#hold corporations and rich cronies accountable

[kineticpenguin]

Larry Correia's fans love it when he "fisks" articles, blog posts etc. ("Fisking" is Larry's term for picking apart a post and making fun of it). So, now that he's had his brain fully melted by grifters like Jack Posobiec and Dinesh D'Souza, maybe he deserves a taste of his own medicine.

There’s a red wave coming because normal voters are fed up with democrat bullshit. They suck at governing and they cater to their base, which is psychotic.

There's this weird notion that Republicans and centrist Democrats have that the Dems lose elections every time they're not basically Diet Republicans. That the party has gone too far to the left courting the lunatic fringe. This doesn't really hold up if the last election was any indication; centrist dems actually lost seats compared to more leftist candidates. What's actually happening here is that the Democrats over-promised and under-performed, as they've done for the last 40 years. They don't lose elections because they're not far enough to the right. They lose because they don't deliver.

But the GOP has a history of being lame, cowardly, corrupt squishes, so our government keeps sucking. 

How do we fix it?

Right-wingers keep doing this thing where they vote for people who promise to bring the government down from the inside like Samson, are shocked to find that this only makes the government suck more, and conclude that the only reason we don't have a capitalist utopia is because these rich assholes don't have the balls to give themselves and their cronies even more money. Since they've repeated this cycle for the last 40 years, they just keep getting angrier and angrier that it hasn't paid off.

This is my opinion, based upon working as an accountant/contractor for the most efficient part of our stupid government, which was still a fucking clown show when compared to the corporate world (or at least the non-woke corporate world)

Larry likes to lean heavily on his experience as an accountant regardless of whether it has anything to do with the subject at hand. Y'know how there wasn't any actual evidence of election fraud? He made a bunch of posts talking about vague "red flags" in the election because... something something, he likes doing audits. Did you know he used to be an accountant?

A well known, yet denied, truth is that most government employees are entrenched and don’t do shit. They’re utterly useless. Depending on the department you could fire a ton of them and all it would do is free up parking spaces.

Now, there are some government employees who work their asses off. Good. There are some government functions which are necessary. Great.

A great many don’t work, or the work they do is utterly pointless.

Y'know, you say that, and yet every time an office or department downsizes, it tends to go to shit and they wind up having to pay contractors. See also: literally every military branch trying to save a few bucks by reducing their aircraft maintenance personnel.

As any honest gov employee. They will admit this to you in private. If they say no, everything we do is vital and everyone here is vital, they’re a liar protecting their budget, or one of the useless ones. Most places, if there are 5 employees, 2 do 90% of the work.

Source: No shit, there I was. Trust me, bro.

Pournell’s Iron Law says that as it grows over time any bureaucracy’s purpose will change from its original mission, to a new mission of protecting and growing the bureaucracy.

So now our Department of Labor by itself is bigger than LBJ’s entire federal government. This stuff never shrinks. It only grows. It’s an endless leviathan.

That is a weird comparison for a few reasons. First, it's plainly false unless you take the DoD out of the equation. The military was rapidly expanding during LBJ's administration to deal with that whole "Vietnam" thing. The Department of Labor currently has around 17,450 employees. Under LBJ, the USMC alone hit its peak of over 300,000. But if you throw out everything but "civilians employed by the executive branch" when you say "entire federal government," you can consider yourself technically correct, as 2,900 is quite a bit smaller than 17,450. That's some creative accounting, though.

Now I get that Larry is talking to an audience of knee-jerk "government getting bigger = government getting more badder" types that probably have Thin Blue Line punisher skull decals next to their Molon Labe ones, and they will absolutely eat this shit up without question, but still. Nice little truisms ignore the fact that bureaucracies can expand and contract over time depending on improvements in efficiency and the demands placed on it. Check out the Air Force since 1955.

Yeah yeah I know it's because the Democrats hate America and the GOP is too spineless to give us a strong military blah blah fuckin' blah. "Pournelle's Iron Law" still doesn't hold up. It's all a bunch of circular logic that nobody ever questions because It Is Known.

(And if you think military branches don't count as "bureaucracies" you have no business citing experience working with them.)

The leviathan needs to grow and protect itself against all threats, which is how you get super evil shit like the CIA and FBI meddling in US elections…

More circular logic with no basis in reality. The FBI is extremely conservative as an organization and treated both Clinton and Trump with kid gloves to avoid even the appearance of meddling in elections. The CIA waited until after Trump was President-elect to make up their minds whether the Russians were trying to help him or not. Before that it was "we know they're up to something, but we don't know what it is exactly."

Or constantly expanding its powers into new places, like the #MinistryOfTruth

If you're not familiar with Twitter, this is probably incomprehensible. There's a right-wing conspiracy theory that the Democrats are trying to take over social media under the guise of stopping misinformation. Right-wingers also have a complete victimhood mentality about their posts being moderated, believing that the people running those sites have it in for them. There is no evidence for this; every empirical study into Facebook and Twitter shows that right-wingers are typically allowed to post whatever the hell they like, with only the most egregious TOS violations resulting in suspensions, bans, etc. Anything that pisses off the old and middle-aged tends to drive up engagement and is thus good for the site's bottom line.

And that's when they're not just being cowards. Facebook deliberately lets Breitbart violate its policies just to keep people like you happy. But yeah, you're right, being given a time-out from shitposting is just like 1984.

This leviathan will find allies which help it expand in size and power. The more power/money you give it, the more it can bribe and co-opt other institutions. Academia, media, corporations, etc. 

Funny you should mention that, Larry. Most of the people you like to cite are propped up by billionaires like the Koch brothers and Peter Thiel. It's almost like the "leviathan" you should be worried out isn't the bureaucracy so much as the extremely wealthy guys with their arms up the ass of those puppets you live to listen to.

As the leviathan grows in power, it will become more malicious, spiteful, and controlling. Dissent is crushed. Freedom dies. 

@elonmusk  is currently a speed bump in this, which is why the control freak contingent is super pissed at him.

...Elon Musk tried to create his own "#ministryoftruth" called Pravduh, remember? You're talking about a guy who tried to get a kid's bot shut down for reporting on the movements of his private jet, which is publicly available information. He called a dude a pedophile for calling his stupid submarine idea stupid. He is not a free speech advocate. He's not remotely a "speed bump" for the censorious. He's just another stupid, rich asshole who wants to control the narrative.

The big question is, do the people own their government, or does the government own its people? If we are just assets of the gov, we can be spent freely, and bad assets get eliminated.

Look, either the government loves keeping useless people around, or it ruthlessly eliminates anyone not contributing to its goals. Make up your mind.

The leviathan is compelled to own EVERYTHING.

Again, I think you've misidentified your "leviathan."

Slowing the leviathan down isn’t enough. If you concentrate on stopping one part, others keep growing. Then when our bipolar country elects a new leader, those parts start growing again. Repeat forever. And it just keeps getting bigger. 

So we’ve got to shrink the whole thing

If the GOP had a brain/spine (lol) they’d slash the shit out of everything. They’d starve the beast. They usually don’t, because they are total chickenshits. They’ll pay lip service to this, do nothing, or feed their favorite parts. 

The DNC gleefully feeds the whole thing.

This is how you know you've given up describing anything besides a The Blob. You don't need to think about anything besides a malevolent Something that consumes everything, and then... then that'd be real bad. Also, the idea that the GOP hates spending is nonsense. They hate taxes. They LOVE spending. Especially if it's on the military. But only for tanks the Army doesn’t want, not cost-of-living raises for the troops.

Trump’s biggest weakness was he surrounded himself with people who loved government, and loved expanding government. Of course all of those fucked him at every opportunity. 

HAH! He surrounded himself with nuts like Steve Bannon and oil barons like Rex Tillerson. And his own children. The only people standing in his way were trying to stop him from fucking up. It's why nobody lasted long: they either got caught doing crimes for him, or realized that being anything other than a yes-man was getting them frozen out.

We need somebody who actively HATES the government to run it.

We need a Lucy who's going to HOLD the football! Christ, how do you dipshits keep falling for this?

if I was President (ha!) I would only create a single new executive branch entity. The Department of Fuck Your Job Security.

The DoFYJS would consist of surly auditors, and their only job would be to go into other government agencies to figure out-

A. do you fuckers do anything worth a shit?

B. which of you fuckers actually get shit done? 

Then fire everyone else.

Someone's got fantasies of being Steve Jobs. (Supposedly, he'd ask random employees what they did for him. If they couldn't answer immediately to his satisfaction, he'd fire them on the spot. This was completely ineffective because most of the people they reported to actually used them and would immediately re-hire them.) Trying to do this only gets you surrounded by yes-men who know how to tell you what you want to hear. See also: Joseph Stalin.

Right now it is pretty much impossible to fire government employees. The process is asinine. It is so bad that the worst government employees, who nobody else can stand, don’t get fired. They get PROMOTED. It’s easier, and then its somebody else’s problem.

If you think that's bad, you should really be a Defund the Police guy. Federal desk jockeys have nothing on cops when it comes to being impossible to fire. And they generally make a lot more money!

But the DoFYJS don’t care. If your job is making tax payers fill out mandatory paperwork and then filing it somewhere nobody will ever read it? 

Fuck you. Gone. Clean out your desk.

That's not a government job so much as an Intuit and H&R Block job. It absolutely does not have to be this way and you don't need your fantasy Chekas to do it. All you have to do is reform how taxes work like a functional country. But that would go against the whole "taxes should hurt" concept, which conservatives love! Thanks, Reagan!

We need to get rid of entire agencies. Gone. WTF does the Department of Education improve? NOTHING. 

Gone. Fire them all. Sell the assets.

Ah, we're going the "everything was already figured out in the 1860s" route, I see.

Any agency that survives this purge, move it out of DC to an area more appropriate to its mission. Do we need a Dept of Agriculture? Okay. Go to Kansas.

This will also cause all the DC/NOVA power monger set to resign so I don’t have to waste time firing them

Yeah, let's gerrymander federal agencies and make it harder for them to coordinate with the president, there's no way that could backfire. Besides, I'm not sure you could bore an Iowan like Tom Vilsack away from the job by sending him to Kansas. And that guy tried to bore himself away from the job.

Oh, and right wing pet causes, you’re not safe. I worked for the Air Force. We all know that we could fire 1/3 of the GS employees tomorrow and the only noticeable difference would be more parking available on base.

The only reason the military has so many GS employees is that some penny-pinching genius already eliminated the positions normally held by enlisted personnel, only to find out later it actually needed the guys they RIF'd and had to hire them back on as more expensive WG, GS or contractors because otherwise readiness would be destroyed. The attempts at slimming down and privatizing military services has been a slow-motion catastrophe for awhile now. Don't build base housing, that's expensive. Oh wait, now we have to increase housing allowances to keep up with soaring rent, burglaries are driving everyone insane, off-base incidents go up, and gate traffic is a Lovecraftian nightmare. Oops.

The responsible thing to do would be stop over-missioning the military and reorient our strategies around less intervention, but that'd mean no longer being the World Police, and might get you assassinated by LockMart.

Cut everything. We never do, because somebody might cry. Too bad. They’re called budget cuts because they’re supposed to hurt. Not budget tickles. Fuck you. Cut.

Cute. Utter nonsense, but cute. Pain is a sign something is wrong. If your cuts actually hurt, you fucked up and are going to spend even more money fixing the damage later.

And yeah, we're at "Megamind arguing with Metroman" levels of tortured analogy here but this whole thing was stupid from the start.

Shutting off the money faucet will also destroy the unholy alliance between gov/media/academia/tech.

It absolutely will not. Media's gonna do whatever gets ad revenue, as they've always done. Academia's gonna do its own thing. By "tech" I assume you mean social media sites, since reducing manning will in no way stop the government from blowing billions on new toys. Oh, but we gotta keep the A-10 around. Right. Better order 2000 more replacement wings for 'em.

Anyway, you're still gonna see all the people with money trying to control everyone under them. They can absolutely do it without the government.

Right now there is a revolving door, government job, university job, corporate board, think tank, the same crowd who goes to the same parties and went to the same schools and all that other incestuous shit just take turns in the different chairs. 

Sell the fucking chairs.

See, that's the thing. Those people, the moment your auditors come after them, are either going to sue the shit out of your administration, or simply bring your auditors into the club. Hell, they probably wouldn't even be in a position to be one of those auditors if they weren't already in the club or club-adjacent. In any case, this is the part where your simpleminded strategy gets you so tied up in red tape and litigation that you look like the Michelin Man in a spider's web.

Every entity that gets tax money inevitably turns into a pig trough for these people. Cut it all off. All of these money faucets ALWAYS cause some kind of financial crisis later anyway.

Oh boy, you're really not gonna like how you could actually do that.

See the student loan crisis caused by the government, here is free money, oh college has become expensive and useless, so now we need more government to solve it. You dummies get to pay for it. Have some inflation.

Hey, you asked what the Department of Education is for? I mean, maybe you could use it to do something about that? Like, maybe end the giveaway to banks that the entire system is and fund higher education and trades through the government. But then, I dunno, that sounds kinda communist.

It’s all bullshit. 

Quit pretending any of this makes sense.

Oh, believe me, I'm not.

The only way the leviathan shrinks is we elect people who actively hate the government to the government, and then only let them stay there long enough to fuck the government without getting corrupted by it.

People who actively hate the government don't participate in government. It's simple as that. As long as you keep telling yourself that this is possible, you're going to keep electing liars who put on a big show about how government isn't the answer, cuts things you don't like, but ultimately contributes to the actual problems and makes us all worse off. They'll be sure to keep jingling keys in front of you about migrant caravans, and Dr. Seuss, and Mr. Potatohead, and how the green M&M isn't fuckable anymore, and critical race theory in schools. So you won't notice until they get replaced and you'll be mad that you've once again been fooled by your "spineless" candidate.

The instant you see the small government crusader you sent to DC going “Oh, well maybe an unholy alliance between the state and OmniGlobalMegaCorp to develop a mind control ray is a good thing” FIRE HIM.

That won't happen, because it means letting a Democrat take his place. You can see the opposite thing happening now with the Democrats and Sinema. Democrats are furious with her for not doing what she was elected to do, but the centrist refrain is, "and what, let one of those REPUBLICANS win? Then we'll lose the Senate!"

So there you have it. That’s my platform if you elect me president. Fire fucking everybody. And only give me one term. Thank you. 

Four years of President Lawsuit. Or at least until you get so sick of spinning your wheels, you get filmed smashing watermelons on the white house lawn with a tetsubo and your ticket-balancing veep invokes section 4 of the 25th amendment.

Oh wait… why did I just get these hot insider stock trading tips in my inbox from Blackrock? I guess a second term is cool.

See, that's the thing. You wouldn't even be a serious contender if you weren't already playing that game. Money is Speech, after all.

Seriously though, something has to break. We can’t afford the loss of money or more importantly, freedom. The government either has to start cutting off parasites and control freaks, or stuff is going to get way way worse. 

I dunno man. Try burning down a police precinct or something.

[saltypiss]

Russia's hypernormalization hit america so fucking hard our presidents are gonna become kings.

I wonder if R's really think it a good idea to make people lose confidence in the government and all systems. Because they're doing a fantastic job ensuring nobody can really give a shit anymore.

Much like how Dems have Absolutely No Plan after Biden's second stolen term (only stolen in that he lied about being an interim) (because the elections are nothing if not completely corrupt unless blue wins) they also have no plan when SCOTUS permanently sends the country down the shitter.

It's just a reality TV show until we decide to do something. Sucks but, dems of all variety, ain't gonna do shit. Just gonna sit on their hands and bitch. Sucks to suck but, Dems aren't gonna be the solution. They're more of a shitty doorstop.

Dems once had The Hype. It's gone and dead now, now we argue if a Genocide is moral so long as a Blue person is aiding or committing it. We were so excited about raised minimum wages, making the rich pay back trump's tax cuts, fix schools, universal healthcare, better work protections...

But sure ya'll. Let's energize the voter by saying you can't criticize Dear Leader because he did nothing to earn anyone's respect or trust and instead killed the hype and made us scared to demand better, but he's not Dump, so he's clearly infallible and anything less than sheer devotion is republican.

Nah man. What's republican is Dear Leadering Biden like R's did Dump. Like...ya'll? Just google this dude's history and he stops being anything but another corporate crony. Dude's sub-human in so many points of history.

All I'm saying is: Dems demanded better from Dump but refuse from Biden. R's don't even demand better from anyone. Why the shit are Dems being republican on progress? How is he supposed to know shit if half of his base supports genocide and the other just wanted 4 day work weeks? How is he supposed to know shit other than making that easy oil money of tens of thousands of known casualties, half being children? That one's obvious, he knows he's fucking up but no one is holding him accountable, so he doesn't care, and next term he's given the keys to all our homes to burn and rob.

For people to defend a genocide with "of course he was going to be pro-israel" Ever consider the problem is he's pro-genocide because you idiots enable him? This is exactly what ya'll are demanding?

