Elimination of the Entitlement State - Part II

A staunch right winger sends us this:

Top 100 Teacher Salaries for 2011: Phys. Ed Teacher Heads List with $203,154

In 2011 an amazing 14,866 public school employees made more than $100,000, up 18% from 2010’s 12,588. And then? Our brainwashed Naybob natters...

"This is the broken State of Affairs that Barrack Obama and Rahm Emmanuel brought to The White House, and want to bring to the rest of The US.

Yep, the same broken political system of payback that is threatening to bring ruin and collapse to all the cradle-to-grave Socialist entitlement nations of Europe."

We Natter Back...

From 2009: Wall Street banks Citigroup and Merrill Lynch paid 1,400 staff bonuses of $1m or more each, despite being kept afloat by US government money.

From 2011: Big bank compensation, which includes salaries, benefits and bonuses, will likely total $156 billion -- a 3.7 percent boost from 2010 -- and a record breaking number.

Goldman Sachs, which in October recorded its second loss ever as a public company. Still, Goldman employees will take home $362,862 in compensation on average, compared with the U.S. median income of $26,364.

Bankers Join Billionaires to Debunk ‘Imbecile’ Attack on Top 1%

The top 1 percent of taxpayers in the U.S. made at least $343,927 in 2009, the last year data is available, according to the Internal Revenue Service.

While average household income increased 62 percent from 1979 through 2007, the top 1 percent’s more than tripled, an October Congressional Budget Office report showed.

As a result, the U.S. had greater income inequality (The Grand Canyon) in 2007 than China or Iran, according to the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook.

Billionaire Warren Buffett, 81, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., has called for increasing taxes on the wealthy, as has Patriotic Millionaires,

a group whose supporters include Ask.com co-founder Garrett Gruener and Peter Norvig, director of research at Google Inc., according to its website.

“Rich businesspeople like me don’t create jobs,” Nick Hanauer, co-founder of aQuantive Inc., an online advertising company he sold to Microsoft Corp.

for about $6 billion, wrote in a Dec. 1 Bloomberg View article. “Let’s tax the rich like we once did and use that money to spur growth.”

Two out of three Americans support raising taxes on households with incomes of at least $250,000,

according to a Bloomberg-Washington Post national poll conducted in October.

The Nattering One muses: This is the capitalist way, bonus paid with our tax dollars.

Witness the new NAZI group think that feeble minded right wingers spew...

Non Christians, Homosexuals, Immigrants, Government Workers, Unions and Pensions... what do they have in common?

They are THE PROBLEM. If you eliminate them, you eliminate THE PROBLEM.

They are the NEW JEW. And nothing could be further from the truth.

This is political divisiveness and Goebbels NAZI credo at its best.

Divide and conquer the masses through propaganda. Tell a big enough lie enough times and the feeble minded will believe it.

If this behavior continues, what will it get us in the end? The rich attacking the poor and vice versa. Oh no, far, far more, baby ducks.

The rich own the lobbyists and the whores on the hill, aka the prostitutes in congress. How do you control the hill?

The rich employ their whores to start initiatives that deal with problems that aren't really problems.

Trying to solve problems that don`t exist is the specialty of the right wingers in congress.

And that is a way to serve some other agenda that is unspoken to by the fake problems.

Examples? Measures to combat voter fraud without instances of actual voter fraud.

Elimination of a proposed EPA farm dust regulation, when the EPA has no proposed farm dust regulation.

A resolution to affirm `In God we trust` as the national motto, when `In God we trust` is already the national motto.

And the latest is, blocking millionaires from receiving unemployment insurance or food stamps. (For those with ADD, refer to our previous post.)

Yeah just eliminate all the entitlements, the Non Christians, Homosexuals, Immigrants, Government Workers, Unions and Pensions, no more problems right?

Wrong. In fact, DEAD wrong. This diviseness over the last 50 years has us rapidly becoming a second class power and well on our way to being a third world country.

The eradication of the middle class, the widening of the Grand Canyon aka the Great Divide (the rich get richer, the poor get poorer) has the ultra rich upper 1% vs the rest of the serfs.

Occupy Wall Street is just the beginning, of the end. This is the end, my friend.

In South America, the Eastern bloc and most third world countries, kidnappings of the elitist rich are a common occurance.

MLB baseball player Wilson Ramos, of the Washington Nationals, had his Venezuelan ordeal and says he is thankful to be alive. In the near term, many here may be chiming the same.

Someday soon, in this country, holding the elite for ransom, will be commonplace. The rich will not venture far from their fortress compounds, without an armed entourage and escort.

Recently in Italy, letter bombs exploded in the tax collectors office. In the middle East public terrorist bombings are an every day occurance.

It would not surprise, if Corporate and government bombings (such as Oklahoma City) start to become commonplace here.

And unfortunately, in our lifetime, if they don't change their greedy, divisive and naughty ways...

You better watch out, You better not cry, Better not pout, I'm telling you why, the people's revolution is coming to town.

Their making a list, And checking it twice; Gonna find out Who's naughty and nice. The people's revolution is coming to town.

The elitist, sexist, racist, anti-humanist throats will be slit, and they will be hung, as they and their assets are bled out, like the greedy pigs they are.

They can't hide and they know who they are, so better to be on the good list, than the naughty list.

Some food for thought and a peak into a potentially bleak alternative future, in the Naybob Zone. Remember, its never too late and never, say never.

Season's Greeting, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all.

Elimination of The Entitlement State

We have certain entitlements in this country that have been around for generations and remained intact -- Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance.

These are programs that work politically in part because they apply to all of us. They are for all Americans.

When you`re 65, you get Medicare. You get Social Security. When you lose your job, if you have paid into the unemployment insurance program, you get unemployment insurance.

You are by definition entitled to these things, and these things have been a huge success in the story of America.

They are our social safety net. They have kept people out of poverty. They have kept food on the table. They`ve allowed us to retire one day instead of working our entire lives until we die.

But the thing about them is that they are entitlements. And that is as important to what they mean to us as Americans as it is to their political survival.

You get these things if you`re rich or if you`re poor. We do not discriminate by class. As Americans we get them.

The idea of ending unemployment benefits for millionaires is that you fundamentally change a program in order to eventually break it apart.

Making the unemployment insurance program a program that is not for everybody. It`s not for everybody anymore. Instead, it`s just for poor people.

When people with not very many resources are the beneficiaries of a particular program, those people don`t have many resources and that also means they don`t have much political power to protect that program once politicians try to tear it apart.

It`s also because when a program is seen as just being for poor people, that program is susceptible to losing broad public support when it inevitably gets attacked from the right as waste.

When you try to change entitlement programs so instead of benefiting everybody, they just benefit, say, poorer Americans, you set the stage to break those programs apart because the right has come up with really great politics for making the rest of the country resent programs that only serve poor people.

So, suddenly this means drug testing for unemployment insurance. That may seem like a throw-away line in a Republican proposal. That`s not a real problem, why are they working on that?

Well, it is a way to dismantle that as an entitlement. To make us think of unemployment insurance that only applies to poor people.

And that`s why the Paul Ryan kill Medicare thing really isn`t a lie.

But make no mistake. What the Republicans have proposed is actually ending Medicare. I mean, the whole idea of Medicare is that everybody gets it. It`s not something that divides America.

It doesn`t matter if you`re rich or poor. You as an American citizen are entitled to Medicare once you turn 65.

The Paul Ryan plan would end Medicare. It would make Medicare something that not all Americans get anymore, which means it`s not Medicare.

This is about changing the social safety net to make its politics more like welfare politics, and less like Social Security and Medicare politics.

Ask Americans how they feel about Social Security and Medicare. Those programs are more popular than a cold drink on a hot day. Look at that.

Now, if you make those programs just for some people, see how popular they become. Right now, House Republicans are playing chicken again. This time it`s not the debt ceiling or looming government shutdown.

This time it`s almost every adult American getting substantially less money in their paycheck as of January 1st, courtesy of a Republican tax hike on working people. Merry Christmas.

