Root Cause

Farewell - American Democracy
It's Official. Corporations Rule.
The American Justice System has decided

Ask your two year old on a seesaw about balance, weight and power
when 2% golden greedy guts owns 98% of the worlds’
Wealth and Resources









true to scale model would render top image invisible


total world population Feb 2010:......... 6,801,000,000
2% Golden Greedy Guts population:........ 136,020,000
98% rest of us population:................... 6,664,980,000

“Fascism is about the state running things on behalf of corporations. Adrian Lyttelton in his book on Mussolini wrote that ‘Fascism can be viewed as a product of the transition from the market capitalism of the independent producer to the organized capitalism of the oligopoly.’ It was a point that Orwell noted when he described fascism as being but an extension of capitalism. Lyttelton quoted Italian Nationalist theorist Affredo Rocco: ‘The Fascist economy is. . . an organized economy. It is organized by the producers themselves, under the supreme direction and control of the State.’ ”

Could Terrorists do more to destroy America: Millions of Americans losing their life savings, losing their homes, losing their jobs, going hungry, without health insurance, with surging productivity among those still working accompanied by steady decline in wages and benefits, local and state governments running out of money, interest rates on savings at negative 0 (Zero), and everyone stuck in nightmare traffic…………………. A declining economy on a planet whose population is exploding - an incredible impossibility
Advances in the science of energy would have eliminated all the above, providing prosperity and understanding for all people.

Root Cause

There's No Such Thing as a Free Market -- Just a Matter of Who Pays for It

“nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. If you’re rich in a free market, you can get great health care, you can travel, you can do whatever you like. All the freedom money can buy. But if you are poor in a market economy, then freedom is just another word for nothing you can afford" (........Freedom Times insert - remember the poor created banks with Zero interest rates on savings, told employers to continually pay them less, created Casinos out of stock market speculation and control, and added volumes of no need to know, national security, classified, science and energy documents, ........... and if you believe all that, I have a lot of swamp land to sell)

By Terrence McNally and Raj Patel, AlterNetPosted on February 19, 2010, Printed on February 20, 2010http://www.alternet.org/story/145726/
Raj Patel opens his new book, The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy, with Oscar Wilde’s observation that “nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Patel shows how our faith in prices as a way of valuing the world is misplaced. Revealing the hidden ecological and social costs of a hamburger -- as much as $200 -- he asks how we came to have markets in the first place. Both the corporate capture of government and our current financial crisis, Patel argues, are a result of our bankrupt political system. Searching for solutions, Patel goes back to basics in both economics and politics.

Raj Patel has worked for the World Bank and WTO and been tear-gassed on four continents protesting against them. He is a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Center for African Studies, a researcher at the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, a fellow at the Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First) and the author of Stuffed and Starved. Though recently heralded as the Maitreya (or chosen one) by members of Share International, Patel protests he's just an ordinary bloke.

Terry McNally: You have worked for and protested against some of the same organizations. Tell us a bit about your path.

Raj Patel: I’m a child of imperialism, or as it’s more recently called, globalization. My family was scattered to the winds: my father was born in Fiji, my mother in Kenya, and I grew up in Britain. I’ve long been concerned about the links between different places, and how to fight poverty in those places. I was lucky enough, being born in a diaspora community, to be taken to the global south a great deal and to spend time staring poverty in the face.When I was in the process of my graduate studies, there came an opportunity to work at the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. As an intern at the WTO, I delivered intelligence to social movements who were very interested in how that organization worked. At the World Bank, I was offered the opportunity to write a report that gave me access to classified internal documents looking at how they represented poverty and poor people to themselves.

Unfortunately I helped produce a puff piece that the World Bank then published under the title, "Voices of the Poor – Can Anyone Hear Us?" In it, the World Bank proclaimed quite loudly that it knew poor people very well and that some of its best friends were poor. That was obviously unacceptable, and I resigned soon after the professor who had originally hired me.

TM: Your experience at the World Bank reminds me of Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, and even more specifically of ecological economist Herman Daly. When Daly was at the World Bank, they were producing a publication that included a depiction of the global economy. Daly suggested they put a frame around the economy to indicate the limits of nature. Others disagreed, and, after intense back and forth, the image was published without a frame. Daly protested that the economy does not exist in some abstract unbounded universe, and resigned soon after that.

RP: I am quite pleased to be part of a tradition of people who discover that the World Bank, however much it protests that it is interested in poverty and sustainability, turns out not to be. The fact that some pretty good people have run away from the World Bank in disgust does not mean that the people who remain are evil, but that they’re beholden to an ideology that they cannot see and they cannot change. The bankruptcy of that ideology is one of the starting points of The Value of Nothing.

TM: Could you say a bit about your earlier book, Stuffed and Starved?

RP: When I was at the Institute for Food and Development Policy in Oakland, California, also known as Food First, I wanted to write a book connecting the dots, to explain how it is that the United States has such epidemic levels of obesity, while there are globally epidemic levels of hunger. We now live in a world where there are a billion people who are overweight and a billion people who are starving.For a while, of course, it was a revelation to point out that hunger happened in America, as well as obesity, but now the tragedy of that contradiction is even more magnified. In 2008 over 49 million went hungry in the United States, and at the same time, the United States was the most obese population on earth.In Stuffed and Starved, I tried to explain how these two things are not accidental, but are actually the outcomes of a very complex system in which corporate power not only underpays labor -- particularly labor that produces food – but also sells us food that is systematically bad for us.

TM: You say "…that markets should know best is a relatively recent article of faith. It took a great deal of ideological and political work to make it part of government’s conventional wisdom.” How did this well-constructed belief in the market impact the food crisis and the financial crash of last year?

RP: Based on the idea that markets know best, government regulation and oversight was pretty systematically dismantled in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s. That regulation had taken a wide range of forms, from protection for union organizing to banking regulation and oversight, from food grain reserves in the U.S. and elsewhere to the ability of people to organize and think about a role for government that was anything other than cutting taxes and letting the free market do its thing. These are all things that were lost when the ideology of "markets know best" triumphed.The food crisis wasn’t really because of a shortage of food. There were odd things happening in the global food supply, and strange events that affected a few grain baskets here and there, but, in the main, the driving force behind a lot of the volatility in food markets was speculation. Capital flowed from speculating on oil prices into speculating on the price of food, and all of a sudden the price of rice went up by 30 percent in a single day.

TM: The price of rice went up 30 percent in one day?

RP: Some dodgy policies happened in Southeast Asia at the same time as global markets were incredibly tight and there was a lot of speculation. All of a sudden the interconnectedness of global markets in rice meant that the price jumped.Food prices soared in 2008 for a variety of reasons, a lot to do with the interconnectedness of world markets. Locally sourced rice wasn’t able to be produced and released to the market in ways that were acceptable to everyone, so those food price rises led to protests.Haiti is a perfect example of how market fundamentalism destroyed an economy. At the beginning of the 1980s Haiti grew the majority of its own rice. But people in Haiti wanted a left-wing government, and two U.S. presidents didn’t think that was a good idea. Presidents Reagan and Clinton negotiated for Haiti a structural adjustment loan from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Haiti, a very indebted country, would be given money in order to pay off its debts, on the condition that it open its economy to the free-market-knows-best mentality.The trouble is there is no free market. There’s no free market in food for sure. You have Haitian rice farmers who earn two dollars a day if they’re lucky, competing against U.S. rice farmers who get a billion dollars a year in subsidy. It’s not surprising that Haitian rice farmers first panic and try to produce more rice just to be able to survive, and then in the end, give up to become sweatshop workers in the city.As a consequence, in 2008 there were vigorous protests around food. First of all, demanding the return of a democratically elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide, deposed in an international coup in which the U.S. seems to be very heavily involved. But also demanding bags of subsidized rice that came from the U.S. labeled “gift of the people of the United States." That gives you some sense of how the markets have been politically enforced in places that didn’t want them, and how this market-knows-best mentality turns out to be a tool with which poorer people are subjugated to the needs of the most powerful.

TM: When you throw someone who can feed his family or a community that can feed themselves into the global marketplace…as long as they’re able to compete with subsidized produce from richer countries they’re okay, but if the market doesn’t work for them, even temporarily, they no longer have the life raft of their own food to feed them.How did the free-market-knows-best influence the Wall Street bubble and the crash?

RP: You had a series of decisions around regulation, with the banks thinking that they ought to be able to regulate themselves. But they also had an ideology, the efficient market hypothesis: if you let markets reign freely, then all knowledge that is available will be brought to bear, and markets will be able to price assets correctly.But there was a problem in the way compensation in Wall Street was structured, because if the market really prices everything exactly and correctly the minute that it hits the market, there’s no room for anyone to make any profit. There was a sort of inbuilt incentive for people to systematically ignore the risks in certain financial products and in certain kinds of trades.If they could shuffle off that risk into the next quarter, they would be rewarded handsomely this quarter and their bonuses would be high. By basically gaming the system with regulations -- that they authored -- which encouraged a certain kind of playing fast and loose with the numbers, it was possible through some creative accounting for huge amounts of systematic risk to be kicked off into the future and ignored. And of course when the catastrophic risk was realized, everyone ran for the hills and started demanding public support.We’re told that free markets are almost God-given things, that they fall from the sky, when, in fact, they are human made. Free markets very much depend on governments to pick them up when they fall.