Oh and the Larpers claiming they'll stop supporting him if he stops the genocide? Understand that sounds like a Great Thing. To kick you out of the group of dems? Yes. When ya have a nazi at the table of 10, they're all nazis. Congrats Dems. You're now Nazis. Undeniably. Your body count is now higher than Dump's. At least I didn't expect any better from him, ya'll had me believing I could with Biden, until ya let him decay further and further until he became a whipped bitch for corporations. Just saying, at least Dump simply GOT millions and millions killed by covid for political gain, Biden's just aiding in a genocide because he has absolutely no morality or ethics you can trust, because, again, Pro-Genocide. But also because he's just gotta go with the popular opinion! Not...Not the actual one, but the one's that will net him votes from those who laclkcritical thinking and flip flop their empathy depending on the victim.

Just sayin'. If Biden was mostly aiding in the tens of thousands of deaths of children and any minority inside america, Dems would support it. Because it's Blue no Matter Who! Nah, realistically they'd be mad because now it matters to them...somehow. Yeah the people you'll never meet? They can Die. But your fruity friends? Well, clearly they're The Most in danger right now as we speak (Ignore Palestine's 70 years of oppression by Israel) (oh yeah and that whole Active genocide thing) (seriously stop focusing on the child crying over his father's blown up corpse CARE ABOUT THE GAYS WHO HAVE NEVER BEEN SAFER)

and remember you HAVE to vote for Biden because even though it costs the lives of tens of thousands, when it Really Fucking Shouldn't?????????????? It's an important... PFFFFT...haha..."""sacrifice""" (people think other country's I don't know about matter?) to protect the gays! They're what this election is 100% about! Minorities. (In america) (Must be virtue signallable) (preferably black, mexican, gay or trans) (but not some other label) (human lives are cheap) (blue no matter who!)

AREN'R YOU ENERGIZED AS SHIT TO VOTE FOR GENOCIDE!?!? WHAT DO YOU MEAN EVERY ARGUMENT I MADE IN SUPPORT OF GENOCIDE MADE YOU NOT WANT TO VOTE FOR BIDEN? WHY DO YOU CARE ABOUT PALESTINIANS!?!? THEY'RE LESS HUMAN THAN AMERICAN GAYS!!!!

Really consider the fact R's and the rich approve of the genocide, that Biden is working with both, because ya'll MFs can't be consistent morally, ethically, or logically. Of course he's aiding in a genocide, the only people being fucking understandable are R's and the rich, because they're consistent, Murder is Good, I just wish Dems weren't Actually Worse about that than R's. R's can be seen through with a hint of critical thinking, Dem's will actively Lie about their morals and beliefs the second it becomes inconvenient. Ya can't trust a grift ever, and my friends, Biden is a grift.

Weak. Dems are Weak. I can see why R's have more confidence in their rapist leaders, they're surprisingly consistent when you ignore the public relation noise and focus on the Larp.

A republican 10 years ago to this day still thinks a lynching is appropriate when seeing a Brown. Dems will claim otherwise unless it hurts Dear Leader's chances at re-election. Because in their mind, anything short of Percieving Perfection is tantamount to treason.

Biden could come out and repeat what he's said with Israel and Palestine about R's and minorities and I guarantee you this, most Dems will flip flop because now? Dems got their own Larp, and it's that Biden is the best president of allllll time! He...he has...he has to do something first. Something historic? Like. Raise minimum wage? Shit man.

No. You're supposed to demand better. Not demand worse. Not demand genocide. Not demand our Leader be Cruel and a Grifter. You aren't even necessarily expected to not vote for him, let alone against him. Just Demand Accountability. Demand Better. Demand Leadership. Instead? He hides behind his God Awful Sub-Human cohorts to speak for him.

We heard you loud and clear Biden. Anti-Genocide is Evil in your eyes, Genocide is Moral. I heard you, and ya lost my vote completely for it. The chance of apology has passed, the chance of regaining votes lost. He told everyone his ethics are that Genocide is Moral.

What would've make him votable, kept him votable, is the fact he'd listen, and would do what is Ethical and Moral. The fact we Can Demand Change. The fact we can Approach And Consider. Y'know, like what you're supposed to do with your leaders. Not just accept them as Gods of perfection.

But sure. Telling disenfranchised voters that their opinions don't matter and People and Children Just Have To Die For Biden, that demanding leadership or any accountability is actually rather Republican! Yes Dems are saying exactly this right now. Because otherwise? Maybe don't tell people they just have to accept the guy who's done nothing but kill the hype, and Kill Children.

Maybe don't tell disenfranchised voters that that whole silly genocide thing isn't as compellig to your morals as the possibility...it's..it's not a possibility. I'm not sorry, Dump ain't ever getting in office again. What we're doing is working with the definite second term Biden right now. And the fact we're letting him commit a Genocide simply due to fear mongering? That's not the Dems I remember.

Okay so, After Biden gets the second term, what are we gonna do about that "silly ol genocide thing?" Because I sure hope you idiots aren't seriously considering he can get a third term? Remember how tens of thousands of children died thanks to this guy? Because you refused to demand he simply...not. do that? Maybe Biden could simply, not? Come with the Thousands of Dead Children baggage? Maybe we can ask him to y'know, drop the dangling corpses of, again, children, and instead, be reasonable?

y'know, we used to say Dump was going to commit a genocide. The fact we got exactly that? I really, really, don't have the energy to vote. I don't have that blue no matter who in me anymore. Because Dems are as bad as R's with their Dear Leader.

just a dump in blue, of course he's smarter, but fact is, he's still a politician. Not your friend. Not your hero. Not shit. He's never been shit and will be passed on in history books. Because again, he's actively done nothing his entire career, except hurting minorities. Or sniffing kids. Yeah sorry, ya can't ignore that one anymore. Demand leaders that aren't genocidal pedophiles, dems, do better than R's.

Just saying. Maybe we shouldn't demand diet dump as our leadership? Maybe instead of just letting these people be completely unchained is a bad idea? Maybe just because R's are blatantly corrupt, doesn't mean Dems aren't at least halfway as much? Because the whole of the government is corrupt and broken.

Idunno man, seems REAL fucking lucky that in a 2 party system, that somehow, miraculously, only One Party is actually moral and good and perfect. Seems more likely that one party fell apart and the other party simply hasn't, but they're both shit. They both are pro-genocide. And there is no fixing that other than to minimize a genocider's voice. That requires more parties to make such a decision absolutely a political suicide thing, instead of simply one thing to consider.

Really

Understand your shortsightedness will lead to another R president. No on after Biden. And dems just exposed how little they believe in the words they've said. I don't trust dems when they say "genocide good" and "save the gays!" on the same profile. Hopefully. Dema will understand that kinda shit is why people left R's. That this is an open wound that will only fester.

Dems enabled their genocidal immorality. It's only a matter of time before they're as bad as R's. Sorry that I make it a principle to not support Genocide. I'm sorry for you thinking that's a necessary "sacrifice" when you could've simply demanded better instead of compromising your morals for a dude who has never done shit for you.

#biden

[berniesrevolution]

THE GUARDIAN

There is a global struggle taking place of enormous consequence. Nothing less than the future of the planet – economically, socially and environmentally – is at stake.

At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, when the world’s top 1% now owns more wealth than the bottom 99%, we are seeing the rise of a new authoritarian axis.

While these regimes may differ in some respects, they share key attributes: hostility toward democratic norms, antagonism toward a free press, intolerance toward ethnic and religious minorities, and a belief that government should benefit their own selfish financial interests. These leaders are also deeply connected to a network of multi-billionaire oligarchs who see the world as their economic plaything.

Those of us who believe in democracy, who believe that a government must be accountable to its people, must understand the scope of this challenge if we are to effectively confront it.

It should be clear by now that Donald Trump and the rightwing movement that supports him is not a phenomenon unique to the United States. All around the world, in Europe, in Russia, in the Middle East, in Asia and elsewhere we are seeing movements led by demagogues who exploit people’s fears, prejudices and grievances to achieve and hold on to power.

This trend certainly did not begin with Trump, but there’s no question that authoritarian leaders around the world have drawn inspiration from the fact that the leader of the world’s oldest and most powerful democracy seems to delight in shattering democratic norms.

Three years ago, who would have imagined that the United States would stay neutral between Canada, our democratic neighbor and second largest trading partner, and Saudi Arabia, a monarchic, client state that treats women as third-class citizens? It’s also hard to imagine that Israel’s Netanyahu government would have moved to pass the recent “nation state law”, which essentially codifies the second-class status of Israel’s non-Jewish citizens, if Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t know Trump would have his back.

All of this is not exactly a secret. As the US continues to grow further and further apart from our longtime democratic allies, the US ambassador to Germany recently made clear the Trump administration’s support for rightwing extremist parties across Europe.

In addition to Trump’s hostility toward democratic institutions we have a billionaire president who, in an unprecedented way, has blatantly embedded his own economic interests and those of his cronies into the policies of government.

Other authoritarian states are much farther along this kleptocratic process. In Russia, it is impossible to tell where the decisions of government end and the interests of Vladimir Putin and his circle of oligarchs begin. They operate as one unit. Similarly, in Saudi Arabia, there is no debate about separation because the natural resources of the state, valued at trillions of dollars, belong to the Saudi royal family. In Hungary, far-right authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán is openly allied with Putin in Russia. In China, an inner circle led by Xi Jinping has steadily consolidated power, clamping down on domestic political freedom while it aggressively promotes a version of authoritarian capitalism abroad.

We must understand that these authoritarians are part of a common front. They are in close contact with each other, share tactics and, as in the case of European and American rightwing movements, even share some of the same funders. The Mercer family, for example, supporters of the infamous Cambridge Analytica, have been key backers of Trump and of Breitbart News, which operates in Europe, the United States and Israel to advance the same anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim agenda. Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson gives generously to rightwing causes in both the United States and Israel, promoting a shared agenda of intolerance and illiberalism in both countries.

The truth is, however, that to effectively oppose rightwing authoritarianism, we cannot simply go back to the failed status quo of the last several decades. Today in the United States, and in many other parts of the world, people are working longer hours for stagnating wages, and worry that their children will have a lower standard of living than they do.

Our job is to fight for a future in which new technology and innovation works to benefit all people, not just a few. It is not acceptable that the top 1% of the world’s population owns half the planet’s wealth, while the bottom 70% of the working age population accounts for just 2.7% of global wealth.

Together governments of the world must come together to end the absurdity of the rich and multinational corporations stashing over $21tn in offshore bank accounts to avoid paying their fair share of taxes and then demanding that their respective governments impose an austerity agenda on their working families.

It is not acceptable that the fossil fuel industry continues to make huge profits while their carbon emissions destroy the planet for our children and grandchildren.

It is not acceptable that a handful of multinational media giants, owned by a small number of billionaires, largely control the flow of information on the planet.

It is not acceptable that trade policies that benefit large multinational corporations and encourage a race to the bottom hurt working people throughout the world as they are written out of public view.

It is not acceptable that, with the cold war long behind us, countries around the world spend over $1tn a year on weapons of destruction, while millions of children die of easily treatable diseases.

In order to effectively combat the rise of the international authoritarian axis, we need an international progressive movement that mobilizes behind a vision of shared prosperity, security and dignity for all people, and that addresses the massive global inequality that exists, not only in wealth but in political power.

Such a movement must be willing to think creatively and boldly about the world that we would like to see. While the authoritarian axis is committed to tearing down a post-second world war global order that they see as limiting their access to power and wealth, it is not enough for us to simply defend that order as it exists now.

We must look honestly at how that order has failed to deliver on many of its promises, and how authoritarians have adeptly exploited those failures in order to build support for their agenda. We must take the opportunity to reconceptualize a genuinely progressive global order based on human solidarity, an order that recognizes that every person on this planet shares a common humanity, that we all want our children to grow up healthy, to have a good education, have decent jobs, drink clean water, breathe clean air and live in peace.

Our job is to reach out to those in every corner of the world who share these values, and who are fighting for a better world.

In a time of exploding wealth and technology, we have the potential to create a decent life for all people. Our job is to build on our common humanity and do everything that we can to oppose all of the forces, whether unaccountable government power or unaccountable corporate power, who try to divide us up and set us against each other. We know that those forces work together across borders. We must do the same.

Bernie Sanders is a US Senator from Vermont

We asked Yanis Varoufakis to comment on Bernie Sanders’ piece. Here is his response:

Bernie Sanders is spot-on. Financiers have long formed an international “brotherhood” to guarantee themselves international bailouts when their paper pyramids crash.

More recently, xenophobic rightwing zealots also formed their very own Nationalist International, turning once proud people against another so that they control their wealth and politics.

It is high time that Democrats from across the world form a Progressive International in the interests of a majority of people on every continent, in every country.

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #yanis varoufakis #bernie sanders #the guardian #foreign policy #capitalism #neo fascism #internationalism #trade agreements #trade policy #economic inequality #progressive #progressive movement #democratic socialism #socialism

[commiepinkofag]

Wealth Is A Far Greater Threat to American-style Democracy than ‘International Interlopers’ on Social Media

Through American-style democracy [read: capitalism], we have created a system that supports the out-of control acquisition of wealth and power, and ensures the repeated appointments of the wealthy to positions of far greater power, enacting legislation solely in their self-interest.

It is a one-party system, that allows the wealthy to pillage our tax dollars for easy profit. It has enabled corruption of the highest order. 

Control Access

Voter Suppression targeting people of color, poor [restricting access through voter ID laws, closure of voting locations, voting held during standard work-week/hours, misinformation and fear tactics]

Disenfranchisement through mass incarceration

Gerrymandering to favor Conservative delegates

Paperless voting machines, built and contracted through Conservative-leaning corporations, without adequate means of verifying election results

Direct Harm of the Electorate

Legislation and court appointments that favor the wealthy: campaign financing [Citizens United] to limit who may run for office, defunding public aid programs Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security/public housing, sentencing that disproportionately targets minorities, & the poor and protects the wealthy

Profit from war, destruction, destabilization, death: profit from the sale of arms, profit from the acquisition/pillage of new resources, and profit through the reconstruction of destroyed infrastructure  

Government-sanctioned corporate censorship of dissent

Corporate control of production and access to reliably accurate information, that is not disclosed as public relations/marketing or lobbying to profit industry [mainstream media]

Privatization of public [water/land] resources and utilities that further enrich the wealthy, deprive access to common necessities

Privatized healthcare and corporate-owned insurance mandates to profit from illness, increase debt, lower quality of life & life-expectancy

Limiting education and opportunity through economic barriers, corporate-controlled textbooks, and limited funding of public schools and food programs, continued economic/geographic segregation.

Conflicts of interest in contracting, lobbyist hiring/appointments, appointed government officials purchasing paperless voting machines with plans to run for elected office

Providing tax-breaks for the wealthy, kickbacks and contracts to cronies 

Allowing tax-dodging for corporations without compensation or contribution to the communities that provide public resources

Deregulation of industries to allow monopolies, remove oversight for worker and consumer protections, increase risk of harm

Failures to hold corporations accountable for fraud, negligence, malfeasance, environmental degradation and human rights violations [poisoning land & water resources, fracking, oil spills, waste disposal, mortgage/lending, drug profiteering … ]

Exploitation of workers through failures to close the wage gap, and ensure a living wage, or provide a universal basic income

Increased division of the electorate through favored, special-interest, and targeted ‘single-issue’ legislation that further exploits groups, in leaving portions of the population unprotected, or in creating new barriers while appeasing some; [majority votes to ‘allow’ minorities portions of equal access]

Creation of the idea of choice in a one-party system, through the fabrication of a ‘free-market’ brand-variation of a corporate monopoly

This system of governance may be idealized as a ‘representative democracy’, yet the government currently represents only the interests of the few wealthy at the expense of all else — namely, the major populace and the environment we rely on. As the rich, through their corporations, scramble privatize the Earth’s remaining water and land resources, the disparity and desperation of a divided people grows. 

Direct and fundamental change to this system is imperative. We must level these injustices and inequities through organized action, education and empowerment in the dissolution of power. 

To have a system of government established to protect people from abuses of power is far more sustainable and stronger than a government established in favor of the wealthiest people.  

Equity & justice is possible with the dismantling of capitalist-driven governance.

[The above is an abbreviated list. Feel free to expand and expound.]

@brentpruitt​ / @commiepinkofag​ Capitalism = Fascism

#equity #socialism #merka #wealth #ˇrich white christian men #right-wing #centrist #disparity #capitalism #economics #us politics #usa #russia #manifesto #democracy #republican #libertarian #democrats

[skydancer610-blog]

EARTH ONE CALLING: DISSECTING THE PARALLEL UNIVERSE OF TRUMP’S GOP

Dear GOP:

• You can no longer lecture us about divisiveness, or lambaste the Democrats foR “playing politics” when your warped media ecosystem has disseminated the very GOP talking points that have routinely tarred and feathered anyone left of Karl Rove on the daily for the past three decades.

