffee farmers, suger cane farmers, textile workers...
Men women and children alike work long hours in deplorable conditions for poor pay, and no benefits to produce our products.
Products which they can never afford.
People are forced by major US corporations to live in squalor, making less than 2.00 per day so that I can buy cheap chino's or sneakers at Wal-Mart, a .99 cent cup of coffee at McDonalds, or a .50 cent candy bar at Dillon's.
My comfort and convenience depends on someone elses suffering.
An estimated 1.2 billion people struggle to live on less than a dollar a day. A total 2.7 billion people live on less than $2 a day.
Source: UN Millennium
www.youtube.com/watch?v=46MEqEgdLTg
How's this for scary...
Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research Institute, is renowned for his accuracy in predicting future world and economic events, which will send a chill down your spine considering what he told Fox News this week.
Celente says that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.
“We’re going to see the end of the retail Christmas….we’re going to see a fundamental shift take place….putting food on the table is going to be more important that putting gifts under the Christmas tree,” said Celente, adding that the situation would be “worse than the great depression”.
“America’s going to go through a transition the likes of which no one is prepared for,” said Celente, noting that people’s refusal to acknowledge that America was even in a recession highlights how big a problem denial is in being ready for the true scale of the crisis.
Also, a good argument for the necessity of unionization.
>>>>>>>>>>
Sorry but I don't share your view.
One of the things that has gotten us into this mess is "Groups" that are looking for people to join their "Club".
You look at the Auto Industry -
The UAW made and the Auto Mgt. let them make contracts that they could keep when there was sufficient demand/profit. But now they are expecting others to make good on the debt.
They have contracts that give healthcare to all living ex/current employees. One of the things that deterred inovation was that the workers were to get paid as if they worked when a plant was to be shut down for improvement or retooling.
Then compuond that with the fact that they created the gas guzzling
SUV market and then they compounded the problem even worse by their creative pricing promotions that put them several years ahead of demand.
If you want you can look at other
industries and see similar stories.
What amazes me is everyone is looking somewhere to place the blame!
Well the greatest tool in the whole arsenal is the POWER of The Consumer Dollar!
You can put the blame whereever you want but you can't seem to see its where you put your money that will make the greatest difference!
No I don't think targeting companies or witholding purchases is the answer. I don't think targeting countries banning their products is either.
If you go to Pickens Plan dot com look at the amount of money we spent on foreign oil in Jan. 09.
(19 billion dollars) twice the amount of the proposed/passed bailout for one month.
There is a better way but its going to take the consumers to make it happen!
Correction - I meant to say the foreign oil would cost us more than twice the proposed/passed bailout for the year.
Correction again - The proposed/passed bailouts for the auto industry.
Now some of you are going to say you have no choice in the matter!
There will be choices where there are dollars and support!
they should have given the american automakers about $18,000 per household.
Then deliver the car to each of us.
That would have gotten the economy going.
How's this for a number.
Combined, Bush's and Obama's stimulus/bailout plans are approaching $2,000,000,000,000. Enough to pay every man, woman and child in the United States $6,500.
That's $26,000 for a family of four. That's a new car, a down payment on a house, payment on a credit card, new furniture, T.V., college tuition. However it was spent, it would have made its way to banks, and created some liquidity for lending. Now that would have been a stimulus.
One other note on the Auto Ind. and I'll shut up.
The Politicians need to belly up to the bar and take responsibility for subsidizing the SUV (built on truck frames) market with the tax breaks they gave to businesses. Any vehicle with a GVW of 6000# or over was allowed to be expensed off income tax. There were plenty of Dr.s, Lawyers..etc. that took advantage of the subsidy.
But back then gas was cheap!
What happened to true market driven competition?
...true market driven competition?
It went the same way the constitution is going...almost gone.
I watched a PBS doc about Bernanke and Paulsen. Fascinating.
The cause of all of the problems was credit default swaps, a credit insurance that was being sold without any reserve or funding. During the Bush years, the regulators were turning a blind eye toward it. It was completely unregulated and unfunded. Once it started collapsing, it snowballed.
