Friday, September 30, 2011

AMERICANS GIVE UP THEIR CIVIL RIGHTS TO BE PROTECTED FROM TERRORISTS ...BUT THE ONLY TERRORISTS ARE A FEW SAPS SUCKED IN BY FBI STING OPERATIONS


September 30, 2011 at 00:20:21

Promoted to Headline (H3) on 9/26/11:









Is The War On Terror A Hoax?



By paul craig roberts (about the author)

opednews.com


In the past decade, Washington has killed, maimed, dislocated, and made widows and orphans of millions of Muslims in six countries, all in the name of the "war on terror." Washington's attacks on the countries constitute naked aggression and impact primarily civilian populations and infrastructure and, thereby, constitute war crimes under law. Nazis were executed precisely for what Washington is doing today.

Moreover the wars and military attacks have cost American taxpayers in out-of-pocket and already-incurred future costs at least $4,000 billion dollars -- one third of the accumulated public debt -- resulting in a US deficit crisis that threatens the social safety net, the value of the US dollar and its reserve currency role, while enriching beyond all previous history the military/security complex and its apologists.

Perhaps the highest cost of Washington's "war on terror" has been paid by the US Constitution and civil liberties. Any US citizen that Washington accuses is deprived of all legal and constitutional rights. The Bush-Cheney-Obama regimes have overturned humanity's greatest achievement -- the accountability of government to law.

If we look around for the terror that the police state and a decade of war has allegedly protected us from, the terror is hard to find. Except for 9/11 itself, assuming we accept the government's improbable conspiracy theory explanation, there have been no terror attacks on the US. Indeed, as RT pointed out on August 23, 2011, an investigative program at the University of California discovered that the domestic "terror plots" hyped in the media were plotted by FBI agents.

FBI undercover agents now number 15,000, ten times their number during the protests against the Vietnam war when protesters were suspected of communist sympathies. As there apparently are no real terror plots for this huge workforce to uncover, the FBI justifies its budget, terror alerts, and invasive searches of American citizens by thinking up "terror plots" and finding some deranged individuals to ensnare. For example, the Washington DC Metro bombing plot, the New York City subway plot, and the plot to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago were all FBI brainchilds organized and managed by FBI agents.  

RT reports that only three plots might have been independent of the FBI, but as none of the three worked they obviously were not the work of such a professional terror organization as Al Qaeda is purported to be. The Times Square car bomb didn't blow up, and apparently could not have.

The latest FBI sting ensnared a Boston man, Rezwan Ferdaus, who is accused of planning to attack the Pentagon and US Capitol with model airplanes packed with C-4 explosives. US Attorney Carmen Ortiz assured Americans that they were never in danger, because the FBI's undercover agents were in control of the plot.

Ferdaus' FBI-organized plot to blow up the Pentagon and US Capitol with model airplanes has produced charges that he provided "material support to a terrorist organization" and plotted to destroy federal buildings -- the most serious charge which carries 20 imprisoned years for each targeted building.

What is the terrorist organization that Ferdaus is serving? Surely not al Qaeda, which allegedly outwitted all 16 US intelligence services, all intelligence services of America's NATO and Israeli allies, NORAD, the National Security Council, Air Traffic Control, Dick Cheney, and US airport security four times in one hour on the same morning. Such a highly capable terror organization would not be involved in such nonsense as a plot to blow up the Pentagon with a model airplane.

As an American who was in public service for a number of years and who has always stood up for the Constitution, a patriot's duty, I must hope that the question has already popped into readers' minds why we are expected to believe that a tiny model airplane is capable of blowing up the Pentagon when a 757 airliner loaded with jet fuel was incapable of doing the job, merely making a hole not big enough for an airliner.

When I observe the gullibility of my fellow citizens at the absurd "terror plots" that the US government manufactures, it causes me to realize that fear is the most powerful weapon any government has for advancing an undeclared agenda. If Ferdaus is brought to trial, no doubt a jury will convict him of a plot to blow up the Pentagon and US Capitol with model airplanes. Most likely he will be tortured or coerced into a plea bargain.

Apparently, Americans, or most of them, are so ruled by fear that they suffer no remorse from "their" government's murder and dislocation of millions of innocent people. In the American mind, one billion "towel-heads" have been reduced to terrorists who deserve to be exterminated. The US is on its way to a holocaust that makes the terrors Jews faced from National Socialism into a mere precursor.

Think about this: Are not you amazed that after a decade (2.5 times the length of WW II) of killing Muslims and destroying families and their prospects in six countries, there are no real terrorist events in the US?

Think for a minute how easy terrorism would be in the US if there were any terrorists. Would an Al Qaeda terrorist from the organization that allegedly pulled off 9/11 -- the most humiliating defeat ever suffered by a Western power, much less "the world's only superpower" -- still in the face of all the screening be trying to hijack an airliner or to blow one up?

Surely not when there are so many totally soft targets. If America were really infected with a "terrorist threat," a terrorist would merely get in the massive lines waiting to clear airport "security" and set off his bomb. It would kill far more people than could be achieved by blowing up an airliner, and it would make it completely clear that "airport security" meant no one was safe.

It would be child's play for terrorists to blow up electric sub-stations as no one is there, nothing but a chain link fence. It would be easy for terrorists to blow up shopping centers. It would be easy for terrorists to dump boxes of roofing nails on congested streets and freeways during rush hours, tying up main transportation arteries for days.

Before, dear reader, you accuse me of giving terrorists ideas, do you really think that these ideas would not already have occurred to terrorists capable of pulling off 9/11?

But nothing happens. So the FBI arrests a guy for planning to blow up America with a model airplane. It is really depressing how many Americans will believe this.

Consider also that American neoconservatives, who have orchestrated the "war on terror," have no protection whatsoever, and that the Secret Service protection of Bush and Cheney is minimal. If America really faced a terrorist threat, especially one so professional to have brought off 9/11, every neoconservative along with Bush and Cheney could be assassinated within one hour on one morning or one evening.

The fact that neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, John Bolton, William Kristol, Libby, Addington, et. al., live unprotected and free of fear is proof that America faces no terrorist threat.

Think now about the airliner shoe-bomb plot, the shampoo-bottled water plot, and the underwear-bomb plot. Experts, other than the whores hired by the US government, say that these plots are nonsensical. The "shoe bomb" and "underwear bomb" were colored fireworks powders incapable of blowing up a tin can. The liquid bomb, allegedly mixed up in an airliner toilet room, has been dismissed by experts as fantasy.

What is the purpose of these fake plots? And remember, all reports confirm that the "underwear bomber" was walked onto the airliner by an official, despite the fact that the "underwear bomber" had no passport. No investigation was ever conducted by the FBI, CIA, or anyone into why a passenger without a passport was allowed on an international flight.

