New DVDs By Michael Snyder
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 How in the world can anyone claim that things are getting better? Sometimes the numbers are so clear that they simply cannot be denied. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income in the United States fell from $51,726 in 2008 to $50,221 in 2009. That was the second yearly decline in median household income in a row. In other words, America is getting poorer. Just let that statistic above sink in for a little bit. In 2009, American families had roughly $1,500 less coming in than the year before. Not that the cost of living has gone down either. Have you been to the supermarket lately? Things are getting ridiculous out there. In fact, middle class American families are being squeezed as never before. More mothers and fathers are scrambling to find second and third jobs just to pay the mortgage and to keep the lights on and to put food on the table. This is not a time of prosperity in America. We are in a state of serious decline and it is time to wake up and admit it.
When you stop and analyze the new Census data, something jumps out at you right away. You quickly realize that these income declines are not limited to just a few regions of the country – they are literally happening from coast to coast.
The U.S. economy is in deep, deep trouble and the proof is in the numbers. The following are 12 statistics that reveal just how far the standard of living in America is declining….
1 – According to the Census Bureau, median household income dropped in 34 U.S. states in 2009, and the only state where median household income actually increased was in North Dakota.
2 – The Census Bureau data also revealed that of the 52 largest metro areas in America, only the city of San Antonio did not see a decline in median household income in 2009.
3 – 35 percent of all U.S. households now live on $35,000 or less.
4 – According to the Census Bureau, the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line is the highest it has been in 15 years.
5 – The number of Americans enrolled in the food stamp program passed the 41 million mark for the first time ever in June.
6 – The number of Americans in the food stamp program increased a staggering 55 percent from December 2007 to June 2010.
7 – One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program run by the federal government.
8 – Nearly 10 million Americans now receive unemployment insurance, which is almost four times as many that were receiving it back in 2007.
9 – In 2009, U.S. consumer spending experienced the biggest decline since 1942.
10 – As millions of young Americans struggled just to survive, marriages fell to a record low in 2009. Today, only 52% of Americans 18 years or older are married.
11 – The only group that saw their household income increase in 2009 was those making $180,000 or more.
12– According to the Huffington Post, the gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew in 2009 to its largest margin ever….
The top-earning 20 percent of Americans – those making more than $100,000 each year – received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4 percent made by the bottom 20 percent of earners, those who fell below the poverty line, according to the new figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968.
Not that it is a bad thing to make money.
Contrary to what our socialist friends may think, it is actually a very good thing to work hard and make money.
The point is that the game is rigged and the bottom 80 percent of us are being left behind.
The middle class is being systematically destroyed. At the rate we are going, we will eventually have a very small group of ultra-wealthy Americans and a gigantic mountain of very poor Americans that are barely able to survive.
The answer to this is not a “redistribution of wealth”.
What middle class Americans actually need are good jobs with good benefits.
You know, the kind of jobs that the U.S. economy used to produce.
For the vast majority of Americans, all they have to offer in the marketplace is their labor. If they cannot get someone to hire them for a wage that will enable them to take care of their families then they simply cannot make it without government assistance.
But what our leaders have done in the name of “globalism” is that they have essentially merged our economy with the economies of nations such as China where blue collar workers are paid about a dollar an hour to do the same jobs that American workers get paid 15 to 20 dollars an hour to do.
As a result, jobs and factories are fleeing the United States so rapidly it is hard to even describe. The deindustrialization of America is happening right in front of our eyes, but the American people have become so dumbed down that most of them don’t even seem to have the capacity to understand what is going on.
Quite a few advocates of “free trade” (which is not “free” or “fair” at all under our current system) have left comments on my columns telling me that the American people better just suck it up because this is how it is now and the world isn’t going back. These advocates of the globalist system say that the American people just need to toughen up and learn to compete and need to just accept that the standard of living for workers across the globe is going to be equalized and that is all there is to it.
So are you ready to have the same standard of living as a Chinese sweatshop worker who works 12 hours a day for one dollar an hour?
