Occupy for a Tea Party

The Tea Party and the Occupy Movement both feel it was wrong to bail out the banks and not Main Street, but that’s where the similarity ends. The Tea Party is against the TARP bailout and mistakenly insists it was passed during the Obama administration. Never mind that it was passed during the last administration while former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson was the Treasury Secretary, and that’s a large part of the problem, Goldman Sachs is in control of the Treasury, hence the bail for banks only and not the citizens.

The Tea Party complains about the bail out as too much government interference while the Occupy movement complains about the banksters the bail out helped the most.

The current financial banking disaster goes all the way back to the seventies when the rules for commercial banks were deregulated. Commercial banks could only invest in mortgages but were deregulated by pressure from the banks, so that they could invest in anything. The numerous board members were replaced by one bank president. This led to thousands of small bank failures, which then allowed bigger banks to buy up these failed savings and loans banks. This is what led to “banks too big to fail“.

After they created this housing bubble, and when it became clear to these robber barons that it was only a matter of time before this housing bubble burst, the banks bet against the hand they were holding, knowing in advance it was a losing hand. That’s a set up, pure and simple.

The original Tea Party wasn’t only against taxation without representation, they were rebelling against corporate control as well. During colonial times, the British East India Trading company had warehouses full of tea they couldn’t sell back in England. They convinced the British government to force all American colonists to buy only East India Tea. This tyrannical act stood to put many Tea Houses and Tea merchants out of business, part of the reason the tea was thrown overboard.

So both sides can find common ground in the original Tea Party except the people just don’t know it. In reality the Tarp bail out is only a drop in a big scary bucket, the tax payer is on the hook for trillions in sub prime debt. We all should be throwing this debt and the banksters who brought it to us overboard instead of taxpayer dollars funding 400 million dollar retirements for the very people who caused the financial failure.

Shake, Rattle and Raise Fees say the Banks

The president of the Consumers Banking Association, Richard Hunt said “Again, we do not want to charge our customers. We were forced to by Congress interjecting themselves into the marketplace.”

David Lazarus with The Los Angeles Times stated: The Federal Reserve says that it pretty much costs about 4 cents to process a debit card transaction, considering the huge economies of scale, 4 cents. So that means the current average of 44 cents represents a 1,000 percent profit. So now that we know that, as of tomorrow, that's going to be cut in roughly half to 21 cents, well, that's still a 500 percent profit.”

Bank of America isn’t going to lose money, their profits will be lowered. Yet Bank of America has the unmitigated gall to justify these profits by saying they provide fraud and overdraft protection, manufacture the card (is it made overseas?) and maintaining call centers. These plastic cards and all the other “services” they offer herd people into spending their money faster and with fees attached!

Using the excuse of maintaining “call centers” to justify mega profits would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad; the call centers are outsourced and they pay wages too low for Americans to compete with.

Now, their lust for money and power is transparent. No amount of profits will satisfy these gargantuan banks who are “too big to fail”. Not only that, the bankers threaten us. Richard Hunt said “This is a credit union and small bank issue. You are going to see thousands of small community banks go under because of regulation by Congress.”

On the contrary since the Savings and Loan bailout of the eighties, thousands of banks across the country have gone under due to lack of regulation including century old investment banks like Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch. The truth is the opposite of what Richard Hunt said, bigger banks have swallowed up the smaller banks and that’s how we ended up with banks too big to fail.

Today, the banks are coming right out and saying they will retaliate and make us pay for government doing what it’s supposed to do, protect the powerless from the powerful… except for when it comes to bailing them out of course, then they want Congress and all of the American people to interject billions to bail them out from their own lawless risk taking, so they can come back stronger than ever to charge us more fees. The deadly spiral is absolutely outrageous. 　

Jobs Creators or Slave Drivers?

There’s a lot of political talk these days about cutting taxes and slashing regulations on the “jobs creators”; but just who are these “jobs creators” and what kinds of jobs are they creating?

According to an AP article, service companies now account for eighty percent of the economy and all new jobs, and they consist of the health care; retail; utilities; and the financial industries.

Meanwhile, Bank of America will lay off 30,000 workers; National Grid; a utility company, reported lay offs of 1,200 in February of 2011, supposedly to reorganize and provide better service. Well, hurricane Irene proved that less employees will not provide better service but instead, higher profits for the company and greater difficulties and losses for the public.

An AP article reported in January 2011 that corporations have one trillion, and in July 2011 stated corporations are reluctant to spend the $1.9 trillion especially in the US, which would create jobs.

Rather than lending to entrepreneurs, banks instead choose to park it at the Federal Reserve, where it can’t create jobs.

