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Showing posts with label Business/Economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Business/Economics. Show all posts
Monday, April 1, 2013
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Pepsi Replaces Sugar With Aborted Fetuses
So what exactly is this magic ingredient that will be appearing in a new version of Pepsi, and how is it made? Unfortunately, those questions are hard to answer. Senomyx... refers to them only as 'enhancers' or 'ingredients'... The products work by triggering receptors on the tongue and tricking your taste buds into sensing sweetness — or saltiness or coolness, in the case of the company's other programs...Also see:
So are Senomyx's covert ingredients safe? That, too, is anyone's guess... many of its enhancers have 'been granted'GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) status, but all that means is that the company did its own assessment and then concluded everything was fine. We don't know whether Senomyx did any testing since the company isn't required to submit anything to the FDA.
There's no reason to think that Senomyx's products will cause harm, but until or unless Pepsi decides to share details about how exactly it's achieving a 60 percent reduction in sugar while keeping the taste the same, customers will be drinking their 'scientifically advantaged' sodas completely in the dark.”
The lack of labeling requirements is particularly troublesome and will probably become an issue in the future. Since these compounds (whatever they are) are used in such minute quantities, they don’t have to be listed on the label. They’ll simply fall under the generic category of artificial and/or natural flavors. What this means is that the product will appear to be much “healthier” than it might otherwise be, were a flavor enhancer not used.
According to a 2010 CBS report, Senomyx’s flavor enhancers were already being sold outside the US at that time. For example, Nestle was by 2010 using an MSG flavor enhancer in its Maggi brand soups, sauces, condiments and instant noodles, and Ajinomoto was also using a similar ingredient in products for the Chinese market. This means less of the artificial sweetener is needed to create the same sweet taste as before, but while one could argue that this is a good thing, I suspect we will ultimately learn that this flavor enhancement method has multiple unforeseen adverse consequences — metabolically, and biologically.
Consequences of Food Alteration are More the Rule than the Exception...
There are many reasons why you're better off choosing natural whole foods in lieu of processed alternatives, but one of the primary ones is that junk foods contain additives that increase your toxic load, which in turn may increase your tendency to develop cancer. As of yet, there is NO medical research to back up the assertion that manipulating your taste buds in the way Senomyx’ products do is safe and healthy in the long term. As an example, I would point to the evidence now available showing that one of the reasons why artificial sweeteners do not work as advertised is because the taste of sweet itself is tied into your metabolic functioning in a way that we still do not fully understand... As a result, artificially sweetened products, oftentimes boasting zero calories, actually result in greater weight gain than sweetened products when used “in the real world.”
It's easy to forget that the processed, pre-packaged foods and fast food restaurants of today are actually a radical change in terms of the history of food production. Much of what we eat today bears very little resemblance of real food. Many products are loaded with non-nutritive fillers — purposely designed to just “take up space” to make you think you’re getting more than you really are — along with any number of additives. Many additives have been shown to have harmful effects on mood, behavior, metabolic functioning and biochemistry.
Now, with the introduction of untested engineered flavor enhancers, you’re left wondering whether processed foods with “cleaner” labels really are safer and healthier or not...
Remember, because Senomyx’ flavor enhancers are used in such low concentrations they are not required to undergo the FDA's usual safety approval process for food additives.
The disease trends we're now seeing are only going to get worse as much of the processed foods consumed today are not even food-based. Who knows what kind of genetic mutations and malfunctions we're creating for ourselves and future generations when a MAJORITY of our diet consists of highly processed and artificial foods that contain substances never before consumed by humans in all of history.
Read more at the original source:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/03/17/senomyx-flavor-enhancers.aspx?e_cid=20130317_SNL_Art_1&utm_source=snl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art1&utm_campaign=20130317
Tastes Like Baby
You Ate Beaver Ass Juice
11 Disgusting Ingredients You Eat Every Day That Food Companies Don't Talk About
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You Ate Beaver Ass Juice
Ever eat anything that tasted like vanilla, strawberry or raspberry? Chances are you have eaten the juice secreted from the anal gland of a beaver. It is commonly used as a flavoring additive in foods like ice cream, soda, and chewing gum, and labeled as "natural flavoring."
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Castoreum (pronunciation: /kæsˈtɔriəm/) is the exudate from the castor sacs of the mature North American Beaver (Castor canadensis) and the European Beaver (Castor fiber). Within the zoological realm, castoreum is the yellowish secretion of the castor sac in combination with the beaver's urine, used during scent marking of territory.[1][2] Both male and female beavers possess a pair of castor sacs and a pair of anal glands located in two cavities under the skin between the pelvis and the base of the tail.[3] The castor sacs are not true glands (endocrine or exocrine) on a cellular level, hence references to these structures as preputial glands or castor glands are misnomers.[4]
-SOURCE
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Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Fed Res Notes Series Show 9/11 Collapse Sequence
This is pretty weird. I remember someone folding a $20 at the bar one night and showing me this, but I have never seen the whole sequence before. Really makes you wonder why they never changed the design of the $1.
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Monday, February 25, 2013
90% of Americans Earn Less Than 1950 Minimum Wage Standard
The good ol' days. We always hear about them from our parents and grandparents. Some of us were there and still look back with fond nostalgia to the heyday of American capitalism. The 1950's defined the American ideal. We had emerged from World War II as the richest, most powerful nation on the planet, and we were ready to cash in on our victory.
There was a suburban home with a white picket fence, a new car built from American steel sitting in the driveway, a regular 9-to-5 job, good schools for your children, and a good wife who managed the homefront with aplomb and a fresh baked apple pie. The American dream was not just a television show in black-and-white television re-runs, that was how we actually lived. It was a way of life that was attainable for just about anyone willing to work hard, and work hard we did.
Our parents and grandparents were no slackers. They had paid their dues through the most destructive war mankind had ever known, they had struggled through the misery of the Great Depression before that. They were grateful to be rewarded now with an honest day's pay for an honest day of work, and spiteful of those godless Communists who could promise only drudgery. Our own social contract worked out just fine. Our obligations to our neighbors and to our country were tempered by the personal liberty prescribed in our nation's Constitution. The harder we worked, the better life would be, and there were no free rides for anyone. The promise of freedom was never more clear. Each man would be made or broken on the basis of his very own efforts. And for the time-being, it was upheld by a government we still believed was for the people and by the people, serving the interests of the people.
In 1950, the Federal minimum wage in the United States was set at 75-cents per hour. This meant that no matter what a person did for a living, according to national productivity standards for workers, their work was worth a minimum of 75 pennies for an hour worked, $30 for an average work week, or a little over $1560 a year. At that time, this was a bit more than the average cost of a brand new automobile.A worker could work all year, save every penny, and buy a brand new mid-grade car without taking out a loan.
In 2012, the average cost for an automobile was $30,748, slightly more than double what a minimum wage worker would be paid, before taxes, working full time.
So does this mean that the average American worker only works half as hard as his counterpart in 1950?