The purpose of these make-believe plots is to raise the fear level and to create the opportunity for former Homeland Security czar Michael Chertoff to make a fortune selling porno-scanners to the TSA.

The result of these hyped "terrorist plots" is that every American citizen, even those with high government positions and security clearances, cannot board a commercial airline flight without taking off his shoes, his jacket, his belt, submitting to a porno-scanner, or being sexually groped. Nothing could make it plainer that "airport security" cannot tell a Muslim terrorist from a gung-ho American patriot, a US Senator, a US Marine general, or a CIA operative.

If a passenger requires for health or other reasons quantities of liquids and cremes beyond the limits imposed on toothpaste, shampoo, food, or medications, the passenger must obtain prior approval from TSA, which seldom works. One of America's finest moments is the case, documented on YouTube, of a dying woman in a wheelchair, who requires special food, having her food thrown away by the gestapo TSA despite the written approval from the Transportation Safety Administration; her daughter arrested for protesting, and the dying woman in the wheelchair left alone in the airport.

This is Amerika today. These assaults on innocent citizens are justified by the mindless right-wing as "protecting us against terrorism," a "threat" that all evidence shows is nonexistent.

No American is secure today. I am a former staff associate of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee. I required high security clearances as I had access to information pertaining to all US weapons programs. As chief economist of the House Budget Committee, I had information pertaining to the US military and security budgets. As Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, I was provided every morning with the CIA's briefing of the President as well as with endless security information.

When I left the Treasury, President Reagan appointed me to a super-secret committee to investigate the CIA's assessment of Soviet capability. Afterwards I was a consultant to the Pentagon. I had every kind of security clearance.

Despite my record of highest security clearances and US government confidence in me, including confirmation by the US Senate in a presidential appointment, the airline police cannot tell me from a terrorist.

If I were into model airplanes or attending anti-war demonstrations, little doubt I, too, would be arrested.

After my public service in the last quarter of the 20th century, I experienced during the first decade of the 21st century all of America's achievements, despite their blemishes, being erased. In their place was erected a monstrous desire for hegemony and highly concentrated wealth. Most of my friends and my fellow citizens in general are incapable of recognizing America's transformation into a warmonger police state that has the worst income distribution of any developed country.

It is extraordinary that so many Americans, citizens of the world's only superpower, actually believe that they are threatened by Muslim peoples who have no unity, no navy, no air force, no nuclear weapons, no missiles capable of reaching across the oceans.

Indeed, large percentages of these "threat populations," especially among the young, are enamored of the sexual freedom that exists in America. Even the Iranian dupes of the CIA-orchestrated "Green Revolution" have forgotten Washington's overthrow of their elected government in the 1950s. Despite America's decade-long abusive military actions against Muslim peoples, many Muslims still look to America for their salvation.

Their "leaders" are simply bought off with large sums of money.

With the "terrorist threat" and Al Qaeda deflated with President Obama's alleged assassination of its leader, Osama bin Laden, who was left unprotected and unarmed by his "world-wide terrorist organization," Washington has come up with a new bogyman -- the Haqqanis.

According to John Glaser and anonymous CIA officials, US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mike Mullen "exaggerated" the case against the Haqqani insurgent group when he claimed, setting up a US invasion of Pakistan, that the Hagganis were an operating arm of the Pakistan government's secret service, the ISI. Adm. Mullen is now running from his "exaggeration," an euphemism for a lie. His aid Captain John Kirby said that Mullen's "accusations were designed to influence the Pakistanis to crack down on the Haqqani Network." In other words, the Pakistanis should kill more of their own people to save the Americans the trouble.

If you don't know what the Haqqani Network is, don't be surprised. You never heard of Al Qaeda prior to 9/11. The US government creates whatever new bogymen and incidents are necessary to further the neoconservative agenda of world hegemony and higher profits for the armaments industry.

For 10 years, the "superpower" American population has sat there, being terrified by the government's lies. While Americans sit in fear of non-existent "terrorists" sucking their thumbs, millions of people in six countries have had their lives destroyed. As far as any evidence exists, the vast majority of Americans are unperturbed by the wanton murder of others in countries that they are incapable of locating on maps.

Truly, Amerika is a light unto the world, an example for all.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

NEW YORK'S "FINEST" PROTECT WALL STREET CRIMINALS BY ASSAULTING PEACEFUL PROTESTERS EXERCISING THEIR FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS


  theREALnews                                                                                Permalink

September 27, 2011

80 People Arrested at "Occupy Wall St."

Protesters vow to continue occupying Wall St. until demands are met

More at The Real News

Monday, September 26, 2011

ECONOMIC POLICY IN THE WEST HAS BECOME "A TOOL OF THE WEALTHY USED TO ENRICH THEMSELVES BY SPREADING POVERTY AMONG THE REST OF THE POPULATION" -- PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS


September 26, 2011 at 00:22:05

Promoted to Headline (H3) on 9/26/11:









Saving the Rich and Losing the Economy


By paul craig roberts (about the author)

opednews.com



Economic policy in the United States and Europe has failed, and people are suffering.

Economic policy failed for three reasons:

(1) policymakers focused on enabling off-shoring corporations to move middle class jobs, and the consumer demand, tax base, GDP, and careers associated with the jobs, to foreign countries, such as China and India, where labor is inexpensive;

(2) policymakers permitted financial deregulation that unleashed fraud and debt leverage on a scale previously unimaginable;

(3) policymakers responded to the resulting financial crisis by imposing austerity on the population and running the printing press in order to bail out banks and prevent any losses to the banks regardless of the cost to national economies and innocent parties.

Jobs off-shoring was made possible because the collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in China and India opening their vast excess supplies of labor to Western exploitation. Pressed by Wall Street for higher profits, US corporations relocated their factories abroad. Foreign labor working with Western capital, technology, and business know-how is just as productive as US labor. However, the excess supplies of labor (and lower living standards) mean that Indian and Chinese labor can be hired for less than labor's contribution to the value of output. The difference flows into profits, resulting in capital gains for shareholders and performance bonuses for executives.

As reported by Manufacturing and Technology News (September 20, 2011) the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages reports that in the last 10 years, the US lost 54,621 factories, and manufacturing employment fell by 5 million employees. Over the decade, the number of larger factories (those employing 1,000 or more employees) declined by 40 percent. US factories employing 500-1,000 workers declined by 44 percent; those employing between 250-500 workers declined by 37 percent, and those employing between 100-250 workers shrunk by 30 percent.

These losses are net of new start-ups. Not all the losses are due to off-shoring. Some are the result of business failures.

US politicians, such as Buddy Roemer, blame the collapse of US manufacturing on Chinese competition and "unfair trade practices." However, it is US corporations that move their factories abroad, thus replacing domestic production with imports. Half of US imports from China consist of the off-shored production of US corporations.