That is where we are headed.
But things did not have to be this way. We did not have to merge our economy with communist China and allow them to keep their currency devalued 40 percent lower than it should be so that they could dump massive amounts of cheap goods on our shores. We did not have to elect politicians that believe that “globalism” is the answer to all of our problems. We did not have to sign on to the WTO, NAFTA and all the other “free trade” agreements that are destroying the American middle class.
Labor is now a global commodity. American workers are now part of the global labor force. The bargaining power of the average American worker has dropped through the floor. Now the monolithic predator corporations that dominate our economy don’t even have to deal with American workers if they don’t want to.
Very few of our politicians admitted that merging us into a one world economy would mean a dramatic decline in the standard of living of middle class Americans.
But that is exactly what is happening.
Meanwhile, the federal government, our state governments and our local governments keep going into massive amounts of new debt in an effort to keep paying the bills.
There are some state governments, like Illinois, that are basically flat broke. In fact, Illinois doesn’t even bother to pay many of their bills anymore.
Of course the federal government is the worst offender of them all. The U.S. national debt is rapidly approaching 14 trillion dollars, and most of us have gotten so accustomed to it that we don’t even talk about it much anymore.
That is how bizarre things have gotten.
As America keeps getting poorer, and as U.S. taxpayers see their incomes continue to decline, how in the world are U.S. government finances going to turn around?
The truth is that our leaders should be in full blown crisis mode in an attempt to fix this thing. Pieces of the U.S. economy are literally falling off all around us and our leaders are pushing the debt accelerator to the floor as we head toward a giant cliff.
But instead our politicians are prancing about the countryside telling us that everything is going to be just great as long as we cast our votes for them in the fall.
And the mainstream media keeps telling us that the “recession” is over and that soon the U.S. economy will be better than ever.
Is it any wonder that faith in the mainstream media is now at an all-time low?
According to a new poll just released by Gallup, the number of Americans that have little to no trust in the mass media (57%) is at an all-time high.
A significant percentage of the American people is starting to wake up.
What about you?
Are you awake yet?
 What in the world is going on over at the Federal Reserve? Has it gotten to the point where the Federal Reserve is completely and totally out of control? There is increasing speculation in the financial community that the Federal Reserve is on the verge of unleashing another round of quantitative easing. In fact, at their September meeting, Federal Reserve officials hinted very strongly that quantitative easing is very much on their minds when they stated that the Federal Open Market Committee “is prepared to provide additional accommodation if needed to support the economic recovery and to return inflation, over time, to levels consistent with its mandate.” You might want to reread that quote a couple of times just to let it sink in. Do you see what the Fed is saying there? The Fed is actually saying that it has a mandate to maintain a certain level of inflation. Not that this is a secret to anyone that has seriously studied the Federal Reserve. Since 1913, inflation has constantly gone up, U.S. government debt has increased exponentially and the U.S. dollar has lost over 96 percent of its value. But for Federal Reserve officials to openly state that a certain amount of inflation is part of their mandate is absolutely stunning.
Even though the U.S. economy is still in pretty decent shape at this point (for the moment at least), the Federal Reserve still seems obsessed with trying to stimulate it.
In the past, the Federal Reserve would just cut interest rates whenever the economy needed a bit of a boost, but at this point the Fed has cut rates to nearly zero. There just isn’t any more room to cut rates.
So what else can the Federal Reserve do?
Well, it can create money out of thin air and use it to buy U.S. Treasuries, mortgage-backed securities and other assets. This is known as quantitative easing, and many analysts fear that it is quickly becoming more than just an emergency measure.
Back in March 2009, the Federal Reserve announced that it would purchase $1.7 trillion worth of U.S. Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities over the next 6 to 9 months. That was the first round of quantitative easing and Fed officials believe that it helped the U.S. economy avoid an even worse downturn.
But now Federal Reserve officials are talking about making quantitative easing a regular thing. An article in the Wall Street Journal recently described the current thinking inside the Fed….
