The Proposal:
The Federal Government will buy up and or finance 4 million home mortgages each year and make them Zero percent mortgages until 100% of Unites States home owners regardless of income has a first mortgage at zero percent up to $250,000. Adjusted for inflation annually. To start with a lottery first of those with incomes under $50,000 and escalating upwards annually.
This is purely a policy of self interested investment in the counrty by the country for the people of the country.
How it works:
4 Million 250,000 dollar mortgage equals a 1 Trillion dollar investment.
The zero interest payback will be $33,600,000,000
Those mortgages no longer having a mortgage interest deduction pays back $6,720,000,00
4 million homeowners freed from paying an average $700 a month in interest creates spending in the real economy of $33,000,000,000, and a multiplies spending effect of about $134,000,000,000.
This increases GDP by about 1% and in local communities not international finance and creates 1 Million three hundred and forty four thousand new jobs.
The new jobs each pay Federal income taxes of about $5000 each.
The new jobs create perhaps 134,000 new small businesses each of which then perhaps pays $15,000 in federal taxes.
All the new employment reduces welfare rolls by about half the jobs created taking about 700,000 of the welfare and food stamp rolls.
The 1% increase in GDP extends to all the other non banking sectors and creates even more jobs and business growth and taxed at 15% would equal another 22 Billion for the federal government.
And the trillion dollar buy up buys up existing mortgages from banks for now giving those banks money to invest in "business" and gets them out of the problem of having to deal with millions of potentially adverse loan transactions.
So 1 Trillion invested
Return is:
Principal Payback 33 Billion or 3.3%
Interest deduction 6.72 Billion or .672%
New jobs 6,72 Billion or .672%
New Business 2.01 Billion or .021%
Boost GDP 1% 22.5 Billion or 2.2%
Reduce Welfare 1.2 Billion or .12%
Return Year 1 return to the people 7% or 70 Billion Dollars
If we do a progression of economic impact doing this every year for 20 years somewhere around year 12-15 this program actually pays for itself. Especially considering that each years progressive economic growth created will continue building and expanding on itself.
Easy math, very standard macro economic textbook assumptions.
Lets get banks out of the business of destroying economic activity and get us the people into creating our own vision of a good society.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Ultra Rich and Why Most of us are Poor
I did some quick not 100% spreadsheet work. Info from Forbes 400, and from Wikipedia articles on how many millionaires there are, plus a check at the Federal reserve site, which has available a downloadable 1000 plus page document showing everything you ever wanted to know about wealth and poverty but assumed your elected officials were paying attention to....
http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2009/pdf/scf09.pdf
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/index.html
The top ten US Billionaires are worth 270 Billion.
17 others are worth over 10 Billion each for an additional 211 Billion
Then 24 Billionaires have a pretty respectable 5-10 Billion for 154 Billion
Then there were 144 Billionaires worth 2-5 Billion for a worth of 404 Billion
And finally the poor merely worth 1-2 Billion, 195 of them worth 274 Billion.
Impressive Yes? About 400 Americans worth about $One Trillion Three Hundred Twenty Five Billion, which is about 3.3 Billion each, or $11226 per 118 Million US Households.
That is all interesting But lets look at Millionaires. I won't even bother with the several million mere millionaires. We only want to look at real money, as in my opinion in a real capitalist society everyone would now have to be a millionaire by retirement to merely have about enough to survive and live on, showing how badly our system works as the huge majority of us are going to go in to retirement not with a million or two million dollars of assets, but far far below that, if with anything at all. Looking at the IRS income stats that show about 50 million households having incomes below 40,000 and almost no assets at all.
In 1900 dollars a million would be worth about 30 million now and about 100 million in real GDP terms according to calculations of inflation and GDP growth. So lets use 10 million as the point of departure....And I am estimating from several sources not being 100% exact here as the concept is the point not if we are off by a few percent overall one way or another....
We have about 860,000 folks worth 10 million on average for a worth that beggars the billionaires overall 8 Trillion Six Hundred Billion.
And the the ultra rich but not Billionaires yet of whom there are about 40,000,
these 40,000 worth between 30 Million and 1 Billion have a total worth of another 7 Trillion Five Hundred Billion.
This is that One percent, and the top 100,000 or so are the ultra ultra rich 1/10 of 1% who command the US economy.
