Summer of Rage: Greece in Turmoil

Protesters face riot police during an anti-austerity demonstration near parliament in the centre of Athens. With the Greek government facing collapse, Europe is warned of financial chaos. Photograph: Panagiotis Tzamaros/AFP/Getty

This is what I been writing about since the first of the year. I am afraid we have arrived at a pivotal point in global history; Economic stabilization is the key to preventing a full meltdown of the EU and Europe, and perhaps avoid a global economic calamity.

To understand what is going on, here are a few articles:

Guardian UK – Greek Crisis Sends World Markets into Turmoil
Guardian UK – Europe Warned of Financial Chaos Over Greek Debt Crisis

The Greek government was on the brink of collapse after pitched battles on the streets of Athens on Wednesday, sending world stocks tumbling as EU leaders squabbled over whether and how to launch a second attempt to keep Greece from insolvency.

George Papandreou, the socialist prime minister, appeared to admit defeat by offering to dissolve his government and form a national unity coalition, but admitted his efforts to negotiate with the opposition conservatives had failed.

“Tomorrow I will form a new government, and then I will ask for a vote of confidence,” Papandreou said on state television. The move followed intense but fruitless negotiations with the conservative New Democracy party to engineer a consensus behind the savage public spending cuts deemed necessary and a wholesale privatisation programme.

The opposition had called for Papandreou’s resignation and a renegotiation of the bailout terms with the EU, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund as the price for its assent to a national coalition.

Earlier, riot police had battled with tens of thousands of protesters in the capital against the radical austerity measures being imposed to try to secure a second bailout in a year, running to tens of billions of euros.

EU governments, the ECB, and the European Commission were gridlocked over how to respond to the debt emergency, which pushed Greece closer to sovereign default, possibly triggering a fresh European banking crisis.

A sense of siege descended on Brussels as the Greek drama appeared to be heading towards a denouement. The ECB warned that a Greek default could spark “contagion” across Europe, causing Greek banks to implode and inflicting major damage on the big banks in France and Germany.

“It looks like a week of chaos,” said a European official in Brussels. Senior diplomats in Brussels said that an emergency meeting of the 17 eurozone finance ministers on Tuesday had failed to bridge the differences over how to construct a second bailout in a year for Greece, running to almost €100bn. In May last year the EU and the IMF put together a €110bn bailout for Greece, the first in a single currency country. That experiment has failed. Ireland and Portugal have since also needed to be rescued from national insolvency.

“The euro area faces a very challenging situation that comes mostly from the interconnection of the sovereign debt crisis and the situation of the banking sector,” the ECB said. “Greece could have a contagion effect,” added Vitor Constancio, an ECB vice-president.

The Perfect Storm May Threaten Global Economy – click here

1984 Grace Commission Relevant Today

100% of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal Debt … all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services taxpayers expect from government.”

-Grace Commission report submitted to President Ronald Reagan – January 15, 1984

The Private Sector Survey on Cost Control (PSSCC), commonly referred to as The Grace Commission, was an investigation requested by United States President Ronald Reagan, in 1982. The focus of it was waste and inefficiency in the US Federal government. Its head, businessman J. Peter Grace, asked the members of that commission to “be bold” and “work like tireless bloodhounds. Don’t leave any stone unturned in your search to root out inefficiency.”

Source: Wikipedia, click here

Daily Hurl: Bernanke On Economy

The jobs that have been created by our large multinational corporations, like the bailed-out GE, are primarily outside of the country, as Bernanke admitted.

Source: Robert Scheer at Truthdig

Dow Drops 300 Points on Weak Economic News

Weak manufacturing and anemic job creation caused the Dow to take a 300 point dive today. As I have written many times here, until the major corporations invest the nearly $3 trillion they have in capital reserves and the banks cut loose on the more than $2 trillion they are sitting on, the U.S. economy will continue to slip and slide.

I heard a housing report this morning and it stated that housing will not return to “normal’ for 5 ~ 8 years.

Job creation is around 200,000 a month for the last three months. We need to be above 250,000 a month over the next 3 years ( easy math ) to get back to 2007 employment levels.

With the Republicans threatening to shut the government down (more blackmail tactics), unless Medicare is “reformed” and trillions cut from the deficit and debt ( two different things), job creation will take a back seat to nasty politics for the foreseeable future.

As I posted recently: There are answers to putting our nation back on the road to recovery. One glaring answer is to let the $2 trillion dollar Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire next year. This is supported by a recent report from the Center on Budget and Public Policy. The CBPP reports: Simply letting the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule… would stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio for the next decade.

Read related Atlantic Monthly article: Does Washington DC Care About the Economy Anymore?

Paul Ryan Budget Proposal Voted Down By Senate

The Ryan Plan is history. Bye-bye, DOA, Flamed out. Done. Over. Toast.

The Senate has rejected the controversial budget plan proposed by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), which sailed through the House along partisan lines last month. The Senate vote was 57-40 against the bill. Source: Huffington Post

Wisconsin Teachers Sick-Out Under GOP Attack

Huffington Post reports: A recent spate of Wisconsin public information requests forced school districts to determine whether citizens deserve to know if teachers who took sick days on Feb. 16 were really suffering from the flu, or instead were protesting Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) policies.