A lot of people would be quick to answer yes, absolutely. The average worker in 1950 probably did work twice as hard as today's worker, many might agree. Which might explain too, why even someone like a grocery clerk, a department store salesperson, a delivery driver, why so many jobs paid well enough for a person to actually support a family on back then, while today most people think of such jobs as "lowly" or "meant for high-school kids."
I remember when I first entered the labor market myself back in the late 1980's, that being a grocery store cashier or department clerk was still considered to be a viable career option. There were plenty of adults supporting households on what they earned in those postilions. No one was getting rich, but the bills got paid. For a young teenager like myself, there was the promise of a competitive wage, regular raises, benefits, and even retirement if I put in the time there. Hardly what a worker today can expect from a company like Wal-Mart.
But is this because people are actually working less, are they any less skilled? Quite the opposite actually.
From 1950 to 2000, the productivity of the American worker increased roughly 400%. This means that the standard of living for the average American worker should be 4 times higher, or that it should only take one-fourth the number of work hours to enjoy the same standard of living as someone working the same job in 1950. In the year 2000, we were working 4 times harder and/or smarter than our parents and grandparents were in 1950. One worker today, is doing the work of four or more employees in 1950.
This runs contrary to what they tell us of course, and what we even tell ourselves, about everyone being lazy good-for-nothings today. But clearly this self-hating mindset is brought on by psychosocial factors, rather than mathematical truth.
Productivity and Workweek
The hard data for that particular study only runs up to the year 2000, but we want to get a little bit closer to where we are at today. Using the data from that study, we can project that by 2010 worker productivity had increased by at least 425% since 1950, and even more by 2013. For the purposes of this essay though, with the the data that is readily available, we will adjust the entire data set to 2010 dollars.
If we take the inflation adjusted minimum wage for 1950 then multiply that by 4.25 to account for increased productivity, according to the working standards of previous generations, a minimum wage worker today should be paid $28.56 per hour in 2010 dollars. That is $2.48 cents more than 75% of American workers in 2010 who were paid less than $26.08 per hour according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The disparity in wages versus productivity has no doubt only increased in the last few years, for which the numbers have not yet been fully published. More alarmingly though, the picture is actually worse than that portrayed by the flawed methodology of the BLS statistics. For example, if they reported the unemployment rate the way it was measured back in the 1930's we would see that unemployment was actually higher in 2012 than at any point during the Great Depression.
But these aren't the only numbers they tinker around with ni order to trick the public. Another example is how they make it rather difficult to find what the median hourly wage is, or how they make a mean wage appear as a median wage. Mean average income and median income are not the same thing at all in most cases. Knowing about weighted averages and an understanding of the difference between mean and median are fundamental to understanding these figures. The mean average income is simply the average of all incomes combined. But because of widening income disparity, because the highest wage earners are paid proportionally much more than the majority of other workers, the "average" is now only what about the top 35% of workers actually earn, rather than half of Americans in the job-place. The median is the true dividing point where 50% of workers earn either less, or more than the given amount, and is much lower than the mean average of salaries paid out to American workers.
The BLS reports that in 2010 the mean hourly rate was $21.35 with a median figure of $16.27/hr. Annually this amounts to $44,410 and $33,840 respectively. Both figures fall well below our inflation-adjusted productivity-based 1950 minimum wage rate of $28.56/hr, yet these numbers both appear to be much higher than actual income when compared to figures provided by the U.S. Census Bureau. According to that agency, the mean annual income for Americans was $38,328 and the median was a mere $26,175. This means that in 2010, half of American workers earned less than $12.58/hr. That is 227% less than a minimum wage worker in 1950 when the increased 425% productivity is factored.
The discrepancy between the Bureau of Labor Statistics and those provided by the U.S. Census Bureau is roughly 130%. This means that actual wages are 1.3 times lower than what is reported by the BLS. According to them, the 90th percentile of workers earned less the $39.97/hr. But if we reduce that wage by 130% to be in line with the more accurate methodology of the Census Bureau, we can extrapolate that 90% American workers actually earned less than $27.98/hr. This is 58-cents per hour less than our adjusted 1950 minimum wage.
With that remainder change, and considering that we have not factored increased productivity and inflation between 2010 and today, it could easily be said that even more than 90% of American workers earn less then a minimum-wage worker in 1950.
So just to recap here. If we were paid for our output as an employee today as compared to the standard expected of a worker in 1950, the minimum wage in 2010 would have been $28.56. (The actual minimum wage was only $7.25/hr.) $28.56 was slightly more than 90% of Americans who earned less than $27.98 per hour. Hence, 90% of American workers earn less than a minimum wage worker earned in 1950.
This serious disconnect between how hard we work and how we are actually compensated for our labor is clearly reflected in the bulging income disparity between the majority of Americans, and the wealthy who are reaping the profits of our labor.
Not only are we working harder in every hour than ever before, we are also working more hours in a week. Back in 1950, most Americans enjoyed a 9-to-5 sort of job. The 40-hour workweek was absolutely typical, sick time and vacation time were expected in almost any field of work, and most household operated on a single income.
Today, roughly 75% of us work more than 40 hours a week. Although 134 countries have a law which caps the maximum number of hours for employment each week, the U.S. does not. We often think of the Japanese as fanatically dedicated workers, yet the average American worker spends 137 more hours per year on the job. The U.S. has no law requiring sick time, and is the only industrialized nation that does not require any annual paid leave time of any sort.
The United States is also the only industrialized nation in the world that does not offer any parental leave. The average in Europe is 20 weeks, and even in the rest of the world a worker can expect at least 12 weeks parental leave. In Lithuania they enjoy a year off fully paid, and a second year at 80% pay to split between two parents however they like. In Ethiopia, workers enjoy 90 days of full-pay parental leave.
Despite not having any time off to care for them, 70% of children are raised in a home where all adults work. In 1960, that figure was only 20%. The impact on our children has been severe, with depression, suicide, and juvenile crime at unprecedented levels. Pharmaceutical companies offer up chemical solutions to social problems, while public schools have been transformed from institutions of learning to indoctrination hubs for corporatist ideals.
Contrary to the popular belief which has been brought about through clever social conditioning and propaganda, pushing women into the workplace never actually had anything to do with empowerment of women. By 1950 there was nothing stopping a woman from holding a full time job or pursuing a career if she chose to. Indeed, many women had held jobs once thought of as "man's work" during the war years. Some women stayed on in those jobs, others went back home to raise families. If the so called "women's liberation" movement of the 50's and especially the 60's had actually been about freedom for women, ask yourself why so many women today are utterly depressed over the fact that they are unable to stay home to raise their children and be the glue which holds their family together.
From this we see that drawing in women (and old folks) to the workforce was a move to support the same military-industrial-complex the President Eisenhower would warn us about in his farewell address a decade later, not for anything as noble as freedom for the fairer sex.
Ignoring the greater social implications of political feminism and whether or not you want to buy into some of these larger agendas that have been spelled out, we are still left with certain simple economic facts. By enticing the vast majority of women into the workplace the demand for labor was seriously undermined, essentially cutting pay-rates in half. The net result was that every time a woman went to work, she wound up cutting her husband's pay rate in half. Which is why we see today that it takes both parents working full time to support a family, rather than the traditional roles of breadwinner and homemaker.