And Republicans are willing to bear the political cost of doing that for the prize of starting to rip our social safety net around the edges.

For the prize of making the American people see the social safety net not as something that we all have...

but instead seeing it as something that other people might need some day. Something that other people might use some day, but never us.

From the : Dec 20th Rachel Maddow Show

The Nattering One muses: more to come on the right wing divisiveness in our next post.

Recovery? What Recovery?

The Nattering One muses... Long Term Unemployment, Foreclosures and the Ghost Inventory are up. Well, at least one thing is going down, Housing Prices.

This is for all the pollyannas who think that a recovery is under way and the economy has turned the corner...

The omission is... the economy flipped over three times, struck a tree and burst into flames.

Read em, weap and NEVER FORGET, dangling chads in Florida, shady Diebold machines in Ohio, and ALL the IDIOTS (now politically reinventing themselves) that voted for Shrub Jr and Chaney's eight year reign of terror are DIRECTLY to blame.

Now, Now, baby ducks, you do have something to look forward to, as we've nattered all along, we haven't bottomed yet and the worst is yet to come.

Long Term Unemployment Up

The jobs crisis has left so many people out of work for so long that most of America's unemployed are no longer receiving unemployment benefits.

The number of unemployed has been roughly stable this year. Yet the number receiving benefits has plunged 30 percent.

Early last year, 75 percent were receiving checks. The figure is now 48 percent — a shift that points to a growing crisis of long-term unemployment. Nearly one-third of America's 14 million unemployed have had no job for a year or more.

The Census Bureau says unemployment benefits kept 3.2 million people from slipping into poverty last year. It defines poverty as annual income below $22,314 for a family of four.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that each $1 spent on unemployment benefits generates up to $1.90 in economic growth.

Foreclosures Up

The U.S. foreclosure rate has climbed to its highest level in seven months, suggesting that lenders are moving beyond a "robo-signing" scandal that had temporarily slowed bank takeovers, according to a private firm that tracks the activity. This could dry up the pipeline of inventory and improve the market for a time, but a major uptick in foreclosures might hurt the market later.

Home Prices Down, Ghost Inventory Up

Record low mortgage interest rates appeared to have put a floor under home values this summer. After falling steadily last winter, the CoreLogic index flattened out this summer.

But the latest drop leaves home prices 4.1 percent lower than they were in September 2010.

The outlook for home prices remains clouded by the continuing wave of foreclosures that has left the market with many more sellers than buyers.

Some banks have slowed the pace of foreclosures to avoid adding more unsold inventory to their books. As lenders slash prices of foreclosed properties, those “distressed” sales force prices of all homes lower.

"The acceleration in the rate at which the CoreLogic house price index is falling reflects the slowing in the pace of job creation and wider economic growth earlier this year," said Paul Diggle, a housing economist with Capital Economics.

Though mortgages are cheap for those who qualify, banks are only lending to those with top credit scores. Some would-be buyers are waiting for signs that prices have bottomed.

Demand has also been held back by the millions of American households that are “underwater” –- owing more on their loan than their house is worth.

“Against this backdrop, we don’t think house prices will post consistent gains for at least another two years,“ said Diggle.

There were 3.5 million homes on the market in September, or about 8.5 months’ worth of supply based on the current level of demand, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Housing analysts generally figure that supply and demand are well balanced with about a six months’ supply of homes.

But with millions of foreclosures stalled in the courts or on hold by banks, there is a large “shadow” inventory that continues to weigh on prices. Diggle figures there are about 4 million homes in that pipeline.

Credit Based Inflation or Why We're Not in Kansas Anymore?

Credit inflation helped inflate home prices and in turn forced people to borrow even more money to make home purchases. This is the web of debt that caught the population in a never ending loop.

Why does the FED target 2% inflation but not 0%? Inflation makes sure that savers are punished. If people are allowed the save money to buy their homes, then the cycle will end. Thus SAVING and paying CASH must be blocked at all costs.

Never forget that the FED works for the banking industry and makes sure that bankers earn interest at the expense of the rest of the population.

The best thing Americans can do to improve their life style is to avoid taking mortgages.

This is going to prevent the financial industry from making a claim on people’s 30 year earnings for simply creating money out of thin air.

This is outright robbery of the people. This practice of usury must be declared illegal. This is no different than slavery.

But bankers are organized where as the people are not! Individuals and not a powerful lobby which faces the bankers. Thus each individual is helpless and at the mercy of usurers.

All of the prices, and salaries you see around you were based on inflated credit that happened over 50 years. It is based on a money supply that is almost entirely bank credit.

People borrowed and borrowed and spent. The amount of money borrowed reached sky high. You earned in good times! Now, everything is reversing course!

What’s going on with the world’s economy? Foreclosures are up, unemployment is skyrocketing - and this may only be the beginning.

Some think the cause is reckless government spending. Bur even financially conservative countries like Ireland are in trouble.

The true cause of the economic problem is the debt based monetary system.

Could it be that solutions to the world’s economic problems are embedded in the most beloved children’s story of all time, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”?

The yellow brick, the emerald city of Oz, even Dorothy’s silver slippers were powerful symbols of author L. Frank Baum’s belief that the people (not the big banks) should control the quantity of a nation’s money.

The bottom line: No More National Debt. All our money is created out of debt. But nations don’t have to borrow money from banks.

Sovereign nations can create their own money (debt free) just as Abraham Lincoln did. But will it not cause inflation if we let the government simply print money?

Well, banks are already creating money out of nothing and it is causing inflation as we all know it. We might as well collect the interest ourselves!

Banks, finance and insurance profits should be made by the people and for the people. Not by the elite and for the rich.

Excerpts above from Web of Debt.

The Nattering One muses... A debt free monetary system is the fix. If you want the truth, dare to watch this award winning 2 hour documentary "The Secret of Oz".

Take the time to learn how the bankers going back to Christ have put the screws to the populace. History keeps repeating itself.

As Col. Nathan Jessup nattered: "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth."

The Rise Of The Planet of The Apes

The Nattering One muses... The Autumn of Protest has sprung into full winter discontent...

what started last month in Spain, has gone viral and global.

It seems we are not the only ones sick and tired of the ascendancy of the house of finance and the same old song spoon fed by the elitist ultra rich.

It also seems that perhaps we are moving one step closer to what we have heralded in these pages as "necessary" many a time.

The status quo of those in charge will always do as the song says, "meet the new boss, same as the old boss "...

If you want change, real meaningful change, there is only one way to get it and perhaps we are closer than most want to think or believe.

Remember PLANNING IS ESSENTIAL and UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL.

There is power in numbers, NOW is the time to "COME TOGETHER RIGHT NOW".

A day of worldwide protests inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States began Saturday with the hundreds of people gathering in cities from Japan and South Korea to Australia.

Organizers had hoped to see non-violent demonstrations in 951 cities in Asia, Europe, South America and Africa in addition to every state in the United States.

A website called 15october.net urged the people of the world to "rise up" and "claim their rights and demand a true democracy."

"Now it is time for all of us to join in a global non violent protest. The ruling powers work for the benefit of just a few...

ignoring the will of the vast majority and the human and environmental price we all have to pay. This intolerable situation must end," the website says.

Minority of violent demonstrators stretch into evening, hours after tens of thousands of people join global 'day of rage' against bankers, politicians.

Hundreds of hooded, masked protesters rampaged through Rome in some of the worst violence in the Italian capital for years Saturday...

torching cars and breaking windows during a larger peaceful protest against elites blamed for economic downturn.

Sydney: "I think people want real democracy," said Nick Carson, a spokesman for OccupyMelbourne.Org.

"They don't want corporate influence over their politicians. They want their politicians to be accountable."

The crowd cheered a speaker who shouted, "We're sick of corporate greed! Big banks, big corporate power standing over us and taking away our rights!"

Danny Lim, a 67-year-old immigrant from Malaysia, said he moved to Australia 48 years ago in search of opportunities.