• You can no longer drone on about why we should not prosecute your dearly departed Fuhrer "For the good of the country" when your elected representatives are focused only on their own narrow self-preservation and fund-raising. Let’s face it: you don’t give a shit about this country. If you did, you would have stood up to a president who has been actively destroying it for five years.

• You can no longer posture about unity or bipartisanship, especially when Trump’s GOP just spent four years exhibiting telltale fascist tendencies in the dogged pursuit of one-party rule, all the while waging a holy war on the main institutions entrusted with discovery and discernment of truth: the media, the judiciary, science, and education.

• You can no longer plead for civility on the part of Democrats when your representatives and media have spent decades shouting down anyone who isn’t on their side (here's looking at you Jim Jordan). And you especially can no longer lecture us about civility in the aftermath of your own supporters openly advocating-and then enacting-Civil War in the failed 1/6 fascist coup designed to keep your exalted Dear Loser as President.

• You can no longer shout from the top your soap boxes about leftist extremists, radicals, socialism, or communism when your party has veered so far to the right over the last three decades that it now teeters on the edge of a nihilist rightward cliff, about to plunge into full-on fascism.

• You can no longer lecture us about the dangers of violent Antifa and BLM protesters, especially given that a) over 95% of BLM protests were peaceful, b) so-called ”lone wolf” assailants have committed horrific acts of violence (i.e. racially motivated mass shootings) in the name of Donald Trump, and especially c) thousands of Trump supporters committed an act of mob violence on 1/6 so heinous that it has traumatized an entire nation and many of its duly elected Congressional representatives, Be there Republican or Democrat.

• You can no longer claim to be the party of "Law and order.” Don't even try it. Not when the leader of your party is a career criminal who spent the entirety of his presidency rigging the legal system to avoid consequences for his neverending litany of crimes, including Bank and tax fraud, conspiring with Russia to get elected, conspiring to withhold much-needed aid from Ukraine unless their president would ”dome a favor though,” committing election fraud in a call with the Georgia secretary of state, and especially for knowingly inciting the violent insurrection that resulted in over 140 law enforcement officers injured and three dead. Add to this Bill Barr’s politicization of the judiciary, the systematic rigging of our legal system at every level, and the countless Trump administration officials who were caught red-handed violating Federal laws and ethical standards, we need to call the GOP what it is: a lawless party led by angry White men to whom the laws of the land do not apply, and whose nakedly partisan judicial Philosophy has become “the law is whatever I say it is.”

• You certainly can no longer continue to demonize the mainstream media, facts and evidence-based reporting as "fake news", particularly since you have created a parallel media universe whose very existence demands that the brains of your legions of supporters must remain steeped in a toxic cesspool of mendacious venom in which warped talking-head drivel has wholly supplanted the reporting of actual news.

• You can no longer continue to channel Reagan’s dictum about how “government I s the problem,” especially since it has become glaringly obvious that most Republican politicians have no interest in governing to begin with, save for overfunding our military and police, under my name a woman’s right to choose, and squandering precious time and resources on such pressing matters as trans bathroom access and an umpteenth hearing on Benghazi. Once elected, GOP legislators routinely produces budgets that starve government agencies of funding, effectively reducing them to the status of a broke and emaciated pauper begging for spare change. These agencies are offered up as sacrifices to the God of lower taxes. Your anti-government rhetoric has thus morphed into a self-filling prophecy: you spout tired talking points that demonize government, then you get elected and cripple government, only to proclaim "look ma, government doesn’t work anymore". Aside from culture wars, your “Governing” it is not limited to gerrymandering, voter suppression, raising funds to get re-elected, and lining the pockets of your rich cronies. As our country rots away and the public good deteriorates, it is not a stretch to suggest that YOU have become the problem.

• You definitely can no longer claim the mantle of pro-life, not when you denounce science, support the death penalty, oppose access to healthcare, restrict funding for social services, and rationalize away the murder of Black Americans by an increasingly militarized police force. Truth be told, yours is a party that has become decidedly anti-life during the pandemic, first by downplaying the severity of COVID, then refusing to wear masks in the face of a deadly pandemic that has now killed roughly 1 in 700 Americans. Add to this a presidential administration that knowingly lied to the public about the risk posed by the coronavirus, and then systematically failed to address it. President Trump opted instead to corrupt the CDC and wage a public relations campaign rather than performing the necessary governmental function of tackling this deadly disease.

• You can no longer position yourself as the party of ”faith” and family values when you openly show hostility toward non-Christian religious and spiritual orientations, demonize entire races of putative “children of God,” or oppose expanding access to healthcare for families across the nation. Whatever God you are serving, it is certainly want for compassion. Additionally, your politicians and conservative media ritually engage in bad faith arguments in lieu of addressing to the many problems that plague our nation.

• You can no longer drone on about patriotism, or label some Americans as patriotic and others as unpatriotic when you have blindly supported and enabled a President who openly conspired with Russia to get elected, and who unflinchingly professed blind loyalty to the leader of the most hostile foreign power facing the US today. When confronted with credible evidence that the Russian autocrat put bounties on the heads of American soldiers in Afghanistan, Trump even refused to hold Putin accountable. Seriously. And of course you can no longer call yourself patriotic when you fan the flames of the Great Lie of a stolen election that gave rise to the seditious assault on the Capitol on 1/6. Then 86% of the GOP Senate Caucus voted to acquit Trump on charges that he incited the insurrection. Let's face it: you only hide behind the flag when it provides you political cover.

• Most importantly, you can NEVER lecture Democrats and their supporters about accountability, or responsibility, or pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, or traffic in tired caricatures of crime-plagued inner cities and welfare moms. Why? Because the deficit always increases during Republican presidential administrations. Because Congress passed a tax act that will cost American taxpayers $1.5 trillion over the next decade. Because the GOP has shifted from being a party that believes in small government to a party that has ceased even trying to govern. Because the Republican Congressional Caucus fecklessly supported an administration that did virtually nothing about the pandemic, except to claim it was just another hoax, or to state that “one day it will just go away,” or to host super-spreader events in Tulsa and on the White House lawn. How many lives could have been saved by a serious and coordinated federal government response? No GOP, you are neither responsible nor accountable to anyone except the interests of yourselves, the wealthy, and corporate donors you serve.

But nowhere has Republican irresponsibility been more clearly on display then the 1/6 attack on the US Capitol, where the whole world saw a violent mob of conspiracy-driven Trump supporters wage a vicious terrorist assault on the most sacred hall of American democracy and civil parliamentary debate. It is clear that these insurrectionists were spurred on by the spread of the Great Lie that somehow a legitimately conducted election—one that was unsuccessfully challenged in 61 US court cases—had been stolen from their Dear Leader. The Great Lie was supported by the majority of the Republican House Caucus, a dozen US Senators, and a parallel media universe that has become as unhinged as the power-mad President Trump himself—who was visibly pleased as he watched the unrest unfold on live TV. But as the world watched in horror, the whole web of lies undergirding Trumpism was exposed, unraveled, and irrevocably shattered for all to see.

And yet, in the face of overwhelming evidence that Trump’s violent rhetoric led directly routinely insurrection, when the GOP finally had a chance to hold Trump accountable for his actions, 43 out of 50 Republican US senators punted. They abdicated their Constitutional duty to hold the President accountable for the most reprehensible violation of our democracy in our nation’s history. Although Minority leader Mitch McConnell was deeply troubled, and felt that Trump was directly responsible for the insurrection, he characteristically seized upon the wiggle room afforded by a technicality in order to weasel out of performing his Constitutional duty to prevent Trump from ever holding public office again. Like a grocery clerk telling a customer that quote that is not my department,” McConnell—who tried to thread the needle between retaining hi-dollar donors and appeasing Trump’s base—reasoned that the US criminal justice system that Trump just spent four years attacking and corrupting was the more appropriate forum in which to address the former President’s crimes. One can only hope. Finally, even though they amplified the lie that the November election was somehow stolen from the ex-president, it is safe to say that Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Fox News, Alex Jones and their ilk will never assume an iota of accountability or culpability for the nearly diabolical consequences of their words and actions.

• But the lack of Republican responsibility and accountability is most clearly embodied by President King Baby himself. True to form, despite issuing a vitriolic speech that explicitly and repeatedly called for the mob to “fight” for him, Trump claimed no responsibility for inciting the directly consequential insurrection for which he was impeached a second time. Predictably, Trump wrung his hands of this. Moreover, to hear him tell it, it is safe to s ay that Trump has never done anything wrong and never feels the need to atone for anything. Predictably, like many rich and powerful White American men—over the course of his life the silver spoon-fed Trump has seldom had to face the consequences of his actions.

• No GOP, you can no longer do any of these things anywhere that serious people frequent and the pursuit of truth is held to be sacrosanct. You’re probably just have been revoked. 1/6 and its aftermath shall go down in American history the pivotal moment in which your entire parallel universe of bullshit was finally exposed, and where the web of lies upon which it has been built was irretrievably refuted. It is now time to hold you accountable for your systematic, longstanding, and wholesale war on facts, truth, reason, rational discourse, and even reality itself. So no more false equivalencies, whataboutism, both-sides-ism, performative outrage, disingenuous spin, or just plain bald-faced outright lies. This is not simply a matter of opinion. The lies that you have perpetrated and propagated have had deadly consequences, be they for victims of hate crimes, the many people of color murdered by police forces, or the countless additional deaths due to coronavirus misinformation, or the death of three Capital police officers.

• But the GOP will continue to do all of these things and more because their very existence depends on it. Additionally, Fox News, OAN, Newsmax have way too much invested in their viewers for that to ever happen. The disinfo-meter must be cranked up to eleven, because the conservative media ecosystem has reached a point of no return. To call bullshit on their game now would me more than assuming responsibility: it would mean that the whole web of lies upon which the identities and worldviews of those who inhabit the parallel universe of conservative media would have to be debunked. The mass cult of Trumpism-which extends far beyond QAnon-would have to be painstakingly deprogrammed and deradicalized. The fascist White supremacist elements of Red America—including those in our government, military, and law enforcement—would somehow have to come back from the nether reaches of 8chan and Parler to the ostensibly objective, fact-based reality inhabited by the sane. A massive media literacy campaign and cultural inoculation against demonstrable bullshit would be needed, maybe even a wholesale cultural the programming would become necessary. In the meantime, the only way to combat the parallel universe of Trump’s GOP is by holding people accountable in the pursuit of truth and justice—by shedding light upon lies, crimes, misdeeds, and the pathological creation and dissemination of a hostile alternate reality that continues to threaten to tear our country apart.

#fake news #media disinformation #donald trump #fox news #conspiracy stuff #republicans

[heatherrdavis1]

Bitcoin Critical Level as Great Depression 2.0 Could Push Gold to $3000

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Today in crypto bitcoin is maintaining a key line by just a razor’s edge but a scarily similar pattern for me up in the equity markets right now could actually still really big trouble for bit coin and of course for the entire global economy another multi billion dollar bailout is being planned in America at the same time analysts are saying that gold could hit three thousand dollars and why this could be a good thing for bit coin and a super super weird twist in that big hack for twenty five million dollars we saw happened the weekend you won’t believe this it’s wild the crypto learnt this release was crap all of the hottest all of the latest happening out there in the wild wild west of crypto and a quick reminder for those of you who are new to crypto hi by the way welcome but I have made an awesome beginner’s course to help you get started which will walk you through step by step everything that you need to know as a beginner to start investing in cryptocurrency confidently you can find a link down below in the description where you can learn more so let’s take a quick look at the charts here to kick it off today the price of bitcoin briefly dipped under the fifty day moving average on that big oil sell off that we saw happen yesterday but today we close back above the fifty day moving average but we’re just holding on to that right now by a thread if we were to do a retest and then a bounce from that that would be quite nice to see but it’s not looking super convincing at the moment a sustained break below the fifty day moving average currently around sixty eight hundred dollars a so that will do nothing good for the bit coin market overall and again I think we only really can say they were getting back that super bullish sentiment when bitcoin crosses back over the two hundred day moving average and we are a long way away from that currently is around the eight thousand dollar mark. We need to cross to get back above the two hundred day moving average the lowest I could see us going at the moment though before the having if we do lose support on the fifty day moving average is always potentially back down to two hundred week moving average which is around fifty eight hundred dollars at the moment now with the having only twenty days away right now it seems that we may not actually get that big pump like we have seen in previous having this big going anything could happen but the crisis has really taken the wind out of the sales of the market here post having compiled we still expect a dump though unfortunately because all those miners will still have that same financial pressure that could drag us back down to that two hundred week moving average or potentially even with below that bitcoin has seen in your thirty percent drawdown post having after the previous having maybe something similar will play out this time however since the other pre having price action has had a totally dissimilar pattern to what has happened previously perhaps our post having action will also be different all that being said though the bitcoin network remains very strong with the hash rate seeing significant recovery since the mid March crash however at these current prices the bit coin having will be a blood bath for a lot of minors even though a whole range of new machines have been announced by Bitmain in EDC and other different companies it remains to be seen if the miners will actually be able to get their hands on them considering the strain being put on the global supply chains due to the crisis right now regardless the short term action happening over the next six to eight weeks in bit coin I am still looking for new market highs coming late twenty twenty one at twelve eighteen months after having keep your eyes on that bigger picture now is the accumulation time now is that stack and sat in children time one interesting chart from the guy. Eyes were glassed no though surely we could actually be on the verge of some upwards price action for bitcoin the N. U. P. L. chart which is currently approaching the optimism zone which would be hit if we close above seven thousand dollars yeah there was a very similar pattern in this particular chart back in April twenty nineteen really before we saw that big run-up happen. Twenty nineteen Sir good times aren’t they remember that way back in the day twenty nineteen but there are growing fears that the global economy is about to get savaged twenty nineteen come back which we think would be very bad for crypto because obviously seen bitcoin showing higher levels of correlation to the equity markets recently traditionally it’s a very low-level correlation of that correlation has been higher recently seeing a federal reserve study suggests that the U. S. the which is thirty-two percent unemployment rate which is far worse than the depths of the nineteen-thirties Great Depression which is a pretty bad time freak my read about history books course. The rate of unemployment back then was just shy of twenty-five percent. And if you look at the Dow Jones back in nineteen twenty-nine you’ll see in your really similar chart pattern starting to play out you see there was a big drop followed by a pureed what looked like some kind of market recovery happening but it was just a fake-out because what followed was absolutely devastating drop in prices this is a chart of the Dow Jones today on the weekly. Looking rather similar now I’m not saying that is what is going to happen I honestly really really hope that it doesn’t all this blows over very quickly and Hey look these are different times and the ability to governments to print just sickening amounts of money to bail out corporations in the economy overall may actually help us avoid the worst outcomes of this crisis. But I bring this up just as a reminder to stay frosty we are still not out of the woods and speaking of bailing out industries Trump on Tuesday ordered energy secretary Dan Brouillette and treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin put forward a plan to get funding to the struggling US oil and gas industry. Another bailout no there’s been no specification about how much money the oil companies lacks ability you know gorged themselves on but let’s just guess it’s probably going to be hundreds of billions of dollars I mean why wouldn’t it be just throw them some more money everyone else is getting loads of free money hedge funds are getting free money airlines are getting free money cruise lines get free money banks are getting free money everyone is getting their big fat stinking piece of the pie with extra cream on top and gold flakes except of course for regular people you know one time check of twelve hundred Bucks just a few little crumbs off of the table of money that is being given to the fat cats meanwhile fiscally responsible companies they just get trillions of dollars of money and loans and all this stuff in their CEOs course get sick sick bonuses crony capitalism only benefits the cronies as we know it fears around the government’s insane money printing combined with their huge increases of debt and buying junk bonds in cutting rates along with the insane unemployment numbers have led analysts at the bank of America to predict that gold could increase by a whopping one thousand dollars an ounce to as high a potentially even as three thousand dollars over the next eighteen months as central bank stimulus and economic turmoil Dr record interest in safe haven assets like metals. Just so you understand that would be around five trillion dollars trillion dollars moving into the gold market over the next eighteen months do you really think that none of that money will not end up in bitcoin right now the world’s monetary authorities what are they doing their spending trillions of dollars trying to keep their economies from sinking into the depths of despair this widespread fiscal insanity is placing incredible pressure in currencies the dollar the yen the euro the pound the Australian dollar New Zealand dollar and all pushing investors to gold because of its scarcity bitcoin also stands to gain from this trend because it is basically digital gold of course if you’re looking for a good place to actually trade on the future price of gold and go over and check out fan access link down below you can actually claim up to a seventy two dollar bonus if you’re starting a new account over there by the way this is only for experienced traders so moving on to some if the PM news now the Ethereum two point oh test that topaz has reached almost twenty thousand validators today this comes only a few days after the genesis block was successfully mined and validated. This brings us one step closer to the initial launch of a theory in two-point oh is main that which is tentatively at this moment scheduled for July. In other Ethereum news, almost two million contract blades to the Ethereum network in the month of March which is a staggering seventy-five percent growth from the previous monthly record all of those smart contracts by the way only cost eleven thousand dollars to deploy this is the future of finance it’s cheap to deploy its scalable and it’s available to everyone everywhere it’s amazing stuff in the final if you’re him story for today that big twenty-five million dollar hacks story of land AFT dot M. either I shared on Monday it is taking a wild wild west over the last day the T. force hacker has returned almost all of the stolen twenty-five million dollars in crypto apparently what happened is this guy accidentally docks himself by exposing his metadata not so clever now I have produced the way. Or lessen your weird lessons are really important lesson your risks remain in the fight be aware of those risks plan for those risks and mitigate those risks so closing thought for today is actually from this great tweet from Robert Kiyosaki rich dad poor dad in Vietnam he said I don’t consider gold silver in bitcoin as investments to me they are insurance hedges against CEOs or is he says criminal executive officers in H. P. P. highly educated puppets running the fad the treasury Wall Street CEOs in HEVs printing trillions of fake money to cover crime greed and incompetence got insurance. Yeah I got the insurance man I got this reduction of gold on the Gold I get that my four ways days but do you have your insurance I know you do at least two guys have big going anyway your question for to date how big of a bail out do you think that the U. S. oil and gas industry is going to get just for fun my guess is two hundred and forty seven billion dollars because why not why not I’d love to hear guesses down below and of course I know you guys all have your insurance plan your big point or your gold or silver but what is not in your insurance plan right now that you would like to have in it for me I would actually like to acquire some gold at this stage maybe not a mass amount but that for just a little bit to say got some skin in the game on gold but what is it for you would you like to get some gold guess and silver maybe some land maybe you just want to get more bit coin all are good answers let me know down below thank you so much for watching today’s video as always you are totally freaking awesome thank you so so much for continuing to support the channel but watching the videos hit that thumbs up button sharing these around the internet it means the world thank you so so much and of course I hope you have an awesome day out there if you are in the jail make sure to subscribe the channel long live the blockchain. Man peace out the next time.