TM: As we live with a shorter attention span, people think that what is has always been. You make clear that the notion of the market, particular ways of looking at human nature, and the whole idea of value and price were not ever so.

RP: The idea that price and value are different things goes all the way back to Aristotle. For them, chrematistics -- what does something cost in a market -- is basically a trivial question. And very different from economia, the business of provisioning and distributing resources within the household.Although a price is the most superficial example of the economy at work, all the major economists, certainly Adam Smith and Karl Marx, knew very well that supply and demand, scarcity and availability, determined what something cost. As investigators, they were trying to figure out why something costs what it does. For Smith and for Marx, the question came down to labor.Work and labor are somehow different from anything else that goes into a good, because labor transforms something from being a static inanimate part of nature into something that has much more value. This labor theory of value is why Adam Smith thought that the real value of anything was essentially the trouble that went into the making of it. Smith also had a much more sophisticated idea of how the economy was structured so that workers were systematically different from landowners who, in turn, were systematically different from merchants, who profited from the employment of laborers.Karl Marx took that idea much further and systematized it much more thoughtfully into an explanation of why capitalism looks the way it does, and why modern capitalism is always going to externalize environmental costs while internalizing the profits.Marx also made another point that I think is tremendously important, which is that modern capitalism doesn’t pay for household work. Modern capitalism doesn’t pay for the business of making new workers. Bringing up kids, educating them, and building new community won’t be paid for by capitalism because that’s a subsidy that capitalism needs in order to survive. Some U.N. researchers figured out that women’s unpaid work (in 1995) would cost $17 trillion if we were to pay market value -- pretty much half the total world output. Yet women own less than 10 percent of the world’s resources in developing countries and less than 10 percent of the land. And this is not an accident, it’s integral to the way the system works.

TM: Another very important notion you deal with is the commons. You point out that much of what we now see as a God-given economic infrastructure was made possible by the enclosure of the commons.
RP: There is a hidden history to this word. In general the way people know about the commons is through the tragedy of the commons, which says that when all of us have access to a resource that no one owns, we will be selfish and greedy and with eyes wide open use that resource up. The tragedy is that we will destroy the resource that we know we depend on, and leave ourselves with nothing. In 1968 this was published in the journal Science as a thought experiment by cell biologist Garret Hardin. If you look at the history of the commons, however, in the United Kingdom, in Italy, around the world, it turns out that people are pretty good at managing resources so that they don’t get destroyed and overrun.

TM: In Jared Diamond’s book Collapse, he looks at a number of societies. Some collapsed, some did not.

RP: The question of what causes collapse versus sustainability is something we’re increasingly interested in. The latest Nobel Prize in economics was won by a woman for the first time, Ellen Ostrum, in part for her work on the commons. What she found should shock us a little bit. While human beings are of course selfish and greedy, it turns out that we are also cooperative and altruistic and generous and capable of negotiating agreements that we in general abide by. And if we don’t abide by them, we also have regimes of punishment that make sure that fairness is maintained.A recent study in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looked at how different forest communities manage their forests. Forest communities that had enough forest to be able to use it sustainably, and that also had autonomy -- with neither the private sector nor the government involved -- did better. Not only did they have higher levels of welfare and development indicators, but they also sequestered more carbon. They managed the forest so that they were able to lock away carbon that benefits all of us. Despite being selfish and greedy, they were also good at living with the economic consequences of their actions and learning from them. And that’s something that markets don’t teach us how to do.

TM: You say that the joining of politics and economics, of government and the market has really distorted things over the last 100 years.

RP: Even someone like Adam Smith was very worried about the power of corporations or the very rich to dominate the poorest in society.

TM: In the evolution of the market’s power over everything else, you cite Eugene Fama and Gary Becker and Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand. Do such theoreticians actually make a major difference? Do they lead people somewhere or do they just map what people are already doing?
RP: I talk a lot in the book about how these ideologues for the free market, these apologists if you like, are useful in pushing forward a free market doctrine that suits the very powerful. I do think that someone like Ayn Rand is an important part of the story of the acceptability of free markets in the U.S. Of course, it’s a bit of both. On the one hand, particularly in the Cold War, the free marketers were able to insinuate their ideology into the war on communism, so the rich could say we’re part of the war on communism, tax us less. At the same time, the ideology makes certain courses of action thinkable. There’s a sort of back and forth between power and the ideologies that power produces.Gary Becker, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, thinks that there should be a market in women -- that we should allow polygamy so that women who aren’t able to command a good price for themselves as a first wife can get a price as a second wife -- which is of course a preposterous idea.

TM: He didn’t believe it was preposterous, am I correct?

RP: He was serious. He proved with a few diagrams that you actually increase welfare for women when you allow polygamy.Markets aren’t bad by themselves. There are some cultures that exist today where markets are associated with meeting people you don’t know and developing bonds of trust and generosity. It’s just that capitalist markets are premised on certain relations of exploitation that are good for just a handful of people, and bad for the rest of us and bad for the environment.

TM: How has this become a global problem when Europe has a tradition of social democracy with safety nets and a robust social contract?

RP: It’s become a global problem through the export of free market fundamentalism through organizations like the World Trade Organization and the World Bank, but also through direct U.S. economic policy and intervention. And British and European. The European Union is quite happy to have its safety nets at home, but in its development policy, it joins the U.S. in insisting that developing countries not be allowed the rights to invest in their own people or develop their own industries. In that sense Europe is two-faced about its development economics.

TM: The U.S. espouses things that it doesn’t actually do. Europe actually does them for itself, but prevents them for anyone else.Could you say a bit more about price, value, externalities…and the hamburger?

RP: This is the example that captures people’s imaginations. We’re familiar with paying $4 for a double cheeseburger, but what we’re not familiar with is the way in which the corporation that produced that food has managed to squeeze out the hidden costs.

Some researchers in India asked if we were to value the rainforest that was destroyed so that cattle could be raised on that land, how much would it cost? We lose biodiversity, we lose the nutrient cycles of the rainforest, we lose carbon, we lose the oxygen being produced -- and we can impute a dollar value to that. It turns out that our $4 hamburger would cost $200. That’s just the environmental costs and doesn’t include the hidden costs of labor in the food.

In the U.S. our burgers come with tomatoes, and in the winter those tomatoes will likely come from Florida, and chances are that the people who are picking those tomatoes are getting paid pennies for a 48-pound bucket of tomatoes.Since 1997 in the U.S. over 1,000 people have been freed from conditions of modern-day slavery under articles that constituted abolition. Workers were being paid pennies for a day’s work, and then forced to pay for things like showers. When you’re working with pesticides every day, you need a shower. Some people found it cheaper to wash their hands with bleach than to pay for a shower. That features in the price of a hamburger.

TM: I’ve talked with Ben Skinner and others about the magnitude of slavery in the world at this time, but that 1,000 people have been freed under U.S. antislavery laws is news to me.
RP: The Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Southern Florida say that 1,000 is just those the police have managed to liberate, and that the number who remain in slavery is much higher.

TM: That $200 also doesn’t include the health costs.

RP: These are just the costs that precede production. But the hamburger is part of a diet that is causing us to be massively overweight and very sick. One in three kids born in this country after 2004 will develop diabetes, one in two among minorities, and one in five of our health care dollars -- over $180 billion -- is already being spent treating people with diabetes.The burger companies don’t have to foot that bill, we do. The debt that we owe developing countries from the way that we consume today is in the trillions of dollars, but even in this country, the way we eat today is a debt that never features in the price of food. I say that cheap food is in fact cheat food, because companies cheat their way out of paying the full cost.

TM: It isn’t just the food in this country, it’s the clothing, it’s the toys, it’s everything. If you are opting for cheap, someone is probably getting cheated.Let’s get to your reasons for hope. There are some very radical activities going on among the Immokalee Farm Workers, the La Via Campesina, the Zapatistas, etc. I recently interviewed Rebecca Solnit about her book, Hope in the Dark, and your reasons for hope are very much the same.

RP: You began by quoting Dr. King, who described himself as a democratic socialist. Dr. King didn’t just say we need more regulation, he was actually engaged in the politics of practical change. Organizing the poor people’s campaign was a direct response to asking the questions: Why do we live in a world of poverty? Why does capitalism reign with such awesome power?

It’s important for us to realize that in the U.S. we don’t really live in a proper democracy. We live in a kind of complain-ocracy, where every two years we have the chance to boot out officials who have disappointed us and replace them with officials who have yet to disappoint us.We don’t have the kind of thriving democracy that Athens did 2,400 years ago. I don’t want to live in 2,400-years-ago Athens, but I do think it’s interesting that in the birthplace of democracy, there were never any elections. Electoral politics has nothing to do with democracy. In Athens, governments were elected at random through a lottery. At the beginning of every year 6,000 people were chosen to become the government, and after that year they were disbanded and another 6,000 were chosen. People who did not want to be part of that governing procedure were called idiots.There are communities today where that kind of democracy is taken very seriously. The Zapatistas in Southern Mexico are a good example. But you don’t have to go to Southern Mexico to find really exciting movements. La Via Campesina, an International peasant movement of 150 million, has members in the United States, including the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Southern Florida and the National Family Farm Coalition.