Now he no longer trusts the government to look after his best interests. He thinks Australia's government has become too dependent upon the U.S. for direction.

"The big man — they don't care. They screw everyone. Eventually we'll mortgage our children away," Lim said.

Taiwan: "we are Taiwan's 99 percent", saying economic growth had only benefited companies while middle-class salaries barely covered soaring housing, education and healthcare costs.

They found support from a top businessmen, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp Chairman Morris Chang...

who told reporters in the northern city of Hsinchu that Taiwan's income gap was a serious issue. "I've been against the gap between rich and poor,"

"The wealth of the top 1 percent has increased very fast in the past 20, 30 years. 'Occupy Wall Street' is a reaction to that. We have to take the issue seriously..."

Korea: The protesters, who have adopted slogans and imagery used by those in the U.S., say the rally is designed to...

motivate "99 percent of Koreans" to complain about the actions of the wealthiest "1 percent," the paper said.

"The situation is the same in South Korea (as the U.S.), where the financial institutions have speculated to earn high profits in a short time, creating victims," the coalition said in a statement, the Herald reported.

London: Spyro, a 28-year-old who has a well-paid job and did not want to give his full name, summed up the main target of the global protests as "the financial system."

MSNBC: Protests go global

October 15th.net

The New Kid - Wish Me Luck Part II

Our last post elicited this response from a Naybob of Transport...

Hey *********, I am amazed you found that commercial or that I even still remember it as vividly as I did. It still gives me the creeps.

I hope you did not take my comments on my observations at McDonalds as Racist because nothing could be further from the truth, but rather as you stated, an observation I have witnessed over the years.

I do have to tell you that I do take personal exception to some of your comments.

In particular

“This is why UNIONS are a necessary evil, TO PROTECT THE RIGHTS OF THE INDIVIDUAL against the profit motive AKA GREED, and no Gordon Gecko, greed is NOT good.

Workers must unite in all industries and at all levels, to prevent management from abusing the populace under the profit motive and outsourcing to labor at the margin.

Unchecked and left to their own devices, management will ALWAYS abuse the rights of the individual in favor of the capitalist creed.”

You knew I had to comment on that. Some management will abuse the rights of the individual that has been proven, but not all.

I do more for my employees than any employer I have ever worked for. I pay well, I provide great benefits, I treat everyone equally. I provide free insurance...

I match their contributions on their 401k plan, I pay for time off, and I have a great bonus plan that have paid every employee every year at year end.

i.e profit sharing, and everyone gets it including the janitor. No union does what I do for my people.

I even lend money to my employees interest free when they need it and no one else will, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Not all management is evil and corrupt or only make decisions in favor of capitalist greed. We are a capitalist system, and unlike the government if I don’t make money we go out of business.

Making a profit is not evil. When I make money I invest it back into the business. One day if I’m lucky enough when I sell my business I will make a little money.

Having worked with the UAW and the Teamsters, I can tell you that not all unions work in the best interest of their members either.

Deals and trade offs at the expense of one or many is a common practice on their part.

Some things we can control and others we cannot. However, people do have to think for themselves, and the Government cannot be the sole answer to every problem.

I cannot think of one government agency that is run efficiently, can you? Every single one of them is inefficient.

In the private sector, inefficient businesses go out of business. In the public sector, inefficient businesses just keep on keeping on.

The last group of people I want making decisions for me are government bureaucrats and Unions are no better. If you have ever served on a labor committee like I have, you know what I’m talking about.

Somewhere in our not too distant past our generation was never taught basic economics from our parents or teachers, and ignorance spreads more ignorance to our children following in their parents footsteps.

Our teachers don’t understand it, and now most parents it seems. The Government certainly can’t.

If businesses or individuals spent like the government we would all be locked up behind bars. I took the initiative to learn on my own as I know you did.

Every Government regulation breeds more regulations, and when it comes to corruption I have yet do work with a union boss that was not corrupt. Most are still behind bars.

On a personal note, I don’t work 12 hours a day 6 days a week and invest everything I have in my business and employees so that I can perpetuate socialism...

so that the next guy who is not willing to take the risks and responsibility or work the hours needed to achieve success required then earns the same as I.

I’m also sick and tired of hearing that I’m not paying my fair share when I am taxed to death as it is and if the Obama administration has it’s way I am going to be paying a whole lot more.

You see I’m one of those greedy rich people that does not pay his fair share.

I did not become successful off the sweat and backs of others hard labor without rewarding them handsomely and doing the same in return. I am right there with all of them.

As you known, my business is a capital intensive business and heavily dependent on labor. I have more than quadrupled my employment workforce with high paid wages...

i.e. averaging over $50,000 a year and I do strictly with Americans, using strictly made in America equipment.

Interesting to hear and feedback you receive on today’s rant from an unnamed trucking guy.

The Nattering One muses... Our system (which is neither democratic, nor purely capitalistic)...

is run by and geared for the big corporations. Draconian in nature, they control the political and economic system.

My Naybob of Transport is a Republican, nobody is perfect. Neither are unions, greed and personal gain often trump the common good.

Moreover, this Naybob is a small businessman, one whom the system is becoming increasingly unfriendly and discouraging towards.

The system needs to be geared toward small domestic business, not big global multinationals.

If only all large corporations would treat their people the same as my friend treats his, we would have far less qualms about the abuses inherent to the system.

The New Kid - Wish Me Luck

Click here to first to watch the one minute commericial: The New Kid - Late 80's McDonalds Advert, then come back and read below.

In response to yesterdays post's - Recession's Act Two & The Double Dip, a Naybob of Transport notes...

Good morning *********, or should I say Mr. Naybob

I always enjoy your nattering’s as depressing as they may be, and I agree with you most of the time.

I too feel that we are already in a second recession. If it looks, feels, smells and tastes like sh*t, there is a good chance it is, even if the Government wants to call it something else.

Anyway you cut it, it’s still sh*t, and Obama’s jobs bill is an utter joke as well. There is not one thing contained within it that would prompt me to hire someone that I wasn’t already going to hire anyway. Sure I’ll take the credits but they would be better off leaving as is.

When you use the terms Gutless and spineless, you are being way too nice in my opinion.

My personal net worth has dropped by more than 50% in the past 2.5 years, so forget about my prior plans for retirement.

I just might be that 90 year old man in the old McDonalds Commercials walking out the door in his new McDonalds Uniform walking to work on this first day on the job with his new employer, waiving to my wife with my cane saying “Wish Me Luck”.

I don’t know if you ever recall that commercial but it gave me nightmares. They were trying to recruit older folks that needed a little extra income, but to me it was a nightmare. A total failure of the system.

They tried to make it look like fun, you know get out of the house and be productive. I looked at it as work your ass off all your life and then what do you have to look forward to in your final days?

Wiping down tables at McDonalds, working with people that don’t even know how to count change unless they look at the picture buttons on the register and earn top dollars at minimum wage.

(The Nattering One muses... the next passage may seem racist, but it is just an observation of this individual.)

Stopping at McDonalds and observing who is working there is one of the many gauges I use to determine how bad the economy really is.

When the economy is bad, you will find mostly white people working there. When the economy is a little better you will see mostly white and some african american.

When it’s doing ok you will see a mix of african american and some hispanic. When the economy is humming along you will find hispanic supervisors, an almost all Hispanic work force...

with few african americans and virtually no whites unless of course you are in the middle of corn field USA. I have been observing this for years.

As you know, the majority of my employees are blue collar. I pay on the very high end of the scale but from what I see of these guys in their 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s are living check to check to check with no savings.

They have no skills other than driving, and they have no money. A nice flat screen TV, but no money.

Very few employers offer any sort of pension program and 401k’s have surely shown what can happen. It’s amazing how many people don’t even have a 401k.

The vast majority of our generation will be looking to Washington for handouts when they get older because they have not saved a penny, or we will be an economy of minimum wage geriatrics.