None of that should be interpreted as a gender bias either. It makes no real difference whether the father or the mother chooses to stay home with the children. The economic concern is simply that the labor pool was flooded, depressing wages and bargaining leverage across the board. By the end of the 1970's, the labor pool of America's women had been fully exploited, and the government-supported corporatists set their sights south of the border to Mexico and Latin America for another labor pool to exploit in order to further reduce wages in the United States.
The end result of all of this comes back again to the main topic of this essay. That today, more than 90% of American workers now earn less than a minimum wage worker in 1950. This is why we always feel like we can never get ahead no matter how much harder we work. This is why the rich get richer, while the poor get poorer. This is how our economy has been reduced to rubble. It was no accident. Welcome to Third World America.
What can we do about it?
We can stand up and demand, in one unified voice as American workers, an honest day's pay for an honest day of work. We can demand a minimum wage that reflects a basic standard of living without need of welfare assistance, social programs, and predatory loans from vampire bankers.
For more information on the minimum wage and how it effects you, please read:
There was a suburban home with a white picket fence, a new car built from American steel sitting in the driveway, a regular 9-to-5 job, good schools for your children, and a good wife who managed the homefront with aplomb and a fresh baked apple pie. The American dream was not just a television show in black-and-white television re-runs, that was how we actually lived. It was a way of life that was attainable for just about anyone willing to work hard, and work hard we did.Our parents and grandparents were no slackers. They had paid their dues through the most destructive war mankind had ever known, they had struggled through the misery of the Great Depression before that. They were grateful to be rewarded now with an honest day's pay for an honest day of work, and spiteful of those godless Communists who could promise only drudgery. Our own social contract worked out just fine. Our obligations to our neighbors and to our country were tempered by the personal liberty prescribed in our nation's Constitution. The harder we worked, the better life would be, and there were no free rides for anyone. The promise of freedom was never more clear. Each man would be made or broken on the basis of his very own efforts. And for the time-being, it was upheld by a government we still believed was for the people and by the people, serving the interests of the people.
In 1950, the Federal minimum wage in the United States was set at 75-cents per hour. This meant that no matter what a person did for a living, according to national productivity standards for workers, their work was worth a minimum of 75 pennies for an hour worked, $30 for an average work week, or a little over $1560 a year. At that time, this was a bit more than the average cost of a brand new automobile.A worker could work all year, save every penny, and buy a brand new mid-grade car without taking out a loan. In 2012, the average cost for an automobile was $30,748, slightly more than double what a minimum wage worker would be paid, before taxes, working full time.
So does this mean that the average American worker only works half as hard as his counterpart in 1950?
A lot of people would be quick to answer yes, absolutely. The average worker in 1950 probably did work twice as hard as today's worker, many might agree. Which might explain too, why even someone like a grocery clerk, a department store salesperson, a delivery driver, why so many jobs paid well enough for a person to actually support a family on back then, while today most people think of such jobs as "lowly" or "meant for high-school kids."
I remember when I first entered the labor market myself back in the late 1980's, that being a grocery store cashier or department clerk was still considered to be a viable career option. There were plenty of adults supporting households on what they earned in those postilions. No one was getting rich, but the bills got paid. For a young teenager like myself, there was the promise of a competitive wage, regular raises, benefits, and even retirement if I put in the time there. Hardly what a worker today can expect from a company like Wal-Mart.
But is this because people are actually working less, are they any less skilled? Quite the opposite actually.
A projectionist in a movie theater was once considered to be a prestigious technical grade career, that required an apprenticeship rather than a college degree. Today, it's a minimum-wage job. While much of the "old art" has gone the way of the Dodo bird due to changes in technology, and while more and more classic projectionists are finding themselves out of work entirely, movie projection itself is not completely automated. Even with the newest digital projectors, a knowledgeable technician is still required.
There are still some old techniques and skills that the worker still needs to understand, the fundamentals of projection with lighting and lenses and so forth. But rather than splicing together platters of film, the modern projectionist must understand complex computer programs. There is also the hardware to maintain, such as the computer terminal used to control the projectors, or even the speakers and sound system components of a theater. While the technology has indeed made a dramatic shift, the need for a skilled technician still remains. So why are the old projectionists out of work now, and why has this job become a minimum wage endeavor with little prestige?
Quite simply, because worker productivity has been undermined by depressed wage standards. The projectionist unions have had their backs broken, and the high-school kid who is good with computers will come in and do the job for video game money. There ends the once prestigious career of movie theater projectionist. Either that high school kid will move on to college in a year or two to be replaced by another high school kid, or he will be stuck in a dead-end job with his pay raises tied to the Federal minimum wage increases. A minimum wage that is far less than what he would have earned in 1950.
From 1950 to 2000, the productivity of the American worker increased roughly 400%. This means that the standard of living for the average American worker should be 4 times higher, or that it should only take one-fourth the number of work hours to enjoy the same standard of living as someone working the same job in 1950. In the year 2000, we were working 4 times harder and/or smarter than our parents and grandparents were in 1950. One worker today, is doing the work of four or more employees in 1950.
This runs contrary to what they tell us of course, and what we even tell ourselves, about everyone being lazy good-for-nothings today. But clearly this self-hating mindset is brought on by psychosocial factors, rather than mathematical truth.
Productivity and Workweek
The hard data for that particular study only runs up to the year 2000, but we want to get a little bit closer to where we are at today. Using the data from that study, we can project that by 2010 worker productivity had increased by at least 425% since 1950, and even more by 2013. For the purposes of this essay though, with the the data that is readily available, we will adjust the entire data set to 2010 dollars.
If we take the inflation adjusted minimum wage for 1950 then multiply that by 4.25 to account for increased productivity, according to the working standards of previous generations, a minimum wage worker today should be paid $28.56 per hour in 2010 dollars. That is $2.48 cents more than 75% of American workers in 2010 who were paid less than $26.08 per hour according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
 |
| Shadowstats |
But these aren't the only numbers they tinker around with ni order to trick the public. Another example is how they make it rather difficult to find what the median hourly wage is, or how they make a mean wage appear as a median wage. Mean average income and median income are not the same thing at all in most cases. Knowing about weighted averages and an understanding of the difference between mean and median are fundamental to understanding these figures. The mean average income is simply the average of all incomes combined. But because of widening income disparity, because the highest wage earners are paid proportionally much more than the majority of other workers, the "average" is now only what about the top 35% of workers actually earn, rather than half of Americans in the job-place. The median is the true dividing point where 50% of workers earn either less, or more than the given amount, and is much lower than the mean average of salaries paid out to American workers.
The BLS reports that in 2010 the mean hourly rate was $21.35 with a median figure of $16.27/hr. Annually this amounts to $44,410 and $33,840 respectively. Both figures fall well below our inflation-adjusted productivity-based 1950 minimum wage rate of $28.56/hr, yet these numbers both appear to be much higher than actual income when compared to figures provided by the U.S. Census Bureau. According to that agency, the mean annual income for Americans was $38,328 and the median was a mere $26,175. This means that in 2010, half of American workers earned less than $12.58/hr. That is 227% less than a minimum wage worker in 1950 when the increased 425% productivity is factored.