What’s missing in our economy, they argue, is the right to have rights. If you’re rich in a free market, you can get great health care, you can travel, you can do whatever you like.

TM: All the freedom money can buy.

RP: But if you are poor in a market economy, then freedom is just another word for nothing you can afford. These movements want the right to have rights. They’re not asking for anything special, they just want rights and the capacity to demand them.Movements like La Via Campesina say, “If we’re going to have rights, we need equality in power. We need a democracy where it’s possible for every voice to be counted." Within the fight for food sovereignty they call for an end to all forms of violence against women -- and that’s an amazing jump.TM: …and they came up with that through a set of conversations bubbling up from the bottom. That’s very powerful.

RP: It is important to remember that these are peasants. In English the word peasant carries with it a certain pejorative connotation: "That guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he’s just a peasant."They’re not anti-market, they just want social control of markets. They’re saying that if we’re serious about equality and power; if we’re serious about having real markets where real exchange can happen, then we need to confront inequality in power wherever it happens, from the heights of the World Trade Organization right down to the household where permanent inequality still exists under modern capitalism.People didn’t sit down and read Marxist textbooks to figure this out. It’s not about finding the right revolutionary manual or reading the right chapter of Ayn Rand. This is born of direct experience, in a concrete attempt to solve real world problems.
TM: How do they do it? You write, for instance, that the Zapatistas do it slowly.RP: In Stuffed and Starved I talk about slow food, a movement that started in Italy, of sitting down and really enjoying food. In the Zapatistas' case, I talk about slow politics -- the difficult, prolonged deliberation that leads to good decisions.There are certain things that need to be done very quickly. If you’re sick, Zapatistas do not sit around and ponder what you have and the best way to reach you, they send an ambulance. But for a lot of the choices and decisions that we make today, they realize we need to take more time. We need discussion, we need to learn the art of deliberating and of having meetings and of disagreeing and of resolving our disagreements. One of the ways in which we are de-skilled as citizens is that we’re not really used to having civilized debates. We’re used to rowdy town halls where people adopt positions of one or the other political party -- as if there are only two opinions about any given issue -- and then hurl abuse at one another.In Zapatista meetings, you have a long, really slow process of deliberation to get to what people believe to be the right answer, so that people can own a decision, and learn from the consequences if that decision isn’t correct.

TM: Someone recently described his politics to me as 'radical' -- not as in wild-eyed, but as in the Latin, where radical comes from the same word as 'root.' He was interested in getting to the roots of things.

RP: In our accelerated world and our accelerated politics where decisions need to be made instantly and there’s no room for reasoned debate, we never get to the roots of anything. We never get to the roots of the word radical.We don’t have time for that, and we need to make time. It would be futile to expect our politicians in Washington to do that. But at a community level in the U.S. right now, particularly in the food movement but in many other movements as well, I’m seeing people asking root cause questions, just as Dr. King did. Asking tough questions and coming up with answers -- that to me is democracy at work, and it’s very hopeful.

TM: Where can people learn more? What is worth paying attention to, worth becoming involved with, and worth putting our hopes in?

RP: For me it’s food, an issue that concerns 49 million Americans. You can get involved pretty instantly, there’s already stuff going on in your community. At foodfirst.org, there’s a great deal of information about how to get to the root causes of hunger and how to fight it. Food Policy Councils are springing up around the country and around North America, nearly 100 of them now, that are asking these root cause questions.

But if you’re not interested in food, that’s okay, there’s something you’re passionate about, whether it’s health care or transitioning away from our unsustainable carbon world into something much better. If you’re interested in education or criminal justice or the prison system, there are people organizing in your community right now. All it takes is a few minutes of Web searching, or go to your local library because librarians are the gods of information -- there is no more noble profession. Ask around, people will know. Ask around in your church, in your local farmer’s market. Whatever movement you’re interested in, they’ll be able to hook you up.There’s always a space in which you can make democracy flourish and it begins with you.
Interviewer Terrence McNally hosts Free Forum on KPFK 90.7FM, Los Angeles and WBA I99.5FM, New York (streaming at kpfk.org and wbai.org). He also advises non-profits and foundations on communications. Visit terrencemcnally.net for podcasts of all interviews and more.

Corporate Personhood Should Be Banned, Once And For All

Farewell - American Democracy
It's Official. Corporations Rule.
The American Justice System has decided

Ask your two year old on a seesaw about balance, weight and power
when 2% golden greedy guts owns 98% of the worlds’
Wealth and Resources









true to scale model would render top image invisible



total world population Feb 2010:......... 6,801,000,000
2% Golden Greedy Guts population:........ 136,020,000
98% rest of us population:................... 6,664,980,000

“Fascism is about the state running things on behalf of corporations. Adrian Lyttelton in his book on Mussolini wrote that ‘Fascism can be viewed as a product of the transition from the market capitalism of the independent producer to the organized capitalism of the oligopoly.’ It was a point that Orwell noted when he described fascism as being but an extension of capitalism. Lyttelton quoted Italian Nationalist theorist Affredo Rocco: ‘The Fascist economy is. . . an organized economy. It is organized by the producers themselves, under the supreme direction and control of the State.’ ”

Could Terrorists do more to destroy America: Millions of Americans losing their life savings, losing their homes, losing their jobs, going hungry, without health insurance, with surging productivity among those still working accompanied by steady decline in wages and benefits, local and state governments running out of money, interest rates on savings at negative 0 (Zero), and everyone stuck in nightmare traffic…………………. A declining economy on a planet whose population is exploding - an incredible impossibility

………... Review the election procedure last post
http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2010/02/its-official-corporations-rule.html

Advances in the science of energy would have eliminated all the above, providing prosperity and understanding for all people.

Corporate Personhood Should Be Banned, Once And For All

Corporate Personhood Should Be Banned, Once And For All
Outrageous SCOTUS Decision Should Reignite Most Necessary of Debates
by Ralph Nader

Today's decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission shreds the fabric of our already weakened democracy by allowing corporations to more completely dominate our corrupted electoral process. It is outrageous that corporations already attempt to influence or bribe our political candidates through their political action committees (PACs), which solicit employees and shareholders for donations. With this decision, corporations can now also draw on their corporate treasuries and pour vast amounts of corporate money, through independent expenditures, into the electoral swamp already flooded with corporate campaign PAC contribution dollars.

This corporatist, anti-voter decision is so extreme that it should galvanize a grassroots effort to enact a Constitutional Amendment to once and for all end corporate personhood and curtail the corrosive impact of big money on politics. It is indeed time for a Constitutional amendment to prevent corporate campaign contributions from commercializing our elections and drowning out the civic and political voices and values of citizens and voters. It is way overdue to overthrow "King Corporation" and restore the sovereignty of "We the People"!

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super Wealthy Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.

When Bribery Is Called Free Speech

Farewell - American Democracy
It's Official. Corporations Rule.
The American Justice System has decided

Ask your two year old on a seesaw about balance, weight and power
when 2% golden greedy guts owns 98% of the worlds’
Wealth and Resources









true to scale model would render top image invisible



total world population Feb 2010:......... 6,801,000,000
2% Golden Greedy Guts population:........ 136,020,000
98% rest of us population:................... 6,664,980,000

“Fascism is about the state running things on behalf of corporations. Adrian Lyttelton in his book on Mussolini wrote that ‘Fascism can be viewed as a product of the transition from the market capitalism of the independent producer to the organized capitalism of the oligopoly.’ It was a point that Orwell noted when he described fascism as being but an extension of capitalism. Lyttelton quoted Italian Nationalist theorist Affredo Rocco: ‘The Fascist economy is. . . an organized economy. It is organized by the producers themselves, under the supreme direction and control of the State.’ ”

Could Terrorists do more to destroy America: Millions of Americans losing their life savings, losing their homes, losing their jobs, going hungry, without health insurance, with surging productivity among those still working accompanied by steady decline in wages and benefits, local and state governments running out of money, interest rates on savings at negative 0 (Zero), and everyone stuck in nightmare traffic…………………. A declining economy on a planet whose population is exploding - an incredible impossibility

………... Review the election procedure last post
http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2010/02/its-official-corporations-rule.html

Advances in the science of energy would have eliminated all the above, providing prosperity and understanding for all people.



When Bribery Is Called Free Speech
From a speech by San Smith at a US Capitol rally, 1999:

I have three objections to our current system of campaign financing.The first is literary. Being a writer I try to show respect for words, to leave their meanings untwisted and unobscured.This is alien to much of official Washington which daily engages in an activity well described by Edgar Alan Poe. Poe said, "By ringing small changes on the words leg-of-mutton and turnip. . . I could 'demonstrate' that a turnip was, is, and of right ought to be, a leg-of-mutton."For example, for centuries ordinary people have known exactly what a bribe was. The Oxford English Dictionary described it in 1528 as meaning to "to influence corruptly, by a consideration." Another 16th century definition describes bribery as "a reward given to pervert the judgment or corrupt the conduct" of someone.