But what does it mean? Is it not good that we can aspire to join this group? After all there are a lot of them, almost 1 million, that gives odds way better than winning the lottery, supposedly about 1 in 120.
Of course the flip side is that 50 million households below $40,000 a year gives you about a 45 out of 100 chance of living a life of endless very low chance of getting out of the rut poverty. So 50/50 and 1 in 120.
This disparity has been made possible by our tax laws of the last 40 years not taxing the wealthy high enough, and distributing the wealth of the nation upwards to these individuals. In other words we have not built infrastructure, not built schools and hospitals, not upgraded science and technology, not done space exploration, not built a better society, neglected health and housing and the environment and taken away general protections that allow regular folks to get loans and housing and education at a fair rate,and exported manufacturing all done or omitted by the largest transfer of wealth upward ever in history.
The assets of those millionaires and billionaires if they were spread out to 118 million households would be $175,000 each!!!. Each and every american has largely been robbed of at least half a million dollars because remember they have been accumulating this stolen booty since the 1970's so they have spent and lost a lot of it and or transferred it around or shipped it over seas where we lost track of it, and as we know wealthy folks have ways of hiding assets in accounting tricks.
With a fair tax system and redistribution of wealth as well, the money being spent by 118 million would have over 40 years had a large different effect on the US and the global economy over the hoarding and consolidation of that wealth and the prudent investment by the hoarders over seas and in schemes that make rich richer rather than being spent and re spent in the economy of every day human servces and needs.
Basically this huge asset disparity means that the average American is poor, but there is no reason for them to be poor other than the reason that the wealthy and the corporations have fully captured the economic and political process and have plundered the US populace much in the same way that earlier generations had plundered the continent and stolen it from the original inhabitants. The end of easy land exploitation and resource extraction has forced the capitalist to turn back to the old school mechanism of exploiting and plundering the local population. And the discourse if completely diverted away from the real reasons that we the average people are getting poorer and poorer and the government is getting more and more in debt and the rich and corporations are at the same time getting hugely richer and richer at the same time year after year after year.
It is really very simple, through fair taxation, redistribute a very large percentage of wealth into productive human needs and services. That is ALL!
Those on top will continue to recapture the wealth in the process but less of it each time around and we will get better results because democratic and human based decisions will drive what is done with investment and building society and the pure insane so called rationality of making ever more profit will be curbed. If the Billionaires were reduced to mere hundred millionaires and the multi ultra millionaires reduced to mere millionaires, we would all be a lot better off.
I see that another decade or two of this plunder will lead back towards feudalism and slavery. Logically if we get rid of wage laws and mortgages to low cost home owners and small business loans go away as just not profitable and too risky, or too regulated to pursue, and building everything somewhere else is the mode of operation at some point the average citizen will become "Illegal", you won't have enough money to buy mandatory insurance, you won't have enough money to pay the interest and mortgage insurance premium for a place to live, and you won't have the money to get educated at a private school. At some point the ultra rich and the immortal corporation will have to offer to lend you a helping hand and take you in as chattel. They will pay for your "private insurance" and home you in a work camp for just a small, small to them fee, which you will be free to pay off by working on the 8 hours a night you have off to sleep. I think we could accommodate this non descriminatory slavery as it would be free market based and if we can get back to a theological based constitution slavery is after all very prominent in the Bible.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2009/pdf/scf09.pdf
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/index.html
The top ten US Billionaires are worth 270 Billion.
17 others are worth over 10 Billion each for an additional 211 Billion
Then 24 Billionaires have a pretty respectable 5-10 Billion for 154 Billion
Then there were 144 Billionaires worth 2-5 Billion for a worth of 404 Billion
And finally the poor merely worth 1-2 Billion, 195 of them worth 274 Billion.
Impressive Yes? About 400 Americans worth about $One Trillion Three Hundred Twenty Five Billion, which is about 3.3 Billion each, or $11226 per 118 Million US Households.
That is all interesting But lets look at Millionaires. I won't even bother with the several million mere millionaires. We only want to look at real money, as in my opinion in a real capitalist society everyone would now have to be a millionaire by retirement to merely have about enough to survive and live on, showing how badly our system works as the huge majority of us are going to go in to retirement not with a million or two million dollars of assets, but far far below that, if with anything at all. Looking at the IRS income stats that show about 50 million households having incomes below 40,000 and almost no assets at all.