Via https://www.cryptosharks.net/bitcoin-critical-level-as-great-depression/

source https://cryptosharks.weebly.com/blog/bitcoin-critical-level-as-great-depression-20-could-push-gold-to-3000

[scottmapess]

Bitcoin Critical Level as Great Depression 2.0 Could Push Gold to $3,000

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Today in crypto bitcoin is maintaining a key line by just a razor’s edge but a scarily similar pattern for me up in the equity markets right now could actually still really big trouble for bit coin and of course for the entire global economy another multi billion dollar bailout is being planned in America at the same time analysts are saying that gold could hit three thousand dollars and why this could be a good thing for bit coin and a super super weird twist in that big hack for twenty five million dollars we saw happened the weekend you won’t believe this it’s wild the crypto learnt this release was crap all of the hottest all of the latest happening out there in the wild wild west of crypto and a quick reminder for those of you who are new to crypto hi by the way welcome but I have made an awesome beginner’s course to help you get started which will walk you through step by step everything that you need to know as a beginner to start investing in cryptocurrency confidently you can find a link down below in the description where you can learn more so let’s take a quick look at the charts here to kick it off today the price of bitcoin briefly dipped under the fifty day moving average on that big oil sell off that we saw happen yesterday but today we close back above the fifty day moving average but we’re just holding on to that right now by a thread if we were to do a retest and then a bounce from that that would be quite nice to see but it’s not looking super convincing at the moment a sustained break below the fifty day moving average currently around sixty eight hundred dollars a so that will do nothing good for the bit coin market overall and again I think we only really can say they were getting back that super bullish sentiment when bitcoin crosses back over the two hundred day moving average and we are a long way away from that currently is around the eight thousand dollar mark. We need to cross to get back above the two hundred day moving average the lowest I could see us going at the moment though before the having if we do lose support on the fifty day moving average is always potentially back down to two hundred week moving average which is around fifty eight hundred dollars at the moment now with the having only twenty days away right now it seems that we may not actually get that big pump like we have seen in previous having this big going anything could happen but the crisis has really taken the wind out of the sales of the market here post having compiled we still expect a dump though unfortunately because all those miners will still have that same financial pressure that could drag us back down to that two hundred week moving average or potentially even with below that bitcoin has seen in your thirty percent drawdown post having after the previous having maybe something similar will play out this time however since the other pre having price action has had a totally dissimilar pattern to what has happened previously perhaps our post having action will also be different all that being said though the bitcoin network remains very strong with the hash rate seeing significant recovery since the mid March crash however at these current prices the bit coin having will be a blood bath for a lot of minors even though a whole range of new machines have been announced by Bitmain in EDC and other different companies it remains to be seen if the miners will actually be able to get their hands on them considering the strain being put on the global supply chains due to the crisis right now regardless the short term action happening over the next six to eight weeks in bit coin I am still looking for new market highs coming late twenty twenty one at twelve eighteen months after having keep your eyes on that bigger picture now is the accumulation time now is that stack and sat in children time one interesting chart from the guy. Eyes were glassed no though surely we could actually be on the verge of some upwards price action for bitcoin the N. U. P. L. chart which is currently approaching the optimism zone which would be hit if we close above seven thousand dollars yeah there was a very similar pattern in this particular chart back in April twenty nineteen really before we saw that big run-up happen. Twenty nineteen Sir good times aren’t they remember that way back in the day twenty nineteen but there are growing fears that the global economy is about to get savaged twenty nineteen come back which we think would be very bad for crypto because obviously seen bitcoin showing higher levels of correlation to the equity markets recently traditionally it’s a very low-level correlation of that correlation has been higher recently seeing a federal reserve study suggests that the U. S. the which is thirty-two percent unemployment rate which is far worse than the depths of the nineteen-thirties Great Depression which is a pretty bad time freak my read about history books course. The rate of unemployment back then was just shy of twenty-five percent. And if you look at the Dow Jones back in nineteen twenty-nine you’ll see in your really similar chart pattern starting to play out you see there was a big drop followed by a pureed what looked like some kind of market recovery happening but it was just a fake-out because what followed was absolutely devastating drop in prices this is a chart of the Dow Jones today on the weekly. Looking rather similar now I’m not saying that is what is going to happen I honestly really really hope that it doesn’t all this blows over very quickly and Hey look these are different times and the ability to governments to print just sickening amounts of money to bail out corporations in the economy overall may actually help us avoid the worst outcomes of this crisis. But I bring this up just as a reminder to stay frosty we are still not out of the woods and speaking of bailing out industries Trump on Tuesday ordered energy secretary Dan Brouillette and treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin put forward a plan to get funding to the struggling US oil and gas industry. Another bailout no there’s been no specification about how much money the oil companies lacks ability you know gorged themselves on but let’s just guess it’s probably going to be hundreds of billions of dollars I mean why wouldn’t it be just throw them some more money everyone else is getting loads of free money hedge funds are getting free money airlines are getting free money cruise lines get free money banks are getting free money everyone is getting their big fat stinking piece of the pie with extra cream on top and gold flakes except of course for regular people you know one time check of twelve hundred Bucks just a few little crumbs off of the table of money that is being given to the fat cats meanwhile fiscally responsible companies they just get trillions of dollars of money and loans and all this stuff in their CEOs course get sick sick bonuses crony capitalism only benefits the cronies as we know it fears around the government’s insane money printing combined with their huge increases of debt and buying junk bonds in cutting rates along with the insane unemployment numbers have led analysts at the bank of America to predict that gold could increase by a whopping one thousand dollars an ounce to as high a potentially even as three thousand dollars over the next eighteen months as central bank stimulus and economic turmoil Dr record interest in safe haven assets like metals. Just so you understand that would be around five trillion dollars trillion dollars moving into the gold market over the next eighteen months do you really think that none of that money will not end up in bitcoin right now the world’s monetary authorities what are they doing their spending trillions of dollars trying to keep their economies from sinking into the depths of despair this widespread fiscal insanity is placing incredible pressure in currencies the dollar the yen the euro the pound the Australian dollar New Zealand dollar and all pushing investors to gold because of its scarcity bitcoin also stands to gain from this trend because it is basically digital gold of course if you’re looking for a good place to actually trade on the future price of gold and go over and check out fan access link down below you can actually claim up to a seventy two dollar bonus if you’re starting a new account over there by the way this is only for experienced traders so moving on to some if the PM news now the Ethereum two point oh test that topaz has reached almost twenty thousand validators today this comes only a few days after the genesis block was successfully mined and validated. This brings us one step closer to the initial launch of a theory in two-point oh is main that which is tentatively at this moment scheduled for July. In other Ethereum news, almost two million contract blades to the Ethereum network in the month of March which is a staggering seventy-five percent growth from the previous monthly record all of those smart contracts by the way only cost eleven thousand dollars to deploy this is the future of finance it’s cheap to deploy its scalable and it’s available to everyone everywhere it’s amazing stuff in the final if you’re him story for today that big twenty-five million dollar hacks story of land AFT dot M. either I shared on Monday it is taking a wild wild west over the last day the T. force hacker has returned almost all of the stolen twenty-five million dollars in crypto apparently what happened is this guy accidentally docks himself by exposing his metadata not so clever now I have produced the way. Or lessen your weird lessons are really important lesson your risks remain in the fight be aware of those risks plan for those risks and mitigate those risks so closing thought for today is actually from this great tweet from Robert Kiyosaki rich dad poor dad in Vietnam he said I don’t consider gold silver in bitcoin as investments to me they are insurance hedges against CEOs or is he says criminal executive officers in H. P. P. highly educated puppets running the fad the treasury Wall Street CEOs in HEVs printing trillions of fake money to cover crime greed and incompetence got insurance. Yeah I got the insurance man I got this reduction of gold on the Gold I get that my four ways days but do you have your insurance I know you do at least two guys have big going anyway your question for to date how big of a bail out do you think that the U. S. oil and gas industry is going to get just for fun my guess is two hundred and forty seven billion dollars because why not why not I’d love to hear guesses down below and of course I know you guys all have your insurance plan your big point or your gold or silver but what is not in your insurance plan right now that you would like to have in it for me I would actually like to acquire some gold at this stage maybe not a mass amount but that for just a little bit to say got some skin in the game on gold but what is it for you would you like to get some gold guess and silver maybe some land maybe you just want to get more bit coin all are good answers let me know down below thank you so much for watching today’s video as always you are totally freaking awesome thank you so so much for continuing to support the channel but watching the videos hit that thumbs up button sharing these around the internet it means the world thank you so so much and of course I hope you have an awesome day out there if you are in the jail make sure to subscribe the channel long live the blockchain. Man peace out the next time.

source https://www.cryptosharks.net/bitcoin-critical-level-as-great-depression/ source https://cryptosharks1.blogspot.com/2020/04/bitcoin-critical-level-as-great.html

[jeffrmayhugh]

Bitcoin Critical Level as Great Depression 2.0 Could Push Gold to $3,000

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Today in crypto bitcoin is maintaining a key line by just a razor’s edge but a scarily similar pattern for me up in the equity markets right now could actually still really big trouble for bit coin and of course for the entire global economy another multi billion dollar bailout is being planned in America at the same time analysts are saying that gold could hit three thousand dollars and why this could be a good thing for bit coin and a super super weird twist in that big hack for twenty five million dollars we saw happened the weekend you won’t believe this it’s wild the crypto learnt this release was crap all of the hottest all of the latest happening out there in the wild wild west of crypto and a quick reminder for those of you who are new to crypto hi by the way welcome but I have made an awesome beginner’s course to help you get started which will walk you through step by step everything that you need to know as a beginner to start investing in cryptocurrency confidently you can find a link down below in the description where you can learn more so let’s take a quick look at the charts here to kick it off today the price of bitcoin briefly dipped under the fifty day moving average on that big oil sell off that we saw happen yesterday but today we close back above the fifty day moving average but we’re just holding on to that right now by a thread if we were to do a retest and then a bounce from that that would be quite nice to see but it’s not looking super convincing at the moment a sustained break below the fifty day moving average currently around sixty eight hundred dollars a so that will do nothing good for the bit coin market overall and again I think we only really can say they were getting back that super bullish sentiment when bitcoin crosses back over the two hundred day moving average and we are a long way away from that currently is around the eight thousand dollar mark. We need to cross to get back above the two hundred day moving average the lowest I could see us going at the moment though before the having if we do lose support on the fifty day moving average is always potentially back down to two hundred week moving average which is around fifty eight hundred dollars at the moment now with the having only twenty days away right now it seems that we may not actually get that big pump like we have seen in previous having this big going anything could happen but the crisis has really taken the wind out of the sales of the market here post having compiled we still expect a dump though unfortunately because all those miners will still have that same financial pressure that could drag us back down to that two hundred week moving average or potentially even with below that bitcoin has seen in your thirty percent drawdown post having after the previous having maybe something similar will play out this time however since the other pre having price action has had a totally dissimilar pattern to what has happened previously perhaps our post having action will also be different all that being said though the bitcoin network remains very strong with the hash rate seeing significant recovery since the mid March crash however at these current prices the bit coin having will be a blood bath for a lot of minors even though a whole range of new machines have been announced by Bitmain in EDC and other different companies it remains to be seen if the miners will actually be able to get their hands on them considering the strain being put on the global supply chains due to the crisis right now regardless the short term action happening over the next six to eight weeks in bit coin I am still looking for new market highs coming late twenty twenty one at twelve eighteen months after having keep your eyes on that bigger picture now is the accumulation time now is that stack and sat in children time one interesting chart from the guy. Eyes were glassed no though surely we could actually be on the verge of some upwards price action for bitcoin the N. U. P. L. chart which is currently approaching the optimism zone which would be hit if we close above seven thousand dollars yeah there was a very similar pattern in this particular chart back in April twenty nineteen really before we saw that big run-up happen. Twenty nineteen Sir good times aren’t they remember that way back in the day twenty nineteen but there are growing fears that the global economy is about to get savaged twenty nineteen come back which we think would be very bad for crypto because obviously seen bitcoin showing higher levels of correlation to the equity markets recently traditionally it’s a very low-level correlation of that correlation has been higher recently seeing a federal reserve study suggests that the U. S. the which is thirty-two percent unemployment rate which is far worse than the depths of the nineteen-thirties Great Depression which is a pretty bad time freak my read about history books course. The rate of unemployment back then was just shy of twenty-five percent. And if you look at the Dow Jones back in nineteen twenty-nine you’ll see in your really similar chart pattern starting to play out you see there was a big drop followed by a pureed what looked like some kind of market recovery happening but it was just a fake-out because what followed was absolutely devastating drop in prices this is a chart of the Dow Jones today on the weekly. Looking rather similar now I’m not saying that is what is going to happen I honestly really really hope that it doesn’t all this blows over very quickly and Hey look these are different times and the ability to governments to print just sickening amounts of money to bail out corporations in the economy overall may actually help us avoid the worst outcomes of this crisis. But I bring this up just as a reminder to stay frosty we are still not out of the woods and speaking of bailing out industries Trump on Tuesday ordered energy secretary Dan Brouillette and treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin put forward a plan to get funding to the struggling US oil and gas industry. Another bailout no there’s been no specification about how much money the oil companies lacks ability you know gorged themselves on but let’s just guess it’s probably going to be hundreds of billions of dollars I mean why wouldn’t it be just throw them some more money everyone else is getting loads of free money hedge funds are getting free money airlines are getting free money cruise lines get free money banks are getting free money everyone is getting their big fat stinking piece of the pie with extra cream on top and gold flakes except of course for regular people you know one time check of twelve hundred Bucks just a few little crumbs off of the table of money that is being given to the fat cats meanwhile fiscally responsible companies they just get trillions of dollars of money and loans and all this stuff in their CEOs course get sick sick bonuses crony capitalism only benefits the cronies as we know it fears around the government’s insane money printing combined with their huge increases of debt and buying junk bonds in cutting rates along with the insane unemployment numbers have led analysts at the bank of America to predict that gold could increase by a whopping one thousand dollars an ounce to as high a potentially even as three thousand dollars over the next eighteen months as central bank stimulus and economic turmoil Dr record interest in safe haven assets like metals. Just so you understand that would be around five trillion dollars trillion dollars moving into the gold market over the next eighteen months do you really think that none of that money will not end up in bitcoin right now the world’s monetary authorities what are they doing their spending trillions of dollars trying to keep their economies from sinking into the depths of despair this widespread fiscal insanity is placing incredible pressure in currencies the dollar the yen the euro the pound the Australian dollar New Zealand dollar and all pushing investors to gold because of its scarcity bitcoin also stands to gain from this trend because it is basically digital gold of course if you’re looking for a good place to actually trade on the future price of gold and go over and check out fan access link down below you can actually claim up to a seventy two dollar bonus if you’re starting a new account over there by the way this is only for experienced traders so moving on to some if the PM news now the Ethereum two point oh test that topaz has reached almost twenty thousand validators today this comes only a few days after the genesis block was successfully mined and validated. This brings us one step closer to the initial launch of a theory in two-point oh is main that which is tentatively at this moment scheduled for July. In other Ethereum news, almost two million contract blades to the Ethereum network in the month of March which is a staggering seventy-five percent growth from the previous monthly record all of those smart contracts by the way only cost eleven thousand dollars to deploy this is the future of finance it’s cheap to deploy its scalable and it’s available to everyone everywhere it’s amazing stuff in the final if you’re him story for today that big twenty-five million dollar hacks story of land AFT dot M. either I shared on Monday it is taking a wild wild west over the last day the T. force hacker has returned almost all of the stolen twenty-five million dollars in crypto apparently what happened is this guy accidentally docks himself by exposing his metadata not so clever now I have produced the way. Or lessen your weird lessons are really important lesson your risks remain in the fight be aware of those risks plan for those risks and mitigate those risks so closing thought for today is actually from this great tweet from Robert Kiyosaki rich dad poor dad in Vietnam he said I don’t consider gold silver in bitcoin as investments to me they are insurance hedges against CEOs or is he says criminal executive officers in H. P. P. highly educated puppets running the fad the treasury Wall Street CEOs in HEVs printing trillions of fake money to cover crime greed and incompetence got insurance. Yeah I got the insurance man I got this reduction of gold on the Gold I get that my four ways days but do you have your insurance I know you do at least two guys have big going anyway your question for to date how big of a bail out do you think that the U. S. oil and gas industry is going to get just for fun my guess is two hundred and forty seven billion dollars because why not why not I’d love to hear guesses down below and of course I know you guys all have your insurance plan your big point or your gold or silver but what is not in your insurance plan right now that you would like to have in it for me I would actually like to acquire some gold at this stage maybe not a mass amount but that for just a little bit to say got some skin in the game on gold but what is it for you would you like to get some gold guess and silver maybe some land maybe you just want to get more bit coin all are good answers let me know down below thank you so much for watching today’s video as always you are totally freaking awesome thank you so so much for continuing to support the channel but watching the videos hit that thumbs up button sharing these around the internet it means the world thank you so so much and of course I hope you have an awesome day out there if you are in the jail make sure to subscribe the channel long live the blockchain. Man peace out the next time.