The banks ie.; Bear Stearns and Lehman had sold trillions of dollars worth of them worldwide and had no assets to back them up when they needed to be paid out. They sold them to all of the Wall St banks and without the bailout, it could have been exactly like the depression, which it may become anyway.
It was a significant enough loss of booked capital that the U.S. dollar will be devalued.
10 years ago it would have been illegal. It is George Bush's legacy for America.
Just another reason we should never put a mental midget in charge of anything.
Anonymous said...
The banks ie.; Bear Stearns and Lehman had sold trillions of dollars worth of them worldwide and had no assets to back them up when they needed to be paid out.
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Sounds a little like Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme!!!
I just saw some figures that said the country is 78.8 Trillion Dollars in debt.
Thats $258298.00 for every man women and child in this country.
One Million Dollars owed for every family of 4.
The GDP for the entire world was 74.4 Trillion last year.
Staggering.
And the government just keeps printing money.
Inflation is going to be through the roof.
We have nothing to back our currency up.
The more we print, the less value it has.
Which is why I don't understand how this will help the economy.
Why don't we start pulling some money out of the economy?
REDISTRIBUTE what we have?
The big companies got into this mess by greed and other immoral behavior.
Now we are going to reward them by bailing them out.
So the very rich people who created this mess will be reimbursed. That will be made up by cutting services to the poor.
Both parties seem more intent on blaming the other side than doing anything to fix the problem.
We have really lost our moral footing as a nation.
I do think this is as much a moral issue as anything.
The big companies got into this mess by greed and other immoral behavior.
>>>>>>>>>>>
Yep! One big ole "Mosh Pit of Greed"! With the CEO's and Politicians body surfing.
The music has slowed down and awaits the next segement of body slamming and surfing!
"Sounds a little like Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme!!!"
The problem is there are dozens of Madoff type schemes, ie. Stanford Financial Group (might be as high as $50 Billion).
In Madoff and Stanford and others, there were whistle blowers who told the SEC about it years ago, but the administration told them not to investigate. Obviously friends of George, Dick and Karl.
If you couple the rampant bank fraud with the government encouraging and giving tax credits to companies who move manufacturing jobs to China and VietNam, you have a picture of a vast loss of capital from the U.S.
This whole thing is directly linked to those fricking idiot republicans in the presidency who were running the country. Good riddance.
The only joy I have in all of this is that the majority ownership in American stocks is China and Saudi - Middle Eastern cartel governments (yep, government money, think about it).
They have nothing at all stable in their own countries to bank on so they invest in American stocks.
They took a real bath in the stock market and I'm laughing my ass off about it. Good.
Because Bush put no accounting requirements on how the money that he gave away was used, many of the banks used it to fund investments in companies in other countries, like Spain, Germany, etc.
Now the banks are saying they don't have an accounting of how the money was spent. Put the CEOs in front of Congress for a year or so and see if their accounting and memory improves. I have no doubt they know exactly where each penny was sent.
The U.S. has a hell of a challenge, and it is on the backs of the individuals. I agree, it is very unfair. If it is not done, the people will suffer worse than if it is done.
The cause of all of the problems was credit default swaps, a credit insurance that was being sold without any reserve or funding. During the Bush years, the regulators were turning a blind eye toward it. It was completely unregulated and unfunded. Once it started collapsing, it snowballed.
...........
There were warnings in the 1990's about derivitives! Clinton signed some of the key legislation into effect that discouraged regulation.
Bush is guilty as well but the high flying society wouldn't hear of anything that might slow or stop the party.
One other note: Clinton benfited from the ramp up to Y2K. The massive spending/investment that took place in electronics to ward off the Y2K disaster. Bush started his presidency with the subsequent hangover/recession.
Its the bubbles that got created and burst that has caused the problems. Don't kid yourself they saw them all along. What they didn't see was all the other corruption like Madoff and company!
Do you even remember the S&L bailout?
There is a revolution on the horizon. When or if it comes, would you cower, or stand and fight for your country by fighting against what your country has become?
