Jesse Ventura was able to talk to Larry King on Monday about the war and 9/11, bringing up some important questions for listeners.
Mr. Ventura also brought up the idea of a draft and war tax. This of course is if the decision isn’t made to fully withdrawal from the wars, which he supports as the highest priority.
I was trying to figure out if Congressman Obey’s attempt at a new War Tax was about robbing from Americans even more or if it is about waking them up. I just don’t know.
What do you think?
Will a new War Tax help wake Americans up or simply fund the machine of war for a longer period via even more tax payer money?
Yesterday we told you that Jesse Ventura thinks he was paid by MSNBC to shut up about his opposition to the war in Iraq. Now, as President Barack Obama decides to double down in Afghanistan, the former Navy SEAL and governor of Minnesota is calling for a return to the military draft and a war tax.
On Friday, I provided some specifics about who had loaned Dubai money, and the potential fallout from Dubai’s debt crisis.
But I just found another interesting tidbit.
Specifically, 7 Days – one of the largest papers in Dubai – wrote in March:
The US public will be “outraged” by Citibank’s $8 billion loan to Dubai just six weeks after the bank was bailed out, US House of Representatives domestic policy subcommittee chair-man has said. Read the rest of this entry »
As financial reforms face new delays in Congress, the chair of the Congressional oversight panel on the TARP program, Elizabeth Warren, told Truthout Tuesday that the nation’s financial institutions still pose major risks for taxpayers – and the economy.
She declared, “The rules that got us into this financial crisis have not yet been changed.” Meanwhile, she said, “The too-big-to-fail institutions are bigger, the banking industry is more concentrated and the toxic assets remain on the books of the banks. Worse yet, the implicit government guarantee that let big companies take on high risks, then keep all the rewards if they succeed and get taxpayer bailouts when they failed, are even stronger than they were a year ago.”
She added, “In other words, we are now operating under a set of rules that have proven to be disastrous, but we have not changed them.”
And yet Obama, like Bush, has done virtually nothing to create more jobs. Instead, they both gave trillions to the biggest banks (who are not loaning it out to the little guy) and for waging wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Obama is apparently escalating – not ending – the wars. And its not cheap.
Whenever I hold my two-year old grandson, Grant, in my arms I wonder what this world will look like six decades from now, when he is my age. I know that if we “stay the course” it will be ugly. The current economic meltdown is a harbinger.
Panama’s chief of government, Omar Torrijos, foresaw this meltdown and understood its implications back in 1978, when I was an economic hit man (EHM). He and I were standing on the deck of a sailing yacht docked at Contadora Island, a safe haven where U.S. politicians and corporate executives enjoyed sex and drugs away from the prying eyes of the international press. Omar told me that he was not about to be corrupted by me. He said that his goal was to set his people free from “Yankee shackles,” to make sure his country controlled the canal, and to help Latin America liberate itself from the very thing I represented and he referred to as “predatory capitalism.”
“You know,” he added, “what I’m suggesting will ultimately benefit your children too.” He explained that the system I was promoting where a few exploited the many was doomed. “The same as the old Spanish Empire — it will implode.” He took a drag off his Cuban cigar and exhaled the smoke slowly, like a man blowing a kiss. “Unless you and I and all our friends fight the predatory capitalists,” he warned, “the global economy will go into shock.” He glanced across the water and then back at me. “No permitas que te engañen,” he said (“Don’t allow yourself to be hoodwinked.”)
Some two decades ago, it was decided by the global financial elites that the framework for the global economy shall consist of:
1) A global derivative-based financial system, controlled by the US Federal Reserve Bank and its associate global banks in the developed countries.
2) The re-location from the West to the East in the production of goods, principally to China and India to “feed” the developed economies.
The entire system was built on a simple principle, that of a FED-controlled global reserve currency which will be the engine for growth for the global economy. It is essentially an imperialist economic principle.