The discrepancy between the Bureau of Labor Statistics and those provided by the U.S. Census Bureau is roughly 130%. This means that actual wages are 1.3 times lower than what is reported by the BLS. According to them, the 90th percentile of workers earned less the $39.97/hr. But if we reduce that wage by 130% to be in line with the more accurate methodology of the Census Bureau, we can extrapolate that 90% American workers actually earned less than $27.98/hr. This is 58-cents per hour less than our adjusted 1950 minimum wage.
With that remainder change, and considering that we have not factored increased productivity and inflation between 2010 and today, it could easily be said that even more than 90% of American workers earn less then a minimum-wage worker in 1950.
So just to recap here. If we were paid for our output as an employee today as compared to the standard expected of a worker in 1950, the minimum wage in 2010 would have been $28.56. (The actual minimum wage was only $7.25/hr.) $28.56 was slightly more than 90% of Americans who earned less than $27.98 per hour. Hence, 90% of American workers earn less than a minimum wage worker earned in 1950.
This serious disconnect between how hard we work and how we are actually compensated for our labor is clearly reflected in the bulging income disparity between the majority of Americans, and the wealthy who are reaping the profits of our labor.
Not only are we working harder in every hour than ever before, we are also working more hours in a week. Back in 1950, most Americans enjoyed a 9-to-5 sort of job. The 40-hour workweek was absolutely typical, sick time and vacation time were expected in almost any field of work, and most household operated on a single income.
Today, roughly 75% of us work more than 40 hours a week. Although 134 countries have a law which caps the maximum number of hours for employment each week, the U.S. does not. We often think of the Japanese as fanatically dedicated workers, yet the average American worker spends 137 more hours per year on the job. The U.S. has no law requiring sick time, and is the only industrialized nation that does not require any annual paid leave time of any sort.
Despite not having any time off to care for them, 70% of children are raised in a home where all adults work. In 1960, that figure was only 20%. The impact on our children has been severe, with depression, suicide, and juvenile crime at unprecedented levels. Pharmaceutical companies offer up chemical solutions to social problems, while public schools have been transformed from institutions of learning to indoctrination hubs for corporatist ideals.
Contrary to the popular belief which has been brought about through clever social conditioning and propaganda, pushing women into the workplace never actually had anything to do with empowerment of women. By 1950 there was nothing stopping a woman from holding a full time job or pursuing a career if she chose to. Indeed, many women had held jobs once thought of as "man's work" during the war years. Some women stayed on in those jobs, others went back home to raise families. If the so called "women's liberation" movement of the 50's and especially the 60's had actually been about freedom for women, ask yourself why so many women today are utterly depressed over the fact that they are unable to stay home to raise their children and be the glue which holds their family together.
Beginning in 1950, under the Truman Administration, the United States became the first known industrialized nation to explicitly (albeit secretly) and permanently forswear a reduction of working time. Given the military-industrial requirements of the Cold War, the authors of the then secret National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68) proposed the US government undertake a massive permanent national economic expansion that would let it “siphon off” a part of the economic activity produced to support an ongoing military buildup to contain the Soviet Union. In his 1951 Annual Message to the Congress, President Truman stated:
"In terms of manpower, our present defense targets will require an increase of nearly one million men and women in the armed forces within a few months, and probably not less than four million more in defense production by the end of the year. This means that an additional 8 percent of our labor force, and possibly much more, will be required by direct defense needs by the end of the year. These manpower needs will call both for increasing our labor force by reducing unemployment and drawing in women and older workers, and for lengthening hours of work in essential industries."
From this we see that drawing in women (and old folks) to the workforce was a move to support the same military-industrial-complex the President Eisenhower would warn us about in his farewell address a decade later, not for anything as noble as freedom for the fairer sex.
Ignoring the greater social implications of political feminism and whether or not you want to buy into some of these larger agendas that have been spelled out, we are still left with certain simple economic facts. By enticing the vast majority of women into the workplace the demand for labor was seriously undermined, essentially cutting pay-rates in half. The net result was that every time a woman went to work, she wound up cutting her husband's pay rate in half. Which is why we see today that it takes both parents working full time to support a family, rather than the traditional roles of breadwinner and homemaker.
None of that should be interpreted as a gender bias either. It makes no real difference whether the father or the mother chooses to stay home with the children. The economic concern is simply that the labor pool was flooded, depressing wages and bargaining leverage across the board. By the end of the 1970's, the labor pool of America's women had been fully exploited, and the government-supported corporatists set their sights south of the border to Mexico and Latin America for another labor pool to exploit in order to further reduce wages in the United States.
The end result of all of this comes back again to the main topic of this essay. That today, more than 90% of American workers now earn less than a minimum wage worker in 1950. This is why we always feel like we can never get ahead no matter how much harder we work. This is why the rich get richer, while the poor get poorer. This is how our economy has been reduced to rubble. It was no accident. Welcome to Third World America.
What can we do about it?
We can stand up and demand, in one unified voice as American workers, an honest day's pay for an honest day of work. We can demand a minimum wage that reflects a basic standard of living without need of welfare assistance, social programs, and predatory loans from vampire bankers.
For more information on the minimum wage and how it effects you, please read:
Analyzing a Practical Minimum Wage
Wal-Mart: Lower-Prices, Higher Taxes
One in Three Americans Face Poverty, Latest Census Study Shows
World's Richest Woman Wants You to Work Harder for $2 a Day
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Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Minimum Wage vs. Libertarian
I like a lot of stuff Julie does, and consider myself a libertarian as well, but I have to completely disagree with her on this issue. Her reasons for opposing a minimum wage are logically unsound, based more on Neo-Con propaganda than facts.
Rebuttal to Minimum Wage Argument Made by Julie Borowski
In her first few sentences, I do agree with Julie. I would like to know where the heck Obama came up with that figure as well. It does sound awfully arbitrary. Speech rhetoric that probably won't go anywhere anyway, but will appease the working poor for a time fooling them into believing that the Democrats are actually looking out for them. I don't trust politicians, and as much as I support an increase in minimum wage, I don't expect Obama to deliver any better than he delivered on his promise to close GITMO or to repeal so much of the tyranny imposed by the Bush administration.
There is another standard we can look at though, regarding minimum wage. Something a little more thought- out than the hollow promises of political speechwriters. Let's have a look here for a moment, at the proposal by the Minumum Wage Workers' Union of America:
Wage-Slavery
Essentially, what that author is pointing out, is that anything less than a practical minimum wage is slavery. And not only slavery, but slavery subsidized by taxpayers who are next in line to become slaves themselves, in perpetual economic decline, as designed by the Federal Reserve System.
In the days of racial slavery, the slave owners were obligated to provide for the needs of their workers. To pay for the food, shelter, clothing, and even provide the basic medical care for their slaves. Contrary to some modern perceptions of those times, a slave worker was as expensive as an automobile is today and treated accordingly. Sure, there are some people who beat on their cars. But for the most part, responsible car owners make sure that their car is well kept and given proper maintenance. That was true too, in the shameful era of the slave laborer.