Rather than announce massive bond purchases with a finite end, as they did in 2009 to shock the U.S. financial system back to life, Fed officials are weighing a more open-ended, smaller-scale program that they could adjust as the recovery unfolds.
Quantitative easing that is open-ended?
What kind of insanity is this?
Is quantitative easing going to become a permanent part of our financial system?
And what does “smaller-scale” actually mean?
Well, according to James Bullard, the president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, “small-scale” is actually pretty darn large. According to the Wall Street Journal, a “small-scale” quantitative easing program would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 billion a month….
Under a small-scale approach, Mr. Bullard says, the Fed might announce some still-undecided target for bond buying—say $100 billion or less per month. It would then make a judgment at each meeting whether continued action was needed.
If the Fed injected $100 billion a month into the economy through quantitative easing, that would mean that by the end of the year over 1 trillion dollars would have been created.
That does not sound like “small-scale” to me.
In fact, if the Federal Reserve purchased $1 trillion in U.S. Treasuries next year that would be an amount nearly equal to the total amount of new debt that the U.S. government plans to issue during the year.
Can anyone say Ponzi scheme?
When we get to the point where the Federal Reserve is “buying” a large percentage of new U.S. debt with money that is created out of thin air there is simply no denying the fact that the Fed is running a massive Ponzi scheme.
But the truth is that the U.S. government is in so much debt and the U.S. economy is in so much trouble that something must be done. It is really tempting to “inflate away” the debt and to pump up GDP figures with a flood of paper money, and Helicopter Ben Bernanke has certainly shown that he is not shy about pulling the trigger.
Of course more debt, more paper money and more inflation will only make our long-term economic problems even worse.
But right now Federal Reserve officials appear to be absolutely obsessed with the short-term.
And without a doubt world financial markets are certainly expecting a new round of quantitative easing to begin soon.
CNBC recently polled 67 economists, strategists and fund managers about what they think is going to happen. The following is a summary of what CNBC found….
The Federal Reserve will boost its balance sheet by about half a trillion dollars over a six-month period beginning in November and keep it inflated for up to a year, according to a survey of leading markets participants by CNBC.
But many analysts believe that the Fed will take even more substantial action than that. According to the Wall Street Journal, economists at Goldman Sachs are projecting that the Federal Reserve will end up buying at least another $1 trillion in assets during this next round of quantitative easing.
Stephen Stanley of Pierpont Securities in convinced that it will be even worse than that. Stanley believes that the Fed will add another $3 trillion to its balance sheet by next August. The following is what he recently told CNBC….
“If the Fed pulls the trigger, they will go big.”
In an interview with the Economic Times of India, Marc Faber painted an even bleaker picture….
“I believe that if the S&P in the US drops 15-20% to around 900-950, the Fed would come out not with this quantitative easing No. 2, but with quantitative easing No. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 until the asset markets go up again. They are going to print and print and print.”
It seems like almost everyone is anticipating that the Federal Reserve is going to fire up the printing presses.
Now, even some of the Federal Reserve’s staunchest defenders are now abandoning them.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, perhaps the most respected financial columnist in the U.K., recently penned an article entitled “Shut Down the Fed (Part II)” in which he absolutely lambasted Bernanke and other Federal Reserve officials for considering another round of quantitative easing….
I apologise to readers around the world for having defended the emergency stimulus policies of the US Federal Reserve, and for arguing like an imbecile naif that the Fed would not succumb to drug addiction, political abuse, and mad intoxicated debauchery, once it began taking its first shots of quantitative easing.
In fact, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is now openly accusing the Federal Reserve of being out of control….
So all those hillsmen in Idaho, with their Colt 45s and boxes of krugerrands, who sent furious emails to the Telegraph accusing me of defending a hyperinflating establishment cabal were right all along. The Fed is indeed out of control.
On behalf of those who believe that the Federal Reserve is “a hyperinflating establishment cabal”, I accept Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s apology.
