Essential elements of the liberal American press are hype, that is to say reporting without analyzing the pronouncements of elected leaders, framing all elections as horse races, and passing off fluff as news. So lets get real. The Dow Jones hit a high of 11,722.98 on January 14, 2000. The Dow Jones was finally able to exceed that number on October 3, 2006 when it closed at 11,727.34. The stock market has been flat for the last 6 years and 10 months increasing by 0.037 %. Where was all that speculative capital? A major part of it has been in the housing market. Now that the housing market has collapsed, capital is hold up in the stock market waiting for an opening in another market. Soon some other market somewhere will be invaded, pillaged, and left a tattered ruin.
The Republicans will retain control of the House and Senate. They will lose some seats but they will stay in control because the real agenda facing the nation requires the erosion of civil rights at home while the powers-that-be extend and firm up their grip on the rest of the world. Imperialism for the world and civil rights at home are incompatible because the same men are making both decisions and they are driven by power and wealth.
But, lets suppose the Democrats do take control of one or both houses. Have you heard anything from any national Democrat leader that tells you they will end the war? Remember in 1968 the American people changed horses in midstream on the promise of ending the Vietnam War and nothing changed as the war dragged on for 6 more years? Because Bush or Rice or Rumsfeld said it does not make it the truth. If you are trying to take over the world and suppress dissent at home, you are not going to be frank about that agenda, are you?
According to Bush, only 30,000 Iraqi’s have died since the invasion. But we now know more than 600,000 Iraqis are dead and Iraq is on schedule with the 2 million Vietnamese deaths during the Vietnam War. Comparing the Iraq War to the Vietnam War will arm the American people with information on the long standing murderous policies of our government. Instead we get the sexual deviancy of Congressmen Mark Foley . The Foley story is a diversion designed to deflect the attention of the American people much like a magician dramatically moves his right hand to draw attention away from the trick hand. The liberal American press entertains and tricks and is exceedingly profitable and not much else.
October 2006
Friday, October 20, 2006
Friday, July 21, 2006
Immigrants to America
Before I begin I have to point out that my mother is a post W.W.II German immigrant and my great-great grandparents on my father’s side immigrated to the United States from Italy in the 1870’s. Despite the fact that I was a fourth generation Italian American and a first generation German American, and despite the fact that I spoke German but I did not speak Italian, it was my Italian background that provoked anti-Italian remarks from my classmates at school and from stupid adults in my community. “What sound does sh*t make when it hits the wall?”Guinea, wop, dago, gumba, greaseball, and spic have always been part of my life in America. On the other hand, I have never-ever heard an immigrant make a disparaging remark about my heritage. The people who use words like wop and dago look exactly like the people I saw in the canyon this past weekend. So, as far as I am concerned, you anti-immigrant types are, at your core, and contrary to your self deceptions, bigots and racists.
The following are the myths then the facts about immigrants. Myth: immigrants don’t pay taxes. Fact: Every time an immigrants buys from a store, buys gasoline, and pays rent they pay taxes. Immigrants pay between $90 and $140 billion per year in taxes to the Feds, State, and local governments. According to the Social Security Administration immigrants paid $20 billion into Social Security between 1990 and 1998. Myth: immigrants come here to take welfare. Fact: immigrants paid at least $90 billion in taxes every year and take back $5 billion in public benefits. Myth: immigrants are a drain on the economy. Fact: According to the Federal Reserve immigrants net contribution (profits to business) to the US economy is at least $10 billions per year, they come here in prime working age, no public money has been spent on their education and according to a study conducted by the National Academy of Sciences, they will contribute $500 billion to Social Security over the next 30 years.
I could say something else to all you people bashers but I will refrain and simply point out: put that in your collective pipes and smoke it!
The following are the myths then the facts about immigrants. Myth: immigrants don’t pay taxes. Fact: Every time an immigrants buys from a store, buys gasoline, and pays rent they pay taxes. Immigrants pay between $90 and $140 billion per year in taxes to the Feds, State, and local governments. According to the Social Security Administration immigrants paid $20 billion into Social Security between 1990 and 1998. Myth: immigrants come here to take welfare. Fact: immigrants paid at least $90 billion in taxes every year and take back $5 billion in public benefits. Myth: immigrants are a drain on the economy. Fact: According to the Federal Reserve immigrants net contribution (profits to business) to the US economy is at least $10 billions per year, they come here in prime working age, no public money has been spent on their education and according to a study conducted by the National Academy of Sciences, they will contribute $500 billion to Social Security over the next 30 years.