Now some may see it as vulgar to compare a human being to an automobile, but this is only to highlight the depravity of what we are seeing today with the exploitation of low-wage American workers. They are treated worse than slaves, worse than automobiles, in many ways. No oil changes and running on empty, yet expected to run hotter and faster each and every day.
As if the abuse of the low-wage worker were not enough, the middle class-worker, the common taxpayer, is being forced to subsidize the labor costs of the corporations. Rather than mandating a corporation like Wal-Mart pay their own true labor costs, by paying a wage so that their employees can subsist, you, the taxpayer, are now forced to make up the difference through social welfare programs. Now you must pay for the "oil changes" on their equipment and put "gas in the tank" so to speak, with foodstamps, medical care, and so forth, to keep the corporate labor force running.
As a libertarian, I believe that providing for liberty over slavery is a noble cause, not to mention lower taxes and making companies pay their own expenses.
But I digress. Let's dig into Julie's next point now.
"Why not 50 or 100 dollars...? (paraphrased)
Because Julie, we are trying to establish a minimum wage, not a free-for-all.
Now this cuts right to the core of the role of government. As a libertarian, I believe that the only role of government is to protect the interests of the people, individually and/or collectively, from those who would exploit our liberty to nefarious ends. Therefore, I believe it is within the purview of Constitutional governance for the Federal government to regulate interstate commerce in such a way that a worker must be paid an equality wage that will provide for their most basic living expenses as a human being, in order to prevent said workers from requiring social welfare subsidies.
In essence, if you want to do business in the United States, you must pay your workers enough so that they may afford the bare essentials without need for government assistance to merely survive.
Without such protection from our own government, there is nothing to stop exploiters from demanding that we all work harder for $2 a day. There is no liberty for a working stiff who makes less than a worker in some third-world country.
As Americans, we are supposed to be doing it better and smarter than the other guy, to be a beacon of hope, not to reduce ourselves to a point of global communism. If Libertarians, as a political party don't agree with that, then maybe I am in the wrong camp.
"Any minimum wage... will prevent some people from getting a job."
Is it your position then, Julie, that there should not be a minimum wage at all? That we should take our $2 a day and be grateful for it?
The reality is that a higher minimum wage will only marginally cut into the profits of companies, who exploit the welfare system in order to subsidize their own labor costs. As we showed above, you only get lower prices at Walmart, because you pay more in taxes to pay the food, healthcare, daycare costs, etcetera, for their workers... whether or not you even shop at Walmart.
If a company could actually afford to lay off workers, they would, will, and do, regardless of payroll obligations. Millions of people have been laid off in recent years, without any minimum wage increase. They have already been doing this to the detriment overall economy, as quality of goods and services plummet, while CEO's are steadily increasing historically unprecedented wealth. If you can't afford to pay your employees an honest day's wage for an honest day of work, then you simply cannot afford to be in business and it's time to close your doors.
If it takes 100 employees to operate your shopping center, then you can't lay off 20 of those people simply to protect your profit margin. Your business will not function properly and customers will move to your competitor, who provides better service and/or products. A company only hires as many people as they need. That is true no matter what the minimum wage is.
"Gee, I got a fat bonus, I think I will hire some people I don't need."" -said no CEO ever
In short, no, a minimum wage increase will not prevent anyone from getting a job if there is a job to be done.
"Let's say I'm a ... teenager."
Between the "why not $50 an hour" bit and now this teenager gambit, Julie is clearly relying on false-logic tactics of disinformation, with "straw-man/red herring" arguments.
Teenagers are not the only minimum wage employees, and only make up a small portion of that labor class today, thanks to depressed wages and skilled workers being forced into unskilled jobs.
More and more adults with families are trying to support those families with minimum wage jobs. Minimum wage standards are not there to protect some high school kid who is living at home with their parents, and who needs the money for a new set of headphones. The people who are filling these jobs today are trying to feed their own children and keep a roof over their heads. The less they are paid by the companies who are profiting from their labors, the more the taxpayers will have to contribute in order to keep these families from starving to death in the streets.
"...I want to work for $7 an hour, you want to hire me for $7 an hour..."
This is the one point in her argument that cuts to the core of libertarian principles. The free will of two people to enter into a business arrangement. In an overly simplistic interpretation, Julie sees the minimum wage mandate as infringing upon the liberty of these two persons. What she fails to acknowledge is that without a minimum wage standard in this country, companies will be infringing on the liberty of people who don't want to make that same deal, but who are then forced to by circumstances outside of their own control and the impositions of corporate greed.
No man is an island, no business arrangement exists in a vacuum. This is why we have codes of ethics and laws to protect against unfair business practices from Wall Street to your local farm stand. This is why you can't put a gun to someone's head and say, "either your brains or your signature will be on the contract." This is why you can't serve someone a plate of food that will make them sick a half-hour after they walk out of your restaurant, and then claim, "buyer beware."
If this potential employee and the employer were to enter into an arrangement for pay below the minimum wage, they would not be practicing liberty, they would be in effect conspiring to undermine the worth of other workers who were not party to this arrangement.
There will always be someone who is willing to work for less. There are people in India and China who work for pennies a day. Here in America, illegal immigration and related labor exploitation has been detrimental to our economy, thanks to the dampening effect on wages and thanks to a total lack of labor bargaining leverage by American workers. This hasn't just effected minimum wage workers either, but the entire working class across the board. The market is flooded with workers who will work under the table for less than what is mandated by labor laws, putting everyone's wages and jobs in jeopardy.
If the majority of jobs in America only paid pennies per hour, what do you think that would do to your own pay rate? Again, minimum wage standards are not there to protect some teenager who wants his first job, the standard is there to protect the labor market as a whole.
"...and maybe in a month or two would have given you a raise if you were any good."
Well, if the employer can afford to give a raise in a few months, he can afford to pay a fair wage right now! If you hire someone, at any pay rate, and they cannot perform the job, you fire them. It's as simple as that.
Besides, entry level pay rates are not a negotiation. They are a set standard regardless of your resume and skills. If your local burger joint is hiring a cashier, it's a minimum wage position, whether you are a teenager looking for an after school job, or you are a single mother who just got laid off from your job as the manager of a burger place across town that just closed down. A manager looking to fill the cashier position isn't going to pay someone with experience a few more dollars per hour to do the same job that the kid with no resume can do for less. They also are not going to give that cashier a raise, ever. Now granted, a cashier who works hard might be promoted in time to another position that pays better, if someone else gets fired or leaves, but that cashier position will always pay the same minimum wage amount.
As a side note and personal anecdote, I used to work in a contract position with a state government. When the contract was originally signed, it called for the employees to be paid a rate that was double the minimum wage at that time. If the minimum wage were to go up under this Obama plan, it would be the first raise for those employees in 20 years.
"...fire employees, cut their hours..."