In 1900 dollars a million would be worth about 30 million now and about 100 million in real GDP terms according to calculations of inflation and GDP growth. So lets use 10 million as the point of departure....And I am estimating from several sources not being 100% exact here as the concept is the point not if we are off by a few percent overall one way or another....
We have about 860,000 folks worth 10 million on average for a worth that beggars the billionaires overall 8 Trillion Six Hundred Billion.
And the the ultra rich but not Billionaires yet of whom there are about 40,000,
these 40,000 worth between 30 Million and 1 Billion have a total worth of another 7 Trillion Five Hundred Billion.
This is that One percent, and the top 100,000 or so are the ultra ultra rich 1/10 of 1% who command the US economy.
But what does it mean? Is it not good that we can aspire to join this group? After all there are a lot of them, almost 1 million, that gives odds way better than winning the lottery, supposedly about 1 in 120.
Of course the flip side is that 50 million households below $40,000 a year gives you about a 45 out of 100 chance of living a life of endless very low chance of getting out of the rut poverty. So 50/50 and 1 in 120.
This disparity has been made possible by our tax laws of the last 40 years not taxing the wealthy high enough, and distributing the wealth of the nation upwards to these individuals. In other words we have not built infrastructure, not built schools and hospitals, not upgraded science and technology, not done space exploration, not built a better society, neglected health and housing and the environment and taken away general protections that allow regular folks to get loans and housing and education at a fair rate,and exported manufacturing all done or omitted by the largest transfer of wealth upward ever in history.
The assets of those millionaires and billionaires if they were spread out to 118 million households would be $175,000 each!!!. Each and every american has largely been robbed of at least half a million dollars because remember they have been accumulating this stolen booty since the 1970's so they have spent and lost a lot of it and or transferred it around or shipped it over seas where we lost track of it, and as we know wealthy folks have ways of hiding assets in accounting tricks.
With a fair tax system and redistribution of wealth as well, the money being spent by 118 million would have over 40 years had a large different effect on the US and the global economy over the hoarding and consolidation of that wealth and the prudent investment by the hoarders over seas and in schemes that make rich richer rather than being spent and re spent in the economy of every day human servces and needs.
Basically this huge asset disparity means that the average American is poor, but there is no reason for them to be poor other than the reason that the wealthy and the corporations have fully captured the economic and political process and have plundered the US populace much in the same way that earlier generations had plundered the continent and stolen it from the original inhabitants. The end of easy land exploitation and resource extraction has forced the capitalist to turn back to the old school mechanism of exploiting and plundering the local population. And the discourse if completely diverted away from the real reasons that we the average people are getting poorer and poorer and the government is getting more and more in debt and the rich and corporations are at the same time getting hugely richer and richer at the same time year after year after year.
It is really very simple, through fair taxation, redistribute a very large percentage of wealth into productive human needs and services. That is ALL!
Those on top will continue to recapture the wealth in the process but less of it each time around and we will get better results because democratic and human based decisions will drive what is done with investment and building society and the pure insane so called rationality of making ever more profit will be curbed. If the Billionaires were reduced to mere hundred millionaires and the multi ultra millionaires reduced to mere millionaires, we would all be a lot better off.
I see that another decade or two of this plunder will lead back towards feudalism and slavery. Logically if we get rid of wage laws and mortgages to low cost home owners and small business loans go away as just not profitable and too risky, or too regulated to pursue, and building everything somewhere else is the mode of operation at some point the average citizen will become "Illegal", you won't have enough money to buy mandatory insurance, you won't have enough money to pay the interest and mortgage insurance premium for a place to live, and you won't have the money to get educated at a private school. At some point the ultra rich and the immortal corporation will have to offer to lend you a helping hand and take you in as chattel. They will pay for your "private insurance" and home you in a work camp for just a small, small to them fee, which you will be free to pay off by working on the 8 hours a night you have off to sleep. I think we could accommodate this non descriminatory slavery as it would be free market based and if we can get back to a theological based constitution slavery is after all very prominent in the Bible.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Currency and Banks
How is currency and Banking a Green Issue?
A. If private banks control all money then banks decide what economic activity gets to exist.
B. If all economic activity is based upon paying 50-90% of all output to interest then all extraction has a heavy premium on it, more must be extracted.