source https://www.cryptosharks.net/bitcoin-critical-level-as-great-depression/ source https://cryptosharks1.tumblr.com/post/616238977116209152

[cryptosharks1]

Bitcoin Critical Level as Great Depression 2.0 Could Push Gold to $3,000

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Today in crypto bitcoin is maintaining a key line by just a razor’s edge but a scarily similar pattern for me up in the equity markets right now could actually still really big trouble for bit coin and of course for the entire global economy another multi billion dollar bailout is being planned in America at the same time analysts are saying that gold could hit three thousand dollars and why this could be a good thing for bit coin and a super super weird twist in that big hack for twenty five million dollars we saw happened the weekend you won’t believe this it’s wild the crypto learnt this release was crap all of the hottest all of the latest happening out there in the wild wild west of crypto and a quick reminder for those of you who are new to crypto hi by the way welcome but I have made an awesome beginner’s course to help you get started which will walk you through step by step everything that you need to know as a beginner to start investing in cryptocurrency confidently you can find a link down below in the description where you can learn more so let’s take a quick look at the charts here to kick it off today the price of bitcoin briefly dipped under the fifty day moving average on that big oil sell off that we saw happen yesterday but today we close back above the fifty day moving average but we’re just holding on to that right now by a thread if we were to do a retest and then a bounce from that that would be quite nice to see but it’s not looking super convincing at the moment a sustained break below the fifty day moving average currently around sixty eight hundred dollars a so that will do nothing good for the bit coin market overall and again I think we only really can say they were getting back that super bullish sentiment when bitcoin crosses back over the two hundred day moving average and we are a long way away from that currently is around the eight thousand dollar mark. We need to cross to get back above the two hundred day moving average the lowest I could see us going at the moment though before the having if we do lose support on the fifty day moving average is always potentially back down to two hundred week moving average which is around fifty eight hundred dollars at the moment now with the having only twenty days away right now it seems that we may not actually get that big pump like we have seen in previous having this big going anything could happen but the crisis has really taken the wind out of the sales of the market here post having compiled we still expect a dump though unfortunately because all those miners will still have that same financial pressure that could drag us back down to that two hundred week moving average or potentially even with below that bitcoin has seen in your thirty percent drawdown post having after the previous having maybe something similar will play out this time however since the other pre having price action has had a totally dissimilar pattern to what has happened previously perhaps our post having action will also be different all that being said though the bitcoin network remains very strong with the hash rate seeing significant recovery since the mid March crash however at these current prices the bit coin having will be a blood bath for a lot of minors even though a whole range of new machines have been announced by Bitmain in EDC and other different companies it remains to be seen if the miners will actually be able to get their hands on them considering the strain being put on the global supply chains due to the crisis right now regardless the short term action happening over the next six to eight weeks in bit coin I am still looking for new market highs coming late twenty twenty one at twelve eighteen months after having keep your eyes on that bigger picture now is the accumulation time now is that stack and sat in children time one interesting chart from the guy. Eyes were glassed no though surely we could actually be on the verge of some upwards price action for bitcoin the N. U. P. L. chart which is currently approaching the optimism zone which would be hit if we close above seven thousand dollars yeah there was a very similar pattern in this particular chart back in April twenty nineteen really before we saw that big run-up happen. Twenty nineteen Sir good times aren’t they remember that way back in the day twenty nineteen but there are growing fears that the global economy is about to get savaged twenty nineteen come back which we think would be very bad for crypto because obviously seen bitcoin showing higher levels of correlation to the equity markets recently traditionally it’s a very low-level correlation of that correlation has been higher recently seeing a federal reserve study suggests that the U. S. the which is thirty-two percent unemployment rate which is far worse than the depths of the nineteen-thirties Great Depression which is a pretty bad time freak my read about history books course. The rate of unemployment back then was just shy of twenty-five percent. And if you look at the Dow Jones back in nineteen twenty-nine you’ll see in your really similar chart pattern starting to play out you see there was a big drop followed by a pureed what looked like some kind of market recovery happening but it was just a fake-out because what followed was absolutely devastating drop in prices this is a chart of the Dow Jones today on the weekly. Looking rather similar now I’m not saying that is what is going to happen I honestly really really hope that it doesn’t all this blows over very quickly and Hey look these are different times and the ability to governments to print just sickening amounts of money to bail out corporations in the economy overall may actually help us avoid the worst outcomes of this crisis. But I bring this up just as a reminder to stay frosty we are still not out of the woods and speaking of bailing out industries Trump on Tuesday ordered energy secretary Dan Brouillette and treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin put forward a plan to get funding to the struggling US oil and gas industry. Another bailout no there’s been no specification about how much money the oil companies lacks ability you know gorged themselves on but let’s just guess it’s probably going to be hundreds of billions of dollars I mean why wouldn’t it be just throw them some more money everyone else is getting loads of free money hedge funds are getting free money airlines are getting free money cruise lines get free money banks are getting free money everyone is getting their big fat stinking piece of the pie with extra cream on top and gold flakes except of course for regular people you know one time check of twelve hundred Bucks just a few little crumbs off of the table of money that is being given to the fat cats meanwhile fiscally responsible companies they just get trillions of dollars of money and loans and all this stuff in their CEOs course get sick sick bonuses crony capitalism only benefits the cronies as we know it fears around the government’s insane money printing combined with their huge increases of debt and buying junk bonds in cutting rates along with the insane unemployment numbers have led analysts at the bank of America to predict that gold could increase by a whopping one thousand dollars an ounce to as high a potentially even as three thousand dollars over the next eighteen months as central bank stimulus and economic turmoil Dr record interest in safe haven assets like metals. Just so you understand that would be around five trillion dollars trillion dollars moving into the gold market over the next eighteen months do you really think that none of that money will not end up in bitcoin right now the world’s monetary authorities what are they doing their spending trillions of dollars trying to keep their economies from sinking into the depths of despair this widespread fiscal insanity is placing incredible pressure in currencies the dollar the yen the euro the pound the Australian dollar New Zealand dollar and all pushing investors to gold because of its scarcity bitcoin also stands to gain from this trend because it is basically digital gold of course if you’re looking for a good place to actually trade on the future price of gold and go over and check out fan access link down below you can actually claim up to a seventy two dollar bonus if you’re starting a new account over there by the way this is only for experienced traders so moving on to some if the PM news now the Ethereum two point oh test that topaz has reached almost twenty thousand validators today this comes only a few days after the genesis block was successfully mined and validated. This brings us one step closer to the initial launch of a theory in two-point oh is main that which is tentatively at this moment scheduled for July. In other Ethereum news, almost two million contract blades to the Ethereum network in the month of March which is a staggering seventy-five percent growth from the previous monthly record all of those smart contracts by the way only cost eleven thousand dollars to deploy this is the future of finance it’s cheap to deploy its scalable and it’s available to everyone everywhere it’s amazing stuff in the final if you’re him story for today that big twenty-five million dollar hacks story of land AFT dot M. either I shared on Monday it is taking a wild wild west over the last day the T. force hacker has returned almost all of the stolen twenty-five million dollars in crypto apparently what happened is this guy accidentally docks himself by exposing his metadata not so clever now I have produced the way. Or lessen your weird lessons are really important lesson your risks remain in the fight be aware of those risks plan for those risks and mitigate those risks so closing thought for today is actually from this great tweet from Robert Kiyosaki rich dad poor dad in Vietnam he said I don’t consider gold silver in bitcoin as investments to me they are insurance hedges against CEOs or is he says criminal executive officers in H. P. P. highly educated puppets running the fad the treasury Wall Street CEOs in HEVs printing trillions of fake money to cover crime greed and incompetence got insurance. Yeah I got the insurance man I got this reduction of gold on the Gold I get that my four ways days but do you have your insurance I know you do at least two guys have big going anyway your question for to date how big of a bail out do you think that the U. S. oil and gas industry is going to get just for fun my guess is two hundred and forty seven billion dollars because why not why not I’d love to hear guesses down below and of course I know you guys all have your insurance plan your big point or your gold or silver but what is not in your insurance plan right now that you would like to have in it for me I would actually like to acquire some gold at this stage maybe not a mass amount but that for just a little bit to say got some skin in the game on gold but what is it for you would you like to get some gold guess and silver maybe some land maybe you just want to get more bit coin all are good answers let me know down below thank you so much for watching today’s video as always you are totally freaking awesome thank you so so much for continuing to support the channel but watching the videos hit that thumbs up button sharing these around the internet it means the world thank you so so much and of course I hope you have an awesome day out there if you are in the jail make sure to subscribe the channel long live the blockchain. Man peace out the next time.

source https://www.cryptosharks.net/bitcoin-critical-level-as-great-depression/

[sparankime40-blog]

Trump and Warren are Both Wrong

Jesse Fried is the Dane Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. This post was authored by Professor Fried. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance includes Short-Termism and Capital Flows by Professor Fried and Charles C. Y. Wang (discussed on the Forum here).

President Donald Trump and Senator Elizabeth Warren rarely see eye-to-eye on policy, and frequently attack each other personally. But they have finally found common ground: both seem to believe that investors in public firms are too powerful, and the solution is to better insulate corporate directors from shareholders.

In August, each offered a proposal aimed at shielding boards from investor pressure. Senator Warren introduced legislation—the Accountable Capitalism Act—that would federalize corporate law and force all U.S.-domiciled firms with revenues exceeding $1 billion to hand over at least 40% of board seats to employees. The Act would also alter fiduciary duties to require directors to consider all stakeholders, not just shareholders. President Trump, in turn, asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to study the possibility of eliminating quarterly reporting for public firms and allowing boards to share the information with investors only semi-annually.

Bipartisanship is generally a good thing, especially in this era of hyper-polarized politics. But the consensus view that public shareholders are distorting firm behavior—a phenomenon often labelled “quarterly capitalism” or “short-termism”—is very wrong-headed. And the remedies emerging from this consensus, particularly Senator Warren’s, could profoundly damage the U.S. economy.

In the absence of any solid evidence that shareholders harm firms, the case for weakening investors has been based on myths, misconceptions, and misleading figures. For example, the press release for Senator Warren’s Accountable Capitalism Act recycles the erroneous claim that America’s biggest companies dedicate 93% of their profits to shareholders—funds that supposedly would have gone to workers or long-term investment.

But as my research with Charles Wang shows, the 93% payout figure is gross—it includes dividends and stock repurchases, but excludes equity issuances that move capital in the opposite direction. Net shareholder payouts are much lower. Figure 1 below displays both shareholder payouts (dividends and repurchases) and net shareholder payouts (dividends and repurchases, less issuances) for all public firms during 2007-2016, against a backdrop of net income. As Figure 1 makes clear, net shareholder payouts are only about 40% of shareholder payouts during the period. (Our research focuses on 2007-2016 but the results are almost identical for 2008-2017, the latest decade for which data are available.)

Another problem with this 93% figure is that the denominator—net income or profits—reflects what’s left after the firm has allocated a portion of its income to deductible expenses, including wages and R&D. For understanding the effect of net shareholder payouts on investment capacity, a better denominator is “income available for investment”: net income plus a firm’s after-tax R&D costs. Across all public U.S. firms, our research shows, net shareholder payouts during the period 2007-2016 were only about 33% of income available for investment, leaving approximately $7 trillion for that purpose.

In fact, my research with Charles Wang shows that much of this $7 trillion has gone into long-term investment. As Figure 2 below illustrates, the overall investment intensity at public firms, as measured by the ratio of capital expenditures (CAPEX) and R&D to revenue, was higher during 2012-2016 than during any other five-year period since the late 1990s boom. R&D intensity, the ratio of R&D to revenue, ended the period at an all-time high.

Nor are public firms financially constrained from engaging in additional investment; they had ample dry powder. Indeed, cash balances climbed from about $3.3 trillion in 2007 to about $5 trillion at the end of 2016. The misleading 93% figure and others like it paint a picture of shareholders starving firms of capital, crippling their ability to invest; the real figures do not.

Decisions about how to deploy capital in public firms—whether to invest it, store it for the future, or pay it out to investors—occur within the context of a market-based system. Investors provide capital to corporate managers under an agreed-upon allocation of decision-making power. If managers have a credible plan for long-term investment, investors can sit patiently as the firm spends years running up losses (such as Amazon, in its early years). When a firm can’t profitably deploy capital, investors want the cash returned to them so it can be invested in other firms, public and private. Overall, the market generally works, allocating financial resources to where they are most needed.

The ironically-titled Accountable Capitalism Act would endanger this system by making corporate insiders accountable to nobody but themselves. When 40% of a firm’s board consists of managers or their direct or indirect reports, outside investors would need to win almost every other seat to wrest control from incumbents. While this feat would be difficult even under existing arrangements, the Act’s new stakeholder-oriented fiduciary duties could make it all but impossible—by justifying directors’ use of extreme anti-takeover defenses to protect their board seats. And even if investors could gain a majority of board seats, these fiduciary duties could be used to prevent the investors from rationally allocating firm capital from inside the boardroom.

The Act’s effects can easily be predicted: capital would be trapped in cash-rich firms and mis-spent, the flow of capital from larger public firms to smaller public and private firms would dry up, and wealth would be transferred from public investors to corporate insiders. Firms looking to raise cash would find it harder. After all, why would investors hand funds over to unaccountable directors? Over time, capital would flee the country, followed by jobs. To be sure, employees of existing firms may feel more secure, at least in the short run. But there will be fewer opportunities in the U.S. for their children.

Of course, some firms may succeed in escaping the Act’s reach, either by domiciling outside the U.S. or by splitting themselves into smaller pieces. But these circumventions would give rise to other costs to the American economy, such as reduced operational efficiencies and a transfer of corporate tax revenues to other jurisdictions.

The Act could also be expected to lead to additional distortions down the road. Once corporate law is federalized, Congress will be tempted to use its foot-hold in corporate governance to add more mandates and restrictions, ostensibly to address other “problems” in corporate America, but actually to benefit key voting constituencies and campaign financiers. In short, the Act would put American crony capitalism on steroids.

President Trump’s proposal—which he tweeted after chatting with CEOs at his golf course—would also reduce corporate accountability, but through a different channel: by depriving shareholders of up-to-date information needed to monitor management. The CEOs whispering in Trump’s ear apparently told him that moving from quarterly to semi-annual disclosures would encourage boards to focus more on long-term investment. But, as my research with Charles Wang shows, R&D is at a record high and overall investment spending by public firms appears quite robust. Thus, it’s far from clear such encouragement is needed. In any event, evidence from the U.K. suggests that a reduction in disclosure frequency does not increase investment.

For most firms, the main effects of moving to semi-annual reporting will be profoundly negative: investors will find it harder to assess management and the value of their shares, and corporate insiders—and their tippees—will have more non-public information on which to trade. As a result, stock prices will be lower and firms going public will find it harder to raise capital.