In more modern times, the Meat Inspection Act of 1917 prohibits giving "money or other thing of value, with intent to influence" to a government official. Simple and wise.But that was before the lawyers and the politicians got around to rewriting the meaning of bribery. And so we came to a time not so many months ago when the Supreme Court actually ruled that a law prohibiting the giving of gifts to a public official "for or because of an official act" didn't mean anything unless you knew exactly what the official act was. In other words, bribery was only illegal if the bribee was dumb enough to give you a receipt.

The media has gone along with the scam, virtually dropping the word from its vocabulary in favor of phrases like "inappropriate gift," "the appearance of a conflict of interest," or the phrase which brings us here today: "campaign contribution."Another example is the remarkable redefinition of money to mean speech. You can test this one out by making a deal with a prostitute and if a cop comes along, simply say, "Officer, I wasn't giving her money, I was just giving her a speech." If that doesn't work you can try giving more of that speech to the cop. Or try telling the IRS next April that "I have the right to remain silent." And so forth. I wouldn't advise it.

My second objection to our system of campaign financing is economic. It's just too damn expensive for the taxpayer. The real cost is not the campaign contributions themselves. The real cost is what is paid in return out of public funds.

A case in point: Public Campaign recently reported that in 1996, when Congress voted to lift the minimum wage 90 cents an hour, business interests extracted $21 billion in custom-designed tax benefits. These business interests gave only about $36 million in campaign contributions so they got out of the public treasury nearly 600 times what they put in. And you helped pay for it.

Looked at another way, that was enough money to give 11 million workers a 90 cent an hour wage increase for a whole year -- or, to be more 1990s about it, to give 21,000 CEOs a million dollar bonus.This is repeated over and over. For example, the oil industry in one recent year gave $23 million in campaign contributions and got nearly $9 billion in tax breaks.The bottom line is this: if you want to save public money, support public campaign financing.My final objection is biologic. Elections are for and between human beings. How do you tell when you're dealing with a person? Well, they bleed, burp, wiggle their toes and have sex. They register for the draft. They register to vote. They watch MTV. They go to prison and they have babies and cancer. Eventually they die and are buried or cremated.

Now this may seem obvious to you, but there are tens of thousands of lawyers and judges and politicians who simply don't believe it. They will tell you that a corporation is a person, based on a corrupt Supreme Court interpretation of the 14th Amendment from back in the robber baron era of the late 19th century -- a time in many ways not unlike our own.

Before this ruling, everyone knew what a person was just as everyone knew what a bribe was. States regulated corporations because they were legal fictions lacking not only blood and bones, but conscience, morality, and free will. But then the leg of mutton became a turnip in the eyes of the law.

Corporations say they just want to be treated like people, but that's not true. Test it out. Try to exercise your free speech on the property of a corporation just like they exercise theirs in your election. You'll find out quickly who is more of a person. We can take care of this biologic problem by applying a simple literary solution: tell the truth. A corporation is not a person and should not be allowed to be called one under the law.I close with this thought. The people who work in the building behind us have learned to count money ahead of votes. It is time to chase the money changers out of the temple. But how? After all, getting Congress to adopt publicly funded campaigns is like trying to get the Mafia to adopt the Ten Commandments as its mission statement. I would suggest that while fighting this difficult battle there is something we can do starting tomorrow. We can pull together every decent organization and individual in communities all over America -- the churches, activist organizations, social service groups, moral business people, concerned citizens -- and begin drafting a code of conduct for politicians. We do not have to wait for any legislature.

If we do this right, if we form true broad-based coalitions of decency, then the politicians will ignore us only at their peril.At root, dear friends, our problem is that politicians have come to have more fear of their campaign contributors than they have of the voters. We have to teach politicians to be afraid of us again. And nothing will do it better than a coming together of a righteously outraged and unified constituency demanding an end to bribery of politicians, whether it occurs before, during, or after a campaign.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT THE SUPREME COURT'S ASSAULT ON YOUR VOTE.

Move to Amend - Exxon. AIG. Enron. Blackwater. Edison. Halliburton. Diebold. They've gone after our tax dollars. Our services. Our jobs. Our schools. Our military. Our votes. Our future. Our freedoms. And the federal courts have helped them every step of the way.

Today, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government.

Human beings are people; corporations are legal fictions. The Supreme Court is misguided in principle, and wrong on the law. In a democracy, the people rule.

We move to amend.

We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to:- Firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.- Guarantee the right to vote and to participate, and to have our votes and participation count.- Protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate "preemption" actions by global, national, and state governments.

Housing Crisis Getting Uglier in 2010

Farewell - American Democracy
It's Official. Corporations Rule.
The American Justice System has decided

Ask your two year old on a seesaw about balance, weight and power
when 2% golden greedy guts owns 98% of the worlds’
Wealth and Resources









true to scale model would render top image invisible



total world population Feb 2010:......... 6,801,000,000
2% Golden Greedy Guts population:........ 136,020,000
98% rest of us population:................... 6,664,980,000

“Fascism is about the state running things on behalf of corporations. Adrian Lyttelton in his book on Mussolini wrote that ‘Fascism can be viewed as a product of the transition from the market capitalism of the independent producer to the organized capitalism of the oligopoly.’ It was a point that Orwell noted when he described fascism as being but an extension of capitalism. Lyttelton quoted Italian Nationalist theorist Affredo Rocco: ‘The Fascist economy is. . . an organized economy. It is organized by the producers themselves, under the supreme direction and control of the State.’ ”

Could Terrorists do more to destroy America: Millions of Americans losing their life savings, losing their homes, losing their jobs, going hungry, without health insurance, with surging productivity among those still working accompanied by steady decline in wages and benefits, local and state governments running out of money, interest rates on savings at negative 0 (Zero), and everyone stuck in nightmare traffic…………………. A declining economy on a planet whose population is exploding - an incredible impossibility

………... Review the election procedure last post
http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2010/02/its-official-corporations-rule.html

Advances in the science of energy would have eliminated all the above, providing prosperity and understanding for all people.

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 2, 2010
Housing Crisis Getting Uglier in 2010
Nearly 6 Million Foreclosures in Past 3 years - 3 Million More Expected in 2010
CBS) In its "Where America Stands" series, CBS News is looking at a broad spectrum of issues facing this country in the new decade. CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy report the American Dream is now a nightmare for many of the 75 million Americans who own a home. The housing report card is ugly. In the past two years, the housing market has lost an estimated $4.9 trillion dollars, as 59 million homes have declined in value. Nearly 1 in 4 homeowners -- 10.7 million households nationwide -- are underwater on their mortgages. They owe more than their home is now worth. The housing market is so bad in California, that a bank demolished 16 nearly completed homes - because it was cheaper to knock them down, than to finish them. Home building across the country is almost non-existent. In 2005, 2 million housing units were built in this country. Last year, that number dropped to nearly a quarter of that. That's left former boom towns like Las Vegas with a lot of roads to nowhere, as builders ran out of money and buyers for the homes they once planned to build here. Then, there's foreclosure. Nationwide, nearly 6 million households have been taken back by the bank in just the past three years - pushing down home values, and leaving some neighborhoods looking like warzones. The Problem People are still losing their homes, preventing a housing market recovery. "Disaster is not too strong a word and crisis is not too strong a word," said Michelle Johnson of Consumer Credit Counseling Services.

Rolling in Dough, Still Kicking Out Families
http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2009/12/capitalism-evolutionary-choices-fascism.html
A recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston showed banks have little incentive to modify loans to help homeowners avoid foreclosure because of one simple reason that at this time of year perhaps only Ebenezer Scrooge could appreciate: Loan modification is not profitable for lenders.
No Interest in Avoiding Foreclosure
Because mortgages are typically sold off to third party investors, the entities that service the loans, such as Litton, do not have a vested interest in avoiding foreclosure, according to Julia Gordon, senior policy counsel at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Responsible Lending.
"Loan servicers make their money on late fees, so there is a perverse incentive for them not to work out solutions," Gordon said. "Meanwhile, there is zero incentive for them to help a family stay in their home. This is really a deep, serious problem and it has been for a long time."

"Today, the number one cause of foreclosure is unemployment," said Pete Flint of Trulia.com. Fifteen million Americans are now out of work. Twenty-seven-year old C.J. Mueller bought a house in Phoenix for $210,000. But then he lost his job. He tried to get his bank to modify his loan. Instead, he just got his foreclosure notice. "It came to a point where I didn't really care," he said. President Obama's mortgage modification program is supposed to permanently modify 3-4 million loans by 2012. So far, they've fixed 66,000. They want banks to speed up the process. "Unfortunately it's been lip service and little action," Flint said. "Until the administration gets tough on lenders, we're still going to see huge amounts of foreclosures." Banks say they are simply overwhelmed and some people are beyond help. "I gave up. I don't care anymore," Mueller said. "Take the house."