The wage differential is substantial. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of 2009, average hourly take-home pay for US workers was $23.03. Social insurance expenditures add $7.90 to hourly compensation and benefits paid by employers add $2.60 per hour for a total labor compensation cost of $33.53.

In China as of 2008, total hourly labor cost was $1.36, and India's is within a few cents of this amount. Thus, a corporation that moves 1,000 jobs to China saves $32,000 every hour in labor cost. These savings translate into higher stock prices and executive compensation, not in lower prices for consumers who are left unemployed by the labor arbitrage.

Republican economists blame "high" US wages for for the current high rate of unemployment. However, US wages are about the lowest in the developed world. They are far below hourly labor cost in Norway ($53.89), Denmark ($49.56), Belgium ($49.40), Austria ($48.04), and Germany ($46.52). The US might have the world's largest economy, but its hourly workers rank 14th on the list of the best paid. Americans also have a higher unemployment rate. The "headline" rate that the media hypes is 9.1 percent, but this rate does not include any discouraged workers or workers forced into part-time jobs because no full-time jobs are available.

The US government has another unemployment rate (U6) that includes workers who have been too discouraged to seek a job for six months or less. This unemployment rate is over 16 percent. Statistician John Williams (Shadowstats.com) estimates the unemployment rate when long-term discouraged workers (more than six months) are included. This rate is over 22 percent.

Most emphasis is on the lost manufacturing jobs. However, the high speed Internet has made it possible to offshore many professional service jobs, such as software engineering, Information Technology, research and design. Jobs that comprised ladders of upward mobility for US college graduates have been moved off shore, thus reducing the value to Americans of many university degrees. Unlike former times, today an increasing number of graduates return home to live with their parents as there are insufficient jobs to support their independent existence.

All the while, the US government allows in each year one million legal immigrants, an unknown number of illegal immigrants, and a large number of foreign workers on H-1B and L-1 work visas. In other words, the policies of the US government maximize the unemployment rate of American citizens.

Republican economists and politicians pretend that this is not the case and that unemployed Americans consist of people too lazy to work who game the welfare system. Republicans pretend that cutting unemployment benefits and social assistance will force "lazy people who are living off the taxpayers" to go to work.

To deal with the adverse impact on the economy from the loss of jobs and consumer demand from offshoring, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan lowered interest rates in order to create a real estate boom. Lower interest rates pushed up real estate prices. People refinanced their houses and spent the equity. Construction, furniture and appliance sales boomed. But unlike previous expansions based on rising real income, this one was based on an increase in consumer indebtedness.

There is a limit to how much debt can increase in relation to income, and when this limit was reached, the bubble popped.

When consumer debt could rise no further, the large fraudulent component in mortgage-backed derivatives and the unreserved swaps (AIG, for example) threatened financial institutions with insolvency and froze the banking system. Banks no longer trusted one another. Cash was hoarded. Treasury Secretary Paulson browbeat Congress into massive taxpayer loans to financial institutions that functioned as casinos. The Paulson Bailout (TARP) was large but insignificant compared to the $16.1 trillion (a sum larger than US GDP or national debt) that the Federal Reserve lent to private financial institutions in the US and Europe.

In making these loans, the Federal Reserve violated its own rules. At this point, capitalism ceased to function. The financial institutions were "too big to fail," and thus taxpayer subsidies took the place of bankruptcy and reorganization. In a word, the US financial system was socialized as the losses of the American financial institutions were transferred to taxpayers.

European banks were swept up into the financial crisis by their unwitting purchase of the junk financial instruments marketed by Wall Street. The financial junk had been given investment grade rating by the same incompetent agency that recently downgraded US Treasury bonds.

The Europeans had their own bailouts, often with American money (Federal Reserve loans). All the while Europe was brewing an additional crisis of its own. By joining the European Union and (except for the UK) accepting a common European currency, the individual member countries lost the services of their own central banks as creditors. In the US and UK, the two countries' central banks can print money with which to purchase US and UK debt. This is not possible for member countries in the EU.

When financial crisis from excessive debt hit the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) their central banks could not print euros in order to buy up their bonds, as the Federal Reserve did with "quantitative easing." Only the European Central Bank (ECB) can create euros, and it is prevented by charter and treaty from printing euros in order to bail out sovereign debt.

In Europe, as in the US, the driver of economic policy quickly became saving the private banks from losses on their portfolios. A deal was struck with the socialist government of Greece, which represented the banks and not the Greek people. The ECB would violate its charter and together with the IMF, which would also violate its charter, would lend enough money to the Greek government to avoid default on its sovereign bonds to the private banks that had purchased the bonds. In return for the ECB and IMF loans, and in order to raise the money to repay them, the Greek government had to agree to sell to private investors the national lottery, Greece's ports and municipal water systems, a string of islands that are a national preserve, and in addition to impose a brutal austerity on the Greek people by lowering wages, cutting social benefits and pensions, raising taxes, and laying off or firing government workers.

In other words, the Greek population is to be sacrificed to a small handful of foreign banks in Germany, France and the Netherlands.

The Greek people, unlike "their" socialist government, did not regard this as a good deal. They have been in the streets ever since.

Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the ECB, said that the austerity imposed on Greece was a first step. If Greece did not deliver on the deal, the next step was for the EU to take over Greece's political sovereignty, make its budget, decide its taxation, decide its expenditures and, from this process, squeeze out enough from Greeks to repay the ECB and IMF for lending Greece the money to pay the private banks.

In other words, Europe under the EU and Jean-Claude Trichet is a return to the most extreme form of feudalism in which a handful of rich are pampered at the expense of everyone else.

This is what economic policy in the West has become -- a tool of the wealthy used to enrich themselves by spreading poverty among the rest of the population.

On September 21, the Federal Reserve announced a modified QE 3. The Federal Reserve announced that the bank would purchase $400 billion of long-term Treasury bonds over the next nine months in an effort to drive long-term US interest rates even further below the rate of inflation, thus maximizing the negative rate of return on the purchase of long-term Treasury bonds. The Federal Reserve officials say that this will lower mortgage rates by a few basis points and renew the housing market.

The officials say that QE 3, unlike its predecessors, will not result in the Federal Reserve printing more dollars in order to monetize US debt. Instead, the central bank will raise money for the bond purchases by selling holdings of short-term debt. Apparently, the Federal Reserve believes it can do this without raising short-term interest rates, because back during the recent debt-ceiling-government-shutdown-crisis, the Federal Reserve promised banks that it would keep the short-term interest rate (essentially zero) constant for two years.

The Fed's new policy will do far more harm than good. Interest rates are already negative. To make them more so will have no positive effect. People aren't buying houses because interest rates are too high, but because they are either unemployed or worried about their jobs and do not see a recovering economy.