To be sure, there could be certain public firms where both managers and outside investors prefer semi-annual over quarterly reporting, because the costs of more frequent disclosures exceed the benefits. Thus, the SEC should consider permitting firms to adopt semi-annual reporting after managers obtain approval by outside investors or at the IPO stage. But the CEOs pushing for semi-annual disclosures want the SEC to let them unilaterally reduce reporting frequency, even when it would hurt investors.

Perhaps President Trump and Senator Warren offered these ideas during the summer doldrums to rally their bases, or to provide material for Twitter, without actually expecting them to go anywhere. But there is a growing bipartisan consensus that excessive shareholder power is a critical problem facing America—notwithstanding the absence of any compelling evidence. This consensus creates a real risk that one or both of their policy proposals could be adopted, either in this administration or the next one.

Source: https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/09/06/trump-and-warren-are-both-wrong/

[maziliteralworks]

British EX-Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, a Putin Crony/Agent who Sold BREXIT DOOM to the gullible British Prime Minister Theresa May.

British EX-Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, a Putin Crony/Agent who Sold BREXIT DOOM to the gullible British Prime Minister Theresa May,as UK is a Former quasi EU,which function as EU State with its different Currency, No North Ireland & Ireland Republic Border and Queen off Table transaction which are not covered by industrial/data Production and factual economic index,as obtainable from Germany,but France is not a complete EU,like UK has so many off Table exploitative Trade/Transactions not covered by Production or direct Trade.there is no Need for BREXIT,as UK usually function as an EU State  like BREXIT,why officially seeking for  BREXIT with its Cost and now leaving shall cost UK, 2 Billion Pounds and establishing BREXIT,shall cause UK a Doom. ---------------------------------------- The US President Donald Trump politically associating with the US hatred Groups and Republican white Extremist Right Groups in using political fallacies.without real relevance to the fact that Chinese have had trade surplus with the US for over 20yrs:with the US Riches mostly Republicans who have shipped US jobs to Asia for cheap labor with its poor environmental regulations for corporate greed, arguments based on non feasible economic jobs creation options, racial politics based on hatred & racial divide, using White House insiders  to propagate   false Swiss code account & framing up case against President Obama and general racial heat up/divide as political tool to woo gullible US people as to win the next US presidential election, will definitely backfire, counterproductive and will not work, as most moderate & reasonable Americans cannot pay such  ideas and politics. They will challenge any such foul attempt and reinstall US greatness through oneness and ideas prepare the US as to be able to face Nostradamus prediction that Persia/modern Iran will acquire nuclear arm with help of Russia and shall use it against Rome, Jew/Israel, southern France and Moscow. The Republican White Extremist Rights branding President Obama & Democrats,as socialists,is unfortunate and uncalled for,as the Obamacare comprehensive Health scheme, was put in place as to provide US with healthy people, which people the US Military with right stock of quality people who will be able to mine various US Military/Security challenges and to protect US investment/interest globally.The taxing US Riches who owes large businesses/investments as to generate resources For the State, which will enable the Military to have sufficient funds for its global operations and care for US citizens at home. A US comprehensive immigration Policy is very important as the leader of Free World and allows immigrants to know their right of stay and what are obtainable by Law, as well as enable the US with its Immigrants live and co-exist harmoniously with Its neighbours/Foreigners. Further details on US Immigration and US Health Care are contained on my website as stated: www.maziliteralworks.wordpress.com It is advisable that apart from the New EU Economic policies formulation and implementation, there should be some serious efforts of restructuring various European little-industrialized Countries like, Greece, Italy, Spain Ireland and Portugal whose little industries with its low technological products, were overtaken by the China-led Asia cheap industrialized goods under its poor non-regulated environment. www.maziliteralworks.wordpress.com www.maziliteralworks.blogspot.com Regards Mazi Patrick Historian, Thinker/Writer email:[email protected] Mazi literal work is an African literal organization based in writing and international research. ------------------------------------------------------------ The US Citizenry lives &US resources were used in protecting US interest and Businesses globally, US needs protectionist fees/Tax from US riches. US resources were used and lost of US Citizenry lives in protecting US interest and Businesses globally,those who have benefited from prototyping or copying US products/services made from US researchers, inventions & discoveries which the US have spent so much with aged labor, don't want to give back to US State,shows immoral and bankruptcy. US administration should insist on a protectionist fee not Tax from US riches who have benefited from prototyping or copying US products/services through their Asian Affiliates. .................................... US riches must assist US State since US resources and Lives were used to globally protect US interest thro diplomacy and military. Despotic Regimes around the world could manhandle or seize US investment or companies if such belongs to companies or citizens of any little country with no military. These riches must invest in the US  by contribution/Tax, since State tools are used to guide and protect their huge investments/businesses around the world.or could US Riches image what will happen to their freedom and businesses,if despotic Regimes hold them at ransom, while arguments by Republicans are simply economic ill logic and unwise. US should formulate some protectionist fees for the US Riches to contribute, since they have shipped US labour/jobs to oversea, due to cheap labour and poor regulatory controls. these  goods and services were invented or discovered by US State Efforts,time,aged labor and US resources,which China and others are simply copying or prototyping with US Shylock businessmen/women for huge profits, leaving US people empty after their huge human/material investments where US citizens sat for ages in difficult conditions in laboratories or workshops inventing or researching or discovering products or services at huge cost. regards Mazi Patrick Thinker, Writer, Political Strategist, Historian & Psychoanalyst email: [email protected]

[nicholemhearn]

Op-ed: The Conservative Inequality Paradox

*This piece originally ran in National Review.

Conservatives have two intellectual commitments that are increasingly incompatible. They believe that the American economy is clogged up with crony-capitalist corruption that hands out special favors and protections to organized interests. They also hold that economic inequality — in particular, the surging share of total income earned by those at the very top — is morally justified by the rights of property and the tendency of free markets to raise living standards overall.

These two commitments can no longer be squared. If our economy really is riddled with cronyism, then the beneficiaries must have pocketed large amounts of ill-gotten loot. The existing distribution of income and wealth, therefore, does not deserve the deference it would be due if all gains were derived from spontaneous, unregulated market transactions. Call it the conservative inequality paradox: Either conservatives have overstated the amount of crony capitalism, or their dismissal of the concept of inequality as envy is misplaced.

In our new book The Captured Economy, we argue that conservatives are not mistaken about the extent of what we call “regressive regulation” — government-created distortions of markets that have the effect of funneling income and wealth up the socioeconomic scale. Such schemes of upward redistribution have proliferated in the past few decades, an era that is often misunderstood as one of unceasing deregulation. And because these reverse–Robin Hood policies work by squelching and misdirecting competition, they exert a powerful downward drag on output and growth as well.

Accordingly, conservatives should redouble their willingness to attack these forms of regulation that — unlike health, safety, and environmental rules, which impose (sometimes necessary, sometimes excessive) costs on business — actually boost corporate profits by creating market distortions, including barriers to entry for new competitors. In addition, conservatives need to examine their instinctive defense of business interests and their hostility to redistribution. But that doesn’t mean conservatives need to become Bernie bros. There is a distinctly conservative way of addressing inequality in a world of crony capitalism — one that seeks to attack the inequality resulting from anti-market, growth-killing policies.

Progressives may rant about “neoliberal” markets run amok, but many conservatives understand clearly that the U.S. economy is far from a textbook model of free competition and voluntary exchange. Senator Mike Lee, for example, has argued that “cronyist policies come in many shapes and sizes — from subsidies and loan guarantees to tax loopholes and protective regulation — but they all work the same way: The elite leaders of big government, big business, and big special interests collude to help each other climb to the highest rungs of success, and then pull up the ladder behind them.” And in the 2015 debate over the Export-Import Bank, which primarily subsidizes big-business exports, soon-to-be House speaker Paul Ryan rejected claims that the existence of similar subsidies abroad justified providing them here. “We should be leading by example,” he said. “We should be exporting democratic capitalism, not crony capitalism.”

If anything, conservatives have been too modest in their assessment of the breadth and scope of crony capitalism. In our book, we focus on four big case studies: financial regulation, patent and copyright law, occupational licensing, and zoning. In all of them, government-caused market distortions have been growing rapidly over recent decades. Between 1980 and 2006, the financial sector as a percentage of GDP grew by almost 70 percent, fed by regulatory subsidies for securitized mortgages and a string of “too big to fail” bailouts. Copyright terms have lengthened from a maximum of 56 years to the current life of the author plus 70 years, while laxer standards for patentability have caused a nearly 400 percent increase in the number of patents awarded annually. This excessive expansion has created a field day for lawyers and inflated profits for Hollywood, big pharma, and Silicon Valley with higher prices and licensing fees. But new innovators faced with traversing this legal minefield are not so fortunate.

In 1970, only one in ten Americans worked in a job subject to mandatory government licensing; now it’s closer to one in three. Most of that growth has occurred because of a huge expansion in the number of licensed occupations, now over 1,100 and counting. And in the nation’s big coastal cities, increasingly restrictive zoning has levied an ever more burdensome tax on new-housing construction — equal to 50 percent of the total price of housing in Manhattan, San Francisco, and San Jose. While boosting real-estate values for lucky legacy homeowners, zoning has imposed a serious drag on national economic output — as much as 10 percent, according to recent estimates. The loss is due to geographic misallocation of the labor force: The country’s most productive places can’t accommodate all the people who want to live and work there.

But do these market distortions really have anything to do with inequality? After all, the pursuit of profit through the political system (what economists call “rent-seeking”) is nothing new: James Madison was writing about the problem of “faction,” or special-interest corruption, in The Federalist Papers 230 years ago.

Conservatives as a rule have failed to see a connection between government policies and changes in the income distribution. Harvard economist Greg Mankiw, who served as President George W. Bush’s top economic adviser, displayed this blind spot in a 2013 article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives entitled “Defending the One Percent.” “There is no good reason to believe,” he wrote, “that rent-seeking by the rich is more pervasive today than it was in the 1970s, when the income share of the top 1 percent was much lower than it is today.”

The problems with this analysis are apparent once you scrutinize who exactly occupies the apex of America’s economic pyramid. Financial professionals and managers made up 14 percent of the top 1 percent in 2005, up from 8 percent in 1979. And while top financial executives earned the same as their peers in other industries in 1980, they were making a 250 percent premium by 2006. Doctors accounted for 16 percent of the top 1 percent in 2005, while lawyers accounted for 8 percent. The representation of doctors and lawyers in the top-earners’ club has been quite stable for decades; this means that their incomes have been growing much faster than the incomes of most other Americans, since the threshold for entering the top 1 percent has been moving up rapidly over time as incomes get more unequal. Doctors and lawyers both use occupational licensing to raise their incomes by restricting the supply of practitioners and use the state to inflate demand for their services — in the case of doctors, primarily through their influence over Medicare-reimbursement schedules; in the case of lawyers, by larding up every law and regulation with dysfunctional but highly litigable complexity.

So nearly 40 percent of earners at the top of the income distribution are finance professionals, doctors, or lawyers — all major beneficiaries of government largesse at our expense. Corporate executives make up another 31 percent of the top 1 percent, and a healthy chunk of them are in industries (such as movies, recorded music, or pharmaceuticals) whose profit margins are fattened by government policy.

Even if it were true, as Mankiw contends, that rent-seeking by the rich is no more prevalent now than in the past, incomes at the top are nonetheless swollen with government-created rents. Top-end inequality — the percentage of total income that goes to earners in the top centile — could therefore be reduced significantly if those benefits were eliminated or reduced through policy reforms.

Meanwhile, a review of America’s changing political economy makes clear that, while rent-seeking has been a constant, its distributional consequences have clearly changed over time. Beginning with the New Deal, the initial decades of activist government featured a great deal of downward redistribution: The National Labor Relations Act encouraged unions; the Davis-Bacon Act raised wages on government contracts; the minimum wage was relatively high; the federal government set universal service requirements for telephones and utilities; municipalities inaugurated rent control and tenant-protection laws. Such policies feature much less prominently today.

Of course, there was plenty of New Deal–era government intervention in behalf of business as well, including high trade barriers and price and entry controls for airlines and trucking. But because the affected industries typically employed large numbers of semi-skilled, unionized workers, a substantial portion of the rents to business ended up shared with workers earning modest incomes. Today, by contrast, the technologically leading industries that occupy the “commanding heights” of the economy (and that thus tend to be the focus of industry-specific regulation) mostly employ highly skilled workers. Government favoritism for those industries thus mostly benefits the well-off. Accordingly, the evidence strongly supports our contention that rent-seeking has moved upmarket — and, therefore, that a good chunk of the rich’s income is indefensible.

Conservative attitudes on inequality have long been shaped by Robert Nozick’s famous metaphor of the basketball player Wilt Chamberlain. Nozick argued that Chamberlain’s high income was derived from mutually beneficial exchange and was therefore justifiable. Who could say that there was anything unfair about a basketball player trading his skills for the money of fans? And how could a distribution of income produced by that sort of mutual exchange be unfair?

But the Wilt Chamberlain metaphor does not apply to an economy characterized by extensive high-end rent-seeking. Even if you believe that market returns are inherently just and therefore worthy of being defended on ethical grounds, how do you justify windfalls that are a function of distorted rules of the game? The answer is you can’t.

In the best of all worlds, conservatives would respond to this state of affairs by attacking rent-derived inequality at its source. Their economic agenda would focus on curtailing subsidies for finance, excessive protection of intellectual property, the licensing of high-end professionals, and overly restrictive land-use regulation. Doing so wouldn’t require conservatives to become crusading egalitarians, as these reforms would also unleash economic dynamism, innovation, and growth — familiar conservative priorities.

Nevertheless, making regressive regulation a conservative priority would be a distinct change in approach. Too often, conservatives’ idea of a pro-growth policy agenda starts and ends with tax cuts, despite the overwhelming evidence that moderate increases or decreases in the top rate have little effect on growth. When conservatives do turn their attention to regulation, they usually think about providing “regulatory relief” for business by lightening health, safety, environmental, and labor regulations. In our view, though, the regulations with the most pernicious economic effects are the ones that subsidize business by blocking competition or by otherwise distorting markets.

In some cases, conservatives would be able to build on existing strengths when conducting such a campaign. Much of the mischief caused by regressive regulation occurs at the state and local levels: occupational-licensing rules, land-use regulations, and a host of other industry-specific protectionist policies such as those that limit competition for auto dealers, undertakers, and hospitals. A network of free-market think tanks and activist groups is already up and running to push back against this rent-seeking — but these organizations could be doing a lot more. There is no way to fight regulatory capture by the well-off unless other wealthy people make countervailing efforts to even the political playing field, creating the institutional infrastructure needed to ensure that rent-seekers face determined opposition. Conservatives can provide that countervailing power by deepening their investments in state and local policy reform.

In one important respect, conservatives would need to execute a complete change of direction. For decades now, conservatives have favored slashing congressional staff and eliminating congressional support agencies such as the Office of Technology Assessment. These are false economies, as all they do is make Congress’s shrunken army of under-resourced patronage staff ever more deeply dependent on industry lobbyists for the information legislators need to govern. To insulate our politics more effectively against insider takeover, legislators need to be able to draw on deep internal expertise. As Lee Drutman and one of us (Teles) argued in a 2015 Washington Monthly piece, “A New Agenda for Political Reform,” a major upgrade of legislative staff with a larger, better-paid, and more professional cadre of civil servants would arm Congress with the knowledge needed to counter the rent-seeking lobbies that seek to twist rules to their own advantage.

Even if conservatives were to take our advice, a sustained campaign against regressive regulation would not meet with quick, easy victories. What awaits is, in the words of Max Weber, “the slow boring of hard boards.” The disproportionate influence of the wealthy over the basic rules of the economy is deeply embedded, and the best we can do is chip away at it, a little at a time.

That leaves a hard question, namely, how conservatives should think about inequality in a fallen, second-best world in which so many of these rents survive. At a minimum, there’s a strong case for reconsidering the conservative obsession with reducing top marginal income-tax rates. For too long, conservatives have overhyped the growth effects of tax cuts, as well as the dubious “starve the beast” theory according to which members of Congress would respond to tax cuts by restraining government spending. Many conservatives did not look carefully at the evidence behind these dodgy empirical claims because they believed that they held the moral trump card: By cutting taxes, they were returning wealth to its rightful owners. But in the “captured economy” we’re currently living in, this belief is due for reexamination. Not only is a significant fraction of the rich’s income morally tainted by government favoritism, but it is also used to fund yet more rounds of regressive rent-seeking.

One way to begin solving this problem would be to build a veritable bonfire of the deductions that the wealthy use to shield their income from taxation. The exclusion from taxes of employer-paid health insurance, retirement savings through 401(k)s and IRAs, and education savings accounts could either be scrapped or converted into refundable tax credits. We could also consider a financial-transaction tax, which could raise a lot of revenue while also reducing the incentives for excessive trading of assets. Changes such as these would allow us to claw back some of the rents at the top of the economy without increasing the marginal income-tax rates that conservatives are so concerned with. If conservatives took seriously the presence of ill-gotten gains at the top of the income spectrum, they might also look at immigration policy in a new light.