Surge in Productivity Accompanied With Labor’s Wage Squeeze

Farewell - American Democracy
It's Official. Corporations Rule.
The American Justice System has decided

Ask your two year old on a seesaw about balance, weight and power
when 2% golden greedy guts owns 98% of the worlds’
Wealth and Resources









true to scale model would render top image invisible



total world population Feb 2010:......... 6,801,000,000
2% Golden Greedy Guts population:........ 136,020,000
98% rest of us population:................... 6,664,980,000

“Fascism is about the state running things on behalf of corporations. Adrian Lyttelton in his book on Mussolini wrote that ‘Fascism can be viewed as a product of the transition from the market capitalism of the independent producer to the organized capitalism of the oligopoly.’ It was a point that Orwell noted when he described fascism as being but an extension of capitalism. Lyttelton quoted Italian Nationalist theorist Affredo Rocco: ‘The Fascist economy is. . . an organized economy. It is organized by the producers themselves, under the supreme direction and control of the State.’ ”

Could Terrorists do more to destroy America: Millions of Americans losing their life savings, losing their homes, losing their jobs, going hungry, without health insurance, with surging productivity among those still working accompanied by steady decline in wages and benefits, local and state governments running out of money, interest rates on savings at negative 0 (Zero), and everyone stuck in nightmare traffic…………………. A declining economy on a planet whose population is exploding - an incredible impossibility

………... Review the election procedure last post
http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2010/02/its-official-corporations-rule.html

Advances in the science of energy would have eliminated all the above, providing prosperity and understanding for all people.

The Slavery Equation: Slaves had free food and shelter
More and More American Working Families going hungry, downsizing shelter or losing homes

Economic Perspective: The Surge in Productivity Accompanied With Labor’s Wage Squeeze

“those remaining employees work more, work more and work harder”

Labor's pain: Wages don't reflect rise in productivity, economist says Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09050/950145-28.stm#ixzz0emGqsjE6

In the latest numbers from the government, we had an unprecedented rise in worker productivity. Many economists think this cannot be sustained.

Released December 10, 2009
RALEIGH, N.C. – The government recently reported we had a large increase in worker productivity during the summer. Translated, this means workers are able to produce more in a given time period. Is this a good or bad indicator for the economy?
Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:
"You can look at this in the long run and the short run. In the long run, it's very good, because improved worker productivity is how we achieve higher standards of living. But in recessions, it can take on other meanings.
Typically during recessions, you do see productivity rise as businesses are trying to become more efficient. They're cutting back on what they view as waste. They're cutting down on the number of employees. And, quite frankly, they're making those remaining employees work more, work more and work harder. So that is why you see productivity go up.
In the latest numbers from the government, we had an unprecedented rise in worker productivity. Many economists think this cannot be sustained. And what many economists are thinking is that this is actually a good sign as a forerunner to a turnaround in the job market in that businesses are not going to be able to sustain this high productivity. So if they want to continue to produce more, they're ultimately going to have to hire more workers.
So again, this is another piece of the puzzle that suggests we may be getting to the end of the decline in employment, and we may in maybe four or five or six months start to see jobs come back."
http://www.ncsu.edu/project/calscommblogs/news/archives/2009/12/economic_perspe_509.html
3Q Productivity Rate Surges, Labor Costs Fall By Martin Crutsinger and Christopher S. Rugaber, AP Economics WriterManufacturing.Net - November 05, 2009
http://www.manufacturing.net/News-3Q-Productivity-Rate-Surges-Labor-Costs-Fall-110509.aspx WASHINGTON (AP) -- Companies across the economy are finding ways to do more with fewer workers, dimming hopes that hiring will take off anytime soon.
Employers became leaner and more efficient in the third quarter. Wages, meantime, remain flat or falling. The result is that productivity -- output per hour of work -- jumped at the fastest pace in six years.
The good news for companies, though, may be bad news for the jobless. As long as companies can get their workers to produce more, they have little reason to hire -- at least until consumer spending picks up. And the squeeze on incomes could depress consumer spending, putting the economic recovery at risk

SCOTUS Ruling on Campaign Spending 'Devastating'

Farewell - American Democracy
It's Official. Corporations Rule.
The American Justice System has decided

Ask your two year old on a seesaw about balance, weight and power
when 2% golden greedy guts owns 98% of the worlds’
Wealth and Resources









true to scale model would render top image invisible



total world population Feb 2010:......... 6,801,000,000
2% Golden Greedy Guts population:........ 136,020,000
98% rest of us population:................... 6,664,980,000

“Fascism is about the state running things on behalf of corporations. Adrian Lyttelton in his book on Mussolini wrote that ‘Fascism can be viewed as a product of the transition from the market capitalism of the independent producer to the organized capitalism of the oligopoly.’ It was a point that Orwell noted when he described fascism as being but an extension of capitalism. Lyttelton quoted Italian Nationalist theorist Affredo Rocco: ‘The Fascist economy is. . . an organized economy. It is organized by the producers themselves, under the supreme direction and control of the State.’ ”

Could Terrorists do more to destroy America: Millions of Americans losing their life savings, losing their homes, losing their jobs, going hungry, without health insurance, with surging productivity among those still working accompanied by steady decline in wages and benefits, local and state governments running out of money, interest rates on savings at negative 0 (Zero), and everyone stuck in nightmare traffic…………………. A declining economy on a planet whose population is exploding - an incredible impossibility

………... Review the election procedure last post
http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2010/02/its-official-corporations-rule.html

Advances in the science of energy would have eliminated all the above, providing prosperity and understanding for all people.

'Devastating' to Democracy: Obama Rips Court

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/01/obama-calls-scotus-ruling-on-campaign-spending-devastating.html

Obama Calls SCOTUS Ruling on Campaign Spending 'Devastating'
January 23, 2010 6:00 AM
ABC News' Sunlen Miller reports:
President Obama used his weekly address to rail against Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling on corporate spending in political campaigns -- calling it a “devastating” and “powerful blow” striking at democracy that he intends to fight against.
“The United States Supreme Court handed a huge victory to the special interests and their lobbyists – and a powerful blow to our efforts to rein in corporate influence,” Obama said. “This ruling strikes at our democracy itself.”
In a 5-4 decision on Thursday, the Supreme Court invalidated decades-old federal legislation restricting corporate spending in political campaigns.
The president said ruling essentially “opens the floodgates” for unlimited amounts of special interest money and gives those special interest lobbyists “new leverage.”
“That means that any public servant who has the courage to stand up to the special interests and stand up for the American people can find himself or herself under assault come election time," President Obama said. "Even foreign corporations may now get into the act.”
When the ruling came down, President Obama said, he instructed his administration to get to work immediately with members of Congress to developed a “forceful, bipartisan” response to the decision.
“We have begun that work, and it will be a priority for us until we repair the damage that has been done,” he said. “I can’t think of anything more devastating to the public interest. The last thing we need to do is hand more influence to the lobbyists in Washington, or more power to the special interests to tip the outcome of elections.”
The president said that the ruling will make it more difficult to pass his key agenda items – like health care and energy legislation, because foreign entities would be allowed to affect elections and the insurance industry would have ever more power.
“Teddy Roosevelt fought to limit special interest spending and influence over American political campaigns and warned of the impact of unbridled, corporate spending," Obama said, pledging to fight. "His message rings as true as ever today, in this age of mass communications, when the decks are too often stacked against ordinary Americans.”
-Sunlen Miller
/span>

Consumers Squeezed as Wages Sagged in 2009

Farewell - American Democracy
It's Official. Corporations Rule.
The American Justice System has decided

Ask your two year old on a seesaw about balance, weight and power
when 2% golden greedy guts owns 98% of the worlds’
Wealth and Resources









true to scale model would render top image invisible



total world population Feb 2010:......... 6,801,000,000
2% Golden Greedy Guts population:........ 136,020,000
98% rest of us population:................... 6,664,980,000

“Fascism is about the state running things on behalf of corporations. Adrian Lyttelton in his book on Mussolini wrote that ‘Fascism can be viewed as a product of the transition from the market capitalism of the independent producer to the organized capitalism of the oligopoly.’ It was a point that Orwell noted when he described fascism as being but an extension of capitalism. Lyttelton quoted Italian Nationalist theorist Affredo Rocco: ‘The Fascist economy is. . . an organized economy. It is organized by the producers themselves, under the supreme direction and control of the State.’ ”

Could Terrorists do more to destroy America: Millions of Americans losing their life savings, losing their homes, losing their jobs, going hungry, without health insurance, with surging productivity among those still working accompanied by steady decline in wages and benefits, local and state governments running out of money, interest rates on savings at negative 0 (Zero), and everyone stuck in nightmare traffic…………………. A declining economy on a planet whose population is exploding - an incredible impossibility

………... Review the election procedure last post
http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2010/02/its-official-corporations-rule.html

Advances in the science of energy would have eliminated all the above, providing prosperity and understanding for all people.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/15/business/main6101477.shtml?tag=cbsnewsSectionContent.11