The truth is that the Federal Reserve is out of control.
The Federal Reserve system was designed to get the U.S. government into a perpetually expanding spiral of debt. Wealth is slowly but surely transferred from the American people to the U.S. government (when we pay taxes) and ultimately into the hands of those who own U.S. government debt.
As long as the Federal Reserve system exists, U.S. government debt will keep going up, the value of the U.S. dollar will keep going down and wealth will be slowly transferred into the hands of the ultra-wealthy.
And why in the world would the American people allow an unelected, privately-owned central bank to run the U.S. economy, control the money supply, set interest rates and print all U.S. currency?
It simply does not make any sense.
The Federal Reserve has not been shy about declaring that it is “not an agency” of the U.S. government and not directly accountable to the American people.
So why do the American people put up with this kind of nonsense?
The truth is that the Federal Reserve has become far too powerful. U.S. Representative Ron Paul recently told MSNBC that he believes that the Federal Reserve is actually more powerful than Congress…..
“The regulations should be on the Federal Reserve. We should have transparency of the Federal Reserve. They can create trillions of dollars to bail out their friends, and we don’t even have any transparency of this. They’re more powerful than the Congress.”
The truth is that the U.S. economy will never be fundamentally “fixed” simply by electing another “Bush” or another “Obama”. Something needs to be done about the Federal Reserve system, but right now our politicians in Washington can’t even muster enough support to pass a bill to audit the Fed.
So what do you think about the Federal Reserve? Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts….
 In 2010, any nation that has a weak currency has a very significant competitive advantage in global trade. A weak currency means that the products and services produced by that nation will be less expensive for other nations. Therefore other nations will buy more of those products and services. When exports go up, employment goes up and more wealth flows into the country. Alternatively, when the value of a national currency declines, exports do down, unemployment increases and less wealth flows into the country. Therefore, dozens of exporting nations around the globe have become increasingly determined to keep their national currencies very weak in an attempt to maintain a competitive advantage in the global marketplace. Essentially what we have is a race to the bottom among global currencies. Whenever any nation wants to gain a little bit more of an edge in global trade they push the value of their currency down just a little bit more. So who is the winner in all of this? Well, that is easy. Gold, silver and other precious metals will continue to be the winners as fiat currencies all over the globe continue to decline in value.
Quite a few nations have been openly manipulating their national currencies for many years, but now currency issues are starting to make front page news. Things are starting to get quite tense out there. Major importing nations are starting to resent the fact that they have been burned by all of this currency manipulation and major exporting nations are absolutely determined not to lose the economic gains that they have achieved as a result of their currency manipulation.
In recent months, nation after nation has been taking steps to weaken their national currencies. Every time another currency gets devalued the hostility in the global marketplace just seems to grow. In fact, Brazil’s finance minister recently was very honest about the fact that the nations of the world are now engaged in a very open “international currency war”….
“We’re in the midst of an international currency war, a general weakening of currency.”
So where does all of this end?
Well, to some the answer is to adopt a global currency. But let us hope that never, ever happens because it would be the end of economic sovereignty for every nation on the face of the earth.
To others, the answer is for the nations that are being taken advantage of to stand up and to declare that they are not going to take it anymore.
Perhaps the most glaring example of one nation taking example of another is what China is doing to the United States.
In my recent article entitled “Currency War” I described the effect that currency manipulation by the Chinese government is having on trade between the U.S. and China….
For years, China has kept the value of their currency artificially low. Even though China has made a few small moves toward a more free-floating currency policy, at this point China’s currency is still pretty much pegged to the U.S. dollar. It is estimated that the Chinese government is keeping China’s currency at a value about 40 percent lower than what it should be. This is essentially a de facto subsidy to China’s exporters.
By keeping their currency essentially pegged to the U.S. dollar at such a low value, China is able to flood the U.S. market with incredibly cheap goods and services. But this has created an absolutely massive trade imbalance. Today, the United States spends $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1.00 that the Chinese spend on American goods. Jobs and wealth are flowing out of the United States and into China at a pace that is almost unimaginable.