The meat wagons will be coming by daily to pick up the dead bodies as we drop like flies on the job from old age. “Wish me Luck”.

The Nattering One muses... Tonights offering for your acceptance, submitted for your approval....

Most often heard phrase at Walmart or McDonald's, often being uttered by an employee over the age of fifty...

"Welcome to Walmart, how can I help you?" ; "Would you like to Supersize that order?"

We have noted many a time in these pages about the new world disorder in which one is expected to work till they die...

This is why UNIONS are a necessary evil, TO PROTECT THE RIGHTS OF THE INDIVIDUAL against the profit motive AKA GREED, and no Gordon Gecko, greed is NOT good.

Workers must unite in all industries and at all levels, to prevent management from abusing the populace under the profit motive and outsourcing to labor at the margin.

Unchecked and left to their own devices, management will ALWAYS abuse the rights of the individual in favor of the capitalist creed.

What part of FOR PROFIT, did you NOT understand?

We defer to the Grass Roots song "Live for Today":

When I think of all the worries people seem to find
And how they're in a hurry to complicate their mind
By chasing after money and dreams that can't come true
I'm glad that we are different, we've better things to do
May others plan their future, I'm busy lovin' you (1-2-3-4)
Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today
Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today
And don't worry 'bout tomorrow, hey, hey, hey

This is also why PENSION plans, public and private MUST exist. Left to their own devices, individuals will NOT plan for the future.

Again, individuals as a group can muster better placement, control and return's on their nesteggs.

Individual 401K's are nothing more than a Wall Street broker scam to make more managment fees off the individual.

Remember PLANNING IS ESSENTIAL and UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL. There is power in numbers, NOW is the time to "come together right now".

Recessions Act Two

Recession's second act would be worse than the first

By John W. Schoen, Senior Producer

Fresh evidence of a global economic slowdown has raised fears that governments around the world may be powerless to reverse it. If the world does fall into back into recession, it could be much harder to escape than the contraction that ended in 2009.

With banks still recovering from a decade-long credit bubble, governments slashing spending to cope with unsustainable debt, and unemployment at levels not seen in decades, a new recession would be “disastrous,” according to Roger Altman, a senior Treasury official in the Clinton administration.

“We could be in for a repeat of the experience of 1937, when America fell back into recession after three years of recovery from the Great Depression,” he wrote in the Financial Times.

Altman was referring to the fact the global downturn of the 1930s technically included two U.S. recessions, from 1929 to 1933 and again from 1937 to 1938. U.S. unemployment peaked at over 20 percent in the 1930s, according to historical estimates, and did not decline significantly until factories began gearing up for World War II.

Two years after the latest U.S. recession technically ended, evidence continues to build that the weak recovery is stalling out. The U.S. economy stopped producing new jobs in August after a string of mostly meager monthly job gains that failed to bring the unemployment rate below 9 percent.

On Thursday, fresh data showed the Eurozone's service sector contracting for the first time in two years; a separate index of the manufacturing sector, which has provided much of the region’s growth, slowed for the second month in a row.

A global stock sell-off that dragged market indices to their lowest level of the year spread to the U.S., where the Dow Jones industrial average was down nearly 400 points.

Until recently, there were hopes that emerging economies in places like China and Brazil could prop up global growth until a stronger recovery took hold elsewhere. But China’s two biggest export markets -- Europe and the United States -- are struggling, and that has cut into demand for Chinese goods. A report out Thursday showed that China’s factories slowed for the third month in a row.

"There is a global slowdown,” Jeavon Lolay, head of global research at Lloyds Banking Group, told Reuters. “There is no doubt the risks of a global recession have grown."

That’s also the opinion of Federal Reserve policymakers, who said Wednesday they saw "significant downside risks" to the U.S. economy after deciding to launch an unusual program of reshuffling $400 billion in Treasury holdings to try to push interest rates lower.

But with interest rates already at record lows, few expect the program to do much to increase the demand for loans. Businesses face weak demand for their products and services and consumers are continuing to work to pay down their debts. Though mortgage rates remain at record lows, millions of homeowners are unable to refinance their higher rate loans because they owe more than their home is worth.

Some analysts argue that the Fed’s latest move (dubbed Operation Twist because it “twists” the relationship between short- and long-term rates), will hurt economic growth because it will squeeze bank profits and lower the income consumers earn on their savings. Public and private pension funds, already under strain, will be even more badly underfunded because they’ll have to set aside more money to generate the same amount of cash to pay retiree benefits.

“In a couple of weeks (Operation Twist) will be a subject for economic history, and the main discussion will be that the Fed is grasping at straws,” former Fed governor William Poole told CNBC. “I think that they have thrown lead into the life preserver, and they are sinking.”

‘Slow motion train crash’

European central bankers appear increasingly unable to contain a widening banking crisis, sparked by the threat of bond defaults in Greece and Italy, Europe’s third-largest economy.

The International Monetary Fund warned Tuesday that Europe and the United States could slip back into recession next year without bold action

"We are seeing a slow-motion train crash in the euro area, where credit contraction risks leading to a new recession by Christmas unless governments face up to the task swiftly and forcefully," Martin Enlund, market strategist at the Swedish bank Handelsbanken told Reuters.

Policymakers in China, the world’s third largest economy behind the U.S. and EU, face their own set of tough choices. Rapid growth rate has fueled inflation that is running at a double-digit rate, according to analysts -- much higher than official targets. To contain inflation, Beijing has raised interest rates five times and lifted banks' reserve requirements nine times since October. If it clamps down too hard, though, a deeper economic slowdown could reverse China's efforts to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

China is also coping with a banking hangover of its own, after years of massive government lending for expansion of state-owned enterprises an infrastructure upgrades.

"There is a two-tier system within China and I think the lending that's taking place and the percentage of nonperforming loans is now at a level that is disturbing," David McAlvany, chief executive at McAlvany Financial Group told CNBC. "Ultimately, (China's banks) will have to see some comeuppance."

Recessions Act Two

The Double Dip

The Nattering One muses... long ago in these pages we predicted the double dip.

We keep hearing all these stories about recovery from the pollyannas we know. We quip, what recovery?

The markets are jury rigged and contrived, witnessed by the stock market level and real estate prices being completely false.

As stated before, the equation is simple...

Bail out all you like... until real durable economic jobs are created domestically, there shall be no recovery.

We differ with Mr. Altman in only one aspect, inflation is anything but negligible and tame.

Much like the guvmints unemployment number at 9%, the inflation number at 3% is missing something... the truthful number one in front of it.

19% and 13% would be accurate numbers for unemployment and inflation respectively.

In Greece it's reported that something like 50% of ALL jobs are Government or Government related. Outside of tourism and olive oil they produce NOTHING.

Greece have been in technical default fo something like 100 of the last 150 years. They have no industry that exists anymore that they can even tax to make it look as if they are even trying.

We have institutionalized and fed a dysfunctional and corrupt, gluttonous, slothful, over-paid and under-performing Government for decades. WE ARE GREECE.

We have stated many times that globalization and outsourcing to labor at the margin are nothing more than euphemisms for global corporate rape and pillage.

This is what happens when the special interest lobbyists run everything, and our government is no longer for the people and by the people, but for the corporations and by the rich upper 2%....

you outsource everything and turn to globalization, you wind up with a soft non durable service based economy...

dependent on the largess of others to patronize you with loans and tourism.

We can't come to a budget deal because the layers of corruption overlap on so many levels, and we have no national will to self-correct.

Everything is broken, and the leadership we've elected whether they be Republican, Democrat, Tea Party, Libertarian or Independent...

are just spine-less jellyfish and pawns of groups that don't want to compromise on anything that they have control over.

It's a total catastrophe, a failure of epic proportion. We have failed at every level, Main Street, Wall Street, The Financial System, everybody and every institution is corrupt and lazy.

As Jonathan E.(James Caan) said in the original Rollerball: "It's like people had a choice a long time ago between having all them nice things or freedom. Of course, they chose comfort."