WASHINGTON, Jan. 15, 2010
Consumers Squeezed as Wages Sagged in 2009
Biggest Drop since 1990 in Inflation-adjusted Wages Last YearAP) The notion that consumers will help lead the economic rebound received a stark rebuttal Friday: American families are being squeezed. Workers saw their inflation-adjusted weekly wages fall 1.6 percent last year - the sharpest drop since 1990 - even as consumer prices rose only modestly. Families' spending power sank as a result. Slack pay and scarce job growth are slowing consumer spending, along with tight credit and a rising savings rate. That's hindering the economy's ability to mount a strong recovery. For some families, the overall inflation rate last year - 2.7 percent - understates their burden. Many are struggling with surging costs for health care and college tuition, both of which have been galloping far above the overall inflation rate. Energy led consumer prices higher last year, offsetting the biggest drop in food costs in nearly a half century, the Labor Department said Friday. Core inflation, which excludes the volatile food and energy sectors, rose 1.8 percent. That's the second-smallest rise in four decades. But to middle-class people like Angie and Larry Kimbrel of Birmingham, Ala., inflation feels anything but moderate. With three sons, the Kimbrels say they're just scraping by. Angie Kimbrel, who works for an insurance underwriter, has gone without raises and bonuses and faces higher health insurance premiums. Work is slow for her husband, a painter, because of the sagging construction and housing markets. "I haven't seen anything getting cheaper," said Kimbrel, 43. She's facing rising costs for health insurance and gas, in particular. Economists expect core inflation to remain tame in 2010, giving the Federal Reserve leeway to keep interest rates at record lows to try to invigorate the economy. Inflation and wages remain low because employers can't or won't raise pay in an economy that's shed 7.2 million jobs since the recession began two years ago. The unemployment rate is 10 percent, and the number of jobless has hit 15.3 million, up from 7.7 million when the recession started in at the end of 2007. The 1.6 percent drop in average weekly earnings for nonsupervisory workers was the worst yearly performance since a 2.5 percent fall in 1990. Inflation-adjusted pay has sunk in five of the past seven years, underscoring the pressures households felt even before the recession. Over the past 10 years, for example, inflation-adjusted wages grew only about 13 percent - the slowest pace in five decades, according to calculations made by Scott Hoyt of Moody's Economy.com. And that trend is expected to persist as long as the recovery remains weak and the job market tight. "When people are unemployed and wages are weak, household spending is depressed and businesses don't have any pricing power," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "That is the reason that inflation is not a problem." Even though the Consumer Price Index rose 2.7 percent from December to December, more than 50 million Social Security recipients got no cost-of-living benefit increase this year. That's because overall prices fell from July to September 2009 - the period the government uses to determine Social Security adjustments. Even as wages, on average, have stagnated, Wall Street is one industry that's still handing out lavish pay raises. At JPMorgan Chase, for example, the average compensation per employee rose to $121,124 in 2009 from $101,110 a year earlier, the bank said Friday. The average compensation in the investment banking division was about $380,000. The 1.6 percent drop in inflation-adjusted weekly earnings for the 12 months ending in December compared with a 3.1 percent rise in inflation-adjusted wages in 2008. While the 1.8 percent rise in core inflation was within the Fed's comfort zone, it masked the pain consumers felt in their pocketbooks because of the big jump in energy prices and other key items. Energy prices for the 12 months ending in December 2009 shot up 18.2 percent. That was the biggest jump since 1979. Energy prices had dropped by 21.3 percent during the same period in 2008. The energy surge was led by higher gasoline costs, which rose 53.5 percent after falling 43.1 percent in 2008. Food prices swung in the opposite direction. They fell 0.5 percent for the 12 months ending in December, the biggest drop since 1961. Another factor that's limiting core inflation is housing costs. They dropped 0.3 percent for the 12 months ending in December. It was the biggest annual decline on records dating to 1968. A glut of single-family homes on the market and record apartment vacancy rates have put pressure on housing prices. Medical costs rose by 3.4 percent in 2009, the biggest advance since a 5.2 percent in 2007. That continued a trend in which the costs of hospital visits, doctors and drugs outpacing overall inflation. College tuition costs jumped by 6 percent in 2009 following a 5.8 percent rise in 2008. Over the past decade, college tuition and fees have soared 92 percent. Theresa Bryan was in line Friday morning at Dunkin' Donuts in Haddon Township, N.J., for a cup of coffee. It's about the only indulgence she's allowing herself. She says she's been unable to shop for clothes, shoes or anything for her home for a couple years. With two kids - one in high school, one in college - and a salary as a mortgage processor stalled for the past few years, she's felt no benefit from low inflation. "I don't notice anything because I'm so broke," said Bryan, 50. The CPI is calculated monthly with Labor Department workers checking prices of hundreds of items at stores. The index reflects a market basket of goods such as food, autos and gasoline, which make up about 40 percent of the index, and services, such as hospital visits or haircuts, which make up the other 60 percent. Economists caution that the economy can't sustain a strong recovery until wages and job creation strengthens. Business investment and exports driven by a low dollar will help, though. David Wyss, an economist at Standard & Poor's in New York, said he expected inflation pressures to remain low through the middle of the decade given the likelihood a modest recovery with unemployment falling only slowly. "You have to get back to full employment before inflation becomes a major problem," Wyss said.

Lobbyists Get Potent Weapon in Campaign Finance Ruling

Farewell - American Democracy
It's Official. Corporations Rule.
The American Justice System has decided

Ask your two year old on a seesaw about balance, weight and power
when 2% golden greedy guts owns 98% of the worlds’
Wealth and Resources









true to scale model would render top image invisible



total world population Feb 2010:......... 6,801,000,000
2% Golden Greedy Guts population:........ 136,020,000
98% rest of us population:................... 6,664,980,000

“Fascism is about the state running things on behalf of corporations. Adrian Lyttelton in his book on Mussolini wrote that ‘Fascism can be viewed as a product of the transition from the market capitalism of the independent producer to the organized capitalism of the oligopoly.’ It was a point that Orwell noted when he described fascism as being but an extension of capitalism. Lyttelton quoted Italian Nationalist theorist Affredo Rocco: ‘The Fascist economy is. . . an organized economy. It is organized by the producers themselves, under the supreme direction and control of the State.’ ”

Could Terrorists do more to destroy America: Millions of Americans losing their life savings, losing their homes, losing their jobs, going hungry, without health insurance, with surging productivity among those still working accompanied by steady decline in wages and benefits, local and state governments running out of money, interest rates on savings at negative 0 (Zero), and everyone stuck in nightmare traffic………………….

………... Review the election procedure last post
http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2010/02/its-official-corporations-rule.html

Advances in the science of energy would have eliminated all the above, providing prosperity and understanding for all people.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/us/politics/22donate.html?hp