I could say something else to all you people bashers but I will refrain and simply point out: put that in your collective pipes and smoke it!
Friday, June 30, 2006
American Ruling Class
In the spirit of Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, and H.L. Mencken politics can be defined as the tactics of manipulating the many to act in the strategic interest of the few. In the United States the many and the few are usually defined along racial/ethnic lines. The practice of racial politics, however, does nothing but muddy the waters confusing the political tactic of manipulation with long term political strategy of control.
In the United States the economic system pervading every aspect of American society, informing virtually all human relationships is capitalism. With the exception of the very earliest hunter-gatherer societies, every past economic system including capitalism gives rise to social classes. Social classes are rooted in and differentiated by how much wealth each social class owns or controls. According to the Federal Reserve the wealth of the top one percent of Americans is greater than that of the bottom 95 percent. A Federal Reserve study dated March 6, 2006 reports that the consumer debt now exceeds 11.45 trillion dollars, the highest in U.S. history (not to mention the added tax burden on the lower classes by the Federal national debt of 8.5 trillion dollars).
It’s one thing to establish the objective existence of a small wealthy upper class but quite another to show if that upper class is a ruling class conscious of itself and acting in it’s own interests even if their upper class interest is diametrically opposed to the “national interest.” More than a century of academic and scholarly research shows conclusively that the American Upper Class is a Ruling Class. Thorsten Veblen’s 1899 study titled “Theory of the Leisure Class” which was responsible for introducing “conspicuous consumption” into the language is among the earliest works showing the connection between upper class and ruling class. Other studies of the American Upper Class as a ruling class include Ferdinand Lundberg’s “America’s 60 Families” (1938), “The Power Elite” by C. Wright Mills (1956), “The Protestant Establishment” by E. Digby Baltzell (1964), and G. William Domhoff’s study “Who Rules America” (1967, 1983, 1998).
The biggest fear the American Ruling Class faces is the loss of its ability to manipulate the lower classes should the middle and working classes become conscious of itself as distinct classes and begin to act in alliance for it’s collective interest. In other words, above all else the American Ruling Class fears a two sided class war. To suppress class consciousness by spreading “false consciousness” among the lower classes, the American Ruling Class uses it’s manipulative powers to divide and conquer by attacking working class ethnic immigrants (Mexicans), gays (Defense of Marriage Act), women (anti-abortion), flag burners, welfare, teachers, nurses, national health care, minimum vs. living wages , and all those who oppose the Iraq war where working class kids are dying by the thousands. So far class warfare in the United States has been a one sided fight. I suspect the fight may be joined sooner than many think.
In the United States the economic system pervading every aspect of American society, informing virtually all human relationships is capitalism. With the exception of the very earliest hunter-gatherer societies, every past economic system including capitalism gives rise to social classes. Social classes are rooted in and differentiated by how much wealth each social class owns or controls. According to the Federal Reserve the wealth of the top one percent of Americans is greater than that of the bottom 95 percent. A Federal Reserve study dated March 6, 2006 reports that the consumer debt now exceeds 11.45 trillion dollars, the highest in U.S. history (not to mention the added tax burden on the lower classes by the Federal national debt of 8.5 trillion dollars).
It’s one thing to establish the objective existence of a small wealthy upper class but quite another to show if that upper class is a ruling class conscious of itself and acting in it’s own interests even if their upper class interest is diametrically opposed to the “national interest.” More than a century of academic and scholarly research shows conclusively that the American Upper Class is a Ruling Class. Thorsten Veblen’s 1899 study titled “Theory of the Leisure Class” which was responsible for introducing “conspicuous consumption” into the language is among the earliest works showing the connection between upper class and ruling class. Other studies of the American Upper Class as a ruling class include Ferdinand Lundberg’s “America’s 60 Families” (1938), “The Power Elite” by C. Wright Mills (1956), “The Protestant Establishment” by E. Digby Baltzell (1964), and G. William Domhoff’s study “Who Rules America” (1967, 1983, 1998).