Bartholomew (John Houseman): "The game was created to demonstrate the futility of individual effort."

"Corporate society takes care of everything. And all it asks of anyone, all it's ever asked of anyone ever, is not to interfere with management decisions."

There are no heroes. We're just spineless sputem of our forefathers and we've squandered the whole deal.

Ladies and gentlemen, will you stand please for the playing of our Corporate Hymn.

America and Europe are on the verge of disastrous recession

Roger Altman

September 21, 2011

Interest rates on US, German and UK government bonds have fallen to all-time lows. Yields on 10-year US Treasury securities, for example, are below two per cent.

That is the lowest recorded since the Federal Reserve began publishing market data in 1953.

In addition, yields on the inflation-protected 10-year Treasuries are zero. These are nearly incomprehensible levels whose implications are profoundly negative. Namely that Tuesday’s International Monetary Fund report is quite correct to warn that America and Europe are on the verge of renewed recession.

It is only the anticipation of negligible demand for capital and negligible inflation ‑ both hallmarks of recession ‑ that could drive rates this low. For the American and western European economies to decline again, when unemployment levels are already so high, would be disastrous.

It would shock consumers, businesses and financial markets. Fearful, they would retrench further, causing the economic decline to accelerate. Weak labour markets would get even worse, as would the already swollen government deficits and debt.

Overall, we could be in for a repeat of the experience of 1937, when America fell back into recession after three years of recovery from the Great Depression.

How do we know that another recession is approaching? For starters, there is no other credible explanation for the relentless fall in interest rates.

Yes, monetary policy is on maximum ease and that controls short-term rates. Safe haven psychology also is at work. However, these cannot explain such low yields on longer-term government and corporate bonds.

Further, bond markets usually signal recession through an inverted yield curve, when long-term rates are lower than short-term ones. Technically, this is impossible now, as short-term rates are zero. But, the recent movement in long-term rates is the equivalent.

Moreover, recent US and European economic data conveys serious weakness. US household net worth has begun to fall again, and jobless claims have been rising for several weeks.

Retail sales are flat and consumer confidence is hovering around modern lows. Onshore corporate liquidity has reached a record $13,000bn, which signals that businesses are uncertain over the outlook.

Across the Atlantic, the trend is also poor. Neither Germany nor France grew in the second quarter. Household consumption in the eurozone actually fell during that period.

Moreover, the European Commission is forecasting only 0.2 per cent and 0.1 per cent growth across the region for the third and fourth quarter respectively. The worsening of the sovereign debt crisis surely means that actual results will be worse.

It is the debilitating sovereign debt crisis in Europe that is pushing both regions back towards the brink. It is causing credit conditions to tighten again for sovereign credits, weaker borrowers and small and mid-sized business. It also is suppressing consumer and business confidence and the export outlook.

The never-ending nature of this crisis was avoidable. At every opportunity Europe’s leaders have delayed, taken the tiniest steps possible and generally averted their eyes to the elephants in the room.

Yes, everyone knows that the country-by-country politics are difficult, starting with Germany. But the risk of another Lehman-like market collapse and subsequent economic contraction is huge.

Faced with this, European leaders must confront the politics. Instead, their grudging incrementalism is deepening the risks. Implicitly, this was the message behind Treasury Secretary Geithner’s presence in Poland last week.

A single currency representing 17 separate nations inevitably requires a unified balance sheet behind it and, following that, a form of fiscal union. The time for denying the latter is over.

The European financial stability facility must be enlarged exponentially so that it can stand behind nations such as Italy or Spain. In addition, the mandate of the European Central Bank must be expanded.

Just like the Federal Reserve, it should be responsible for maintaining a sound banking system and stable capital markets. This requires a permanent capacity to finance banks directly, just as a group of central banks did last week.

It also requires the flexibility to buy and sell sovereign debt securities in secondary markets. These reforms must be accompanied by tighter, eurozone-wide bank regulation and supervision.

It also requires IMF-like conditionality to accompany direct EFSF loans to member nations. Finally, the ECB should ease monetary policy now as there is no visible inflation risk.

America also must stop its own partisan bickering and undertake one last round of fiscal stimulus. The $447bn job-creation plan by President Obama, or another quick-acting plan of similar magnitude, should be enacted immediately. The Fed should also initiate further moves to promote credit availability and lending.

Another recession would be profoundly damaging to labour markets and public confidence. It would take years to fully overcome.

We must try to avoid such an outcome at all costs. That requires the type of far-sighted leadership that we haven’t seen much of lately.

The writer is founder and chairman of Evercore Partners and former US deputy treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton.

Roger Altmans Financial Times Op-Ed (Registration Required)

The Big Default

Shhh... pay no heed to the man behind the curtain...

Unless an agreement is reached by Aug 2nd, the US Treasury will run out of money to pay its bills.

Most likely, only defense contractors and social security payments would be delayed.

However, in the event an actual default occurs, then a downgrade on US debt ratings will occur.

Those required to hold AAA rated securities must then liquidate non AAA assets.

The cascade created by this public/pension liquidation on CDO and CDS would be like Lehman Brothers 10X...

"The irony of the situation at the moment ... is that the biggest threat to the world financial system comes from a few right-wing nutters in the American Congress rather than the euro zone,"

British government minister Vince Cable said on Sunday.

The Nattering One muses... We warned in the past about this. Greece just got its second bailout package. Will Japan and China bail US out?

Read details here.

Part VIII: The War on Vox Populi

The Nattering One muses... The chart above witnesses how jobs are being outsourced while our economy is expatriated.

Meanwhile the teabaggers are crafting the final solution for the new jews... homosexuals, immigrants, pensions, unions and public workers...

Quietly, those stealth whores on the hill have set it up so that their rich friends pay no tax while the working stiff gets screwed royally.

This is a classic parliamental misdirect in our governments "War on the Vox Populi" and "War on the Middle Class".

We refer to our tried and true axioms: Adam Smith's Urban Myth AKA: "There are NO free markets" and Globalism: "a euphemism for unfettered corporate rape and pillage"...

and add a new one from our "Ducky" friend: Rather than a revolution against "no taxation without representation"...

we need a new revolution against "representation for the ultra rich without taxation" and "taxation without representation" for everyone else.

...while Main Street Americans are having their services gutted and public investment is being slashed, some of the country’s most profitable corporations are getting away with paying little to nothing in taxes.

The amount of money that taxpayers are losing from the tax dodging by these major corporations is enormous.

For example, if five of the nation’s biggest banks paid their taxes at the full rate, we could re-hire every single one of the 132,000 teachers laid off during the recession — twice.

A new report by Public Campaign examines how these major corporations have influenced Congress to craft a tax code that lets them get away with making so much money and paying so little taxes in return.

In its report, “The Artful Dodgers,” Public Campaign juxtaposes the limited tax liability of dozen major corporations with the companies’ campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures, which amount to more than a billion dollars over the last decade:

EXXON MOBIL: The oil giant that was the world’s most profitable corporation in 2008 has spent $5.7 million in campaign contributions over the last ten years and $138 million in lobbying expenditures. Its federal corporate income tax liabilities for 2009? Absolutely nothing. Not only did it pay nothing, but it also received a tax rebate the same year of $156 million.

CHEVRON: Chevron spent $4.4 million in campaign contributions and $91 million in lobbying expenditures over the last decade. It received a tax refund of $19 million in 2009 while making $10 billion in profits and $324 million in government contracts in 2008.

CONOCOPHILLIPS: The Texas-based gasoline giant spent $2.5 million in campaign contributions and $63 million in lobbying expenditures over the last decade. It received “$451 million through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction,” a special tax break, between 2007 and 2009, despite $16 billion in profits over the same period of time.

VALERO ENERGY: Valero spent $4.1 million in campaign contributions and $4.8 million in lobbying expenditures from 2001 to 2010. It received a $157 million tax rebate in 2009 despite $68 billion in sales during the same year. It received “$134 million through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction” over the last three years.