C. All resources must be extracted not at the rate of sustainability but to satisfy the demands of bankers and the accounting rules of paying interes and balancing ledgers.
D. The bank system converts 100% of all activities away from serving human social needs and sustainable environments to only the purpose of increasing profits for the banks.
E. Central banks run in secret, owned by the largest bankers manipulate the economy to their advantage and the rest of our disadvantage. If you don't agree just go ask for the record of the Private owned US federal reserve meeting decision discussions and what was decided.
F. War and Government debt are the number one profit base for large banks.
G. Economic Bubbles, stock crashes, real estate bubbles, banking crises are actually engineered economic warfare where banks take control of the majority of the wealth created in each business cycle and destroy it so that they can maintain the illusions that there is always a shortage of resources.
This all adds up to a society stuck in a war and resource depletion cycle where most people work more than they have to and much business activity and resource utilization is unnecessarily used to satisfy all kinds of activities that are secondary and tertiary to any real economic activity purely related to creating the goods and services needed to maintain a high standard of living.
If half or more of our resource extraction and energy used is going to war, to run banks and insurance companies and support law firms and all the tax preparing and all the financial centers of the world and everyone has to make two or three times more money than they need in order to pay the debt down then we are just spinning our wheels and building a huge edifice of artificiality and sadly building it by destroying out sustainable base of existence.
A. If private banks control all money then banks decide what economic activity gets to exist.
B. If all economic activity is based upon paying 50-90% of all output to interest then all extraction has a heavy premium on it, more must be extracted.
C. All resources must be extracted not at the rate of sustainability but to satisfy the demands of bankers and the accounting rules of paying interes and balancing ledgers.
D. The bank system converts 100% of all activities away from serving human social needs and sustainable environments to only the purpose of increasing profits for the banks.
E. Central banks run in secret, owned by the largest bankers manipulate the economy to their advantage and the rest of our disadvantage. If you don't agree just go ask for the record of the Private owned US federal reserve meeting decision discussions and what was decided.
F. War and Government debt are the number one profit base for large banks.
G. Economic Bubbles, stock crashes, real estate bubbles, banking crises are actually engineered economic warfare where banks take control of the majority of the wealth created in each business cycle and destroy it so that they can maintain the illusions that there is always a shortage of resources.
This all adds up to a society stuck in a war and resource depletion cycle where most people work more than they have to and much business activity and resource utilization is unnecessarily used to satisfy all kinds of activities that are secondary and tertiary to any real economic activity purely related to creating the goods and services needed to maintain a high standard of living.
If half or more of our resource extraction and energy used is going to war, to run banks and insurance companies and support law firms and all the tax preparing and all the financial centers of the world and everyone has to make two or three times more money than they need in order to pay the debt down then we are just spinning our wheels and building a huge edifice of artificiality and sadly building it by destroying out sustainable base of existence.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
MLK RIVERSIDE 2011
1967 Martin Luther King Speech Against War in Vietnam and US Global Policy in general.
I have revised the speech to reflect the United States Policy of War on the World as it is now. I have done this because I believe it shows that our leaders have ignored the messages and warnings of King. In fact it would appear that the state has coopted Martin Luther King and enshrined him as a cult figure to be venerated and worshipped and to be a name dropped in rhetoric and propaganda to make the people think some person in power is somehow a fair and just person who believes in what King stood for. It is time that we took what King said and studied it and either take the message to heart and start implementing these values in society or we should take down Martin Luther king as an icon and get rid of the holiday and set up a more appropriate day such as "Installation of Democratic Regime Day" or "Hatred and Killing Day", or perhaps, "Nine Commandments Day, commemorating the official policy of the United States that the pesky "Thou Shalt not Kill", does not apply to great civilizations with appropriate deliberative mechanisms of extra judicial law.
I find it tragic and scary that with changes in country names to reflect the time of 2004 vs. 1967, and replacing communism with terrorism and democracy with revolution, that Kings speech rings true and loud and clear as a clarion call for dismantling the security state which rules and oppresses our world through never ending terror, misinformation, subterfuge and chaos.
I think Dr King would approve of and support this revision.
The war in Iraq is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy and laymen concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Columbia and Peru. They will be concerned about Indonesia and the Phillipines. They will be concerned about Nigeria and Sudan. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Iraq, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.