The Wisconsin State Journal reported online Tuesday that conservative groups filed public records requests to uncover the names of the teachers who played hooky to protest legislation that drastically altered the laws governing their profession. The sick-out led to school closures, as teachers rallied en masse against Walker’s proposal to end collective bargaining for civil employees, including teachers.

The Wisconsin law and subsequent protests contributed to igniting a national debate about the role of public employees — and particularly work protections for teachers. While job security for teachers was traditionally pegged to senority, new laws are taking student test scores into consideration and limiting teachers’ right to collectively bargain their salaries.

In Wisconsin, most districts complied with the information request, but not Madison, which cited concern for protecting both teacher morale and safety. And in response to arguments from local divisions of the state’s largest teachers union, a judge blocked the release of names in the Holmen and La Crosse districts.

Read entire article, click here

Story of Citizens United vs FEC

I’m a small business owner and cannot seem to catch a break. My inlaws are members of unions, teachers and postal workers – and they are under attack. Our public lands are under siege as large corporations insist on mining, drilling, and otherwise exploiting the forests, deserts, and reserves that make up public lands. Banks are no longer interested in loaning to small businesses. Many large corporations are no longer interested in investing in America or Americans. What’s going on!? I think this little video provides some answers:

Koch Juice: More JBS and Libertarian Obfuscation

Let me poke one big hole in JBS and Libertarian rhetoric. You cannot say you are for personal freedom and then be anti-civil rights. That is as contrary a position as one can get in the art of manipulation.

I have run across several sites recently while researching the extent of the reach of the John Birch Society and Libertarian party… their so-called, grass roots movement. I have come across several sites that claim they do not support any party or candidate. Hmm, I think we need to evaluate that statement a little further. And let me say this. Just because you are on the Web, does not mean you are open and honest. I think most people know that, but some people seem to think that putting up a website somehow is making a statement of openness and presumed honesty. That is a false presumption.

First off, there is the John Birch Society “Meet Ups”: http://jbs.meetup.com/ AND http://www.meetup.com/jbs-111/

Ron Paul specifically backs these “meet ups” with his own meet up site. I also found a site called, JBS Freedom Campaign Pages, with this theme: ~~ LET’S TAKE AMERICA BACK! ~~ “Major goals of this Meetup are blocking the North American Union (NAU), repealing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), improving border security, stopping illegal immigration, rejecting amnesty, opposing Senate ratification of the UN’s Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), and supporting Ron Paul’s American Freedom Agenda Act of 2007. Organizational guidance and campaign tools are provided for the JBS.org Freedom Campaign Meetups by the John Birch Society at http://www.JBS.org/freedom.”

So, the theme here is “Let’s take America back” and the question is from whom? And also, when we take it back, what is being implemented in its place? These elements of their argument are implied through their well-constructed rhetoric. We are going to take it back and do what? Let’s take another look at who is involved and what their agenda is and what “taking it back” might look like.

Libertarian Ron Paul who just announced his 2012 candidacy for President is a John Bircher. The John Birch Society has a history of being racist and anti-civil rights. The core principle is to squash anything that resembles collectivism: welfare, Medicare, public education, etc. They also want to do away with the Federal Reserve and restore the gold standard. That would strip the U.S. of its monetary authority, among other things.

The [JBS] society opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, saying it was in violation of the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and overstepped the rights of individual states to enact laws regarding civil rights. Source: Wikipedia

Over at RTR.orgwe find the Social Network of the Revolution. Wow. “The revolution”? What revolution? Is there a revolution declared on our federal government? If so, that is an act of sedition. But, that’s what Gary Franchi states in the video posted on their site and on YouTube. It is the new social network of THE revolution. He also says: This site is powered by you, not special interests groups….

Uh, Libertarians are a special interest group. They are heavily backed political party group backed by wealthy elitists and the Koch brothers, the 3rd richest in the United States. $25 billion each at last count. They back 59 think tanks, front groups, astroturf groups, and the Tea Party who are Libertarians.

Check out the post by one of its members, a self-professed Libertarian called Libertarian Pledge to America – click here. You will see he is actively promoting the dismantling of most of the Departments of our federal government, the Federal Reserve, NPR, FTC, TSA, NASA, National School Lunch Program, and on and on the list goes. It is a lengthy list but my readers will now see that this is in fact what I have been saying about Libertarians they are radical and want to shrink government and basically concentrate power in the hands of the few. A very dangerous proposition. Here are some more exceprts:

# I promise to cease funding Planned Parenthood.
# I promise to abolish the Department of Health and Human Services.
# I promise to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
# I promise to end Medicare and Medicaid.
# I promise to end all federal funding and control of medicine and medical research.
# I promise to abolish the FDA.
# I promise to abolish NPR.
# I promise to abolish the Department of Labor.
# I promise to cease funding any scientific research on climate change.
# I promise to end the FED.