January 22, 2010
Lobbyists Get Potent Weapon in Campaign Finance Ruling
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has handed a new weapon to lobbyists. If you vote wrong, a lobbyist can now tell any elected official that my company, labor union or interest group will spend unlimited sums explicitly advertising against your re-election.
“We have got a million we can spend advertising for you or against you — whichever one you want,’ ” a lobbyist can tell lawmakers, said Lawrence M. Noble, a lawyer at Skadden Arps in Washington and former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission.
The decision seeks to let voters choose for themselves among a multitude of voices and ideas when they go to the polls, but it will also increase the power of organized interest groups at the expense of candidates and political parties.
It is expected to unleash a torrent of attack advertisements from outside groups aiming to sway voters, without any candidate having to take the criticism for dirty campaigning. The biggest beneficiaries might be well-placed incumbents whose favor companies and interests groups are eager to court. It could also have a big impact on state and local governments, where a few million dollars can have more influence on elections.
The ruling comes at a time when influence-seekers of all kinds have special incentives to open their wallets. Amid the economic crisis, the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats are trying to rewrite the rules for broad swaths of the economy, from Detroit to Wall Street. Republicans, meanwhile, see a chance for major gains in November.
Democrats predicted that Republicans would benefit most from the decision, because they are the traditional allies of big corporations, who have more money to spend than unions.
In a statement shortly after the decision, President Obama called it “a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics.”
As Democrats vowed to push legislation to install new spending limits in time for the fall campaign, Republicans disputed the partisan impact of the decision. They argued that Democrats had proven effective at cultivating their own business allies — drug companies are spending millions of dollars to promote the administration’s health care proposals, for example — while friendly interest groups tap sympathetic billionaires and Hollywood money.
After new restrictions on party fund-raising took effect in 2003, many predicted that the Democrats would suffer. But they took Congress in 2006 and the White House two years later.
While Democrats pledged new limits, some Republicans argued for bolstering parties and candidates by getting rid of the limits on their fund-raising as well. Several cases before lower courts, including a suit filed by the Republican National Committee against the Federal Election Commission, seek to challenge those limits.
Thursday’s decision, in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, “is going to flip the existing campaign order on its head,” said Benjamin L. Ginsberg, a Republican campaign lawyer at the law-and-lobbying firm Patton Boggs who has represented both candidates and outside groups, including Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group formed to oppose Senator John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.
“It will put on steroids the trend that outside groups are increasingly dominating campaigns,” Mr. Ginsberg said. “Candidates lose control of their message. Some of these guys lose control of their whole personalities.” ....................
“Parties will sort of shrink in the relative importance of things,” he added, “and outside groups will take over more of the functions — advertising support, get out the vote — that parties do now.”
In practice, major publicly held corporations like Microsoft or General Electric are unlikely to spend large sums money on campaign commercials, for fear of alienating investors, customers and other public officials.
Instead, wealthy individuals and companies might contribute to trade associations, groups like the Chamber of Commerce or the National Riffle Association, or other third parties that could run commercials.
Previously, Mr. Noble of Skadden Arps said, his firm had advised companies to be wary about giving money to groups that might run so-called advocacy commercials, because such activity could trigger disclosure requirements that would identify the corporate financers.
“It could be traced back to you,” he said. “That is no longer a concern.”
Some disclosure rules remain intact. An outside group paying for a campaign commercial would still have to include a statement and file forms taking responsibility. If an organization solicits money specifically to pay for such political activities, it could fall under regulations that require disclosure of its donors.
And the disclosure requirements would moderate the harshness of the third-party advertisements, because established trade associations or other groups are too concerned with their reputations to wage the contentious campaigns that ad hoc groups like MoveOn.org or Swift Boat Veterans for Truth might do.
Two leading Democrats, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York and Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, said that they had been working for months to draft legislation in response to the anticipated decision.
One possibility would be to ban political advertising by corporations that hire lobbyists, receive government money, or collect most of their revenue abroad.
Another would be to tighten rules against coordination between campaigns and outside groups so that, for example, they could not hire the same advertising firms or consultants.
A third would be to require shareholder approval of political expenditures, or even to force chief executives to appear as sponsors of commercials their companies pay for.
The two sponsors of the 2002 law tightening the party-fundraising rules each criticized the ruling.
Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, called it “a terrible mistake.” Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican presidential nominee in 2008, said in a television interview on CNN that he was “disappointed.”
Fred Wertheimer, a longtime advocate of campaign finance laws, said the decision “wipes out a hundred years of history” during which American laws have sought to tamp down corporate power to influence elections.
But David Bossie, the conservative activist who brought the case to defend his campaign-season promotion of the documentary “Hillary: The Movie,” said he was looking forward to rolling out his next film in time for the midterm elections.
Titled “Generation Zero,” the movie features the television host Lou Dobbs and lays much of the blame for the recent financial collapse on the Democrats.
“Now we have a free hand to let people know it exists,” Mr. Bossie said.

It's Official. Corporations Rule

Farewell - American Democracy
It's Official. Corporations Rule.
The American Justice System has decided

Ask your two year old on a seesaw about balance, weight and power
when 2% golden greedy guts owns 98% of the worlds’
Wealth and Resources









true to scale model would render top image invisible



total world population Feb 2010:......... 6,801,000,000
2% Golden Greedy Guts population:........ 136,020,000
98% rest of us population:................... 6,664,980,000

“Fascism is about the state running things on behalf of corporations. Adrian Lyttelton in his book on Mussolini wrote that ‘Fascism can be viewed as a product of the transition from the market capitalism of the independent producer to the organized capitalism of the oligopoly.’ It was a point that Orwell noted when he described fascism as being but an extension of capitalism. Lyttelton quoted Italian Nationalist theorist Affredo Rocco: ‘The Fascist economy is. . . an organized economy. It is organized by the producers themselves, under the supreme direction and control of the State.’ ”

Could Terrorists do more to destroy America: Millions of Americans losing their life savings, losing their homes, losing their jobs, going hungry, without health insurance, with surging productivity among those still working accompanied by steady decline in wages and benefits, local and state governments running out of money, interest rates on savings at negative 0 (Zero), and everyone stuck in nightmare traffic………………….

Farewell - American Democracy
It's Official. Corporations Rule. By Eric Lotke January 21, 2010 -

People have been wondering for years who runs our country. People or wealthy corporations?
Today the Supreme Court settled the debate.Today's decision, Citizens United v. FEC, comes down decisively on the corporate side. It gives advertisers more power than voters, and tilts the balance of power even farther towards wealthy and corporate interests. The newly composed conservative court upset decades of precedent and settled expectations. As Justice Stevens says in dissent:Congress has placed special limitations on campaign spending by corporations ever since the passage of the Tillman Act in 1907. We have unanimously concluded that this "reflects a permissible assessment of the dangers posed by those entities to the electoral process," FEC v. NRWC (1982), and have accepted the "legislative judgment that the special characteristics of the corporate structure require particularly careful regulation." (Citations compressed).

Today's decision turns paper corporations into actual people, and gives advertisers more constitutional protection than voters.Progressives can't give up in the face of this setback. Bill Scher and Ralph Nader have called for a constitutional amendment. I'm all for it … though I think we can find easier solutions. We can start by publicly financing campaigns, and add public matches to any private funding raised. Adding speech rather than subtracting it avoids constitutional hurdles.Money has always had power, and always will. The theory of our capitalist democracy is that people voting provides a counterbalance. If money controls business and it controls the ballot box, we're all in trouble.All of this reminds me of a scene in my novel, 2044.Our hero finds herself in a political fundraiser, where her boss is raising money for a campaign. "Why bother voting?" she asks."Because it's a democracy. The process is crucial. If we didn't have elections people would lose faith in the government, and that wouldn't suit anybody. Besides, it's great fun. Get yourself a drink."

………... In every election, blasted on new candidate’s advertisements we hear the same rhetoric “how corrupt the current incumbents are and how they do not care about people’s rights, only corporate rights…but me, I will really, really, really help the people this time…..over and over and over again.

Every election we learn the truth about those who we voted for previously, and we do it all over again, incapable of comprehending a lie, wannabes, wanting to believe so desperately in a democracy that no longer exists. Used to be a lie told three times and you are out….. yet for at least 50 years, we continue to vote for the corporate selected candidates, funded by corporate money, who tell us exactly what we want to hear , and then vote for them. Each time they, our corporate selected (or swayed, influenced) candidates, proceed to do our corporate masters bidding. over and over and over again.

It takes a lot of corporate money to research the psychological and sociological core of people’s desperate desires and cries, then stage the dramatic Hollywood campaign theater between their selected candidates in the restricted two party system. How free we are never to question why a third party cannot get in the door of our dollar dominated system.

Now, (synonym) “Corporate Al Capone” demands no rules or regulations whatsoever, threatening us with economic doom (note the recent 500 point fall on wall street when faced with regulation) as he continues to steal, cheat, and lie for Profit, make us bail him out, continually consolidating power (M & I mergers) and using government resources and smart bombs to spread his deeds. All who oppose are terrorists, a guaranteed forever war, as the oppressed try to find food and shelter.

Advances in the science of energy would have eliminated all the above, providing prosperity and understanding for all people.

Review previous posts; while bad beliefs, and desires for abuse provide explanations for the destruction of the United States and our constitution, ignorance has never been an excuse for breaking or changing the constitutional law; or supporting corporate and economic systems destroying our country; nor will it be a defense for the natural lethal penalties forthcoming, the cyclic rise and fall being created, in unheard of proportions, both natural and manmade.

Why We've Stopped Fighting Back Against the Forces of Oppression
Is Human Consciousness 'Stuck On Stupid'?
The Hope of Monetary Reform - Pipe Dreams for a Fragmented & Divided Culture
Why Bad Beliefs Don't Die

2010 Let There Be Light - Clarification, the science of light, that is

Let there be light (as in the science of light, the Radius of Curvature of all Natural Law) for the New Year and New Decade clearly foretells the promise of new energy systems: bringing freedom, liberty, prosperity for all to unimaginable heights.

Freedom, Light (Science of) and Understanding walk hand in hand towards the world we envision. The well put phrase "let there be light" aptly pinpoints the 'darkness of current trends, with light as the solution, both figuratively and scientifically.

The light of Understanding AND the Science of Light seamlessly merge the Roots of Religion and Science ushering in a New Age of Wonder. Everyone knows Life is not a broken record, endlessly repeating the primitive stages that have consistently caused the "rise and fall" of civilizations. Let There be Light is reprinted with permission from http://evolution-intelligentdesign-survival.blogspot.com/2010/01/2010-let-there-be-light-clarification.html














...........................................................................................
2010 Let There Be Light (pun intended)
Clarification, the science of light, that is

With a new year and new decade upon us, just saying Happy New Year while Americans lose their homes and go hungry is an extremely deficit, & defunct statement. However, Let's Make This a Happy and Wonderful New Year truly sounds like something attainable as we acknowledge our expanding Window to Reality.

A brief review and summary of my background and the role science, specifically the science of Light and Energy, play in humanities' evolutionary survival and self-actualization stages with their possibilities follow.