In 2004 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of global democracy. During the past forty years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in over one hundred nations. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-democratic action of American forces around the globe. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American defoliants and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Thirty Nine years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of world democracy, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a
"person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives
and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway.
True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice
which produces beggars needs restructuring.
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just."
The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of killing human beings with depleted uranium, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against
Terrorism and anti-americanism. War is not the answer. Terrorism will never be defeated by the use of force or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a terrorist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Palestine in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days.
We must not engage in a negative anti-terrorism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against terrorism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of terrorism grows and develops.
The People Are Important
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions.
It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of terrorism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Anti-Americanism has the democratic spirit. Therefore, terrorism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain."
A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.
This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man.
When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This
Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is
beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:
Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word."
We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today.
We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity.
The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it
ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.
We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Iraq and justice throughout the developing world -- a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send
our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.
As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:
Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.
I have revised the speech to reflect the United States Policy of War on the World as it is now. I have done this because I believe it shows that our leaders have ignored the messages and warnings of King. In fact it would appear that the state has coopted Martin Luther King and enshrined him as a cult figure to be venerated and worshipped and to be a name dropped in rhetoric and propaganda to make the people think some person in power is somehow a fair and just person who believes in what King stood for. It is time that we took what King said and studied it and either take the message to heart and start implementing these values in society or we should take down Martin Luther king as an icon and get rid of the holiday and set up a more appropriate day such as "Installation of Democratic Regime Day" or "Hatred and Killing Day", or perhaps, "Nine Commandments Day, commemorating the official policy of the United States that the pesky "Thou Shalt not Kill", does not apply to great civilizations with appropriate deliberative mechanisms of extra judicial law.
I find it tragic and scary that with changes in country names to reflect the time of 2004 vs. 1967, and replacing communism with terrorism and democracy with revolution, that Kings speech rings true and loud and clear as a clarion call for dismantling the security state which rules and oppresses our world through never ending terror, misinformation, subterfuge and chaos.
I think Dr King would approve of and support this revision.
The war in Iraq is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy and laymen concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Columbia and Peru. They will be concerned about Indonesia and the Phillipines. They will be concerned about Nigeria and Sudan. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Iraq, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.
In 2004 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of global democracy. During the past forty years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in over one hundred nations. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-democratic action of American forces around the globe. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American defoliants and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Thirty Nine years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of world democracy, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a
"person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives
and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway.
True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice
which produces beggars needs restructuring.
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just."
The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of killing human beings with depleted uranium, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against
Terrorism and anti-americanism. War is not the answer. Terrorism will never be defeated by the use of force or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a terrorist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Palestine in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days.
We must not engage in a negative anti-terrorism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against terrorism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of terrorism grows and develops.
The People Are Important
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions.
It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of terrorism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Anti-Americanism has the democratic spirit. Therefore, terrorism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain."
A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.
This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man.
When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This
Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is
beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:
Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word."
We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today.
We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity.
The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it
ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.
We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Iraq and justice throughout the developing world -- a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send
our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.
As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:
Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
When Capitalism Hits the Fan
Google the video title or go to the site I bookmarked , Richard Wolff When Capitalism Hits The Fan.
Don't be scared off by marxist theory and critique, check it out.
Now if progressives could take away all the educational snobby marxist crap and the over blown race-gender-class shit and just get the facts down in real world speak of the average people I think they would have a slam dunk platform. Call it the New Democratic Party. And then lay out what is happening in basic straight up factual language with concrete examples, preferably really blatant and easy to see examples which there seem to be plenty of. People have been hearing the Lower tax plus lower wages plus no government equals prosperity, or 1+1+1 = 500 argument, and it will take some time for them to believe that 1+1+1 equals 3, and 3 is good when we all get our fair share of the pie.
Don't be scared off by marxist theory and critique, check it out.