An individual wrote a letter to the editor about his ability to create an LED company and hire ten people, but he was unable to create such a company due to the lack of funding.

Another entrepreneur was researching how to make oil from mold, as that’s how oil is made in the first place, but was finding it difficult to get his idea off the ground due to the lack of funding. A Mobil Oil gas station owner in St. Louis, who already owns 23 ‘profitable’ stations, every one was doing well, he’d been profitable for 30 years, could not secure a loan in spite of his collateral, to build another station because banks were withholding the funds to do so.

With corporations sitting on trillions; banks refusing to lend; entrepreneurs unable to secure funding; the federal government unable to spend along with state governments playing the game of which of their cohorts will get the biggest tax cuts, along with the largest reductions on worker’s rights, who’s left to create jobs? No one, We‘re left begging for jobs. Just the way they like it.

On August 4 it was reported that $2 billion had been spent on bullet proof vests whose inserts were faulty due to lack of proper testing. How many entrepreneurs could have been helped and how many jobs created with that government $2 billion? Just as the military is being given a false sense of security, the public is being lied to and lulled into a false sense of security, and the ’cure’ they say is to cut taxes and regulations on the wealthy, and reduce the government spending by cutting the regulators and inspectors, and that will create the jobs.

Hello!!! It takes money for job creation and supposedly we don’t have any. But there’s plenty of money to be wasted on military suppliers and contractors here and abroad.

The Economy of Debt

The AP reports 7-22-11 “Bernanke said more stimulus would only be necessary if economic conditions worsened and deflation re-emerged as a threat.” “He also said the Fed was nimble enough to respond if the opposite happened. He said the Fed was ready to raise interest rates that have been held at record lows for nearly three years, should the central bank fear a greater risk of inflation.”

Thomas Jefferson said, “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”

Centuries apart yet the warning couldn’t be more relevant if it were said today. We should stop letting the banks issue credit; it’s no longer about paying off credit, it’s all about “managing debt“. First they issued debt, then they insured the debt, then they bet against the debt they insured, knowing full well that the debt would not be paid back, and made billions while rigging the bets. And it was all done in secret, while the Federal Reserve, the central bank charged with ensuring monetary stability, full employment and consumer protection did nothing.

The end result is that our economy is too dependent upon debt, which has been a leading economic driver for decades. It’s time to dump the debt makers, freeze the banks and re-examine the issuing of currency and debt and who controls it.

Mayer Amschel founder of the House of Rothschild said “Let me issue and control a nation’s money, and I care not who writes the laws.” No wonder the government can only rewrite the laws affecting social programs rather than rewrite the laws about who controls the issuing power of the nation’s currency.

Too many of us are being robbed and deprived of property with millions more on the verge of loosing theirs. These gargantuan banks are like a cancer on this nation and they will eventually deprive us all.

Thomas Jefferson’s warning has turned into prophecy.

Austerity cuts or Tea Party fright

The AP’s article of August 6^th “The Tea Party exerts its influence on GOP states, “the Tea Party is “driving the conversation” said Republican consultant Danny Diaz. “If you are seeking office in this environment” he said “it would behoove you to discuss the out-of-control spending that’s taking place in Washington”.

And that’s the catch phrase being used, “out of control spending“, but not much is said about where all the money is going, other than Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

David Leonhardt of the NY Times actually said on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show that the biggest driver of the deficit is Medicare. In other words it’s old people causing us huge debt. Old people have always been with us, why blame them now? It’s easier to blame the people than it is to take a real look at where the excessive spending is occurring.

Where’s the mention of the billions we’re spending on supplying the troops in Afghanistan? The leader of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, recently assassinated was a large power broker who had a trucking industry. We pay out billions to people in Afghanistan for the circuitous trucking route necessary to supply the US troops. Now here’s a brother of an ally taking money from us shot by his one of his own men. Come on Wally, how telling is that?

When the US first went into Iraq truckloads of cash and weapons just disappeared, with no questions asked! Here’s two blatant examples of the excessive spending initiated by corrupt wars, yet the Tea Party says nothing about it.

Another area the Tea Party doesn’t mention is the 100,000 contractors the US is currently employing in Afghanistan each with an average salary of $250,000. How much is that costing us? And even if the troops come home, how many contractors will remain?

These questions and the true costs of war will remain hidden in the Tea Party driven search for “austerity” cuts, which include, but are not limited to Medicare and the pensions of military retirees. We have plenty of money for war, we just don’t have money for the retirees who risked it all to fight the wars.