Over the past few decades, the United States has exposed those at the bottom of the economic pile to intense global competition, whether in the form of products from China or workers from Mexico. As Dean Baker has argued, it is high time to expose the wealthy to those same bracing forces of competition by opening up the economy to more high-skilled immigrants, especially in protected professions such as medicine and dentistry. Conservatives need to face and resolve their inequality paradox. They must double down on their principled advocacy of free, competitive markets — while taking a few giant steps back from the assumption that large incomes reflect large contributions to the general welfare.

–Mr. Lindsey is the vice president and director of the Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center. Mr. Teles is an associate professor of political science at the Johns Hopkins University and a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center. They are the co-authors of The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality.

  The post Op-ed: The Conservative Inequality Paradox appeared first on Niskanen Center.

from nicholemhearn digest https://niskanencenter.org/blog/op-ed-conservative-inequality-paradox/

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[clubofinfo]

Expert: While supporters of our two-party system wring their hands over the sensationalist nonsense reported by the mainstream media, we thought it might be worth touching on the most dangerous lie of all-time: capitalism. It’s an all-encompassing delusion, including: the myth of continual technological progress, the mendacious assumptions of endless economic growth, the lie that constant bombardments of media and consumer goods make us happy, and the omissions of our involvement in the exploitation of the planet and the resources of distant, poorer nations, among other things. We’ve taken the time to hash out some of the most pernicious mendacities we’ve come across in our (relatively) young lives, in the workplace, in our private lives, and in the media. *** Please share these counter-arguments far and wide, in order to educate your fellow citizens, and, if necessary, to provide the intellectual beat-downs needed when arguing with pro-capitalists. So without further ado, here is our list of the most devious “Lies that Capitalists Tell Us”: 1) Wealth will “trickle down” It’s hard to believe an economic policy that conjures images of urination could be wrong, but the idea is as bankrupt as the lower classes who have been subjected to the trickling. Less than ten people now have the financial wealth equivalent to half the planet, and the trickling seems a lot more like a mad cash-grab by the (morally bankrupt) elites. Rather than trickle down, the 1% and their lackeys have hoovered up the majority of new wealth created since the 2008 crash. After 40 years of stagnant wages in the US the people feel more shit on than trickled upon. It’s not a mistake that the elite reap most of the profits: the capitalist system is designed this way.  It always has been, and will be, until we the people find the courage to tear it down and replace it with something better. 2) I took all the risks It can be argued the average employee takes far more risks in any job than the average person who starts a business with employees. The reason being is that the person starting a business usually has far more wealth, where most Americans can’t afford a 500 dollar emergency; meaning if they lose a job or go without work for any stretch it means some tough decisions have to be made. A person with even a failing business cannot be fired, but the employee can be fired for almost any reason imaginable. They are operating without a net at all times. The capitalist uses all sorts of public infrastructure to get his/her company off the ground. From everything to the roads to get you to your job, colleges, public utilities, tax breaks, electricity, etc. Even the internet itself was created from public research. Yet elite business owners still have the audacity, and are so full of hubris, that they believe in the hyper-individualist, macho, rugged-cowboy/pioneer facade they affect. 3) I could pay you more if there were less government regulations Many capitalists argue that layers of government bureaucracy prevent them from paying their employees a fairer, living wage. This is a huge whopper, as our regulations (like no child labor, a minimum wage, disability and worker’s compensation, basic environmental impact studies, etc) actually provide safety against the worst type of exploitation of workers and destruction of the land by corporations. Without these minimum regulations, an age of even more outright neo-feudalism would occur, where employees could be laid-off and rehired ad-infinitum, based on downward market wage forces, at the wishes of ever-more capricious owners, management, and CEOs. 4) If you work hard, one day you can be rich like us (We live in a meritocracy) America is not a meritocracy, and no one should think it is. There exists no tie to the intelligence of work done or the amount of it that guarantees success. Rather to be rich depends more on either being born into it, or being exceptionally good at exploiting others so one may take the bulk of the proceeds for themselves. This is the magic formula for wealth in this ever so “exceptional” land – exploit, exploit, exploit. Inheritance and exploitation is how the rich get rich. To understand the exploitation aspect takes some understanding of how the rich function. Next to none of the super rich become that way solely by meritocracy. Their income is created through complex webs of utilizing leverage usually to extract some form of passive income. They are the rentier class or con artists, or both. You only have to look at what the rich are dabbling in. Like Robert Mercer, for instance, who made his money via “a hedge fund that makes its money by using algorithms to model and trade on the financial markets.” Skimming money off corrupt financial markets hardly seems like a worthwhile activity that contributes anything to humanity. It’s a hustle. Or take Bill Gates, who did some programming for a few years, poorly, and became rich by landing a series of deals with IBM initially, and then by passively making money off the share values of Microsoft. The late Steve Jobs may have been one of the more hands-on billionaires, but even he required thousands of enslaved Asian hands to extract the kind of  profits Apple was able to make. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson almost certainly has organized crime links, as if owning a casino wasn’t enough of a con to begin with. Rich DeVos became a billionaire by running a pyramid scheme most are familiar with called Amway. The Walton family, owners of Wal-Mart, pays a median wage of 10 bucks an hour (far below a living wage), they strong arm vendors, and also rely on products made with working conditions that resemble old world slavery, while having more wealth than the bottom 40% of Americans. There’s just no way to make that kind of money without having a major market advantage and then profiteering off it. Lie, cajole, coerce, manipulate, bribe, rig, and hustle. These are the tools of the rich. No one is worth this kind of money and everyone needs each other’s help to function, but in the minds of the rich they consider themselves the primary cogs in the machine worthy of their money for doing not much else than holding leverage over others and exploiting it. 5) This is as good as it gets (there is no alternative, TINA) Through a process of gaslighting and double-bind coercion the choices we are fed are propagandized via controlled media outlets owned and operated by elites. We are told our choices must be between the democrats or republicans, attacking the Middle East or face constant terrorism, unfettered capitalism or state run communism. We are given binary choices that lack all nuance, and nuance is the enemy of all those who seek to control and exploit. They feed us a tautology of simpleton narratives which unfortunately do exactly what they hoped, keep people dumb and biting on their red herrings. Capitalists make it seem as if there is no alternative because they hoard all the money, have all the hired guns, and pay off teams of servile lawyers, judges, and lobbyists to write and enforce their anti-life laws. Capitalists demand “law and order” whenever their servant classes get too restless. In general, the most hardened, dogmatic capitalists exhibit bewilderment and/or disgust at genuine human emotions like joy, creativity, spontaneity, and love. Many capitalists have an unconscious death wish, and want to drag the rest of us and the mother Earth down with them. Capitalists have stolen all the farmlands, hold all the patents to technology, and don’t pay enough to mass amounts of citizens to get out of the rat race and get back to live off the land. The screws are turned a little tighter every year. If we are not done in by massive natural disasters or an economic collapse, expect a revolution to occur, hopefully a non-violent one. 6) We give back to the community Corporations set out to create non-profits as a public relations move. They cause the problems and then put small band-aids on the gaping wounds they have directly contributed to and use the charity as a source of plausible deniability to obscure the fact that they are exactly what we think they are: greedy. Handing out bread-crumbs after you’ve despoiled, desecrated, and bulldozed millions of hectares of valuable habitat is not fooling anyone. The elite one-percenters are the enemies of humankind and the biosphere itself. 7) The system (and economic theory) is rational and takes into account social and environmental costs People tend to think someone somewhere is regulating things to keep us safe. They look around and see sophisticated technology, gleaming towers in the sky, and what they believe to be is a complex intelligent world. But in truth no one is running the show. The world functions as a mad cash grab driven by neo-liberal ideology. Our leaders are driven by power, fame, and money, and exhibit strong psychopathic, sociopathic, and narcissistic traits. The problems of modern industrial capitalism and its impact on the world are clear – our exploitation of the resources, people, and other species are a direct result of our consumer-based infinite growth model. Just a few of the problems we face are species extinction, climate change, ocean acidification, and a toxic carcinogen filled trash dump of a planet that reached population overshoot decades ago. If the system was rational, we would begin planning to lower birth rates to decrease the world’s population, and voluntarily provide education, decent, dignified jobs, as well as birth control and contraception to women worldwide. We live by money values, and think in money terminology. When we discuss healthcare the topic arises about how to pay for it before nearly anything else. The priority isn’t on saving lives but how to pay for things. Yes, how will we pay for healthcare when banks can create money on a computer through the magic of fractional reserve banking, which they often use to bail out their crony friends. The money isn’t real but the implications of restricting it from the populace are. Money is created out of thin air by the magic of the Federal Reserve, yet we have all heard our bosses, and the pricks in Washington complaining that “we don’t have enough money for that” when it comes to healthcare, improving schools, and humanitarian relief for the poorest parts of the world. Again, if the system was rational, world poverty would be solved within a few short years. Money destined for weapons and “defense” could be used domestically as well as abroad to Africa, South Asia, and Latin America, and there is more than enough money (75 trillion is the annual world GDP, approximately 15 trillion in the US alone) to pay for a good home, clothing, and food for every family worldwide, with an all-renewable powered energy grid. 8) The future will be better When Trump’s slogan “make America great again” was on the lips of every alt-right fascist, most of us stopped to ask, when was it great? The truth is that politicians have been promising something better since the inception of this country and “better” has never arrived. There is always another expensive war to fight and another financial meltdown occurring on average every eight years. Wait, you might say, what about those sweet post-WWII growth years brought about by the New Deal? The sad truth is those years were only materially beneficial to white, middle-class men, who were highly sexist, racist, and complicit in incubating today’s consumer-driven Empty Society. The post-WWII era was an aberration in our history and the result of having more jobs available than people, but as the country rapidly exploited its natural resources and reached the limits of linear growth while the population exploded the leverage that allowed people to have higher wages receded. Even though efficiency increased enormously, the people lost leverage to demand higher wages. Without leverage held by the people capitalism will return to its status quo goal – exploit, and that’s just what it did. In the US, corporations grew richer and the people grew poorer starting from the mid 1970’s to the present. 9) It’s Just Business Employees devote years of their lives to companies and when they are let go they are told it’s nothing personal, it’s just business. This is how all bad news is delivered even when personal. It says we are cold-hearted organizations that adhere to a bottom line first and human needs second. So know when they say “it’s just business” what they are saying is understand we are sharks, and acting like a shark is just what we do. This is also the logic behind defending war crimes and similar atrocities. Nations like the US claim they have a “responsibility to protect” civilians from terrorists. Then, when American bombs kill civilians (or their proxies use US-made weapons), they are referred to as “collateral damage”. 10) Financial markets & debt are necessary The health of the entire economy is too often gauged by the stock markets. But the reality about financial markets is they are extraneous gambling machines designed to place downward pressure on companies to post good numbers to elevate share prices. These financial markets funnel capital to a smaller and smaller number of multinational corporations every year, and perpetuate non-linear economic growth (and therefore more pollutants, CO2, pesticides, strip mining, razing of forests) that is killing the planet. Debt is the most fundamental lie in our economy. Money is only supposed to be a tool to move goods efficiently around a market, but for money itself to be a wealth engine is a Ponzi scheme. And we all know how that ends. *** For a wider taste of our oeuvre, visit Reason Bowl Radio to watch Jason expose the Trump administration for the sorry sacks of shit that they are and discuss current events, as well as Jason and Bill’s commentary and ramblings about topics such as psychedelics, the nature of consciousness, and reflections on how to effect social change. http://clubof.info/

[pagedesignhub-blog]

VLS Finance board recommends a dividend at 10%

New Post has been published on https://pagedesignhub.com/vls-finance-board-recommends-a-dividend-at-10/

VLS Finance board recommends a dividend at 10%

VLS Finance Ltd on Monday introduced that the board of administrators of the enterprise through its meeting hung on May 08, 2017 has recommended a dividend @ 10% i.E. INR 1/- in line with equity share on the face cost of INR 10/- consistent with percentage, for the economic year 2016-2017, concern to the approval of individuals inside the subsequent annual general assembly, as in line with BSE submitting.

The agency additionally accepted audited financial consequences for the region and monetary 12 months ended March 31, 2017. It suggested a net income at Rs 574.70 lakhs for the region ended March 31, 2017, as towards Rs 202.71 lakhs for the identical area in the previous 12 months, as in keeping with BSE submitting.

VLS Finance Limited gives funding banking, structured finance, company consulting and advisory services, stock broking, privatisation and infrastructure finance, and proprietary investments and fairness research.

The Inferno of the Finance Director Sometimes, I harbour a suspicion that Dante was a Financial Director. His well-known work, “The Inferno”, is such a correct description of the task that it cannot be otherwise. He is fervently hated by the people. He is very well despised by the opposite managers (“mean bastard” is his not unusual nickname amongst them, more often than not for scrutinising their expense money owed). He is dreaded by using the owners of the company due to the fact the powers that he has often outweigh theirs. Shareholders preserve him responsible in annual conferences. When the monetary effects are suitable – they may be attributed to the gifted General Manager. When they’re terrible – the Financial Director receives blamed for no longer enforcing budgetary area. It is a no-win, thankless job. Very few make it to the pinnacle and the rest retire, eroded and embittered.

The job of the Financial Director consists of 10 factors. Here is a common job description which is commonplace during the West. Macedonia, as standard, is a special case and so I introduced my own, humble observations.

In the united states, there may be a feature referred to as the Chief Financial Officer. This is the maximum senior monetary manager inside the company and henceforth we are able to use this identity in our article.

Organizational Affiliation

The Chief Financial Manager (CFO) is subordinated to the Chief Executive Officer, answers to him and often reports to him.

The CFO is in fee of:

The Finance Director The Financing Department The Accounting Department which answers to him and frequently documents to him. Despite the above stated, the CFO can record without delay to the Board of Directors thru the person of the Chairman of the Board of Directors or with the aid of direct summons from the Board of Directors.

In Macedonia this will be considered treason – but, inside the West, each function holder inside the enterprise can – and frequently is – summoned by using the (energetic) Board. A grilling session then ensues: debriefing the officer and trying to spot contradictions among his testimony and others. The structure of enterprise corporations inside the USA displays the political structure. The Board of Directors resembles Congress, the Management is the Executive Arm (President and Administration), the shareholders are the humans. The regular tests and balances are carried out: the authorities are supposedly separated and the Board criticises the Management.

The equal methods are applied: the Board can summon a worker to testify – the identical way that the Senate holds hearings and pass-questions workers inside the administration. Lately, however, the delineation have become fuzzier with managers serving on the Board or, worse, colluding with it. Ironically, Europe, where such incestuous practices have been common hitherto – is reforming itself with zeal (see Britain and Germany).

Macedonia continues to be after the snug, very antique European model: Boards of Directors are rubber stamps, with out any will to exercising their powers. They are staffed with cronies and buddies and circle of relatives individuals of the senior control and that they do and decide what the General Managers tell them to do and to determine. General Managers – unchecked and unbalanced – get themselves worried in big errors (no longer to mention worse matters). The idea of corporate governance is alien to maximum Macedonian firms and the businesses are regarded by maximum standard managers as milking cows – rapid paths to non-public enrichment.

Functions of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO):

(1) To modify, supervise and enforce a well timed, complete and correct set of accounting books of the firm reflecting all its sports in a way commensurate with the relevant law and law inside the territories of operations of the company and with internal recommendations set every now and then through the Board of Directors of the firm.

This is particularly hard in Macedonia. The books do now not replicate truth due to the fact they’re “tax driven” (i.E., meant to cheat the tax government out of tax sales). Two sets of books are maintained: the real ones which incorporates all of the earnings – and any other one which is supplied to the tax government. This gives the CFO an inordinate strength. First, he is in a position to blackmail the management and the shareholders of the firm. Secondly, he turns into the information junction of the company, the most effective person who has the entire picture. If he’s cheating, he can effortlessly enhance himself. But he cannot be honest: he has to constantly lie and he does in order a lifestyles lengthy dependancy. He (or she) increase a cognitive dissonance: I am sincere with my superiors – I handiest mislead the State.

(2) To enforce continuous economic audit and manage structures to monitor the overall performance of the company, its drift of finances, the adherence to the price range, the prices, the earnings, the value of income and other budgetary items.

In Macedonia, that is frequently confused with primary planning. Financial manipulate does now not mean the waste of valuable management assets on verifying petty expenses. Nor does it imply a price range which goes to such info as how many tea luggage can be consumed by way of whom and in which. Managers in Macedonia are still under the sensation that they’re supervised and accompanied, that they have quotas to complete, that they have got to behave as even though they’re working (even though they’re, in reality, most of the time, idle). So, they interact in the vintage time primary planning and that they do it through the price range. This is wrong.