The Chinese know that if they let the value of their currency rise substantially it would have a devastating impact on their economy. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was recently quoted in The Telegraph as saying the following about what would happen if the value of Chinese currency was to rise substantially….
“I can’t imagine how many Chinese factories will go bankrupt, how many Chinese workers will lose their jobs.”
So instead American factories get to go bankrupt and millions of American workers get to lose their jobs.
Is that fair?
Meanwhile, other nations around the world are busy debasing their currencies. For example, Japan recently made a 12 billion dollar move in world currency markets to debase the value of the yen.
Earlier this year, the Swiss National Bank experienced losses equivalent to about 15 billion dollars trying to stop the rapid rise of the Swiss franc.
It truly is a race to the bottom.
So who benefits?
Gold, silver and other precious metals of course.
Gold recently topped $1,300 an ounce.
Silver has been absolutely soaring.
Exporting nations such as China and India have been gobbling up gold and other precious metals every time there is a little bit of a dip. They are tired of piling up endless amounts of U.S. dollars and they are seeking to diversify into something more solid.
The trend toward gold and precious metals is so hot that one German firm that installs gold vending machines now has plans to introduce them into the United States later this year.
It seems like everyone wants gold right now.
Not that gold is any more valuable than it ever has been.
It is just that it is not going down in value like all of the fiat paper currencies around the world are.
This is not a good time to have faith in paper currencies – particularly the U.S. dollar.
Already the dollar has been slipping substantially and the Federal Reserve has not really even cranked up the next round of quantitative easing yet.
One of the easiest things to do when there are economic problems in a nation is to pump more paper money into the economy. More paper money gives people something to spend, it spurs economic activity, it helps exports (as described above), and it helps put people back to work.
Of course it also destroys the value of the currency, but we will get to that in a minute.
With millions upon millions of Americans out of work, and with millions of homes being foreclosed, and with poverty statistics soaring into uncharted territory, it is very tempting for our politicians in Washington to borrow even more paper money and to pump it into the economy in an attempt to get things going again. But right now an election is coming up and the Tea Party has raised such a ruckus about government debt that there isn’t much appetite for more “stimulus packages” right now.
Of course the truth is that “stimulus packages” never solve any of our long-term problems anyway. The reality is that they just give our economy a short-term “high” and make our long-term debt problems even worse.
Not that the U.S. government is not quietly up to some monkey business. On Friday, federal regulators announced a 30 billion dollar bailout of the nation’s wholesale credit union system.
Another bailout?
Just what we need, eh?
But in general, the U.S. government is not doing a whole lot more reckless spending right now.
However, the Federal Reserve can inject more paper money into the economy without the help of Congress. Under the guise of “quantitative easing”, the Federal Reserve makes up money out of thin air and pumps it into the economy by buying up U.S. Treasuries, mortgage-backed securities or anything else that they feel like buying.
So is this going to happen again any time soon?
There are all kinds of whispers on Wall Street that this is exactly what the Fed is going to do and that it is going to be massive.
And quantitative easing would probably stimulate the U.S. economy in the short-term.
However, it would also seriously damage the value of the U.S. dollar.
You see, the truth is that when more dollars are introduced into the system, the value of each existing dollar goes down.
It is called inflation, and it is a hidden tax on all of us.
Think of it this way. If you put five dollars away today and you anticipate that you will be able to buy two loaves of bread with it three years from now, you will be greatly disappointed if when that day arrives a loaf of bread now costs five dollars and you can only purchase one loaf.
When the purchasing power of the dollar declines, it is a tax on every single dollar in every single wallet and bank account in the United States.
Since 1913, the U.S. dollar has lost over 96 percent of its value. Unfortunately, as ever increasing mountains of paper money continue to be required to keep our financial system solvent, the rate of decline of the value of the dollar is only going to increase in the years ahead.
