Wicked Leak, Wicked Truth or Wicked Set-up

Both Democrats and Republicans are perpetuating the myth that WikiLeaks is a threat to our security, and Attorney General Holder wants to try founder Julian Assange on espionage charges.

Not one government official paid the price when it was leaked that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent while she was actively engaged in searching for WMD. These actions ruined her career with the CIA. Just how many careers has WikiLeaks ruined? None!

The Valerie Plame incident was just a blip in regards to national security and yet WikiLeaks has been turned into a worldwide manhunt and scandal.

Former national security advisor under President Carter, Zbigniew Brzesinski, has a different take on WikiLeaks stating: “It's, rather, a question of whether WikiLeaks is being manipulated by interested parties that want to either complicate our relationship with other governments or want to undermine some governments, because some of these items that are being emphasized and have surfaced are very pointed.”

“And I wonder whether, in fact, there aren't some operations internationally, intelligence services, that are feeding stuff to WikiLeaks, because it is a unique opportunity to embarrass us, to embarrass our position, but also to undermine our relations with particular governments.”

Perhaps there is some merit to this, who would know better than Brzesinski who helped goad the Soviets into Afghanistan so the US could win the Cold War.

The editor of Wired.com said WikiLeaks set up the US when it chose Amazon.com. Now that Amazon is shutting them down, and even though many citizens may disagree with WikiLeaks, they do agree with freedom of speech, and subsequently will get behind and support WikiLeaks.

This is the second time WikiLeaks has released confidential documents about US foreign policy and we’re supposed to believe it was due to one low level intelligence soldier, Bradley Manning.

There’s more to it than the black and white story we’re being told, but we’ll never know, all information will remain hidden, never to be released by WikiLeaks or even reported by our own journalists who sadly, have dropped the ball and drank the Kool-Aid. They’ve left us with no one of integrity to peer under the rocks to expose the corruption and shadows that have developed and enveloped this nation.

Who’s setting up whom, that’s the real question.

Tightening the Noose

Right out of the gate the politicians tell us whose side they’re on: the rich minority, not the majority. The Republicans will block all legislative activity, including extending unemployment benefits until tax cuts for the wealthy are passed, and rather than fight back, the Democrats will lie down and take it.

Between the 27 billion JP and Chase handed out in bonuses and the 4 billion corporations spent on this past election, (with 2 billion of that going to TV stations owned by a handful of Fortune 500 companies), that’s 31 billion of our tax dollars into the pockets of the few. This is an example of how the wealth is being concentrated at the top.

The government with the support of Democrats and Republicans, have been cutting taxes on the rich ever since Reagan implemented his “trickle down” theory. Cut taxes at the top, and the increased income for the wealthy will trickle down to the little guy. And they’re using the same false trick with tax cuts for the rich. Cut taxes at the top and this increased earnings for the wealthy will trickle down and create jobs. It hasn’t worked yet and it never will.

The Republicans actually threaten the voters: if we don’t pass the tax cuts for the rich, taxes will go up on all Americans. Taxes on us will continue to rise, no matter if we pass the tax cuts or not. In addressing the deficit, a new national sales tax of 6.5 percent has been suggested and of course they’ll have to cut back on benefits. Gee, that sounds familiar.

Ireland was forced to do the same thing-investors in Ireland were threatening to pull their money out due to the banking crisis, so the government of Ireland had to promise to raise taxes on the people, and cut back on their benefits to get a bailout by the European Union. Austerity measures are being implemented in Greece, Spain and Portugal. France raised their retirement age and England saw violent protests over cutbacks in student aid.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve the bank, who prints our money, was bailing out banks both here and abroad to the tune of three trillions dollars of our tax money. Yet we don’t have the money to extend unemployment benefits here while people are loosing their homes, because of the backroom scams the banks enacted to cause the problem in the first place.

So yeah, let’s cut taxes and our throats by giving more money to the minority; the bankers, CEO’s and billionaire hedge fund managers, along with their lobbyists and political puppets. They’ll use this increased wealth to tighten the noose around our necks and the economy through propaganda, lies and threats.

Flat Wages or Increased Spending

On Wednesday November 24 the government released the finding which said Americans earned more and spent more in the month of October.