BANK OF AMERICA: Bank of America employees contributed $11 million to federal political campaigns from 2001 to 2010 and spent $24 million lobbying over the same period of time. It made $4.4 billion in profits in 2010 while receiving a tax refund of $1.9 billion.

CITIGROUP: Citigroup employees contributed $15 million to federal political campaigns from 2001 to 2010 and spent $62 million lobbying over the same period of time. It made $4 billion in profits in 2010 while paying absolutely nothing in federal corporate income taxes. It also received a $1.9 billion tax refund.

GOLDMAN SACHS: The mega-bank Goldman Sachs, which is often called “Government Sachs” in insider circles because of its clout over Washington, spent $22 million in campaign contributions and $21 million in lobbying over the last decade. It paid an ultra-low tax rate of 1.1 percent in 2008, while also receiving $800 billion in government loans to help weather the financial crisis.

BOEING: The aviation and defense contractor giant gave $10 million in contributions and $115 million in lobbying expenditures over the last decade. It paid a grand total of nothing in federal corporate income taxes in 2010 and received a $124 million tax refund.

FEDEX: FedEx spent $8.7 million in campaign contributions and $71 million in lobbying expenditures from 2001 to 2010. It paid a .0005 percent effective tax rate recently, actually spending 42 times as much on lobbying Congress as it did paying taxes. To do this it utilizes 21 tax havens.

CARNIVAL: The cruise line paid $1.7 million in campaign contributions and $1.6 million in lobbying over the past ten years. Despite the relatively low amount of money it spent influencing Washington, it has gotten away with a super-low tax rate. Over the past five years, its federal corporate income tax rate has been an effective 1.1 percent.

VERIZON: Verizon spent $12 million in campaign contributions and $131 million in lobbying expenditures over the past decade. It paid absolutely nothing in federal corporate income taxes over the past two years and $488 million in government contracts in 2008; in 2010, it made $12 billion in profits.

GENERAL ELECTRIC: General Electric spent $13 million in campaign contributions and $205 million in lobbying expenditures over the last decade while netting a tax refund of $4.1 billion over the past five years. It made $26 billion in profits over the same time period.

See original text here.

Part VII: Rand Paul and Ayn Rand: Nothing in Common

The Naybob of Realty, Not Reality, has done it again...

To Parts V & VI she replied... with a notice for the new Atlas Shrugged movie and a Rand Paul petition for "the Right to Work that Obama fears" with the comment:

"As I said before… I think you’re living around too many fossils who hang on to the experiences of yesteryear...

and days long gone by that don’t exist anymore… the killer of visionaries and entrepreneurs."

The Nattering One muses... If Rupert Murdoch is your visionary and Rand Paul is the saviour of your entrepreneurs...

by destroying the only thing standing between you and slavery...

that being unions and the existence of the right to negotiate for fair wages and decent working conditions.

then you are at best, hopeless, clueless and quite misinformed. But then again, you did vote for Shrub Jr. twice and that says it all.

FYI, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged has many of its precepts lifted from the 1922 novel The Driver, written by Garet Garrett which concerns an idealized industrialist...

named Henry Galt, who is a transcontinental railway owner trying to improve the world and fighting against government and socialism. Sound familiar?

Both novels suggest pro-capitalist ways in which the country might get out of the depression. But in plot, character, tone, and theme they are very different.

The real purpose of Ayn Rand's book is to expouse the core tenets of Rand's philosophy of Objectivism.

The Conservative Teabaggers stain Ayn Rand's opus with their misinterpretation or "Fox News world perception" of John Galt's message that...

civilization cannot exist where men are slave to society and government.

This message is stained by perverting the idea put forth in the book, that the destruction of the profit motive leads to the collapse of society,

into a crusade of the FOR PROFIT corporation and Government by The Rich and for The Rich, trumping the individual and government by the people and for the people.

Again, for the conservative, Republican or teabagger, the following truth holds: unions, pensions, public workers, homosexuals and immigrants are the problem...

if you eliminate them, you eliminate the problem, this is the final solution to rid us of the NEW JEW.

Again, your misguided NAZI like efforts are due to your being easily misled, clueless, quite obviously misinformed and sadly...

this short (thumb and index finger held one inch apart) of being in a vegatative state or medically induced coma.

Verily your ideology is a shining testament to the phrases, "if you tell a big enough lie, enough times, people will believe it" and "there's a sucker born every minute".

Remember Naybob's of reality, do not drink the kool aid, remain one of the innoculati, and when the time comes, be merciful and aim for the head.

Part VI: Night of The Living Brain Dead

Our Naybob of Realty has done it again... This week she sends a piece of tripe purported to be authored by Dr. Walter Williams titled..

Obama cannot be defeated in 2012. This tripe is attributed to Townhall.com...

however we cannot find any link between Townhall, Dr. Walter Williams and this piece of tripe that found our Inbox...

Never the less, The Nattering One muses...

Thanks for the inspiration from your unchecked Obama story... it spawned Part V: The Two Party System, I even mentioned you.

From your latest piece of tripe... something actually worthy... "The American people are notoriously ignorant" No statement could be truer.

This is how Bush got elected twice, by braindead flatliner idiots, in two rigged elections.... These are the same people who also believe...

in invisible men that live in the sky and a hereafter...

and that terrorists are on every corner...

and that religions other than their own are praying to the wrong god...

and that heathens and infidels should be put through the inquisition and crusades to be coverted or brainwashed..

and that immigrants, unions, public pensions and homosexuals are the problem...

who support globalization and outsourcing to labor at the margin...

who support avoidance of environmental requirements... so they can pollute and destroy at will, for profit...

who support greedy, two faced, corporations, bankers, finance and Wall Street rapists who were and still are allowed to run wild...

who now whine constantly about a President who happens to be black, and the world of shit we are in... because of their greed, hubris and poor choices...

who insist on cutting income taxes for the corporations and ultra rich, while raising consumption taxes on the ultra poor.. through Fed banker led inflation..

who insist on destroying unions, without which we would already be working 7 days a week, 12 hours a day...

without benefits or vacations, for below minimum wage, next to 14 year olds and prison laborers... Oh wait a minute, that's Walmart, I forgot....

Yes, the American people are generally ignorant, at least the 51% that voted for Bush are...

and those Republicans, conservatives or Tea baggers, Libertarians or Nazis or whatever they call themselves today...

are getting everything they so richly deserve, In SPADES... oh yes, now we are all at the mercy of the two party machine that is...

GOVERNMENT BY THE CORPORATIONS AND FOR THE RICH...

From those of us who have a brain, and a brain wave, and can still think rationally... WE THANK YOU. No really, we do....

Do the rest of us a favor, start praying to your imaginary friends in the sky... for a merciful and quick death, your own that is.

with no right to organize, no right to bargain, it sounds like slavery is making a comeback...

I do hope those rich aristocrats will be more tolerant than our founding fathers were.. or at least our Communist Chinese overlords.

Oh that's right, you can shit in one hand and pray with the other... see what you get first. In fact, see what you get period.

So much for your higher power and prophets... its not "for prophet", its "for PROFIT", what part did you not understand???

Help us Zeus, Apollo, Mohammad, Jesus, Buddha, Shiva, Satan or what was his/her/it's name anyway? I prefer those who pray to totem and May poles myself....

at any rate, in closing we offer Claire Wolfe... "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

Oh no Claire, we beg to differ, time to start loading up and taking aim, before its too late for the rest of us...

that are still in possession of our minds and guns that is. And remember...

the brain dead Zombies in this horror story, can only be killed one at a time, by a clean shot to the head.

Take that you pack of whining braindead pod people, standup and kick yourself in the ass, you know who you are.

Part V: The Two Party System

A Naybob of Realty, not Reality send an email regarding...

Obama signing an executive order to loan 2 Billion of our taxpayers dollars to a Brazilian Oil Exploration Company to drill for oil off the coast of Brazil.

The oil that comes from this operation is for the sole purpose and use of China and not the USA.