False. An employer cannot cut the number of man-hours required to perform a task. It's as simple as that. Also, employers do not keep people on the payroll as a matter of charity. If they didn't need that employee, they would have already fired them, regardless of what they were being paid. Even if you are paying a person $2 an hour, if you don't need that person there, it's a waste of money to keep them there.
"...and raise their hiring standards..."
To what? College educated burger flippers? The market is already flooded with unemployed and underemployed skilled workers. The employers don't have to raise their hiring standards, the market has done that for them already. In the past several years, studies have shown that half of college graduates are either unemployed, or are working minimum wage jobs unrelated to their field of study.
So if a raised hiring standard really is of relevance here, then clearly the employers need to start paying a lot more for these college-educated grocery baggers.
Market-liquidity
Wikipedia explains this principle stating...
"In business, economics or investment, market liquidity is an asset's ability to be sold without causing a significant movement in the price and with minimum loss of value."
This is a concept that seems to be foreign to people like Julie and opponents of a minimum wage increase. Low-wage workers are more likely than any other class of worker to spend what they earn. If you pay them more, they will spend more, creating economic stimulus.
This was the principle and reasoning behind former President Bush's economic stimulus plan, when he mailed everyone a $300 check.
Why is the economy in such dire straits right now? Because employers are forced to pay too much for unskilled and entry-level workers? No, it's because no one is buying anything. How do you get people to start buying things again? Make sure they have the money to go buy things, while instilling consumer confidence in the markets.
Increasing the minimum wage will create market liquidity through increased spending. More spending means greater demand for goods and services to be delivered. Greater demand means more jobs for people who are out of work right now, to deliver more goods and services. More goods and services being delivered, means lower per-unit cost for all of the things we spend money on. More people with jobs, cheaper goods and services, means even more spending, creating economic vitality and prosperity for all.
Rebuttal to Minimum Wage Argument Made by Julie Borowski
In her first few sentences, I do agree with Julie. I would like to know where the heck Obama came up with that figure as well. It does sound awfully arbitrary. Speech rhetoric that probably won't go anywhere anyway, but will appease the working poor for a time fooling them into believing that the Democrats are actually looking out for them. I don't trust politicians, and as much as I support an increase in minimum wage, I don't expect Obama to deliver any better than he delivered on his promise to close GITMO or to repeal so much of the tyranny imposed by the Bush administration.
There is another standard we can look at though, regarding minimum wage. Something a little more thought- out than the hollow promises of political speechwriters. Let's have a look here for a moment, at the proposal by the Minumum Wage Workers' Union of America:
Analyzing a Pracitcal Minimum Wage
On this page, we will itemize a sample budget for a single person in order to analyze what a fair standard would be for a minimum-wage worker. It is our position that a person working eight hours a day, five days a week, at any job, should be able to support themselves to a minimum basic standard of living. This practical wage is necessary in order to elevate the class of working poor to contributing members of society. Working for anything less than what is needed to subsist on independently, is nothing short of slavery.
All figures are based on national averages, for a Federal standard.
RENT ------------------------------$1000
BASIC UTILITIES --------------$200
ADVANCED UTILITIES ------$150
FOOD ------------------------------$300
NON-FOOD GROCERY -----$50
CLOTHING -----------------------$75
TRANSPORTATION ----------$500
HEALTHCARE -----------------$350
MISCELLANEOUS -----------$400
------------------------------------------------------
Average Basic Monthly Expenses $3,025
A full-time job at 40 hours per week is 173.2 hours per month calculating 4.33 weeks in each month. To find a reasonable minimum wage, we divide the average basic monthly expenses figure, by the number of hours worked. For the average American worker to support themselves without government assistance or by borrowing beyond their means, that worker must earn...
$17.47 per hour
Of course, that figure must be after all taxes and contributions are taken, or that anyone earning that amount must be exempt from all such garnishments and liability. A person who cannot even afford to pay their own way, cannot afford to pay taxes. Forcing them to pay taxes that will jeopardize their basic standard of living, is unsound economics and in the long run will only force other taxpayers to subsidize those workers, in turn jeopardizing their own living standard, in a perpetual cycle that we see happening today as more workers descend into deep poverty.
If $17.47 per hour seems unreasonable to you, or just downright impossible, consider a few more facts. There was a time when a grocery clerk, or a department store salesperson could actually support themselves on what they earned. That is not so today.
Using data by the U.S. BLS, the average productivity per American worker has increased 400% since 1950. One way to look at that is that it should only take one-quarter the work hours, or 11 hours per week, to afford the same standard of living as a worker in 1950 (or our standard of living should be 4 times higher). Is that the case? Obviously not. Someone is profiting, it’s just not the average American worker. -Source
Based on consumption growth since 1968, the minimum wage today would have to be $25.05 to represent the same share of the country's total consumption. Based on national income growth, the minimum wage should be $22.08. Based on personal income growth, it should be $21.16. -Source
After adjusting for inflation, minimum wage workers today are paid about 26 percent less than they were in 1974.
At the top 1 percent of the American income distribution, average incomes rose 194 percent between 1974 and 2011. Had U.S. minimum wages risen at the same pace as U.S. maximum wages, the minimum wage would now be $26.96 an hour. -Source
Click link for full article and detailed description of how budget figures were calculated.
Wage-Slavery
Essentially, what that author is pointing out, is that anything less than a practical minimum wage is slavery. And not only slavery, but slavery subsidized by taxpayers who are next in line to become slaves themselves, in perpetual economic decline, as designed by the Federal Reserve System.
In the days of racial slavery, the slave owners were obligated to provide for the needs of their workers. To pay for the food, shelter, clothing, and even provide the basic medical care for their slaves. Contrary to some modern perceptions of those times, a slave worker was as expensive as an automobile is today and treated accordingly. Sure, there are some people who beat on their cars. But for the most part, responsible car owners make sure that their car is well kept and given proper maintenance. That was true too, in the shameful era of the slave laborer.
Now some may see it as vulgar to compare a human being to an automobile, but this is only to highlight the depravity of what we are seeing today with the exploitation of low-wage American workers. They are treated worse than slaves, worse than automobiles, in many ways. No oil changes and running on empty, yet expected to run hotter and faster each and every day.
As if the abuse of the low-wage worker were not enough, the middle class-worker, the common taxpayer, is being forced to subsidize the labor costs of the corporations. Rather than mandating a corporation like Wal-Mart pay their own true labor costs, by paying a wage so that their employees can subsist, you, the taxpayer, are now forced to make up the difference through social welfare programs. Now you must pay for the "oil changes" on their equipment and put "gas in the tank" so to speak, with foodstamps, medical care, and so forth, to keep the corporate labor force running.
As a libertarian, I believe that providing for liberty over slavery is a noble cause, not to mention lower taxes and making companies pay their own expenses.
But I digress. Let's dig into Julie's next point now.
"Why not 50 or 100 dollars...? (paraphrased)
Because Julie, we are trying to establish a minimum wage, not a free-for-all.
Now this cuts right to the core of the role of government. As a libertarian, I believe that the only role of government is to protect the interests of the people, individually and/or collectively, from those who would exploit our liberty to nefarious ends. Therefore, I believe it is within the purview of Constitutional governance for the Federal government to regulate interstate commerce in such a way that a worker must be paid an equality wage that will provide for their most basic living expenses as a human being, in order to prevent said workers from requiring social welfare subsidies.