Once we grasp this fundamental truth, Bernanke’s boast that the “US can produce as many US dollars as it wishes at no cost” takes on a different dimension.
WASHINGTON – The White House is promising that new figures being released Friday will be a more accurate showing of progress in President Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan. It aggressively defended an earlier, faulty count that overstated by thousands the jobs created or saved so far.
Ed DeSeve, serving as Obama’s stimulus overseer, said the administration has been working for weeks to correct mistakes in early counts that identified more than 30,000 jobs paid for with stimulus money. He said a new stimulus report Friday should correct many mistakes an Associated Press review found that showed the earlier report overstated thousands of stimulus jobs.
The AP reviewed a sample of federal contracts, not all 9,000 reported to date, and discovered errors in one in six jobs credited to the $787 billion stimulus program — or 5,000 of the 30,000 jobs claimed so far.
Lenders reclaimed 585 homes in Sonoma County during the third quarter, nearly seven foreclosures per day, according to a report released Tuesday by MDA DataQuick, a San Diego real estate research firm. It marked the largest number of foreclosures in a year, up from 478 in the second quarter.
However, lenders are sending fewer mortgage default notices, a step that precedes foreclosure. Mortgage defaults declined 6 percent in the third quarter, compared to the preceding quarter, although the 1,282 notices remain close to record levels set in early 2008.
Local currencies are gaining popularity almost as quickly as our dollar is being debased. The following news report is from December of last year, the video highlights BerkShares which is a community currency circulated in the Berkshire region of Massachusetts.
The currency was launched in 2006, since that time over two million BerkShares have been created. The notes are used by more than 350 businesses and thousands of individuals in the area. Another popular currency is called the Ithaca hour which circulates in Ithaca, New York.
In better times, a bleak war market would mean a boom in employment and fill all demands of the small communties. -ed
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Aided by a bleak job market, the U.S. military met all of its recruitment goals in the past year for the first time since it became an all-volunteer force in 1973, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.
Military services have been stretched thin by conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, giving added weight to recruitment efforts as President Barack Obama considers sending another 40,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan next year.
Last month the American Community Survey detailed the painful 2008 year for American households. This is a comprehensive survey looking at multiple financial, economic, and social characteristics of Americans. What we find is that the average American is having a tougher time maintaining a hold on the middle class dream. This isn’t a revelation but it does help us determine what to expect in the next few years. The American family in fact over the past decade has maintained the illusion of middle class living by going deeper into debt because of stagnant wages. The U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve allowed this to occur by injecting liquidity and creating a credit market that had no brakes. In the latest data, the median American household brings in $52,000 per year. Let us break down this data: Read the rest of this entry »
War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength, and Debt is Recovery
In light of the ever-present and unyieldingly persistent exclamations of ‘an end’ to the recession, a ‘solution’ to the crisis, and a ‘recovery’ of the economy; we must remember that we are being told this by the very same people and institutions which told us, in years past, that there was ‘nothing to worry about,’ that ‘the fundamentals are fine,’ and that there was ‘no danger’ of an economic crisis.
Why do we continue to believe the same people that have, in both statements and choices, been nothing but wrong? Who should we believe and turn to for more accurate information and analysis? Perhaps a useful source would be those at the epicenter of the crisis, in the heart of the shadowy world of central banking, at the global banking regulator, and the “most prestigious financial institution in the world,” which accurately predicted the crisis thus far: The Bank for International Settlements (BIS). This would be a good place to start.
Sept. 27 (Bloomberg) — World Bank President Robert Zoellick said the U.S. shouldn’t take for granted the dollar’s status as the world’s main reserve currency.
In remarks set for delivery tomorrow, Zoellick said the “next upheaval” in the international economic order is under way as emerging nations gain greater influence.
“The United States would be mistaken to take for granted the dollar’s place as the world’s predominant reserve currency,” according to excerpts released by the World Bank.
Posted by Brian 
