Why the Rich Love High Unemployment

Mark Provost  
Dissident Voice

Christina Romer, former member of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors, accuses the administration of "shamefully ignoring" the unemployed. Paul Krugman echoes her concerns, observing that Washington has lost interest in "the forgotten millions." America's unemployed have been ignored and forgotten, but they are far from superfluous. Over the last two years, out-of-work Americans have played a critical role in helping the richest one percent recover trillions in financial wealth.

Obama's advisers often congratulate themselves for avoiding another Great Depression – an assertion not amenable to serious analysis or debate. A better way to evaluate their claims is to compare the US economy to other rich countries over the last few years.

On the basis of sustaining economic growth, the United States is doing better than nearly all advanced economies. From the first quarter of 2008 to the end of 2010, US gross domestic product (GDP) growth outperformed every G-7 country except Canada.

Copyright Extortionist Righthaven Sues Drudge: Backed by CFR, Rockefeller, and Monsanto Money

Drudge Facing Copyright Lawsuit over this image and link
Image: Denver Post (gotta cover our ass too)

Eric Blair
Activist Post

Shady Las Vegas copyright infringement company, Righthaven LLC, seems to be a small-time legal firm using a canned lawsuit to slap down bloggers for copyright infringement for meager settlements. But now they are going after alternative news kingpin and globalist critic Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report.

Righthaven claims that Drudge knowingly misused a Denver Post copyrighted photo of a TSA agent groping the crotch of a male traveler, along with a link to a story about airport security on the Las Vegas Review-Journal website.  Righthaven is seeking copyright infringement damages of $150,000 and forfeiture of his domain name.


Drudge Report was instrumental in inciting the recent TSA revolt by repeatedly posting stories that exposed rights abuses by Big Brother, or "Big Sis" when referring to DHS Sec. Janet Napolitano.  It seems, this time, Drudge went too far by posting the obvious headline to the groping photo; TSA XXX: Airport Wants 'Opt Out.'

According to the Las Vegas Sun, a newspaper competitor of Las Vegas Review-Journal, these lawsuits are a new type of legal enterprise:

The Review-Journal's copyright enforcement partner, Las Vegas company Righthaven LLC, has sued 98 North American websites and blogsites in federal court in Las Vegas since March -- typically demanding $75,000 in damages and forfeiture of the defendants' website domain names.

Attorneys say the Righthaven lawsuits are unprecedented in recent memory because, in the past, newspapers dealt with online copyright infringement by simply asking infringing websites to remove the infringing material and to replace it with a link to the source newspaper. Most Righthaven defendants say they were sued without warning and without anyone from the Review-Journal informing them there was a concern with their use of Review-Journal material.

None of Righthaven's lawsuits have had a judge rule on their validity although several cases are pending.  Instead, their practice appears to be a business scheme to make the defendants settle out of court: 

Twenty-two of the suits have been settled and closed under generally undisclosed terms, though court filings revealed two defendants paid $2,185 and $5,000, respectively, to close their cases. The settling defendants haven't had to forfeit their website domain names (Las Vegas Sun).

These settlements hardly appear to be worth the trouble, especially considering it cost them around $1,500 for each lawsuit and they've gone after blogs with as little as 20 hits a day leading one defendant to call it extortion:

'It’s legal extortion,' said Mostofi, who fears he may be forced to pay a cash settlement to avoid the expense of a court fight. 'They’re going after small bloggers who can’t afford representation.'

Media watchdogs are monitoring the lawsuits closely to see if a judge will ultimately rule in one of these cases, thus setting a precedent that will surely send shock waves to independent news blogs.  This golden precedent may be the actual goal of Righthaven's enterprise.  A closer look at the company reveals some very close ties to the most nefarious globalists.

According to RighthavenLawsuits.com (which is not affiliated with Righthaven LLC):

Righthaven LLC is owned 50/50 by two limited liability companies.  The first is Net Sortie Systems, LLC, which is owned by Las Vegas attorney Steven Gibson – the Nevada attorney who is behind all of the lawsuits filed by Righthaven.  The second is SI Content Monitor LLC, which is owned by family members of investment banking billionaire Warren Stephens whose investments include Stephens Media LLC which owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal. 