The promise, of a future foretold a half century ago for today: Appleby's world, "a world where he never had to pay a power bill, where heating and cooling were free of energy costs, where his water was pure and veggies local and fresh, and where a four hour work day allowed him ample spare time to indulge in his writing fantasies. Outside, the air was fresh and the streets clean. Everyone had a job, and in this world-the real world-there were no clandestine powers holding back progress. All received a fair share for their efforts" An Impossible World? Excerpt from The Energy Solution Revolution by Brian O'Leary http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2009/04/impossible-world.html

"Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by power obtainable at any point in the universe. It is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature." ---Nikola Tesla

The World We Envision - Clean, safe, abundant, inexpensive energy for all… stabilized climate… clean and healthy water, food, and air for all… beautiful blue skies over our cities… low-impact, sustainable forestry and agriculture… beautiful landscapes unspoiled by wires and smokestacks… recycling of virtually all wastes… rivers running free and natural… thriving sustainable local economies… living standards and education rates increasing… birth rates declining… a global culture of sharing… unleashed human creativity… a new and lasting era of world peace… With a revolution in energy as the foundation of renewed and loving stewardship of our planet, we can transform our world into a beautiful and healthy home full of promise, opportunity, abundance, and peace for all of humanity. New Energy Movement
http://www.newenergymovement.org/

Someone recently inquired if I had read "The Disappearance of the Universe". http://www.garyrenard.com/Preview.htm . I had not. However, it is always good to expand, refresh, refine and experience Awareness and actualization potentials.

"The Disappearance of the Universe" (linked to A Course in Miracles) approaches the expanding and scientifically connected foundations developed by Judge Thomas Troward and Ernest Holmes (Science of Mind), Walter Russell (The Secret of Light), Barbara Dewey (Laminated Space Time, The Creating Cosmos), Amit Goswami, Ph.D (The Self-Aware Universe), Ken Wilber (Spectrum of Consciousness) to name just a few, all referencing light, it’s electrical nature, with it’s ever creating, pulsating, moving instant Now, with Cause/Consciousness at the zero point, i.e. no space no time. (Additional resources http://www.relaxspa.net/e_books.htm)

My own six month heightened awareness (in the old days termed ‘cosmic consciousness’ state) at FIT, removed any shred of doubt of the illusory and magical nature of our universe, with Reality totally connected to the roots of religions, metaphysics, and the sciences. (some of the heightened awareness symptoms were: fully rested with only 1-2 hours sleep every night; answering students questions prior to being asked; effortless sense of movement be it stairs, running, walking; memory capacity to quote any specific paragraphs and pages of recently read books; with synchronicity, right time right place constantly at command)

At that time, I also perceived an inadequately acknowledged aspect of reality continued to this day, a focus quite necessary for human evolution to proceed (Barbara Marx Hubbard, Foundation for Conscious Evolution partially acknowledges Visions of a Universal Humanity http://www.barbaramarxhubbard.com/con/ ). This inadequate comprehension, at its core is:

• The One And the Many


• The Father and I are One


• The Old Testament defines “Community”, the New Testament defines “I”, One Book.
  

Neither community without the I, nor I without community, will further evolution or achieve true enlightenment – regardless of the oversimplified and skewed teachings of the self improvement gurus fixated only upon the ME stage of human child development. There is no dissecting the One with ".... I gots mine too bad you did not get yours", while the ‘I’ continues to support the systems that keep the majority in uneducated and science deprived poverty.

Self Interest does NOT automatically become community interest as Kuhn claimed, which the ‘rise and fall’ of civilizations testify.

I also excitedly deny the claim that there is no intelligent life on earth, that we are here to forever keep repeating a broken record, never moving forward to the infinite trillions of new challenges and learning adventures awaiting us, once we pass by this crude and elementary stage of greed, suppression and power we keep repeating.

While ‘forgiveness’ is a necessary, but insufficient condition to evolutionary survival & enlightenment, humanity will reconsider more balanced options that rites of passage used to teach.

And in this magical Universe of God/Mind, the only training arena is in the physical manifestation (this disappearing, reappearing constant Now Universe) within which we participate in co-creating. (of course, as in fractals, there is a larger cyclic evolution/involution of the manifest universe after eons of time referenced by Eastern Teachings and the Bhagavad Gita).

“What will it take to stimulate more people to come together to examine, better understand, and work towards change for the better?”

Even doctors are getting into the game of freedom.
Is America Driving You Crazy? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5oJPRuFDIk

“What will it take to stimulate more people to come together to examine, better understand, and work towards change for the better?”

Not until we see the Light (pun intended), the science of light, that is (i.e., Walter Russell’s more clarified definition of light) combined with StarSteps’ 4th grade, quantified concept of light as the radius of curvature of all natural law. Science and religion merge here, naturally replacing politics and man’s opinionated, skewed with self-interest ($ controlled), shortsighted laws. http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/

A majority of wisdom books, metaphysics, religions all make references to Light, in the manner of “Let There be Light” referring to creation.

It turns out that the energy differential of light, the constant C, light’s velocity, does indeed become the radius of curvature of All Natural Law – By Default, The New fundamental principle in Physics. StarSteps http://fuel2000.net/starsteps.htm

LIGHT is The missing and illusive Radius of Curvature described in StarSteps, which completes the expanded view of E=MC2, combining the two seemingly opposed pillars of modern science, general relativity and quantum theory. The magic occurs when we also find this energy differential of light is also equivalent to the total energy contained within each and every single atom.

Can less be more? ...............Einstein says YES, in a tiny, tiny atom, the nuclear bomb is only a very small fraction of the energy inherent in a single atom.

This electrical, magnetic, gravitational energy combo becomes available through appropriate flow/frequency harmonic applications necessary for evolutionary survival and mandates a free science that promotes Understanding

A majority of the posts here provide scientific references approaching comprehension of the sine wave nature of this radius of curvature equated to the constant C (velocity of light) and symbolized by the Yin and Yang icon also referencing duality.

A few of the more prominent, common sense items found in StarSteps follow:

The suppressed Unifying Principle supporting the majority of contemporary new energy claims evolved from the late 40's advanced energy/fuel/propulsion concepts after WWII. These same concepts also brought subsequent advanced understanding of human nature, validating ageless Spiritual and Metaphysical Wisdom within the energy/frequency domains.

This Unifying Principle, the radius of curvature of all natural law quantified the radius to the energy differential of the speed of light, shedding insight to many of the mis-interpretations of the Theory of Relativity, i.e. as in:

• nothing goes faster than the speed of light




• when an object travels faster and faster, its mass increases




• time slows, stops, goes backwards – correspondingly when approaching, at, exceeding VC




• As an object approaches the speed of light its mass becomes infinite

The obvious subsequent realization of such short sighted, mis-interpreted errors swiftly correct to - the 'increasing mass' of the target is only the measure of the kinetic energy differential which exists between them http://fuel2000.net/ . This Unifying Principle completely overhauls the stubbornly persistent delusions, primitive definitions and stranglehold restrictions of E=MC2, permitting advances toward FTL (faster than light transportation), field dependent propulsion, polarization of gravity (anti-gravity), action at a distance, as well as "movement"/"transference", the appearance of motion, from one point to another without going through all points in between.

About the year 1905, Einstein brought to our attention that the factors of Gravity, Space,Time, and Energy were not the absolute and independent entities that we had always considered them to be, but that they were variable factors, each having a value which depended upon the value of the others.

In short, the quantity C is the measure of the radius of curvature of natural law. It is the factor which will enable us to determine precisely the degree of change in the curvature of one law which will be brought about by a specified change in the application of the others. It is the factor which will eventually tell us how to place our transport vehicles in either the positive or negative portion of the gravitational curve with respect to the earth or any other planet which we may choose to visit.

When we state that the quantity C is the radius of the curvature of natural law, we mean simply that if a differential of energy equal to this quantity exists between the observer and the point which he is observing, the natural laws will be suspended. If the energy differential is in excess of the quantity C, the laws will appear to operate in reverse at that point.

As it is impossible to disconnect this scientific unifying principle for advanced fuel and propulsion systems from Human energy systems (same atoms/molecules/universe/ comprised of energy) we find this scientific Unifying Principle begins to validate the roots of ageless Spiritual and Metaphysical Principles.

This poses a threat to the current Power Structure. However, suppression and denial of these fourth grade concepts overthrowing relativity delusions, found in StarSteps, poses a threat to all life in evolving, energy intensive and complex civilizations. StarSteps http://fuel2000.net/starsteps.htm

We may forgive and light candles for Peace, but fortunately, That which gave us Life, Light and Creation, also gave us a greater capacity to participate in the evolutionary creative process of Life, Love, Light, Power, Peace, Beauty and Joy.

Statistically, this period of evolution is now almost entirely under the control of conscious human intent and will, and far less influenced by unconscious instinct, genetic mutation and natural selection. Conscious intelligence through human intent usurped unconscious instinct, genetic mutation and natural selection as the evolutionary driver somewhere back in caveman days. Science and Technology, Humanity's extended senses, are at the Steering Wheel today. Blind Science and Technology with Corporate secrecy, power, greed and lies, and Humanity can kiss it's x#s goodbye. (see Freedom Times for the deliberate man made obstacles)