Later UN-fact checked email is exposed as the product of Rupert Murdoch's disinformation machine.

In the initial email this misguided Naybob states...

"This is a perfect example why many refrain from watching news on ABC, NBC, CBS, or MSNBC. Thank God for Fox News and Glenn Beck!"

The Nattering One muses... This is why you will never know the truth.

Pravda and Goebbels were more fair and balanced than Fox news.

Why do you think FOX trademarked the phrase, fair and balanced?

Besides, the Republican illuminati, which by the way, are the same people running the Democratic party,

i.e. THE RICH UPPER 2% which include Rupert Murdoch... George Soros, etc. do not want you or the public to know the truth.

These people have only one interest at heart, their money, keeping it and expanding their power base by taking whatever they can from you and I, legally or illegally.

REPUBLICANS - FAT GREEDY ELEPHANTS

Republicans want you to believe that smaller government, laissez faire economics, fiscal conservatism and trickle down economics with less taxation is better.

The theory goes that reduced income tax rates increase GDP growth and thereby generate the same or more revenue for the government from the smaller tax on the extra growth.

This belief is reflected, in part, by the party's long-term advocacy of tax cuts.

Many Republicans consider the income tax system to be inherently inefficient and oppose graduated tax rates, which they believe are unfairly targeted at those who create jobs and wealth.

Republicans tend to favor faith-based initiatives. They believe private spending is usually more efficient than government spending.

Republicans also believe the private sector is more effective in helping the poor than government is; as a result, Republicans support giving government grants to faith-based and other private charitable organizations to supplant welfare spending.

Republicans also oppose the estate tax which is viewed as another penalty on the wealthy.

Republicans are opposed to increases in the minimum wage, believing that such increases hurt many businesses by forcing them to cut jobs and services, export jobs overseas, and raise the prices of goods to compensate for the decrease in profit.

Most Republicans support school choice through charter schools and school vouchers for private schools; many have denounced the performance of the public school system and the teachers' unions.

They are generally against affirmative action for women and some minorities often describing it as a quota system.

Some Republicans are skeptical of anthropogenic global warming and question scientific studies on the impact of human activity on climate change.

Instead, they assert that global warming is part of a natural cyclical phenomenon, or is caused by a number of other alternative factors.

DEMOCRATS - AN ASS BY ANY OTHER NAME

The Democratic party has historically favored states' rights and strict adherence to the Constitution; and at its inception, opposed a national bank and wealthy, moneyed interests.

In the past, the party has favored farmers, laborers, labor unions, and religious and ethnic minorities and has opposed unregulated business and finance, and favored progressive income taxes.

Democrats favor a higher minimum wage, and more regular increases.

Democrats have opposed tax cuts and incentives to oil companies, favoring a policy of developing domestic renewable energy.

Democrats generally support a more progressive tax structure to provide more services and reduce economic inequality.

Democrats generally support more government spending on social services while spending less on the military.

Democrats believe that the government should protect the environment, the most important environmental concern of the Democratic Party is global warming.

Most Democrats have the long-term aim of having low-cost, publicly funded college education with low tuition fees, which should be available to every eligible American student.

The liberal and cosmopolitan wing of the party, including the intelligentsia and college-educated professionals overall, tend to favor globalization, while the organized labor wing of the party opposes it.

The Democratic Party supports equal opportunity for all Americans regardless of sex, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, creed, or national origin. The Party supports affirmative action programs to further this goal.

Some members of both parties favor civil unions for same-sex couples, others favor full and equal legalized marriage, and others are opposed to same-sex marriage on religious or ideological grounds.

Most members of the Democratic Party believe that all women should have access to birth control, and support public funding of contraception for poor women.

Democrats want you to believe that the benefits or redistribution of wealth through increased social services, in monetary and non-monetary terms, are a more productive labor force and cultured population...

and believe that the benefits of this are greater than any benefits that could be derived from lower taxes, especially on top earners, or cuts to social services.

The Nattering One muses... Aside from some obvious differences in dogma...

when it comes to maintaining special interests in banking, finance, globalization, health care insurance, pharmaceutical and big oil, over the last 30 years the Democrats have voted on the same side as the Republicans.

Whats mine is mine and what's yours is mine, and if you don't like it, fuck you. This is the Republican mantra.

Whats mine is mine and what's yours is ours, and if you don't like it, fuck you. This is the Democratic mantra.

These policies are being furthered by a system bound in senseless term limits and seeming political gridlock.

The two party system is certainly better, for the corporations, insurance, banking, finance and the ultra rich, and that's the way they like it.

This is government by the rich and for the rich, not by the people or for the people.

Those that control it will do anything to keep the masses at bay, up to and including using economic, religious, racial, ethnic...

gender, sexual persuasion and political dogma to create race and class wars amongst those below them in monetary stature.

Through political divisiveness they conquer by creating fanaticism and tyranny, both of which are the spawn of ignorance, which they strive to preserve at all costs.

Reductions in educational spending as a result in tax cutting were just the start of the dumbing down of America.

And any political body that supports this platform will be supported by the blue blooded elites and their ideological MBA educated lackeys.

The two party system keeps those in control, in control, and affords the illusion or delusion of democracy or choice to the ignorant masses whom are enslaved by it.

Those who are hailed as saviour's, such as Donald Trump, George Soros, Rupert Murdoch et al. are really your jailer's.

Think about it for a minute, those with the money and power, want to keep it that way.

Why not turn the mindless masses against one another through devisiveness? It's really quite easy to do you know.

Just tell one side that the other side said, their god isn't the real god, then stand back and see what happens...

while you sell weapons to both sides and profit, and they kill each other off. Now thats what I call easy money.

Naybob's rule #1: IT'S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY.
Naybob's rule #2: Never forget rule #1.

Part IV - The 401K Shortfall or Work Till You Die

The median household headed by a person aged 60 to 62 with a 401(k) account...

has less than one-quarter of what is needed in that account to maintain its standard of living in retirement…

according to data compiled by the Federal Reserve and analyzed by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College for The Wall Street Journal.

The 401(k) generation is beginning to retire, and it isn't a pretty sight. Welcome to WalMart World, where “work till you die” is our motto.

In this WalMart World (outsourced, prison and child labor, minimum wage, no benefits, no vacation, no pension) that we live in…

the private sector has already weaseled out, now, the public sector follows, leaving the faithful employee standing alone...

holding a sack of what filled up the other hand, and where the wishes of “golden years” were not.

The retirement savings plans that many baby boomers thought would see them through old age are falling short in many cases.

This story is about what happens to most people who rely on 401k's. In general, people facing problems today got too little advice, or bad advice.

They didn't realize that a 6% annual contribution, with a 3% company match, might not be enough.

However, 401K’s have been a gold mine for money-management firms.

In 30 years, the 401(k) went from a small program to a multi-trillion-dollar industry supporting thousands of financial planners and money managers.

The Nattering One muses... The sad thing is, the people trying to take away pensions from today’s workers...

are the very people that have benefited from pensions in the first place, retired pensioners that have gone into public service.

I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore… or constructive pension reform to put a halt to system abuses is one thing.

Destructive, hack and slash, wholesale abandonment, as in, we got ours, and screw you and yours, is not a solution.

I hope that there are still some smart people in the right places who realize the truth is out there. Maybe your reading this right now…

Click here for the full WALL STREET JOURNAL article.

More to come in Part V

Part III - Why 401K's are NOT the Solution

So, the state of Utah has been putting insufficient money into its pension plan? and now there isn’t enough money there to meet upcoming liabilities.

And the solution here is for the state, in future, to contribute “roughly half” of what it’s been spending up until now in pension contributions.

Needless to say, this makes no sense on either front.

The liability to existing workers doesn’t go away if a different plan is adopted for new workers, so the problems at the pension plan aren’t being addressed.

On top of that, it’s hard to see how contributing much less to new workers’ retirement is going to help them at all, either.