The billionaire Warren Stephens made his money as an off-Wall Street banker whose clients include some very powerful elitist organizations:

The firm, a closely held family enterprise which doesn’t have to make its investments public, touts itself as the largest brokerage off Wall Street. Now run by Warren Stephens, the firm’s list of clients includes the Waltons, Tyson Foods, Monsanto and whatever interests David Rockefeller (Council for the Americas, Council on Foreign Relations, etc.) might have. Stephens Inc. is proud to be off-Wall Street, but they do deals with Goldman Sachs and Lazard Freres on a regular basis.

Matt Drudge has always proven to be a thorn in the Left side of politics, but as of late he has also taken on the globalists.  Intriguingly, the most notable and quotable of said globalists are all listed as Mr. Stephens' primary clients.  Because of his success and readership power, Drudge also has been the target of proposed website taxes, appropriately dubbed the "Drudge tax."

At first glance it would seem that Drudge would crush this puny ambulance-chasing law business, yet when these globalists are lurking in the nearby shadows, you can bet these copyright infringement cases have an ulterior motive of silencing their critics.  This is nothing more than a blatant tactic to squelch free speech in the Internet's swelling "infowar." 

Given the damage that "Anonymous" hacktivists have done to major corporate websites over freedom of speech violations, the list of newspapers who are Righthaven's current clients here, here, and here may need to boost their Internet security.

(Keep tabs on journalist Steve Green of the Las Vegas Sun who has been covering Righthaven from the beginning.)

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How the Oligarchs Took America

Creating a Country of the Rich, by the Rich, and for the Rich

Anthony Freda Illustration

Andy Kroll
Toms Dispatch

There is a war underway. I'm not talking about Washington’s bloody misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, but a war within our own borders. It’s a war fought on the airwaves, on television and radio and over the Internet, a war of words and images, of half-truth, innuendo, and raging lies. I'm talking about a political war, pitting liberals against conservatives, Democrats against Republicans. I'm talking about a spending war, fueled by stealthy front groups and deep-pocketed anonymous donors. It’s a war that's poised to topple what's left of American democracy.

The right wing won the opening battle. In the 2010 midterm elections, shadowy outside organizations (who didn’t have to disclose their donors until well after Election Day, if at all) backing Republican candidatesdoled out $190 million, outspending their adversaries by a more than two-to-one margin, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. American Action Network, operated by Republican consultant Fred Malek and former Republican Senator Norm Coleman, spent $26 million; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce plunked down $33 million; and Karl Rove's American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS shelled out a combined $38.6 million. Their investments in conservative candidates across the country paid off: the 62 House seats and six Senate seats claimed by Republicans were the most in the postwar era -- literally, a historic victory.

Knocked out of their complacency, no longer basking in the glow of Barack Obama's 2008 victory, wealthy Democrats are now plotting their response. Left-wing media mogul David Brock plans to create an outside group dubbed American Bridge in response to Rove's Crossroads outfits that will fight in the trenches of 2012 campaign spending. Many more outfits like Brock's will surely follow, as liberal and centrist Democrats brace for a promised $500 million onslaught by the Chamber of Commerce and others of its ilk.

Even the Obama administration, which shunned outside groups in 2008, has opened the door to a covert spending war. The Democrats will now fight fire with fire.  "Is small money better? You bet. But we're in a fucking fight," Democratic strategist and fundraiser Harold Ickes told me recently. "And if you're in a fistfight, then you're in a fistfight, and you use all legal means available."

The endgame here, of course, is non-stop war. No longer will outside groups come and go every two years.  Now, such groups will be running attack ads, sending out mailers, and deploying robo-calls year-round in what is going to become a perpetual campaign to sway voters and elect friendly lawmakers. "We're definitely building a foundation," was how American Crossroads president Steven Law put it.

This is what nowadays passes for the heart and soul of American democracy. It used to be that citizens in large numbers, mobilized by labor unions or political parties or a single uniting cause, determined the course of American politics. After World War II, a swelling middle class was the most powerful voting bloc, while, in those same decades, the working and middle classes enjoyed comparatively greater economic prosperity than their wealthy counterparts. Kiss all that goodbye. We're now a country run by rich people.

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How's That New World Order Working Out?

The multipolar moment has arrived -- and it's nothing like Americans imagined.

Portugal protests: AFP - Image

Parag Khanna
Foreign Policy

Looking for a sign of when the multipolar moment suddenly seemed real? You could do worse than mark the day when Brazil and Turkey -- two of the world's most avidly internationalist emerging powers -- joined together this May to announce they had stepped in to broker a nuclear-fuel swap deal with Iran that potentially -- though sadly not actually -- paved the way toward a peaceful solution to the standoff. Turkey and Brazil aren't superpowers, nor are they permanent U.N. Security Council members. But just as U.S. President Barack Obama came into office preaching a renewed focus on multilateralism, rising powers are reminding us that respect for hierarchy is no longer on anyone's agenda.