Now,Gary Franchi also runs Restore the Republic which was originally founded by Aaron Russo (February 14, 1943 – August 24, 2007), an American entertainment businessman, filmmaker, libertarian political activist, and a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.

Aaron Russo died of bladder cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California on August 24, 2007, at age 64. Shortly before his passing, in 2007, Russo founded RestoreTheRepublic.com to fulfill the political ambitions laid out in his final film. He publicly passed the torch to Gary S. Franchi Jr., founder of the Lone Lantern Society of America to lead the new organization and carry on his fight. Russo said his goal was to “try and get the word out to the public about what’s happening to America — and give them an opportunity to try to change things”. Source: Wikipedia

So, we see that Gary Franchi is a Libertarian with a mission to fulfill. In and of itself, there is no crime here, save the ethical one of obfuscation, of deceit, or pretending to be one thing (unbiased social network), but in fact another (promoting a very specific Libertarian agenda). The question begs to be asked? Why hide what you are doing? Why not just straight out say, I am a Libertarian and want to have a social network for like minded people? Why indeed. People like Franchi, Ron Paul, Fred Koch and sons Charles and David, think they are on a mission, a noble mission, to remake America. But, their ideology is very distasteful stuff. They cloak their agenda in false rhetoric and fancy patriotic names. The Kochs are experts at this marketing game: Freedom Works. That’s strong. Americans for Prosperity. Who doesn’t like a little prosperity. But, it was both of these front groups working against collective bargaining in Wisconsin and Michigan and Indiana and Ohio. Shall I go on? These folks are shysters. They are trying to capitalize — literally — on American patriotism, yet are kicking working Americans in the teeth.

What the Libertarians and JBS fail to see is America is a very diverse country made up of many political viewpoints, credos, religions, and cultural beliefs. The beauty of American Constitutional thinking is its great flexibility, its ability to embrace a wide range of views and cultures. These extreme right wingers are constantly banging the fear drum. We are to be fearful. Fearful of the new world order, the tentacles of government, the size of government. Oh my God, the Federal Reserve is not written into our Constitution!

This is all based in the paranoia of politics. Fred Koch’s legacy is one based on very negative experiences while working as an engineer in the Soviet Union. He saw the brutality of Stalin’s totalitarian methods of governing. Upon his return he hooked up with Robert Welch and the two fed off each other’s paranoia about how collectivism was the root evil of communism and communism in the 50s was literally the red hot issue of the day. Better Dead Than Red was a well-know slogan.

The great irony about Soviet communism is two-fold: (i) it was not communism. It was a perverted form of communist theory that enabled a totalitarian state; (ii) the USSR bankrupt itself by spending 45% of its national budget on their military; they never recovered after their venture into Afghanistan. Of course, Reagan lovers all praise him for taking down the red threat.

Certainly, we should as free citizens be on guard for would be usurpers of our freedom, our sense of equality, our rights to live as free citizens. But, it would seem the very people who state we need to retake our government are trying to destroy it and implement corporatism and privatization. That is not democracy. That is an oligarchy.

If you are not sure as to whether RTR.org and Gary Franchi is unbiased, please view this obvious political video backing Libertarian candidate, Ron Paul. BTW: Ron Paul IS running for the 2012 Presidential election.

READ THIS GREAT BACKGROUND PIECE ON THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY: Public Eye, click here

New York: Bloomberg Budget Proposes 6,000 Teachers Laid Off

It is spreading like a cancer and everyday Americans must retake control of their government. Our local, state, and Federal government must affirm the people and not strike them down.

Huffington Post reports:

NEW YORK — A $2.1 billion boost in projected tax revenue will keep the city from planning new cuts to services, but the city is forging ahead with previously announced cuts that would slice more than 6,000 teaching jobs, reduce library hours and pull millions of dollars for youth jobs, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday as he announced his budget proposal for next fiscal year.

Bloomberg is banking on $600 million in state concessions to balance the $65.6 billion city budget, saying that city agencies and schools will face further cuts if the state doesn’t come through on education aid, revenue sharing and retirement payments. Bloomberg called on the Legislature to require all the state’s cities to equally share in cuts to revenue-sharing funds, a move that would save the city $200 million, as part of the concessions he’s asking from the state.

“We have planned ahead and we have helped guide New York through the deepest national recession in decades,” the mayor said, but warned the cuts would be more severe if the state concessions didn’t come through. “We don’t deserve to be penalized for our responsible management.”

The mayor proposed laying off 4,666 teachers and cutting another 1,500 jobs through attrition. Those losses, representing roughly one out of every 12 teachers in the nation’s largest public school system, are the same cuts Bloomberg initially proposed in November in response to a multibillion-dollar budget shortfall.

Read entire article, click here

Osama Bin Laden Dead; Body in U.S. Hands

Osama Bin Laden Dead; Body in U.S. Hands as reported by CBS news tonight. This will greatly strengthen President Obama as it has occurred on his watch.

Followup will happen as events unfold.

UPDATE: CNN: CIA Black Ops hit on Bin Laden; U.S. Operation a moral victory for the United States;

UPDATE: AP: Official says US ensuring bin Laden’s body is handled in accordance with Islamic tradition;

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