The biggest fear the American Ruling Class faces is the loss of its ability to manipulate the lower classes should the middle and working classes become conscious of itself as distinct classes and begin to act in alliance for it’s collective interest. In other words, above all else the American Ruling Class fears a two sided class war. To suppress class consciousness by spreading “false consciousness” among the lower classes, the American Ruling Class uses it’s manipulative powers to divide and conquer by attacking working class ethnic immigrants (Mexicans), gays (Defense of Marriage Act), women (anti-abortion), flag burners, welfare, teachers, nurses, national health care, minimum vs. living wages , and all those who oppose the Iraq war where working class kids are dying by the thousands. So far class warfare in the United States has been a one sided fight. I suspect the fight may be joined sooner than many think.
Friday, April 14, 2006
Racist Immigration Policy
The century following 1820 may be divided into three great periods of immigration to the U.S. During the first period, from 1820 to 1850, most of the immigrants came from Great Britain, Ireland, and Germany. In Response to this wave of immigration the No-Nothing Party was organized. Their platform included, among other things severe limits on immigration, especially from Catholic countries, restricting political office to native-born Americans, mandating a wait of 21 years before an immigrant could gain citizenship, restricting public school teachers to Protestants, and mandating daily Bible readings in public schools (from the Protestant version of the Bible, of course).
In the second period, from 1850 to 1890, Ireland and China supplied a majority of the immigrants. Encouraged by “Nativist” political groups Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which was the climax to more than thirty years of growing anti-Chinese racism. Racial tensions increased as more and more Chinese emigrated, took jobs no one else wanted, and created competition in the job market.
In the final period, from 1890 to 1920 the majority of the immigrants came from Italy and Russia. From 1900 to 1914 more than a million aliens entered the U.S. every year. John J. Simon writing in this months Issue of Monthly Reviews tells us, “Manhattan... in... 1902, was, like today’s city, a locus of great wealth and mean privation. The city’s ruling class were the confident arrogant leaders of the emerging American colossus. Lower Manhattan was headquarters for U.S. finance and industrial monopolies, J. P. Morgan and Standard Oil. The city was a manufacturing center as well. The garment, printing, shipping, and rail industries all needed cheap labor. New York’s population exploded with a flood of newcomers. southern and eastern Europeans poured into dormitory neighborhoods, the Lower East Side, Little Italy, and East Harlem to name a few, overcrowded, noisy, and fetid with garbage....The city was a cacophony of accents and dialects. One person in four spoke almost no English.”
In 1917 Congress passed an immigration law that imposed a literacy test and created an Asiatic Barred Zone to shut out Asians. After World War I a marked increase in racism and the growth of isolationism led to demands for further restrictive legislation. In 1921 and again in 1924 Congress created a quota system for immigrants where aliens from northern and western Europe who were considered racially superior than those from southern and eastern Europe were favored.
Despite Republican Party protestation to the contrary, American immigration policy has always been informed by bigotry and racism.
In the second period, from 1850 to 1890, Ireland and China supplied a majority of the immigrants. Encouraged by “Nativist” political groups Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which was the climax to more than thirty years of growing anti-Chinese racism. Racial tensions increased as more and more Chinese emigrated, took jobs no one else wanted, and created competition in the job market.
In the final period, from 1890 to 1920 the majority of the immigrants came from Italy and Russia. From 1900 to 1914 more than a million aliens entered the U.S. every year. John J. Simon writing in this months Issue of Monthly Reviews tells us, “Manhattan... in... 1902, was, like today’s city, a locus of great wealth and mean privation. The city’s ruling class were the confident arrogant leaders of the emerging American colossus. Lower Manhattan was headquarters for U.S. finance and industrial monopolies, J. P. Morgan and Standard Oil. The city was a manufacturing center as well. The garment, printing, shipping, and rail industries all needed cheap labor. New York’s population exploded with a flood of newcomers. southern and eastern Europeans poured into dormitory neighborhoods, the Lower East Side, Little Italy, and East Harlem to name a few, overcrowded, noisy, and fetid with garbage....The city was a cacophony of accents and dialects. One person in four spoke almost no English.”
In 1917 Congress passed an immigration law that imposed a literacy test and created an Asiatic Barred Zone to shut out Asians. After World War I a marked increase in racism and the growth of isolationism led to demands for further restrictive legislation. In 1921 and again in 1924 Congress created a quota system for immigrants where aliens from northern and western Europe who were considered racially superior than those from southern and eastern Europe were favored.
Despite Republican Party protestation to the contrary, American immigration policy has always been informed by bigotry and racism.
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