What a difference a couple of decades makes. A little over 20 years ago, then U.S. President George H.W. Bush -- who had just witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and saw the Soviet Union disintegrating before his very eyes -- stood at the granite podium of the U.N. General Assembly in New York and proclaimed a "new world order," a U.S.-dominated international system "where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle." Two decades later, the "new new world order" we are in fact living looks almost nothing like what Bush -- and most Americans -- imagined or hoped.

The United States still has the world's most powerful military, of course, but its utility is diminishing as the capacity to deter and resist spreads. Just look at Iraq and Afghanistan. Military might and political influence no longer necessarily go together, and too much of the former can even undermine the latter. More fundamentally, the world has quickly become multipolar, with the European Union a larger economic player than the United States while China rises quickly on all measures of hard and soft power. Obama couldn't give the "New World Order" speech today; he'd have to negotiate it first with his peers in Brussels and Beijing. And as for democracy: Meet authoritarian state capitalism, a new entry into our lexicon that underscores the non-Western options every state can pursue today. Nobody's talking about the Washington Consensus anymore -- instead the Beijing Consensus, the Mumbai Consensus, and even something only half-jokingly called the Canuck Consensus are competing for the hearts and minds of global elites.

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America's Misconception of Freedom

S. Paul Forrest
Activist Post

America was founded in an attempt to escape the oppression of not only religious expression, but also the misrepresentation from a monarchist system that cared only for the proliferation and interests of the elite class.  After 250 years, we have found ourselves in the same position as those who left Europe for these shores so long ago: oppressed by a system that only wants to serve itself before the citizens that support it.  They say history repeats itself, and nowhere is this more evident than in the case of modern America’s politicians, putting their corporate puppet masters and damaging agenda of faux patriotism before the needs of the people.

To understand how we have been led to the erroneous conclusion that America is somehow a free nation, one must come to an understanding of what type of political system exists in this country and how it adds to or detracts from our social system as set up by our forefathers.  We also must recognize the erosion of our system under the watch of the overzealous quasi-patriotism which has served to initiate the current Police State in place and growing in America.


First and foremost, it is important to understand that we do not live in a democracy as most people have been led to believe; America is a republic where we are granted the opportunity to elect representatives to make decisions for us.  Our forefathers were learned enough to understand that a pure democracy was not possible in a complex society, especially the one they were setting up.  In a democracy, although touted as the ideal system for freedom of the people to decide all matters of State, the minority only has those privileges granted by the dictatorship of the majority.  In a democracy the sovereignty is in the group, whereas in a republic the sovereignty is in each individual person.

The problem with a republic, though, is that the inherent rights of the people are surrendered upon the casting of a vote for representation.  After this action has taken place, our fate lies in the hands of politicians who, with the innate human deficiency of sin, represent our interests.  This type of system was set up because the idea of a complex society deciding all aspects of government and the minority becoming unrepresented was unrealistic.  The thought that we the people could effectively be served by those who are concerned not with the continuation of our liberty but with the development and proliferation of self-service has been greatly discredited by the reality of this, our modern model of representation.

To understand our freedom, or lack thereof, it is important to recognize what type of political system exists within our social structure into which we put our faith each election period.  This country is currently run and controlled by a two-party system that determines for us, the “free” voters, who we can vote for.  The choice of candidates is determined by the parties themselves as the proper representatives of their interests, rather than the interests of the American people.  Even the self-labeled “freedom party” or Tea Party, is just an extension of this old, two-sided coin.  We can either vote for the lesser of the evils, or suffer the consequence of others doing the voting for us.

Regarding words by James Madison on the American political system, Jack N. Rakove of Stanford University writes:

Madison assumed politicians . . . would be able to command the allegiance of large numbers of voters. Once in office, they would act with a broadmindedness that would elevate the very quality of public life.  They would think not in terms of the immediate interests of their constituents, but of the larger public good which was synonymous with the concept of the public itself.  The virtue which could no longer be expected to reside in the populace might still be found, he hoped, in its rulers.

It is clear from today’s system that this assumption was wrong.  Our modern politicians are largely self-serving, and the quality of our lives is directly relative to our freedom to vote for true representation.