Already insurance companies can make no money on their investments. Consequently, they are unable to build their reserves against claims. Their only alternative is to raise their premiums. The cost of a homeowner's policy will go up by more than the cost of a mortgage will decline. The cost of health insurance will go up. The cost of car insurance will rise. The Federal Reserve's newly announced policy will impose more costs on the economy than it will reduce.

In addition, in America today savings earn nothing. Indeed, they produce an ongoing loss as the interest rate is below the inflation rate. The Federal Reserve has interest rates so low that only professionals who are playing arbitrage with algorithm programmed computer models can make money. The typical saver and investor can get nothing on bank CDs, money market funds, municipal and government bonds. Only high-risk debt, such as Greek and Spanish bonds, pay an interest rate that is higher than inflation.

For four years interest rates, when properly measured, have been negative. Americans are getting by, maintaining living standards, by consuming their capital. Even those with a cushion are eating their seed corn. The path that the US economy is on means that the number of Americans without resources to sustain them will be rising. Considering the extraordinary political incompetence of the Democratic Party, the right-wing of the Republican Party, which is committed to eliminating income support programs, could find itself in power. If the right-wing Republicans implement their program, the US will be beset with political and social instability. As Gerald Celente says, "when people have nothing left to lose, they lose it."

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

NOMINALLY ABOUT OBAMA'S TAX PROPOSAL, BUT LISTEN TO WHAT TOM FURGUSON AS TO SAY ABOUT THE IMPENDING FRENCH BANKING CRISIS


  theREALnews                                                                      Permalink

September 20, 2011

Obama's Tax on Wealthy Too Little Too Late?

Tom Ferguson: Tax proposal shows conservative economics have been a disaster

More at The Real News
Bio

Thomas Ferguson is Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and a Senior Fellow of the Roosevelt Institute. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and taught formerly at MIT and the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including Golden Rule (University of Chicago Press​, 1995) and Right Turn (Hill & Wang, 1986). Most of his research focuses on how economics and politics affect institutions and vice versa. His articles have appeared in many scholarly journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Economic History. He is a long time Contributing Editor to The Nation and a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of the Historical Society and the International Journal of Political Economy.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

SOLUTION FOR BALANCING THE BUDGET: TRANSACTION TAX ON -- AND REGULATION OF -- WALL STREET

  theREALnews                                      Permalink

September 17, 2011

Nurses Hold Actions Across Country Demanding Wall Street Transaction Tax

Nurses link increasing poverty to health problems, demand Wall St. tax as way of funding solutions



April 22, 2011

"The People's Budget"

TRNN Replay - Robert Pollin: A Wall St. tax would help fund infrastructure and health care investment

More at The Real News

Thursday, September 15, 2011

CIVIL LIBERTIES VIOLATIONS IN THE U.S. ...AND NAZI GERMANY

  theREALnews                                    Permalink

September 14, 2011

Post 9/11 Wars and Violations of Civil Liberties Continue

Michael Ratner​: Obama administration has reversed very little of Bush policy

More at The Real News

          Permalink


Life Under Hitler

An interview with a former Hitler Youth

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

MY FAVORITE RIGHT WING ECONOMIST COMES TO THE DEFENSE OF MY FAVORITE LEFT WING ECONOMIST. LONG LIVE BOTH!


September 14, 2011 at 19:09:35

Promoted to Headline (H3) on 9/14/11:








Stuck Pigs (and Presstitutes) Squeal


By paul craig roberts (about the author)

opednews.com


As an economist I have never had much patience with Paul Krugman's economics, stuck as he is in 1940s-era Keynesian demand-side economics. I have sometimes concluded that Krugman had rather denounce Ronald Reagan than to acknowledge that supply-side economists have established that fiscal policy has supply-side, not just demand-side, effects.  

However, Krugman does display at times a moral conscience.  He did so on September 11 in his New York Times blog, "The Years of Shame." Krugman wrote that 9/11 was hijacked by "fake heros" who used the event "to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight" and that "our professional pundits" lent their support to the misuse of the event. 

The stuck pigs, of course, squealed loudly. The war criminal, Donald Rumsfeld, publicly cancelled his New York Times subscription, and the complicit presstitutes in Washington's wars of aggression jumped on Krugman with spikes and hatchets. 

Perhaps Krugman meant to use the plural and say "unrelated wars." The US government has made war on Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, resulting in massive destruction of homes, infrastructure, and lives of civilians, all in the name of one lie or the other. In addition, the US government is conducting military operations against the populations of three more Muslim countries -- Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia -- with extensive loss of civilian life in Pakistan, a US ally. Drones are sent in week after week that blow up schools, medical centers, and farm communities, and each time Washington announces that they have killed "militants," "al Qaeda," "Taliban leaders."

Thanks to what Krugman calls "our professional pundits" and Gerald Celente calls "presstitutes," the American people know little if anything about the murder of countless civilians and displacement of millions of others in these six Muslim countries, which the Bush/Obama governments regard as "security threats," or habitats of small elements that are "security threats," to the single super-power.

Before I continue, think for a minute about the level of threat posed by these Muslim countries that lack internal unity, an air force, a navy, a modern army, and nuclear ICBMs. Compare this "threat" to the Soviet threat, which, at least, was potentially real. The Soviets had the Red Army, which had defeated Hitler and his high-class war machine. The Soviet Union had an amazing array of extremely powerful ICBMs with single and multiple nuclear warheads, and nuclear submarines outfitted with nuclear-armed missiles.

Somehow we survived 46 years of this threat without going to war. But Iraq, which all but the most stupid people on earth now know had no "weapons of mass destruction," was such a threat that the US government felt not only compelled to invade but also justified to lie to the United Nations in order to attack and destroy a country that had done nothing whatsoever to us and posed no threat whatsoever.

The same for Afghanistan. The Taliban posed no threat whatsoever to the United States or its European allies.

Pakistan is a US ally; yet, Washington has murdered thousands of Pakistani civilians. The liars in Washington and the presstitute media always claim that murdered civilians are "al Qaeda terrorists." Every time Washington blows up a hospital, a farmer's home, a school, Washington issues a report that it has just killed some al Qaeda leader. Some of these leaders have been reported killed multiple times.

I'm not surprised that this does not sit well with Paul Krugman. The best thing in the Keynesians' resume is not their economics -- although it was better, perhaps, than the economics that could not explain the Great Depression -- but their moral conscience. Keynesian economists, for the most part, cared about people and what happened to them. I knew many of the Keynesians and debated before university and professional audiences a handful of Keynesian Nobel prize-winners. I never thought that they were callous people. I never expected to miss them.