A finances in a firm is no one-of-a-kind than the budget of the State. It has precisely the same functions. It is a assertion of policy, a beacon showing the manner to a higher (=extra worthwhile destiny). It set the strategic (and no longer the tactical) desires of the company: new products to broaden, new markets to penetrate, new management techniques to put into effect, possible collaborations, identity of the competition, of the relative competitive benefits. Above all, a finances must allocate the scarce sources of the firm to be able to reap a most effect (=effectively). All this, lamentably, is lacking from budgets of companies in Macedonia (that I have visible).

But the finances is handiest an amalgamation of the intentions. No much less essential are the control and audit mechanisms which go together with it. The audit could outside however have to be complemented through internal procedures. It is the process of the CFO to provide the management with a real-time device with a view to tell them what is occurring in the firm and where are the difficult, potential inflammatory areas of interest and overall performance.

Additional capabilities of the CFO consist of:

(3) To timely, regularly and duly put together and present to the Board of Directors financial statements and reports as required by using all pertinent laws and rules within the territories of the operations of the firm and as deemed vital and demanded now and again by the Board of Directors of the Firm.

The caution symptoms and barbed wire which separate the numerous organs of the Western company (management from Board of Directors and each from the shareholders) – haven’t begun to reach Macedonia. As I said: the Board is complete with the cronies of the control. In many groups, the General Manager uses the Board as a way to cozy the loyalty of his cronies, pals and own family members by way of paying them hefty charges for his or her participation (and presumed contribution) within the meetings of the Board. The bad CFO is loyal to the management – now not to the firm. The company is nothing however a automobile for self enrichment and does no longer exist in the Western sense, as a separate useful entity which needs the undivided loyalty of its officers. A weak CFO turns into a pawn inside the get-rich-brief schemes – a more potent one will become a partner in them. In each instances, he will be forced to collaborate, on occasion, with things which conflict with his judgment of right and wrong.

[learnprogress]

BREAKING: Scott Pruitt Just FIRED 5 of the EPA’s Top Scientists for THIS Despicable Reason.

Trump’s EPA head Scott Pruitt just dismissed five top scientists so they can be replaced by representatives from the fossil fuel industry. Make no mistake: Trump is selling the environment out so his rich friends can pillage the land for profits.

That’s right, Pruitt just ousted five of the nation’s most talented scientists from the EPA’s 18-member Board of Scientific Counselors. This board has previously been independent, but now Pruitt’s moving to politicize it in the WORST way possible.

That’s because Pruitt is now looking to fill these newly vacant positions with cronies from the very fossil fuel industries that the EPA is designed to keep in check. This move is the latest evidence that science is DEAD in Trumpworld, and Big Oil is about to get bigger than ever.

J.P. Freire, Pruitt’s chosen spokesman at the EPA, defended this maneuver as good for business in America. But it seems what’s “good for business” is also AWFUL for science and the planet.

“The administrator believes we should have people on this board who understand the impact of regulations on the regulated community,” Freire said. Here’s the anti-bullsh*t version: we need to make sure that our corporate backers have free reign to pillage the land WITHOUT scientists getting in the way.

Pruitt and Trump KNOW that firing dissidents is their ONLY way to gain control of the EPA and enact their toxic policies. Scientist Robert Richardson was one of the casualties of Pruitt’s recent spate of firings.

“Today, I was Trumped,” Richardson just tweeted out. “I have had the pleasure of serving on the EPA Board of Scientific Counselors, and my appointment was terminated today.”

In George Orwell’s classic 1984, those in power destroyed free thought and the ability to investigate the truth. And that’s exactly what Team Trump’s doing today.

Today, I was Trumped. I have had the pleasure of serving on the EPA Board of Scientific Counselors, and my appointment was terminated today.

— Robert Richardson (@ecotrope) May 5, 2017

What this means for the American people is that we’re living in a new age of censorship. The wisdom of scientists means nothing, and the word of Big Oil is FACT in Trump’s America.

If this is what’s happening today, then we don’t even want to know what’s coming next. Science is under assault in our country, and we can thank Team Trump for this TRAGEDY.

POLL: Is Trump a disaster for the environment?

How do you feel about this story? Do you think Trump is going to wreck the environment?

Let us know and make your voice heard by participating in our poll below! It’s time to enter YOUR voice into the national debate.

function googleBarChartInit() { google.charts.load('current', {packages: ['corechart']}); google.charts.setOnLoadCallback(drawChart); function drawChart() { var data = google.visualization.arrayToDataTable([ ['Answer', 'Count'], ["Yes", 0], ["No", 0], ]); var options = { title: 'POLL: Is Trump a disaster for the environment? results' }; var chart = new google.visualization.PieChart(document.getElementById("poll_values_5634")); chart.draw(data, options); } }

These are dark days for the American people, which means that every Progressive needs to pitch in now and take the fight against Trump to the next level. We need a new wave of protests and activism the likes of which we haven’t seen the 1960s, and together we have it in us to deliver that.

Do not succumb to fear and anxiety. That’s exactly what Trump wants the Resistance to do. Let us confide in each other, in our activism for justice, and we can turn our anger into passion and our passion into tangible political victories.

Join us in spreading awareness against Trump’s monstrous anti-environmental presidency today. Please share this story on Facebook ASAP–we’re relying on you to help us hold Trump to account!

The post BREAKING: Scott Pruitt Just FIRED 5 of the EPA’s Top Scientists for THIS Despicable Reason. appeared first on Learn Progress.

from BREAKING: Scott Pruitt Just FIRED 5 of the EPA’s Top Scientists for THIS Despicable Reason.

#Corruption #Domestic Affairs #Donald Trump #Environment #anti-science #Big Oil #Environmental Protec

[citizen0ne]

Disinformation agents & the CIA: Weaponizing the term 'Conspiracy Theory'

Dr. Gary G. Kohls Global Research Wed, 11 May 2016 17:15 UTC

Conspiracy theory' is a term that strikes fear and anxiety in the hearts of most every public figure, particularly journalists and academics. Since the 1960s the label has become a disciplinary device that has been overwhelmingly effective in defining certain events as off limits to inquiry or debate. Especially in the United States, raising legitimate questions about dubious official narratives destined to inform public opinion (and thereby public policy) is a major thought crime that must be cauterized from the public psyche at all costs... CIA Document 1035-960 played a definitive role in making the 'conspiracy theory' term a weapon to be wielded against almost any individual or group calling the government's increasingly clandestine programs and activities into question. - From CIA Document 1035-960

We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false. - William Casey, Ronald Reagan's first CIA Director (from Casey's first staff meeting, 1981)

It is quite easy for a disinformation agent to spin a rich disinformation tale and then craft several different versions of the tale with new 'facts' to support the story in each one. These tales are usually a good mix of verifiable facts and cleverly designed lies, so that people who check the 'facts' tend to believe the lies that are mixed in. - from: wanttoknow.info

It wasn't very many years after the world-wide web became operational that it was contaminated by secret disinformation agencies and also by individuals that were eventually called internet trolls. Trolls (defined below) began interjecting themselves - uninvited and unwanted - into otherwise useful and productive conversations involving web-groups of like-minded individuals. These trolls, intent on scurrilously confusing various website commenters, seemed to delight in angering up certain online groups. Typically, a lot of time and effort was wasted in such fake arguments before members of the group finally realized that they had been ambushed by a disinformation agent. Many folks might recall how promising were the prospects for the internet's new method of communication that was affordable, quick and paperless. Many envisioned an internet that was "without commercial interruptions" and a way to promote healthy interactions between well-meaning people of different races, religions, politics, commitments, lifestyles and cultures. Progressive-thinking folks without ulterior motives saw the internet as a new way to explore and solve some of the common threats to them or the planet. Peacemakers saw the internet as a tool that could expose the ideological enemies of the exploited 99% and perhaps even unite against the predatory elites in the ruling 1%. Some saw opportunities to expose and then eliminate fascism, racism, militarism, corporatism, bigotry, pollution, over-population and income inequality (and, more recently, global climate change) and to foster understanding and cooperation between various cultures. Tragically, before you could say "corrupt crony capitalism", the web was dominated - and then essentially owned - by profiteering corporations that saw world peace and cooperation as a threat to their greedy profiteering goals. (Peace is never as profitable as war or the rumors or war.) In the viewpoint of amoral corporations, the internet was seen as just another way to market their products to otherwise inaccessible consumers, even if their infernal advertisements were uninvited and unwanted by most internet users (albeit sometimes entertaining) . But, while Big Business and the investor classes took over the internet, the web also became a recruitment tool for assorted hate groups like white supremacists, religious bigots, racists and neo-fascist talk show hosts who all developed a following and websites that allowed them to spew their hate, bigotry and disinformation much more efficiently. Why and How Propaganda Works The internet, like so much of what passes for technological advancement in our commercialized society, has, predictably, become a force for ill, not unlike how Joseph Goebbels and the Nazi Party used the universally-accessible and very affordable radio to spew their right-wing hate propaganda in the 1930s and 40s (after first smashing the liberal media's printing presses, of course). But the ruling elites who own the trans-national mega-corporations also own our legislative bodies and our major media. That often nefarious Gang of Four has brain-washed their way into our hearts, minds and bank accounts. Many of them can be seen eagerly pig feeding at the trough of more than one government bureaucratic agency that may be busily granting no-bid contracts behind closed doors. These corporations, in the interest of unlimited (and unsustainable) stock price growth, have been compelled by their stakeholders to plunge head-long into the soul-destroying muck of the dog-eat-dog-competition that exists in both business and political spheres. The muck has become much less embarrassing - but no less odious - since the democracy-destroying Citizen's United Supreme Court decision of 2011 that legalized the anonymous bribery of most political candidates and made the fiction of corporate personhood the law of the land. As an example of how propaganda works, we need to examine the CIA, America's major national intelligence agency and propaganda machine. The unofficial motto of the CIA, "Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations." was blurted out by Porter Goss, GW Bush's second CIA director in 2005. The official motto of Britain's CIA-equivalent MI6 is "Semper Occultus" (Always Secret) and, according to the whistle-blowing, ex-Israeli Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky, the Mossad's motivating motto has always been "By Way of Deception, Thou Shalt Make War" (derived from a phrase from the book of Proverbs).Weaponizing the term "Conspiracy Theory" But the fact (not just the theory) of widespread official conspiracies (along with the obligatory disinformation and cover-up operations) isn't really new. As one prime example, the CIA (which by law is forbidden to have anything to do with domestic affairs [the FBI's job]) has been a huge disinformation agency for as long as it has been in existence. The CIA institutionalized the term "conspiracy theory" in its very successful attempt to derail the honest attempts to investigate the roles of various governmental agencies and individuals that were involved in the execution of President Kennedy in 1963. (See the documentation of that assertion at the end of this column.) Of course, all clandestine state-sponsored secret service agencies (like the CIA, MI6 and the Mossad) routinely and shamelessly make use of lies, secrecy, deception and false flag operations in their daily affairs. It is a fact of life for such secret agencies and it is all accomplished in the name of "national security". The CIA has admitted that it routinely "plants" stories in the mainstream media. Those "press releases" contain disinformation that influences the perceptions of the electorate and thus national policy. See the evidence for that in the following video (and the narrative that follows) It is a certainty that the FBI, the NSA, the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the White House (not to mention most corporations) do the same. Secret intelligence agencies such as the CIA routinely concoct conspiracies that involve spying, regime changes, de-stabilization of governments, expansion of military bases and even torture, disappearances, "suicides" and extrajudicial assassinations as a matter of course. Of course, all leaked evidence of what are often unethical, immoral or even criminal deeds must be denied. On 9/11/01, for example, many investigative journalists and alert citizens saw with their own eyes that the three WTC towers had obviously been suddenly and unexpectedly brought down by controlled demolitions. Their suspicions were affirmed by the multitude of video and science-based evidence that abounds online. (Start your own edification by listening to real experts who know the real science of controlled demolitions by clicking on: here) If You See Something, Say Something (Unless it's Conspiratorial) We American citizens have been advised by our government to "say something if we see something", so those patriots who loved their country enough to have a lover's quarrel with it, kept pointing out the improbability - indeed impossibility - of the Bush White House's conspiracy theory (that a group of Saudi Arabian nationals conspired to fly two jets into two buildings, causing office fires that rapidly burned down three concrete, massively steel-reinforced, essentially non-flammable high-rise towers, with each of the three buildings successively collapsing into fine powder in less than 10 seconds). Unbelievable. Bush failed in trying to silence those patriotic observers from speaking out by holding a very unconvincing press conference denigrating those who espoused "outlandish conspiracy theories". However, the mainstream media (including the New York Times, which falsely claims to publish "all the news that's fit to print") got thoroughly on board with the cover-up. Sadly, since then, anybody who didn't see what really happened on that day has been effectively brain-washed to believe whatever the major media dis-informed them on, and that includes most of the millennials who were either unaware or unborn at the time of the deed! Tragically, most of the distracted, deceived or too busy Americans succumbed to the totally blacked-out propaganda efforts and their in-bred need to be obedient to authority figures; and thus most Americans were led to believe the deniers of the truth rather than the powerful evidence of conspiracy. One of the reasons that I am addressing this topic in this column is the fact that recently there have been a number of examples of disinformation in my local media about real conspiracies about which I have enough expertise to be able to disprove the claims that were made. A recent letter to the editor in my local newspaper regurgitated the disproven "conventional wisdom" that live virus, mercury-containing or aluminum-containing vaccines are all safe and effective, that they never cause neurological damage to infants and that the infamously-smeared British gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield's research on autism and vaccines was a fraud. (For those uninformed or misinformed about the Big Pharma-manufactured Wakefield pseudo-controversy: In 1998, the once-prestigious British Lancet medical journal published Dr Wakefield's ground-breaking research that proved the connection between (the British pharmaceutical company) GlaxoSmithKline's live measles virus-containing MMR vaccine and a disabling measles virus-caused inflammatory enterocolitis disorder in a group of severely-regressed autistic kids (each of whom had been developing normally until being injected with the scheduled MMR vaccination). The validity of the study, incidentally, has been replicated by other researchers, but the pharmaceutical firm Glaxo cunningly executed a massive disinformation campaign that resulted in the complicit British Medical Association stripping Wakefield of his license to practice medicine!) For documentation of the Wakefield smear campaign, go to a series of videos, starting with this one: CIA Document 1035-960 and Conspiracy Theory: The Foundation of a Weaponized Term

'Conspiracy theory' is a term that strikes fear and anxiety in the hearts of most every public figure, particularly journalists and academics. Since the 1960s the label has become a disciplinary device that has been overwhelmingly effective in defining certain events as off limits to inquiry or debate. Especially in the United States, raising legitimate questions about dubious official narratives destined to inform public opinion (and thereby public policy) is a major thought crime that must be cauterized from the public psyche at all costs. ...it was the Central Intelligence Agency that likely played the greatest role in effectively 'weaponizing' the term. In the groundswell of public skepticism about the Warren Commission's findings on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the CIA sent a detailed directive to all of its bureaus, titled 'Countering Criticism of the Warren Commission Report'. The dispatch played a definitive role in making the 'conspiracy theory' term a weapon to be wielded against almost any individual or group calling the government's increasingly clandestine programs and activities into question. "This important memorandum and its broad implications for American politics and public discourse are detailed in a forthcoming book by Florida State University political scientist Lance deHaven-Smith, titled Conspiracy Theory in America. Dr. deHaven-Smith devised the State Crimes Against Democracy (SCAD) concept to interpret and explain potential government complicity in events such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the major political assassinations of the 1960s, and 9/11. The agency was especially interested in maintaining the CIA's own image and role as it "contributed information to the [Warren] investigation.

The memorandum lays out a detailed series of actions and techniques for 'countering and discrediting the claims of the so-called conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries'.

The agency also directed its members '[t]o employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose'. CIA Document 1035-960 further delineates specific techniques for countering 'conspiratorial' arguments centering on the Warren Commission's findings. Such responses and their coupling with the pejorative label have been routinely wheeled out to this day in various guises by corporate media outlets, commentators and political leaders against those demanding truth and accountability about momentous public events. Today, more so than ever, news media personalities and commentators occupy powerful positions for initiating propaganda activities closely resembling those set out in 1035-960 against anyone who might question state-sanctioned narratives of controversial and poorly understood occurrences. ...the almost uniform public acceptance of official accounts concerning unresolved events such as the Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building bombing, 9/11, and most recently the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, is largely guaranteed. The effect on academic and journalistic inquiry into ambiguous and unexplained events that may in turn mobilize public inquiry, debate and action has been dramatic and far-reaching. One need only look to the rising police state and evisceration of civil liberties and constitutional protections as evidence of how this set of subtle and deceptive intimidation tactics has profoundly encumbered the potential for future independent self-determination and civic empowerment.

About the author Dr Kohls is a retired physician from Duluth, MN, USA. He writes a weekly column for the Reader, Duluth's alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns mostly deal with the dangers of American fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, malnutrition, psychiatric drugging, over-vaccination regimens, Big Pharma and other movements that threaten the environment or America's health, democracy, civility and longevity. Many of his columns are archived here and at here.

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