In essence, if you want to do business in the United States, you must pay your workers enough so that they may afford the bare essentials without need for government assistance to merely survive.
Without such protection from our own government, there is nothing to stop exploiters from demanding that we all work harder for $2 a day. There is no liberty for a working stiff who makes less than a worker in some third-world country.
As Americans, we are supposed to be doing it better and smarter than the other guy, to be a beacon of hope, not to reduce ourselves to a point of global communism. If Libertarians, as a political party don't agree with that, then maybe I am in the wrong camp.
"Any minimum wage... will prevent some people from getting a job."
Is it your position then, Julie, that there should not be a minimum wage at all? That we should take our $2 a day and be grateful for it?
The reality is that a higher minimum wage will only marginally cut into the profits of companies, who exploit the welfare system in order to subsidize their own labor costs. As we showed above, you only get lower prices at Walmart, because you pay more in taxes to pay the food, healthcare, daycare costs, etcetera, for their workers... whether or not you even shop at Walmart.
If a company could actually afford to lay off workers, they would, will, and do, regardless of payroll obligations. Millions of people have been laid off in recent years, without any minimum wage increase. They have already been doing this to the detriment overall economy, as quality of goods and services plummet, while CEO's are steadily increasing historically unprecedented wealth. If you can't afford to pay your employees an honest day's wage for an honest day of work, then you simply cannot afford to be in business and it's time to close your doors.
If it takes 100 employees to operate your shopping center, then you can't lay off 20 of those people simply to protect your profit margin. Your business will not function properly and customers will move to your competitor, who provides better service and/or products. A company only hires as many people as they need. That is true no matter what the minimum wage is.
"Gee, I got a fat bonus, I think I will hire some people I don't need."" -said no CEO ever
In short, no, a minimum wage increase will not prevent anyone from getting a job if there is a job to be done.
"Let's say I'm a ... teenager."
Between the "why not $50 an hour" bit and now this teenager gambit, Julie is clearly relying on false-logic tactics of disinformation, with "straw-man/red herring" arguments.
Teenagers are not the only minimum wage employees, and only make up a small portion of that labor class today, thanks to depressed wages and skilled workers being forced into unskilled jobs.
More and more adults with families are trying to support those families with minimum wage jobs. Minimum wage standards are not there to protect some high school kid who is living at home with their parents, and who needs the money for a new set of headphones. The people who are filling these jobs today are trying to feed their own children and keep a roof over their heads. The less they are paid by the companies who are profiting from their labors, the more the taxpayers will have to contribute in order to keep these families from starving to death in the streets.
"...I want to work for $7 an hour, you want to hire me for $7 an hour..."
This is the one point in her argument that cuts to the core of libertarian principles. The free will of two people to enter into a business arrangement. In an overly simplistic interpretation, Julie sees the minimum wage mandate as infringing upon the liberty of these two persons. What she fails to acknowledge is that without a minimum wage standard in this country, companies will be infringing on the liberty of people who don't want to make that same deal, but who are then forced to by circumstances outside of their own control and the impositions of corporate greed.
No man is an island, no business arrangement exists in a vacuum. This is why we have codes of ethics and laws to protect against unfair business practices from Wall Street to your local farm stand. This is why you can't put a gun to someone's head and say, "either your brains or your signature will be on the contract." This is why you can't serve someone a plate of food that will make them sick a half-hour after they walk out of your restaurant, and then claim, "buyer beware."
If this potential employee and the employer were to enter into an arrangement for pay below the minimum wage, they would not be practicing liberty, they would be in effect conspiring to undermine the worth of other workers who were not party to this arrangement.
There will always be someone who is willing to work for less. There are people in India and China who work for pennies a day. Here in America, illegal immigration and related labor exploitation has been detrimental to our economy, thanks to the dampening effect on wages and thanks to a total lack of labor bargaining leverage by American workers. This hasn't just effected minimum wage workers either, but the entire working class across the board. The market is flooded with workers who will work under the table for less than what is mandated by labor laws, putting everyone's wages and jobs in jeopardy.
If the majority of jobs in America only paid pennies per hour, what do you think that would do to your own pay rate? Again, minimum wage standards are not there to protect some teenager who wants his first job, the standard is there to protect the labor market as a whole.
"...and maybe in a month or two would have given you a raise if you were any good."
Well, if the employer can afford to give a raise in a few months, he can afford to pay a fair wage right now! If you hire someone, at any pay rate, and they cannot perform the job, you fire them. It's as simple as that.
Besides, entry level pay rates are not a negotiation. They are a set standard regardless of your resume and skills. If your local burger joint is hiring a cashier, it's a minimum wage position, whether you are a teenager looking for an after school job, or you are a single mother who just got laid off from your job as the manager of a burger place across town that just closed down. A manager looking to fill the cashier position isn't going to pay someone with experience a few more dollars per hour to do the same job that the kid with no resume can do for less. They also are not going to give that cashier a raise, ever. Now granted, a cashier who works hard might be promoted in time to another position that pays better, if someone else gets fired or leaves, but that cashier position will always pay the same minimum wage amount.
As a side note and personal anecdote, I used to work in a contract position with a state government. When the contract was originally signed, it called for the employees to be paid a rate that was double the minimum wage at that time. If the minimum wage were to go up under this Obama plan, it would be the first raise for those employees in 20 years.
"...fire employees, cut their hours..."
False. An employer cannot cut the number of man-hours required to perform a task. It's as simple as that. Also, employers do not keep people on the payroll as a matter of charity. If they didn't need that employee, they would have already fired them, regardless of what they were being paid. Even if you are paying a person $2 an hour, if you don't need that person there, it's a waste of money to keep them there.
"...and raise their hiring standards..."
To what? College educated burger flippers? The market is already flooded with unemployed and underemployed skilled workers. The employers don't have to raise their hiring standards, the market has done that for them already. In the past several years, studies have shown that half of college graduates are either unemployed, or are working minimum wage jobs unrelated to their field of study.
So if a raised hiring standard really is of relevance here, then clearly the employers need to start paying a lot more for these college-educated grocery baggers.
Market-liquidity
Wikipedia explains this principle stating...
"In business, economics or investment, market liquidity is an asset's ability to be sold without causing a significant movement in the price and with minimum loss of value."
This is a concept that seems to be foreign to people like Julie and opponents of a minimum wage increase. Low-wage workers are more likely than any other class of worker to spend what they earn. If you pay them more, they will spend more, creating economic stimulus.
This was the principle and reasoning behind former President Bush's economic stimulus plan, when he mailed everyone a $300 check.
Why is the economy in such dire straits right now? Because employers are forced to pay too much for unskilled and entry-level workers? No, it's because no one is buying anything. How do you get people to start buying things again? Make sure they have the money to go buy things, while instilling consumer confidence in the markets.