To return to Krugman: His message comes across most powerfully in the presstitute pundits' response to him. Michelle Malkin, whose book on immigration I once, regrettably, reviewed favorably, misinterpreted Krugman's courage as cowardice and called him a "smug coward."

"Coward" was an epithet that the presstitutes seized upon. A Washington Post writer, Erik Wimple, declared Krugman "cowardly."

After establishing Krugman to be a "coward," the presstitutes, who delight in murdering "towel-heads" in six countries, escalated their attack on Krugman. Peter Bella declared Krugman to be "vile" and to have "no conscience."

Bella's interpretation of a moral conscience as its antithesis is a typical presstitute response. It led to attacks on the New York Times for having a "cowardly," "bewildering," "arrogant," "vile," contributor who "has no conscience" as a columnist.

Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post declared the New York Times for publishing Krugman's column to be "a spiritual wasteland," this from a "newspaper" that many regard as a CIA asset.

In other words. Shut Krugman up. Cancel his column. We don't want to hear anything from anyone that casts doubt on Washington's murder, maiming, and dislocation of millions of people because of a "threat" that is a total lie. We are the exceptional nation. We are the light unto the world. Ordinary laws do not apply to us because we are exceptional. Laws are for underlings. We have "freedom and democracy." Anyone who doubts us is evil and a terrorist and a pinko-liberal-commie.

It will be interesting to see if Krugman's column survives his statement of truth. It will tell us whether America has succumbed totally to being the land of the liars, or whether a person of moral conscience still has a voice.

CORRECTION: CENSUS BUREAU UNDER ESTIMATES POVERTY IN THE U.S. BIG TIME, CORPORATE MEDIA ECHOS THE ERROR



Permalink

 

Over 56 Million Americans Live in Poverty – How Census Bureau Propaganda Ignores the Suffering of 10 Million Impoverished Americans


September 14th, 2011

By David DeGraw

Here we go again. The government and corporate media are pumping out more propaganda on vital economic statistics to mask the severity of our economic crisis. Deceptive unemployment, GDP, inflation and poverty measures are easily exposed with some research and a closer look at the data. The latest deception comes from the Census Bureau in their annual poverty report, which is now uncritically being “reported” on throughout the corporate media and echoing throughout online news outlets as well.

The new Census data reveals that a stunning 46.2 million Americans, 15.1% of the population, lived in poverty in 2010. This is an increase of 2.6 million people since 2009. While these are staggering statistics that represent the highest number of American people to ever live in poverty, and a dramatic year-over-year increase, it significantly undercounts the total.

The Census Bureau poverty rate is a highly flawed measurement that uses outdated methodology. The Census measures poverty based on costs of living metrics established in 1955 — 56 years ago. They ignore many key factors, such as the increased costs of medical care, child care, education, transportation, and many other basic expenses. They also don’t factor geographically-based costs of living. For example, try finding a place to live in New York that costs the same as a place in Florida. A much more accurate measurement of poverty, which factors in these vital cost of living variables, comes from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Unlike the Census poverty measure, which gets significant coverage throughout the corporate media, the NAS measurement gets little, if any, mainstream media coverage.

To see how the Census Bureau drastically undercounts poverty totals, let’s look at the past few years of data. In 2008, the Census reported that 39.8 million Americans lived in poverty. However, based on NAS calculations, 47.4 million Americans lived in poverty that year. In 2008, the Census undercounted by 7.6 million people. For the year of 2009, the Census reported that 43.6 million Americans lived in poverty. In my analysis, extrapolating data from 2008 NAS measurement, I estimated that the number of Americans living in poverty in 2009 was at least 52 million. After making this estimate, the NAS measurement was released, backing up my claim by revealing that 52.8 million Americans lived in poverty. In 2009, the Census undercounted by 9.2 million people.

The 2010 NAS poverty totals are yet to be released, so let’s extrapolate data from the new Census statistics in comparison to past NAS data, in the same way we accurately estimated the NAS 2009 poverty totals, to estimate the total number of Americans living in poverty in 2010:









As a general statistical trend, for every one person the Census counts as being in poverty, using NAS calculations 1.2 people are in poverty. In other words, the trend has been for every 10 people the Census reports as living in poverty, NAS reports there are 12. This would mean that 55.4 million people lived in poverty in 2010.

However, with costs of living sharply increasing, the discrepancy between the Census and NAS totals has also been increasing. Over the past two years, for every one additional person the Census counts as falling into poverty, 1.42 people fall into poverty as calculated by NAS methodology. This would mean that 56.5 million people lived in poverty in 2010.

Therefore, after extrapolating the data, we can estimate that at least 56 million Americans, roughly 18.5% of the population, lived in poverty in 2010 according to NAS methodology, approximately 10 million more than the Census Bureau is reporting.

So when you hear the government and media tell you that 46 million Americans lived in poverty in 2010, while that is horrifying enough, you should know that even that shocking statistic is putting a major positive spin on this economic disaster that is still far from over.

Also, keep in mind that the Census defines poverty as an income of $22,314 per year for a family of four. That’s $22,314 per year for four people. Given today’s dramatically increasing costs of living, a family of four trying to live on $22k per year is an extremely low poverty threshold.

To put this all in context, while 56 million Americans, 18.5% of the population, live in poverty, US millionaire households have $46 trillion in wealth, yet only one-tenth of one percent of the population makes over $1 million per year.

The United States currently has the highest inequality of wealth in our nation’s history. Tens of millions of Americans are stressing out wondering how they are going to keep food on the table and pay their bills, meanwhile the people who caused this crisis are rolling around in trillions of dollars.

The statistics speak for themselves. The Robber Barons have now been displaced as America’s most despotic and depraved ruling class.



- David DeGraw is the editor of AmpedStatus.com. His long-awaited book, The Road Through 2012, will finally be released on September 28th. He can be emailed at David[@]AmpedStatus.com.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011







U.S. poverty rate reaches 15.1 percent

By Michael A. Fletcher, Updated: Tuesday, September 13, 10:12 AM


The nation’s poverty rate spiked to 15.1 percent in 2010, the highest level since 1993, the Census Bureau reported on Tuesday, providing vivid new evidence about the country’s inability to escape the lingering effects of the recession.

About 46.2 million Americans lived in poverty last year, marking an increase of 2.6 million over 2009 and the fourth consecutive annual increase in poverty.

The total number of people living below the poverty line — which in 2010 was set at an income of $22,314 for a family of four — is now at the highest level in the 52 years the statistic has been collected.

The continued rise in poverty was just the latest manifestation of a troubled economy that has left 14 million Americans out of work and caused unemployment to hover above 9 percent for 25 of the past 27 months.

As poverty has spiked, median household income declined by 2.3 percent to $49,445 between 2009 and 2010. The typical household now earns less than it did in 1997, when inflation is factored in, a troubling sign of economic stagnation.