Madison obviously had great confidence that an elected official through the ages would think similarly as he and his colleagues with regard to intellectual consideration of the established hierarchy.  The effects of this representation was, in theory, to contribute to the ongoing freedom of the people.  With the issuing of the Constitution, he and others like him believed they had established a system that would endure the natural tendencies of corruption that had ended with the oppression of the masses in so many other social systems.  The reality, as proven with our modern institutional malfeasance, is these representatives eventually become corrupt in the position of power they hold over the people.

The limited choice of representation has fostered a governmental system of insular thinking and the gradual erosion of our own national freedoms.  The two-party system, with its inbred philosophy of elitism, has been taking our freedom from us bit by bit with innumerable laws and initiatives to foster control.  The decay of our Constitutional freedom has been exacerbated by such legislative initiatives as the Patriot Act and its associated nullification of habeas corpus, while labeling some citizens concerned with the direction of our government as dissidents.

Some would argue this action is necessary to protect the security of the nation, but it only stands as proof of the intrinsic dilemma of our current democratic representation.  As stated by the Constitutional Society:

 . . . governments must be vested with a certain degree of power.  It is this power that can be most dangerous to the liberties of the people.  To find out who committed a certain crime, police must be able to question suspects and witnesses, and be able to search for evidence.  In a society where the government is omnipotent, the powers of the police to detain, question, and search are unlimited.  In fact, the power to determine guilt would be unlimited. 

In the modern era of terrorist influence and the over reaction of associated governmental propaganda, a police state, initiated by our increasingly corrupt system, has expanded control and the violation of our rights to a writ of habeas corpus rather than allowing it to remain.  It makes certain that any dissonance or suspicion of anti-patriotism is answered by restraint pending conviction.  Guilt before proof of innocence has become the mantra of modern justice in the evolving decay of the American political system.

Ease of movement and civil rights are also largely questionable in this system.  One only need look at the new TSA screening process, public face recognition programming and intelligence agency policy of Net watching to know these are not applicable freedoms in modern America.  If we want to travel, we are forced to endure a violation of our rights and forced to endure molestation by security screeners.  In an effort to protect our “democracy”, under the new American Police State, we are robbed of our innate, individual rights.  These new, national security measures have only served to imprison us all within the realm of paranoia driven, political propaganda.

The U.S. Government, in the eternal quest of total control of the people, has led the charge in the deception and misconception of our freedom.  In the ever increasing amplification of Al Qaeda’s desire to terrorize our country, America has expanded the control of the people through the Patriot Act, legislation that was pushed though Congress under false pretenses and nationalist plasticity.  This Act was an orchestrated move in response to a false, immoral war begun and promulgated by the United States and has added a fascist element to our Republic.

It is vehemently argued from the creators of this control that steps must be taken to protect our borders and our citizens, but the American people are not the ones who started this war.  It was begun by greedy politicians in an effort to obtain oil rights and control over an area that largely supplies the world’s fuel needs.  The death of whatever freedom we may have previously enjoyed occurred with the initiation of this legislation and the paranoia associated with its inception.

The reality of it all is that our choices are limited, our politics contrived, and our country controlled by corporations fed by an American obsession with excess; America's political puppets no longer represent citizens, but rather their own interests.  We are all slaves to a predetermined mentality of competition for monetary acquisition and zealot-controlled governmental fascism that provides us with 4,000 new laws per year.  Our choice is to conform to these laws, or else be controlled by the bars of a real prison.  We are coerced daily to live silently within a system that is corrupt, or we can pay the price for not following the rules of its deception.

This country is not the model of democratic individualism most of us were taught it was.  From our schools to our media sources, the decay of our American rights has been continuously fed in the name of faux patriotism.  Until we all wake up and see these truths of deception, the constant move to add to the growing state of total control will destroy not only the fabric of this nation but the last freedoms that we do possess.

There once was a dream that was America.  With the ever increasing intrusion of Big Government and its media propaganda, we are slowly falling into the realm of fascist machination, the end result of which will spell the death of the dream of those settlers who first came here to establish a free society.

The time has come for Americans to realize how little control they have in daily choices and to awaken to the fact that we are now suffering from a very damaging misconception of our freedom.  Until we collectively stand together and let our representatives know we will no longer allow their destruction of this wonderful country, the erosion will continue.