Of course Americans spent more, the price of everything constantly goes up.The price of gas has risen and according to the oil companies it is due to increased demand. A local news station reported the price of a Thanksgiving dinner is up from last year and a local grocery store owned by a company in the Netherlands reported increased profits due to more people shopping. Ha, profits are up because the price of food goes up weekly. Is that due to increased demand as well?

Electricity and heating is on the rise not to mention the impending health insurance hikes in January. Added all together, we continually make less as prices rise.

So who’s making more? From an article by Robert Reich -”The top one percent of Americans, by income, is now taking home almost a quarter of all income and accounting for forty percent of all wealth”. And in early 2010 JP Morgan paid out $27 billion in bonuses to executives, traders and “valued” employees.

People at the top are making more but for the rest of us, corporations have been slashing benefits and wages since the 1980’s. Robert Reich states: “With hefty campaign contributions, and platoons of lobbyists and public relations flacks, the rich helped push through legal changes that enabled them to accumulate even more income and wealth-including tacit permission to bust unions, slash corporate payrolls, and reduce benefits…”

In his book ‘Aftershock” Robert Reich sums it up: “The fundamental problem is that Americans no longer have the purchasing power to buy what the US economy is capable of producing. The reason is that a larger and larger portion of total income has been going to the top.”

Spending has increased at the top while requests from food pantries has increased at the bottom; with one out of four children living in a household which runs out of food.

Poverty has increased and wages remain flat, so who are they kidding saying Americans earned more and spent more?

Certainty for the Few

Representative John Boehner wants to make the Bush tax cuts permanent to reduce uncertainty in America saying, “ you can't invest when you don't know what the rules are, when you don't know what the tax rates are going to be next year. And that's why making these permanent would be the most important thing we could do to create jobs in the country.”

While it is admirable that Representative Boehner wants to reduce uncertainty, how many millions of Americans are facing uncertainty when it comes to keeping their homes, their pensions, or are facing the uncertainty of staying alive in Iraq or Afghanistan?

Is Representative Boehner concerned about relieving their uncertainty? Let’s face it, how many Americans make over $200,000 per year? It certainly isn’t the majority, it’s the minority.

A retired member of Congress leaves his job in government and then goes to work as a lobbyist for a bank or corporation with the starting salary of $500,000, and that’s on the low end. How is cutting this person’s taxes going to create jobs?

Since the taxes were enacted in 2001 and over eight million jobs have been lost, how is keeping the tax cuts permanent going to create more jobs? If those tax cuts worked, we’d have those jobs now.

The founders understood a good credit system is necessary to promote prosperity. Our credit system is broken, tilting towards growth for banks only, who have trillions parked at the federal reserve earning interest while refusing to lend. Tax cuts aren’t going to make them lend this money to create jobs.

Reducing uncertainty is a luxury many of us won’t be afforded, but one thing is for certain, those who are able to donate large sums of money end up with the rules in their favor; like tax cuts for lobbyists, politicians and the banking billionaires who pay them.　

Reaping Obamacare Rewards

Republican leader John Boehner said they have to repeal the health care bill or else it’ll bankrupt the country. Meanwhile, on November 3^rd, the Federal Reserve announced they’re going to print 600 billion dollars to buy US Treasury Bonds. They’re doing this to entice banks to lend money by making interest on US Treasuries come down, so investors won’t buy them so much. They call this “quantitative easing”.

The fed stated they are doing this to spur the economy and create jobs. In reality, it helps the banks (the same ones who brought us this depression), more than it helps the economy.

Understand, we owe interest on every dollar the federal reserve, a bank, prints. Therefore, we now owe the interest on 600 billion more dollars. How much debt will these interest payments leave to future generations?

The fed announced this back door bailout the day after the elections; which Republicans won by saying “no more bailouts”. Yeah, right.

The AP reports “stocks indexes reached new highs a day after the Federal Reserve announced a $600 billion plan to boost the economy“, “investors like gridlock”, and a “stalemate between the White House and the new Congress will mean less regulation of business.”

With no one watching, self inflicted gridlock means banks will continue to reap unfettered profits at our expense by printing money, and insurance companies will continue to monopolize health care while raising premiums.

By focusing on repealing Obamacare along with Mitch McConnell’s pledge to insure Obama is a one term president, they’re only focusing on the easy targets, they’re not focusing on tough targets like banks who are ”too big to fail“, or insurance monopolies.