The decline in income has been most pronounced among those who earn the least. Overall, median household income has declined by 7.1 percent since peaking in 1999. The bottom 10 percent of earners have seen their income decline by 12.1 percent, while the top 10 percent have experienced a decline of 1.5 percent in that time period, the Census Bureau reported.

The Census Bureau also reported that 16.3 percent of Americans are without health coverage, a share that officials called statistically unchanged from 2009.

“Income down, poverty up, health insurance coverage down or flat,” said Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “The news on economic well-being in the U.S. is not good.”

The news was particularly bad for blacks, Hispanics, children and women. The poverty rate for Hispanics climbed to 26.6 percent from 25.3 percent, and for blacks it increased to 27.4 percent from 25.8 percent. For whites, the poverty rate in 2010 was 9.9 percent, a half percentage point increase from the previous year. Meanwhile, 12.1 percent of Asian Americans fell below the poverty line in 2010, which was statistically unchanged from 2009.

Among children, the poverty rate climbed to 22 percent. The black child poverty rate climbed to 39 percent, while the Hispanic child poverty rate reached 35 percent. The white child poverty rate was 12.4 percent.

Overall, Hispanics children account for 37 percent of the children in poverty, a share that has gone up substantially since 2009, according to William Frey, a Brookings Institution demographer.

“The Hispanic population has been hit hard by the recession,” Frey said. “They have been in jobs — construction and services — that have borne the brunt of what is going on in the economy.”

Meanwhile, record numbers of women were living in poverty, according to an analysis of the Census data by the National Women’s Law Center. The poverty rate among women climbed to 14.5 percent in 2010 from 13.9 percent in 2009, the highest level in 17 years.

More than 17 million women lived in poverty in 2010, including over 7.5 million in extreme poverty, with an income below half of the federal poverty line.

“Behind today’s grim statistics are real people who are finding it harder than ever to keep a roof over their heads, feed their families, get the health care they need and give their children a chance at a better life,” said Joan Entmacher, NWLC vice president for Family Economic Security.

The report found that the recession was forcing hard-pressed Americans — particularly the young — to double up in households with relatives and friends. Among Americans aged 25 to 34, the number of people doubled up in households has increased 25 percent since the recession hit in 2007.

Monday, September 12, 2011

The notion that a country in which truth is dead is a "light unto the world" is an absurdity. -- Paul Craig Robers

September 11, 2011 at 22:19:34

Promoted to Headline (H3) on 9/11/11:

Permalink


Does 9/11 Truth Have A Chance?


By paul craig roberts (about the author)

opednews.com

In the US on September 11, 2011, the 10th anniversary of 9/11, politicians and their presstitute media presented Americans with "A Day of Remembrance," a propaganda exercise that hardened the 9/11 lies into dogma. Meanwhile, in Toronto, Canada, at Ryerson University the four-day International Hearings on the Events of September 11, 2001, came to a close at 5pm.

During the four days of hearings, distinguished scientists and scholars and professional architects and engineers presented the results of years of their independent research into all aspects of 9/11 to a distinguished panel consisting of the honorary president of the Italian Supreme Court who was an investigative judge who presided over terrorism cases and three distinguished scholars of high renown and judgment. The distinguished panel's task is to produce a report with their judgment of the evidence presented by the expert witnesses.

The Toronto Hearings were streamed live over the Internet. I was able to watch many of the presentations over the four days. I was impressed that the extremely high level of intelligence and scientific competence of the witnesses was matched by a high level of integrity, a quality rare in US politics and totally absent in the American media.

As I stressed in my recent interview about 9/11 with Jim Corbett and Global Research, I am a reporter, not an independent researcher into 9/11. I pay attention when the fact-based community finds problems with the official propaganda. Perhaps this reflects my age. My generation was raised to believe in evidence and the scientific method.  George Orwell and other writers warned us of the consequence of succumbing to government propaganda as a result of disinterest in the truth or government manipulation of one's patriotism.

My ability to serve as a reporter of scientific evidence is enhanced by my having a Bachelor of Science from Georgia Tech, a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, and post-graduate education at the University of California, Berkeley, and Oxford University, where my professor was the distinguished physical chemist and philosopher, Michael Polanyi. In the 1960s, I was appointed Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, in order to provide together with Polanyi to the science students at Berkeley a course in Polanyi's unique contributions to knowledge. Polanyi's illness prevented the course from happening and condemned me to being a mere economist.

This does not mean that I am infallible or that my reporting is correct. If my reporting stimulates you, go to the presentations, which I believe will continue to be available online, and if not, some edited CD will be available. Try this

As one whose own contributions to economics, now belatedly recognized, are "outside the box," I am responsive to those who can escape peer pressure in order to advance truth. Here are some of the important things I learned from the Toronto Hearings.

The NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology, a government agency) reports on the twin towers and building 7 are fraudulent. Witnesses at the Toronto Hearings proved that Building 7 was a standard controlled demolition and that incendiaries and explosives brought down the twin towers. There is no doubt whatsoever about this. Anyone who declares the contrary has no scientific basis upon which to stand. Those who defend the official story believe in miracles that defy the laws of physics.

A nano-chemist from the University of Copenhagen, who together with a scientific team spent 18 months investigating the chemical and physical properties of dust from the towers, found evidence of nano-termite in the dust and quantities of particles not naturally formed by office or normal building fires that indicate another explosive was also present.

These findings explain the extreme high temperatures that produced the molten steel for which indisputable evidence exists. In the orchestrated cover-up, NIST denies that molten steel is present as its presence is inconsistent with the low temperatures that NIST acknowledges building fires can produce.

Physicist David Chandler proved beyond all doubt that building 7 fell over its visible part (other buildings obscure the bottom floors) at free-fall speed, an unambiguous indication that explosives had removed all supporting columns simultaneously. There is no possibility whatsoever according to the laws of physics that Building 7 fell for the reasons NIST provides. The NIST account is a total denial of known laws of physics.

Many other powerful points were made at the conference that I will not report, at least not at this time, because the revelation of malevolence is so powerful that most readers will find it a challenge to their emotional and mental strength.

Psychologists explained that there are two kinds of authority to which people submit. One is to the authority of people in high positions in the government. The belief that "our government wouldn't lie to us" is pervasive, especially among patriots. The other source of authority is experts. However, to believe experts a person has to be educated and open-minded and to trust scientific, professional, and scholarly integrity.

In recent years in America, scientific and scholarly authority has come into disrepute among Christian evangelicals who object to evolution and among anti-intellectual Tea Party adherents who object to "elitists," that is, objection to knowledge-based persons whose knowledge does not support Tea Party emotions.