If the Tea Party were really serious about “restoring fiscal responsibility” they would demand a full accounting of where every tax dollar is spent; rather than hiding behind catchy slogans while being too afraid to point out specifics. If we ever had an actual truthful accounting of where each tax dollar goes, the American people would revolt and hang every politician for high treason.

Drowning Visions the Norquist Way

The Washington Spectator reports that Grover Norquist said we don’t need a president with ideas.

What’s even more astonishing is that a vast majority of Republicans have signed onto Norquist’s pledge to never raise taxes on the wealthy ever; essentially pledging their allegiance to a faction, the Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), over the United States of America.

The founding fathers and the Revolutionaries pledged themselves to the ideal that man has natural rights which were bestowed upon government, the radical opposite from the belief at the time, that rights were given to men by the government.

Yet when interviewed on the NewsHour, Grover Norquist said, if any Republican dares to even think of raising taxes on the wealthy, they will be going back on their pledge to their constituents. Ha, wielding conformity as a threat, hardly a radical idea.

From the Washington Spectator-”Norquist used a corporate analogy to make his point. The Coca Cola company works hard to ensure the quality of it’s product, because product defines brand. Were someone to discover a “rat head in the bottom of the bottle,” Norquist said “Coke’s brand would be ruined for everyone.” “Republican elected officials who vote to increase taxes are rat heads in a Coke bottle”.

Grover’s brand is tax cuts for the wealthy; which were renewed last December but no jobs were created. But rather than believe the reality that tax cuts do not create jobs, the country is convinced all we have to do is lower taxes for the rich and the economy will right itself. Thanks to elitist right-wing factions like the Americans for Tax Reform and the evil media megaphone Fox news; owned by Rupert Murdock is the tea party and republican’s personal broadcasting media station spewing the propaganda that the idiots believe, and it is the ‘gun’ that is shooting the bullet to the brain of the United States, leading to our downfall as a great nation.

FDR said without vision the people perish. What’s Grover‘s vision, to drown government in a bath tub. When that happens, (and we’re well on the way), the founder’s vision of the self governing rights of man, will be drowned by factions. James Madison warned us against factions, a lesson corporate fascists like Grover Norquist and Fox News, have convinced the masses to forget.

Hedging the Debt Ceiling

The politicians are willing to have a “showdown” over raising the debt ceiling but not much discussion on where all this debt is coming from, other than the policies of this president. There’s a lot more to it than that, but making a simplistic answer it’s more easily acceptable to the public.

Wall Street has failed the country. In June 2011 the AP reported that “JP-Morgan Chase & Co. agreed to pay $153.6 million to settle fraud charges that it misled buyers of complex mortgage investments just as the housing market was collapsing.” And “J.P. Morgan Securities a division of the powerful Wall Street bank, failed to tell investors that a hedge fund helped select the investment portfolio all the while knowing and betting that the portfolio would fail.”

In July 2010 The Securities and Exchange Commission has

reached a $550 million settlement with Goldman Sachs in its case accusing the company of misleading investors in mortgage-backed securities, the agency said in a statement ."

The role of Wall Street is to channel investment money into activities which create jobs. Instead two of the biggest banks pay millions for rigging the system while funneling billions into their pockets. In 2010 Wall Street bankers took in $20.8 billion in bonuses.

Where’s the showdown over this failure of Wall Street? There isn’t one, and despite this gargantuan failure, the Republicans refuse to raise taxes on these same hedge fund managers (who pay less in taxes than the working stiff).

If the Republicans are so concerned over government spending then why don’t they increase the income by taxing these hedge fund billionaires who set people up to fail then bet they would fail? And why aren’t the banksters doing jail time for what they’ve done?

According to book “Thirteen Bankers” by Simon Johnson banks today have more power over President Obama than he has over them. And if they have more power than this president, they’ll have even more power over the next president. Just blaming Obama isn’t going to reduce their strangle hold over the economy.

Then, to add insult to injury, Standard & Poor’s said if the debt ceiling wasn’t raised and the US government only paid the interest on it’s debt, then this would result in a lowered credit rating. Well some of the “investments” picked by hedge funds were made up of interest only mortgage loans. And these same credit ratings agencies were paid to lie about these risky securities, and gave them triple ‘A’ ratings, which investors bought in droves due to the high credit rating.

And now they’re going to lower our credit rating after they helped spark the economic tsunami engulfing the world? What an affront. They should be facing jail time not giving out credit ratings. The reality of the situation is that Wall Street and the bankers are rewarded for letting the country down and transferring responsibility to the citizens through bail outs and blame for the housing crisis. All which has been achieved through decades of bipartisan submission, resulting in monstrous gains for the few and massive suffering for the many.