Combined, Bush's and Obama's stimulus/bailout plans are approaching $2,000,000,000,000. Enough to pay every man, woman and child in the United States $6,500.
That's $26,000 for a family of four. That's a new car, a down payment on a house, payment on a credit card, new furniture, T.V., college tuition. However it was spent, it would have made its way to banks, and created some liquidity for lending. Now that would have been a stimulus.
February 18, 2009 9:21 PM
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Unfortunately, it would not work this way. If they gave all of that money to American families, the cost of the new car (and everything else) would just go up. Just as it did when women went to work. Suddenly, we became a society of two income households and the prices went up accordingly.
I think the best bet is to just set back and watch the failing companies and banks fail. Let the CEO's struggle for an income just as their laid off workers are. New companies will rise from their ashes who will have learned from their mistakes. I believe in the law of nature. The weak will persih and the strong will survive. This is how we grow and become stronger as a nation.
There is a revolution on the horizon. When or if it comes, would you cower, or stand and fight for your country by fighting against what your country has become?
February 19, 2009 9:25 AM
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You bet I would! Interesting you say this. I just watched a story on CNN Live about the "war" going on in Mexico. At first glance, it appears their new President is trying to take his country back from the corrupt officials and drug cartel. The Mexican citizens were picketing yesterday in protest of his intervention. All I could say was, "what?" Here is their chance for a true democracy and a life without fear of the cartels. Why do they not stand up and support this cause? I think Americans should rally and show their support. A free and prosperous Mexico would be a great thing for our country, too. They would not need to come to our country poor, starving and afraid.
The biggest Ponzi scheme of all is the Social Security system. But, that's another story.
Meanwhile, while we in the U.S. continue to reward bad behavior and give money to people who won't work and have refused to work for years, and try desperately to hold on to our prodigal lifestyles...Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu is about to be declared the Prime Minister of Israel. NOW, everything changes. He WILL topple the Hamas Gov't. And, probably will bomb Iran. Then the governments of the world will descend on tiny Israel. But, will the U.S. stand with them? IDK. I personally don't think our President will. (my opinion only) I could be wrong, and I honestly hope I am wrong on this one. Nonetheless, this world is headed for war. The final Armageddon.
D.Q.
Don't both the Bible and the Koran say we will set back and watch?
"Don't both the Bible and the Koran say we will set back and watch?"
Tradition has it that the Temple will be rebuilt first. Haven't seen that part yet.
Damascus will be a heap of ruin.
Can any of you religious gurus explain the relationship of John the Baptist in both Christian and Muslim religions? I'm curious...
I really don't understand the question.
Do Christians and Muslims see John the Baptist differently?
He was there to prepare the way for the Messiah. In that time it was very common to send someone ahead to get ready for an important message.
Kings and rulers did it all the time.
Kinda like a PR agency today sending out press releases in advance of a visiting official.
Im not sure how Muslims would see that any differently.
Do Muslims acknowledge the presence of Jesus?
Why do they honor John the Baptist if he was the PR guy for the Christian Mesiah?
I'm really ignorant about this whole thing. I'm just curious about the way the Bible and Koran are so similar in their predictions of the future and wonder how their past is linked.
Maybe I should add...
When I looked up Demascus in Wikipedia I found out that John The Baptist's head is in a shrine withing a mosque in that city. The found it after demolishing the Christian church which had stood on those grounds. Instead of casting it aside, they build a shrine. It seems they do honor him as a great prophet.
If Christian and Muslim religions have been at war for so long, why is it that they respect John the Baptist. What makes him different in their eyes from all other Christians?
Muslim and Christian writings both have jewish roots.
Im not that familiar with Muslim writings.
They see Jesus as a prophet, but not the messiah.
If Christian and Muslim religions have been at war for so long, why is it that they respect John the Baptist. What makes him different in their eyes
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I see. I dont know.
It could even be a specific group of muslims in a specific area revering john the baptist more.
The more radical muslims just want to kill anyone who is of a different religion.
"The more radical muslims just want to kill anyone who is of a different religion."
might add to this list...or turn the remaining ones into slaves or concubines. So much for a religion of peace, huh?
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