In other words, qualified, knowledgeable people who tell people what they do not want to hear are dismissed as "the enemy." Much of the American population is set up to believe government propaganda. Without an independent media, which the US no longer has, people are taught that only "conspiracy kooks" challenge the government's story. Even on the Internet, this is a main theme on Antiwar.com and on CounterPunch.org, two sites that protest America's wars but accept the 9/11 propaganda that justifies the wars.

This is the reason that I think that the US is moving into an era where the emotional needs of the population produced by government propaganda overwhelms science, evidence, and facts. It means the abolition of accountable government and the rule of law, because protection from terrorists is more important.

The fact-based world in which "we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead" is being displaced by dogma. Anyone who doubts "our government" is an anti-American, Muslim-loving, pinko-liberal commie, who should be arrested and waterboarded until the culprit confesses that he is a terrorist.

The event of 9/11 is now outside the realm of fact, science, and evidence. It is a dogma that justifies the Bush/Cheney/Obama war crimes against Muslims and their countries.

Obama regime appointee Cass Sunstein, a Chicago and Harvard Law School professor, thinks the 9/11 movement, for challenging the official "truth," should be infiltrated by US intelligence agents in order to shut down the fact-based doubters of government propaganda.

When a law professor at our two most prestigious law schools wants to suppress scientific evidence that challenges government veracity, we know that in America respect for truth is dead.

The notion that a country in which truth is dead is a "light unto the world" is an absurdity. 

Saturday, September 10, 2011

IF, GOD FORBID, THERE IS A SEQUEL TO THE 9/11/01 ATTACKS: EXPECT THE HIJACKED AIRLINERS TO BE AIRBUS A330s

8 June 2009: Brazilian Navy recovers tail fin of Air France Flight 447
12 May 2010: Officials inspect the tail fin of Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771

As the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, the majority of Americans believe the official conspiracy theory, which holds that these attacks were carried out with super-human stealth and precision by a group of Arabs well known to have been total bunglers before 9/11/01, see here for instance. These Americans have the so-called mainstream media to thank for implanting and constantly refreshing the official conspiracy theory in their minds, while deprecating as “conspiracy theorists” anyone remarking on the myriad contradictions between the official theory and what is publicly known.

Indeed, former Reagan Asst. Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts poses this riddle:
“One would think that if a handful of Arabs managed to outwit not merely the CIA and FBI but all 16 US intelligence agencies, all intelligence agencies of our allies including Mossad, the National Security Council, the State Department, NORAD, airport security four times on one morning, air traffic control, etc., the President, Congress, and the media would be demanding to know how such an improbable event could occur. Instead, the White House put up a wall of resistance to finding out, and Congress and the media showed little interest.”
No member of any of the U.S. Government agencies listed above has ever been accused of dereliction of duty much less been subjected to disciplinary action. I find this ironic, given that I was actually threatened with disciplinary action for creating a lampoon of the Naval Research Laboratory’s internal news paper (for my own amusement, but someone did me no favor by posting one of the few “eyes-only” copies on a lab bulletin board). Surely NORAD’s dismal failure on the morning of 9/11/01 was a more punishable offence than mine, yet there is no evidence that anyone at NORAD was ever disciplined. However, the big difference is that I was the lone miscreant. By contrast, if some lowly officer at NORAD had been charged with failure to do his duties on the morning of 9/11, he might have said he was following orders from his boss, who if charged might have blamed his boss, etc., etc. Surely, avoidance of up-the-chain-of-command finger pointing can be the only solution to PCR’s riddle.

Even members of the 9/11 Commission have become convinced that the government lied to them about what they knew and when they knew it regarding the happenings of the morning of 9/11/01. For example see here. Why would they lie? ...unless the government had a lot to hide.

All of this leaves open the possibility of the 9/11 attacks having been an inside job, of which high members of the government had foreknowledge (even though the operation was surely secretly in preparation for a decade or more). In fact long before 9/11/01 I was an eye witness to two bizarre aviation events in the vicinity of the Pentagon that in retrospect I regard as preparatory for the 9/11/01 attack. Beginning with this insight, I worked out how insiders probably did it. In its simplest description, the allegedly hijacked airliners switched places with drone attack aircraft and/or fighter planes to spoof the radars. Thus, in my model, upon unwitnessed landings at remote locations of Flights AA 11, UA 175, AA 77, and UA 93, those passengers who were not co-conspirators were murdered in cold blood.

I am convinced that the aircraft that hit WTC 2 was a Boeing 767 converted to a drone. And this would surely have entailed years of work and testing, because Boeings normally require pilot pressure on the steering column to maneuver.

By contrast, Airbus jetliners are “fly by wire,” requiring no pilot pressure. So if the bad guys should steal one of these, all they would have to do would be to add a computer module capable of cutting off the pilot’s ability to control the aircraft and turn over full control to someone on the ground or in a nearby aircraft. This way they could murder the passengers and crew without looking them in the face.

The bad news is that I believe “the bad guys” have stolen two Airbus A330’s and faked the cover stories that they had crashed. I list them below. Note that each of the two aircraft was identified solely by its miraculously surviving tail fin.
(1) Air France Flight 447, June 1, 2009: Supposedly lost at sea in a storm not considered dangerous by an experienced meteorologist. It took fully six days of searching before any bodies or identifiable debris were found. My hypothesis is that the plane was landed somewhere in Africa where there would have been no witnesses. Again the passengers were murdered in cold blood, as I supposed to be the case for the innocent 9/11/01 passengers. I envision that the first few bodies and selected identifiable debris were flown out by a small plane. Two days after that more bodies and the tail fin were apparently flown out, presumably on a larger plane.

(1a) A new tail fin suitable for re-flying the Flt 447 aircraft could have been obtained from another Airbus crash the same month. See here and here.

(2) Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771, May 12, 2010: Supposedly crashed in clear air conditions while landing in Libya, where the only identifiable debris was the tail fin. The rest looked to be the contents of several garbage trucks spread out on the ground. See here and here.
Many readers know that Larry Silverstein leased – and insured – the World Trade Center towers two weeks before the 9/11/01 attacks and collected insurance payments of $3.6 billion for each tower. But how many know that Larry is now the owner of the Sears Tower?

So it would be a good idea not to fly A330s or hang out in downtown Chicago tomorrow, or on 11/11/11...

Monday, September 05, 2011

"Labor Day is an anachronism. It should be renamed Corporation Day or War Day to celebrate the success of Bush/Obama in eliminating labor unions as a countervailing power to corporate power and the elevation of War as the highest goal of the American state." -- Paul Craig Roberts

September 2, 2011 at 18:45:34

Promoted to Headline (H3) on 9/2/11: Permalink





Labor's Demise As A Countervailing Power


By paul craig roberts (about the author)


It is Labor Day weekend, 2011, but labor has nothing to celebrate. The jobs that once gave American workers a stake in capitalism have left and gone away. Corporations in pursuit of near-term profits have moved labor's jobs to China, India, Indonesia, Taiwan, South Korea and Eastern Europe.