Increasing the minimum wage will create market liquidity through increased spending. More spending means greater demand for goods and services to be delivered. Greater demand means more jobs for people who are out of work right now, to deliver more goods and services. More goods and services being delivered, means lower per-unit cost for all of the things we spend money on. More people with jobs, cheaper goods and services, means even more spending, creating economic vitality and prosperity for all.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
America's Own Iron Curtain: DHS Suspends Constitution at Borders
Imagine for a moment, that the old Soviet Union were buttressed right up against the United States, where Canada or Mexico are. Now imagine which side of that border would scare you more. Which side the more oppressive police-state, where rights and liberty do not exist? Sadly, more and more each and every day the United States is becoming every terrible thing we ever imagined or were ever told about what laid beyond the old communist Iron Curtain. Are we in the land of the free? Hardly.
Warrantless strip-searches of children by the TSA's agents at airports, that corrupt agency's expansion of power outside of airports, highway checkpoints, alarming scandals within the DHS hidden from the public, helicopters swooping down from the sky to molest innocent people who are just out for a walk, class warfare as the government seizes bodily fluids of the poor without a warrant, and a frightening level of public support for all of this.
What sort of freedom is this? What sort of nation greets visitors and citizens alike with direct violations of the very values it preaches to the rest of the world? Where has the 4th Amendment gone? Where is the America where I was born?
That was in 2009. This is now:
Not only has the government declared our borders a "Constitution-free Zone" but now also claims that zone extends 100 miles inland from the borders. This move declares that virtually the entire northeast is now under martial law.
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Also check out:
Homeland Insecurity - Rise of Global Police State (Full-Length Feature Film)
Warrantless strip-searches of children by the TSA's agents at airports, that corrupt agency's expansion of power outside of airports, highway checkpoints, alarming scandals within the DHS hidden from the public, helicopters swooping down from the sky to molest innocent people who are just out for a walk, class warfare as the government seizes bodily fluids of the poor without a warrant, and a frightening level of public support for all of this.
What sort of freedom is this? What sort of nation greets visitors and citizens alike with direct violations of the very values it preaches to the rest of the world? Where has the 4th Amendment gone? Where is the America where I was born?
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." ~Amendment IV, Constitution for the United States of America
That was in 2009. This is now:
Not only has the government declared our borders a "Constitution-free Zone" but now also claims that zone extends 100 miles inland from the borders. This move declares that virtually the entire northeast is now under martial law.
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DHS Watchdog OKs ‘Suspicionless’ Seizure of Electronic Devices Along Border
The Department of Homeland Security’s civil rights watchdog has concluded that travelers along the nation’s borders may have their electronics seized and the contents of those devices examined for any reason whatsoever — all in the name of national security.
The DHS, which secures the nation’s border, in 2009 announced that it would conduct a “Civil Liberties Impact Assessment” of its suspicionless search-and-seizure policy pertaining to electronic devices “within 120 days.” More than three years later, the DHS office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties published a two-page executive summary of its findings.
“We also conclude that imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefits,” the executive summary said.
The memo highlights the friction between today’s reality that electronic devices have become virtual extensions of ourselves housing everything from e-mail to instant-message chats to photos and our papers and effects — juxtaposed against the government’s stated quest for national security.
The President George W. Bush administration first announced the suspicionless, electronics search rules in 2008. The President Barack Obama administration followed up with virtually the same rules a year later. Between 2008 and 2010, 6,500 persons had their electronic devices searched along the U.S. border, according to DHS data.
According to legal precedent, the Fourth Amendment — the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures — does not apply along the border. By the way, the government contends the Fourth-Amendment-Free Zone stretches 100 miles inland from the nation’s actual border.
Civil rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union suggest that “reasonable suspicion” should be the rule, at a minimum, despite that being a lower standard than required by the Fourth Amendment.
“There should be a reasonable, articulate reason why the search of our electronic devices could lead to evidence of a crime,” Catherine Crump, an ACLU staff attorney, said in a telephone interview. “That’s a low threshold.”
The DHS watchdog’s conclusion isn’t surprising, as the DHS is taking that position in litigation in which the ACLU is challenging the suspicionless, electronic-device searches and seizures along the nation’s borders. But that conclusion nevertheless is alarming considering it came from the DHS civil rights watchdog, which maintains its mission is “promoting respect for civil rights and civil liberties.”
“This is a civil liberties watchdog office. If it is doing its job property, it is supposed to objectively evaluate. It has the power to recommend safeguards to safeguard Americans’ rights,” Crump said. “The office has not done that and the public has the right to know why.”
Toward that goal, the ACLU on Friday filed a Freedom of Information Act request demanding to see the full report that the executive summary discusses.
Meantime, a lawsuit the ACLU brought on the issue concerns a New York man whose laptop was seized along the Canadian border in 2010 and returned 11 days later after his attorney complained.
At an Amtrak inspection point, Pascal Abidor showed his U.S. passport to a federal agent. He was ordered to move to the cafe car, where they removed his laptop from his luggage and “ordered Mr. Abidor to enter his password,” according to the lawsuit.
Agents asked him about pictures they found on his laptop, which included Hamas and Hezbollah rallies. He explained that he was earning a doctoral degree at a Canadian university on the topic of the modern history of Shiites in Lebanon.
He was handcuffed and then jailed for three hours while the authorities looked through his computer while numerous agents questioned him, according to the suit, which is pending in New York federal court.
Also check out:
Homeland Insecurity - Rise of Global Police State (Full-Length Feature Film)
Friday, February 8, 2013
Who Owns the Money?
 |
| Bank of International Settlements, Switzerland |
Do you really think that money in your pocket, in your bank account, is yours? Bwahahaha! Joke's on you fool! It's not your money, you rent it, at interest.
Who Controls The Money? An Unelected, Unaccountable Central Bank Of The World Secretly DoesAlso see:
An immensely powerful international organization that most people have never even heard of secretly controls the money supply of the entire globe. It is called the Bank for International Settlements, and it is the central bank of central banks. It is located in Basel, Switzerland, but it also has branches in Hong Kong and Mexico City. It is essentially an unelected, unaccountable central bank of the world that has complete immunity from taxation and from national laws. Even Wikipedia admits that "it is not accountable to any single national government."
The Bank for International Settlements was used to launder money for the Nazis during World War II, but these days the main purpose of the BIS is to guide and direct the centrally-planned global financial system. Today, 58 global central banks belong to the BIS, and it has far more power over how the U.S. economy (or any other economy for that matter) will perform over the course of the next year than any politician does. Every two months, the central bankers of the world gather in Basel for another "Global Economy Meeting". During those meetings, decisions are made which affect every man, woman and child on the planet, and yet none of us have any say in what goes on.
The Bank for International Settlements is an organization that was founded by the global elite and it operates for the benefit of the global elite, and it is intended to be one of the key cornerstones of the emerging one world economic system. It is imperative that we get people educated about what this organization is and where it plans to take the global economy.
Sadly, only a very small percentage of people actually know what the Bank for International Settlements is, and even fewer people are aware of the Global Economy Meetings that take place in Basel on a bi-monthly basis.
See the rest of the article by clicking this link to The Economic Collapse
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