Now if progressives could take away all the educational snobby marxist crap and the over blown race-gender-class shit and just get the facts down in real world speak of the average people I think they would have a slam dunk platform. Call it the New Democratic Party. And then lay out what is happening in basic straight up factual language with concrete examples, preferably really blatant and easy to see examples which there seem to be plenty of. People have been hearing the Lower tax plus lower wages plus no government equals prosperity, or 1+1+1 = 500 argument, and it will take some time for them to believe that 1+1+1 equals 3, and 3 is good when we all get our fair share of the pie.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
No need for an American Middle Class
Here is an interesting article in my favorite lap dog organ of the uber rich "The Atlantic"
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-rise-of-the-new-global-elite/8343/
Not a peep in this article that maybe it is a bit of a drain and distortion on the economy when 25 hedge fund managers make more than 1 Billion in 2010..., extraction from the economy of which means less jobs, less infrastructure, less education and less health care because those Hedge Fund Managers sure as hell will not re-invest is base line needed economic services but will find "innovative and creative highly educated" uses for the money like lobbying for a lower wages, reduction of taxes on the rich and ripping out any limitation on their fondest goal of being the first Trillionaire.
Just accept it your worthless take a pay cut and accept that there will be no health care-or retirement and no education either unless you can earn it, slovenly ignorant lazy bums all of you.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-rise-of-the-new-global-elite/8343/
Not a peep in this article that maybe it is a bit of a drain and distortion on the economy when 25 hedge fund managers make more than 1 Billion in 2010..., extraction from the economy of which means less jobs, less infrastructure, less education and less health care because those Hedge Fund Managers sure as hell will not re-invest is base line needed economic services but will find "innovative and creative highly educated" uses for the money like lobbying for a lower wages, reduction of taxes on the rich and ripping out any limitation on their fondest goal of being the first Trillionaire.
Just accept it your worthless take a pay cut and accept that there will be no health care-or retirement and no education either unless you can earn it, slovenly ignorant lazy bums all of you.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Where Money Comes From
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2550156453790090544#
Check out the video, it is 47 minutes. This is really how it works now....
Lets go to the new evolution. Digital Standard. Wisdom Engineered Global Base Economics.
Fractional reserve banking was a great concept and got things moving. Unfortunately it gets all snarled up in to concentration of power and weird power trips and very bad anti social engineering.
Check out the video, it is 47 minutes. This is really how it works now....
Lets go to the new evolution. Digital Standard. Wisdom Engineered Global Base Economics.
Fractional reserve banking was a great concept and got things moving. Unfortunately it gets all snarled up in to concentration of power and weird power trips and very bad anti social engineering.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Two Thought Experiments
Don't try this at home it is probably Illegal
1. Loan some one $20. Now just forget about it.
2. Take out a $1 Bill and Burn it. What just happened?
Now what if everyone forgot about all the loans in the world and we just grew up and went digital?
1. Loan some one $20. Now just forget about it.
2. Take out a $1 Bill and Burn it. What just happened?
Now what if everyone forgot about all the loans in the world and we just grew up and went digital?
Monday, January 3, 2011
Bank Bonuses and Corporate Profit
The reported Wall Street Bank Bonuses for 2010: 130 Billion Dollars
Corporate profit reported here and there for 2010 on line 1.7 trillion Dollars.
Simple Math:
130 Billion Dollars = Two Million Six Hundred Thousand $50,000 a year jobs.
1.7 Trillion dollars = Thirty Four Million $50,000 a year jobs.
Lets see now, if Corporations and Banks made 50% less, then 18 million people could have good jobs!
If Corporations cannot invest in the USA maybe then the people should tax them higher, for instance taxing them $850 billion dollars higher and use that money to take care of our needs.
And we have not even got to looking at dividend payments, and treasury bond payouts and corporate bond payouts etc which mostly pay wealthy people large sums of which we just gave a $300 billion plus tax break too as well, in addition to the profits and bonuses listed above.
We have no shortage of resources and no shortage of money just a great absence of leadership and the courage to take what we have and utilize it wisely.
Corporate profit reported here and there for 2010 on line 1.7 trillion Dollars.
Simple Math:
130 Billion Dollars = Two Million Six Hundred Thousand $50,000 a year jobs.
1.7 Trillion dollars = Thirty Four Million $50,000 a year jobs.
Lets see now, if Corporations and Banks made 50% less, then 18 million people could have good jobs!
If Corporations cannot invest in the USA maybe then the people should tax them higher, for instance taxing them $850 billion dollars higher and use that money to take care of our needs.
And we have not even got to looking at dividend payments, and treasury bond payouts and corporate bond payouts etc which mostly pay wealthy people large sums of which we just gave a $300 billion plus tax break too as well, in addition to the profits and bonuses listed above.
We have no shortage of resources and no shortage of money just a great absence of leadership and the courage to take what we have and utilize it wisely.
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