Labor arbitrage, that is, the substitution of foreign labor that is paid less than its productivity for American labor, has enriched Wall Street, shareholders and corporate CEOs, but it has devastated American employment, household incomes, tax base, and the outlook for the US economy.

This Labor Day week-end's job report, announced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Friday, September 2, says zero net new jobs were created in August, a number 250,000 less than the amount of monthly job creation necessary to make progress in reducing America's high rate of unemployment.

The zero figure is actually an optimistic number. As John Williams has made clear, problems with the BLS's seasonal adjustments and "birth-death" model during the prolonged downturn that began in December 2007 result in the BLS over-estimating new jobs and underestimating lost jobs.

Seasonal adjustments and the "birth-death" model were designed with a growing economy in mind and result in miscounts during downturns. For example, the "birth-death" model estimates new jobs that are created from new start-up companies that are not yet reporting, and it estimates the job losses from companies that have gone out of business. In a growing economy, start-ups exceed jobs losses, but the situation reverses during downturns or during periods of sub-normal job growth. For the past 44 months, the "birth-death" model has overestimated the number of new jobs created. When the annual revisions are made to the job reports, the excess jobs are taken out, but it is seldom headline news.

The reason that nearly four years of economic stimulus, consisting of large federal budget deficits and near zero interest rates, hasn't revived the economy is that the jobs that Americans once had have been moved offshore. Stimulus cannot put Americans back to work in jobs that have been given to foreign countries.

Post-World War II Keynesian economists, such as Paul Krugman and Robert Reich, think that if the federal government would add more stimulus by enlarging the already massive federal deficit, new jobs would somehow be created to take the place of those that have left. This is a delusion. Not only have the supply chains necessary to support US economic activity been disrupted and broken by offshoring, but also the same incentive -- excess supplies of foreign labor that produces more value than it is paid -- that sent jobs abroad is still operative.

In a word, the US economy has been de-industrializing, moving from a developed to an underdeveloped economy, for the past two decades. It has been the case for many years that when the US economy manages to eke out new jobs, they are in non-tradable domestic services, such as health care and social assistance, waitresses and bar tenders, retail clerks. Non-tradable employment consists of jobs that do not produce goods and services that could be exported to reduce the large US trade deficit.

The long-term deterioration in the US economy has been covered up by "reforming" the official measures of unemployment and inflation. The U3 measure of unemployment, the current 9.1% unemployment rate, only measures unemployment among those who are actively seeking a job. Those who have become discouraged by the inability to find a job and have ceased looking are not counted as being among the unemployed, and the U3 measure makes no adjustment for those who are forced into part-time jobs because there is no full-time employment.

The government knows that the U3 "headline" unemployment rate is seriously understated and provides a broader measure known as U6. This measure, which is seldom reported by the financial media, includes short-term discouraged workers (those who have not looked for jobs for six months or less) and an adjustment for those who wish full time employment but can only find part time work. Currently, this measure of unemployment stands at 16.2%.

In 1994, the Clinton "progressive" administration defined long-term discouraged workers out of existence. Consequently, no official unemployment rate includes long-term (more than six months) discouraged workers as unemployed. John Williams estimates this number and adds it to the U6 measure to produce a current rate of US unemployment of 22.7%, an unemployment rate 2.5 times higher than the official rate.

Similar understatement exists in the measure of inflation known as the Consumer Price Index. In order to reduce cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security checks and to hold down other inflation adjustments, the "progressive" Clinton administration accepted the Boskin Commission's recommendation to introduce substitution into what had been a fixed, weighted, basket of goods used to measure the cost of a constant standard of living. In the new "reformed" measure, if the price of an item increases, say New York strip steak, the index assumes that consumers switch to a less expensive cut, such as round steak. Thus, the price increase doesn't show up in the CPI.

Consumers, or a number of them, do tend to behave in this way. However, since the basket of goods comprising the CPI is no longer constant, but changes with price changes, the CPI has become a variable measure of the cost of living that reduces the inflation rate by measuring a lower standard of living.

John Williams estimates the CPI according to the previous official methodology that used a fixed basket of goods. He finds the rate of inflation to be much higher than is reported by the substitution-based methodology.

The understatement of inflation serves to boost real Gross Domestic Product growth. In order to compare how much larger (or smaller) the economy is this year compared to last year, the GDP figure has to be adjusted for inflation. If the economy grew 5% in nominal terms and inflation was 3%, then GDP grew 2% in real terms, that is, real goods and services, as opposed to mere price rises, increased 2% over the year.

When John Williams adjusts US GDP with the former or traditional measure of inflation, he finds that there has been no growth in real GDP for several years. In other words, during the period of "economic recovery" the economy has actually been declining.
American economic decline began with offshoring during the Clinton administration. Instead of addressing this threat, the Clinton administration launched the neoconservative program of American Empire with American and NATO naked aggression against Serbia, sending the Serbian leader off to be tried as a war criminal for resisting the dissolution of his country.

The Bush/Cheney regime elevated the pursuit of American Empire under cover of "the war on terror." Based entirely on lies and falsified intelligence, Bush/Cheney launched wars against the Taliban, who were unifying Afghanistan, and against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
 
In the 1980s Hussein was used by Washington to launch a war against the revolutionary government in Iran that had overthrown the American puppet government, headed by the Shah of Iran. Ever since Washington lost its puppet rule over the Iranians, Washington has refused diplomatic relations with Iran. In the place of diplomatic relations, Washington demonizes Iran in order to set the country up for another attack a la Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen. Syria is next.

Saddam Hussein's service to Washington was overlooked when it became more important to eliminate support for Hamas and Hezbollah, two barriers to Israel's expansion in the Middle East, than to maintain Washington's gratitude to an Iraqi pawn.

Despite unequivocal reports from arms inspectors that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and most certainly had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11, top Bush/Cheney regime officials demonized Iraq as the greatest threat to America. The imagery of mushroom clouds from nuclear weapons was evoked, A war was launched entirely on false pretexts that destroyed a country and left over one million Iraqis dead and four million displaced. What Washington did to Iraq is what the Nazis were tried and executed for at the Nuremberg Trials.
 
Obama was elected in order to stop the illegal and senseless wars. Instead, Obama both continued the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and expanded the wars into Libya, Pakistan, and Yemen. Since the deregulation of the financial system under the Bush/Cheney regime and the "war on terror," the entire economy of the US has been sacrificed for the benefit of the financial sector and the military/security complex.
 
Labor Day is an anachronism. It should be renamed Corporation Day or War Day to celebrate the success of Bush/Obama in eliminating labor unions as a countervailing power to corporate power and the elevation of War as the highest goal of the American state.