Besides, it’s not like the president’s health bill or the financial bills did anything to address real issues, they only took out some of the most reprehensible business practices, like denying sick kids insurance or reaching a benefit maximum. New credit card laws prevent only a few banking abuses while leaving mechanisms in place to guarantee another recession/depression.

Catchy campaign slogans ring hollow when compared to the reality that in one year banks contributed 88 million to Democrats and 67 million to Republicans. Obamacare isn’t the only monster in the closet.

Undue Influence

Political contenders, tea partiers and free market enthusiasts are echoing what a banker said in the 1939 movie “Stagecoach”. The banker complained that the government wanted to examine his books and said rather than examine his books the government should reduce the deficit and cut taxes.

Back then, at least the government had the guts to examine the books of the banks; now, we have stress tests administered by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, a loyal friend to the banks. The results were predictable, they all passed with flying colors and are on sound footing.

What they should be examining is how the banks hijacked our economy by creating this new financial industry engineered by Wall Street and founded on sub prime loans. Mathematical wizards devised complex equations to over value our homes, then transferred the trillions in these over valuations into the hands of the few mega banks. (Which we have due to the banking deregulation of the seventies, which led to the public bail out of the Savings and Loans in the ‘80’s which then led to banks too big to fail, and another tax payer bailout).

The government has been cutting taxes on the wealthy for decades, and we see where it’s gotten us; trillion dollar deficits. According to Robert Reich, the government “halved the top income tax rate from the range of 70 to 90 percent to 25 to 39 percent; allowed many of the nation‘s rich to treat their income as capital gains subject to no more than 15 percent tax; and shrank inheritance taxes that affected only the topmost 1.5 percent.” Imagine, paying only 15 percent on profits made in the government sanctioned and bank hidden derivatives market, while the pay of common workers is reported to the government and taxed at over 30 percent.

Anyone who is against keeping the Bush tax cuts is called a socialist. Yet while the sub prime loan market was exploding, bankers were denying reality by insisting prices of houses would never come down, or if they did, they wouldn’t come down across the country all at once. Contrary to their idealistic free market beliefs, housing prices did fall and when they did it brought us this ongoing Recession.

We need a return to the realism of Marriner Eccles, former federal reserve Chairman from 1934 to 1948, who said in the 1920’s, that people with the concentrated wealth had “great economic power” and “ had an undue influence in the making of the rules of the economic game.”

This concentrated wealth and the “undue influence” it buys, caused the Great Depression. Concentrated wealth and its “undue influence” has once again caused financial catastrophe for many Americans. And just like the first time, it will be years before we get out of it.

Reforming the Entitlement Mentality

Tea Party candidates say we need entitlement reform. We need reform alright, but sadly, there isn’t much agreement on which ones should be addressed.

For instance, banks are now entitled to be bailed out. In March 2009 Paul Volcker said, “What all this amounts to is an unintended and unanticipated extension of the official “safety net”…the obvious danger is that with the passage of time, risk-taking will be encouraged and efforts at prudential restraint will be resisted. Ultimately, the possibility of further crises-even greater crises-will increase.”

There’s not much Tea Party coverage of this entitlement danger, but when it’s a social safety net like Social Security, that’s an entitlement they say we just can’t afford.

In 2009, after the tax payer bailed them out, Goldman Sachs set aside 14 billion in bonuses for their employees, which works out to 750,000 per employee. Not only are they entitled to tax payer bonuses, the banks don’t even think they should pay taxes on any of it.

In his review on the book Casualty Gap, about poorer and less educated citizens being more likely to die in America’s wars, former West Point instructor Andrew Bacevich, said, “…the powerful are determined to preserve arrangements that serve their own interests. Those who enjoy these privileges and the politicians who do their bidding-are determined to retain them.” And “…for the rich and well connected, inequality translates into privilege“. Isn’t privileged synonymous with entitled?

When it comes to this year’s campaigning, the heated rhetoric insists it’s Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid bankrupting the country, not a word about the trillions in entitlements we’re giving to Wall Street bankers and war machines.

Dislike for one another is gaining momentum, and it’s being used as a political platform for the privileged to maintain their entitlements, while the rest of us lose entitlements, like dignity in old age.