John Locke had once declared that under natural law, all people have the right to life, liberty, and estate; under the social contract, the people could instigate a revolution against the government when it acted against the interests of its citizens and to replace the government with one that served the interests of those citizens.  In the recent years, our governmental representatives have not acted in any interest save their own.  It is time that the system is corrected and even more importantly, it is time for America to come to terms with its misconception of freedom else lose all that this great nation stands for.  The revolution is near and unless the in-place system comes to realize its errant ways, they will find themselves thrown from the Ivory towers they have built upon the backs of America.

Many Americans also falsely believe the Constitution, set up to combat the decay of the system, guarantees certain freedoms such as speech.  The argument is that we, as American citizens, have the right to speak our minds without consequence.  This belief is so erroneous it physically pains me to think about how many believe it to be true.  We can indeed say what we want, but the ramifications of our statements can result in condemnation by a system that believes in the proliferation of lies and propaganda over truth.

Other articles by S. Paul Forrest
Beware The Rising Ire of a Forgotten Generation 

Death of The American Dream

A Liberal's Perspective of the Tea Party

A Liberal's Awakening to the Reality of ObamaCare

Genetically Modified Foods and The Monsanto Initiative

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Obama's Coming Sell-Out to the Super Rich and What It Means for the Rest of Us

Anthony Freda Illustration

Michael Hudson
CounterPunch

Now that President Obama is almost celebrating his bipartisan willingness to renew the tax cuts for the super-rich enacted under George Bush ten years ago, it is time for Democrats to ask themselves how strongly they are willing to oppose an administration that looks like Bush-Cheney III. Is this what they expected by  Obama’s promise to rise above partisan politics – by ruling on behalf of Wall Street, now that it is the major campaign backer of both parties?

It is a reflection of how one-sided today’s class war has become that Warren Buffet has quipped that “his” side is winning without a real fight being waged. No gauntlet has been thrown down over the trial balloon that the president and his advisor David Axelrod have sent up over the past two weeks to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 per cent for “just” two more years. For all practical purposes the euphemism “two years” means forever – at least, long enough to let the super-rich siphon off enough more money to bankroll enough more Republicans to be elected to make the tax cuts permanent.


Obama seems to be campaigning for his own defeat! Thanks largely to the $13 trillion Wall Street bailout – while keeping the debt overhead in place for America’s “bottom 98 per cent” – this happy 2 per cent of the population now receives an estimated three quarters (~75 per cent) of the returns to wealth (interest, dividends, rent and capital gains). This is nearly double what it received a generation ago. The rest of the population is being squeezed, and foreclosures are rising.

Baudelaire quipped that the devil wins at the point where he manages convince the world that he doesn’t exist. Today’s financial elites will win the class war at the point where voters believe it doesn’t exist – and believe that  Obama is trying to help them rather than shepherd them into debt peonage as the economy settles into debt deflation.

We are dealing with shameless demagogy. The financial End Time has arrived, but  Obama’s happy-talk pretends that “two years” will get us through the current debt-induced depression. The Republican plan is to make more Congressional and Senate gains in 2012 as Obama’s former supporters “vote with their backsides” and stay home, as they did earlier this month. So “two years” means forever in politician-talk. Why vote for a politician who promises “change” but is merely an exclamation mark for the Bush-Cheney policies from Afghanistan and Iraq to Wall Street’s Democratic Leadership Council on the party’s right wing? One of its leaders, after all, was  Obama’s Senate mentor, Joe Lieberman.

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Jon Stewart’s Older Brother, Larry Leibowitz, Is ‘COO’ Of The NYSE

The Tonka Report

Not as many people are aware of it as should be, but Jon Stewart’s older brother, Larry Leibowitz, is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

Mr. Leibowitz was appointed chief operating officer in the first quarter of 2010. In this capacity, he (Leibowitz) is responsible for all the operations management, global cash execution and global listings.

He previously served as group executive vice president and head of U.S. Execution and Global Technology from 2007 until 2009. He joined NYSE Euronext in 2007, having served as managing director and chief operating officer, Americas Equities, at UBS Investment Bank.

Prior to joining UBS in 2004, Mr. Leibowitz held the position of executive vice president, co-head of Schwab Capital Markets. He currently serves on the board of National Stock Exchange of India and has also served on many industry boards and committees, among them the Market Structure Committee of the former Securities Industry Association (now SIFMA).

As stated above, Leibowitz was also formerly managing director and chief operating officer at UBS, “the leading global wealth manager, a leading global investment banking and securities firm, and one of the largest global asset managers”, as they describe themselves. A rather influential man, indeed.

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