From a pensions perspective, there’s no winner at all: the only entity better off is the state, from a cashflow perspective.

401(k) plans are a bad deal for taxpayers.

Dollar for dollar, a traditional pension plan yields more pension benefits than do 401(k) plans because 401(k) management and investment fees are three times higher.

The only clear winners when pensions switch over to the 401(k) plans are brokers and bankers…

The unintended effect of widespread 401(k) plans is more volatility. In contrast to traditional pensions and Social Security, 401(k) plans fuel bubbles and make recessions worse.

When the economy is booming, 401(k) plan asset values soar, making people spend more and work less. Not what you want in an expansion.

Worse, when the economy plummets and takes 401(k) assets with it, people do the opposite; they cling to the labor market and rein in spending – again, two things you don’t want in a recession.

For rich professionals who jump from job to job every few years, 401(k) plans do make a certain amount of sense.

For public servants spending a lifetime in the police force or in elementary schools, by contrast, they emphatically don’t.

Click herefor the full text.

Part II - The Overblown Crisis and The Contract

The redistribution of wealth…

Last year, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) decided to forgoe the $3 billion annual state contribution to the pension plan while pushing $1 billion in tax cuts for the state's wealthiest citizens.

Meanwhile, Christie's budget for fiscal 2012 includes $200 million in corporate tax cuts, with plans to increase those cuts to $690 million a year by 2016, along with $180 million in 2012 tax cuts for homeowners.

It's a fairly straightforward proposition: Christie is taking money from public workers and giving much of it to corporations, cloaking the transfer of wealth in the language of fiscal responsibility.

A gross distortion…

As it stands, pension contributions appear to have a relatively small impact on state budgets. "They have time to make adjustments," said Keith Brainard, research director for the National Association of State Retirement Administrators. "The idea of imminent insolvency is a gross distortion."

Despite major standoffs between conservative governments and labor unions in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and Florida, these states' pension plans are all on strong footing, even given disastrous economic conditions.

Wisconsin and Ohio were each cited in a 2010 study by the Pew Center for the States as "a national leader in managing ... long-term liabilities for both pensions and retiree health care."

Florida was cited by the same report as a "top performer" for its pension fund.

After the massive 2008-2009 House of Finance Bailout…

In early 2010, Goldman Sachs announced two blockbuster numbers: profits of $13.4 billion for the prior year and compensation of $16.2 billion -- the equivalent of about $500,000 for each employee at the Wall Street titan.

When news of Goldmanesque bonuses first sparked public outrage, both Wall Street and the White House combated the criticism with a persistent argument:

Yes, it might be deeply frustrating to see taxpayer dollars used to further enrich already wealthy bankers, but these bonus deals were were contractual obligations and America is a nation of laws.

Not so sacrosanct anymore…

Now, with state leaders planning pay cuts for teachers, firefighters and other public workers, contracts aren't described as so sacrosanct anymore.

In Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Florida and New Jersey, Republicans swept into power last year by voters outraged about ongoing economic distress are now targeting benefits for pensioners...

hiking taxes for employees who will one day receive a pension and, in Wisconsin, even trying to eliminate the right for public employees to collectively bargain for a pension.

Pensions, needless to say, are, like some Wall Street bonuses, contractual obligations. They're deferred compensation that formed the basis for years or, in some cases, decades of work already performed.

Bonus This…

The average annual pension for government workers is roughly $19,500 a year, according to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, one of the nation's largest labor unions.

That would mean $500,000 could provide about 25 years worth of payouts to a retired public servant.

The $9 million bonus Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein received for 2009 could have provided two decades of pension pay for 23 such public workers.

"These people would never invest all of their own money in Treasury bonds alone, yet they expect pensions to plan as if they did," says EPI's Morrissey.

"They're resorting to accounting gimmicks to make the hole look a lot bigger than it really is. The reality is that contributions can be adjusted very gradually because there isn't any immediate cash-flow problem."

The Contract…

The employer has to figure a way to have the little guys who make their companies run profitably, not live in poverty during their golden years.

The compact or contract between employer and faithful employee has been broken.

Gone are the days when the employer (private or public sector) would match or contribute to the faithful employee’s pension plan.

Gone are the days where if the employee dedicated their career and life towards the advancement of the corporation or city, they would receive a just reward for their diligence and perseverance in the form of a pension.

Thanks for 30 years....

tough break on your little 401k when the market crashed, but the burden is all on the employee and none on the employer.

401k's as a stand alone are another way to fatten corporate/finance America's pockets at the expense of the little guy.

Click here to read the full text.

Part One - The Shameful Attack and Truth

The Nattering One Muses...Rather than place blame, directly were it belongs, with the politicians responsible for the House of Finances ascendancy over the last thirty years...

and the rich blue blood fatcats that got them elected in order to rape and pillage globally along with their globalization (new world disorder) plans...

along with the greed and hubris of Wall Street, real estate, bankers and financial criminals who brought us the house of cards or shit we now live in...

Public servants are convenient scapegoats.

It's far more convenient to go after people who are doing the public work -- sanitation workers, police officers, fire fighters, teachers, social workers, federal employees -- to call them "faceless bureaucrats" and portray them as hooligans who are making off with your money and crippling federal and state budgets.

Public employees earn far more than private-sector workers?

That's untrue when you take account of level of education. Matched by education, public sector workers actually earn less than their private-sector counterparts.

Only 23 percent of private-sector employees have college degrees; 48 percent of government workers do.

Over the last fifteen years the pay of public sector workers has dropped relative to private-sector employees with the same level of education.

Public sector workers now earn 11 percent less than comparable workers in the private sector, and local workers 12 percent less.

Even if you include health and retirement benefits, government employees still earn less than their private-sector counterparts with similar educations.

Public-sector pensions are crippling the nation? Public-employee pensions obligations are out of control?

Some reforms do need to be made. Loopholes that allow public sector workers to "spike" their final salaries in order to get higher annuities must be closed. And no retired public employee should be allowed to "double dip," collecting more than one public pension.

But these are the rare exceptions of ABUSERS. Most public employees don't ABUSE and do not have generous pensions.

After a career with annual pay averaging less than $45,000, the typical newly-retired public employee receives a pension of $19,000 a year. Few would call that overly generous.

And most of that $19,000 isn't even on taxpayers' shoulders. While they're working, most public employees contribute a portion of their salaries into their pension plans.

Taxpayers are directly responsible for only about 14 percent of public retirement benefits.

Bargaining rights for public employees have caused state deficits to explode?

Some states that deny their employees bargaining rights -- Nevada, North Carolina, and Arizona, for example, are running giant deficits of over 30 percent of spending.

Many that give employees bargaining rights -- Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Montana -- have small deficits of less than 10 percent.

Public employees often know more about whether public programs are working, or how to make them work better, than political appointees who hold their offices for only a few years.

This version of class warfare is to pit private-sector workers against public servants.

The ruling class would rather set average working people against one another -- comparing one group's modest incomes and benefits with another group's modest incomes and benefits -- than have Americans see that the top 1 percent is now raking in a bigger share of national income than at any time since 1928, and paying at a lower tax rate.

Shameful indeed.

More to come in this FOUR PART series.

Click this link to read the full text of former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich’s op-ed.

The Nattering One Muses... Lazarus has arisen, rise and tell others...

We need to school some liberal left wing Democrats and conservative right wing Republicans.

We won't mention anyone else calling themselves tea baggers, because calling a Ex-Democrat - a Libertarian, or a Ex-Republican - a Tea Party member, is like calling a Ex Nazi - a Socialistic Swastika Lover.

Warm and fuzzy, isn't it? Tell that to the six million Jews that were gassed and turned into ashes.

Your political camouflage is a thin cheap veneer, and deep down, you know what you are, and you can't handle the truth.

The truth being, you can't change your spots or stripes and hide from the Nattering One or anyone with an ounce of common sense.

We of the COMMON SENSE party call BULLSHIT and SHAME on all of you... and like the hunters we are, we will expose you through your words and actions.