So when you are watching the news and you hear that the Federal Reserve has announced some more “quantitative easing”, you might want to watch your wallet because you are about to be taxed. Your dollars will still be there – they just won’t go as far as they used to.
But in the twisted global economic system that our politicians have created, if the U.S. does not devalue the dollar we will lose factories, jobs and wealth at an even faster pace.
How sick is that?
So do not put your trust in the U.S. dollar. In the end, it will fail.
So what do all of you think? Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion (sane of otherwise) below….
 As you read this, there is a bill before the U.S. Senate that has the potential to change the U.S. food industry more than any other law ever passed by the U.S. Congress. In the name of “food safety”, the U.S. government would be given an iron grip over the production, transportation and sale of all food in the United States. Hordes of small food producers and organic farmers could potentially be put out of business. If this bill becomes law, the freedom to grow what you want, eat what you want and to share food from your gardens with your neighbors could be greatly curtailed. It would give the FDA unprecedented discretion to regulate U.S. food production. A version of this bill was already passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last summer, and now S. 510, also know as the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, is in front of the U.S. Senate and it is expected to pass easily.
Because of how vaguely it is written and because of how much discretion it gives to the FDA, it is potentially a very, very dangerous law.
So who is actually in favor of it?
Well, big food corporations and big agriculture are actually very much in favor of this bill.
Why?
Is it because they are so concerned about food safety?
No.
In fact, virtually every major case of food contamination in recent U.S. history has come from large-scale industrial agriculture or large-scale industrial food production.
The real reason why they are backing S. 510 is because it will devastate their primary competition – small food producers and organic farmers.
In recent years, the demand for organic food has skyrocketed as the American people have learned the truth about how our food is actually made. Big agriculture and the giant food producers are losing profits as Americans increasingly vote with their wallets.
So now the food giants are using “food safety” as a way to get market share back. It is an open secret that many of those involved in drafting this bill and in pushing it through Congress have ties to food industry giants.
Thousands of small food producers and organic farmers will have their very existence threatened by this bill. It imposes a bureaucratic nightmare on all food producers that the big corporations will be able to handle easily but that will cripple much smaller operations.
Already, many farmers can see the writing on the wall. One small farmer recently described the mood among her fellow small farmers to the Wall Street Journal….
“I know people who have been small farmers for 25 to 30 years who are looking to get out of the business because food safety is becoming so alarmist.”
But the bureaucratic nightmare is just the tip of the iceberg. To get an idea of just how dangerous S. 510 could potentially be to the already staggering U.S. economy, just check out the following quote from one opponent of this bill….
“If accepted [S 510] would preclude the public’s right to grow, own, trade, transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes. It will become the most offensive authority against the cultivation, trade and consumption of food and agricultural products of one’s choice. It will be unconstitutional and contrary to natural law or, if you like, the will of God.”
-Dr. Shiv Chopra, Canada Health whistle blower
It would be hard to understate how dangerous this bill potentially could be. This bill gives the FDA the ability to exercise a ton of discretion. The FDA could end up exercising that discretion in a very reasonable way, or they could use it to shut down small food producers left and right.
When it comes to S. 510, the question that you need to ask yourself is this….
Do you trust the FDA?
If not, then there are some very real reasons for you to be concerned.
The following are 12 reasons why S. 510 could be absolutely disastrous for small food producers and for the U.S. economy….
#1 All food production facilities in the United States will be required to register with the U.S. government. No food will be allowed to be grown, distributed or sold outside this bureaucratic framework unless the FDA allows it.
#2 Any food that is distributed or sold outside of U.S. government control will be considered illegal smuggling.
#3 The FDA will hire an army of new inspectors to enforce all of the new provisions in the bill.
#4 The FDA will be mandated to conduct much more frequent inspections of food processing facilities.
#5 The fees and paperwork requirements will be ruinously expensive for small food producers and organic farms.
#6 S. 510 would place all U.S. food and all U.S. farms under the Department of Homeland Security in the event of a major “contamination” or an “emergency”. What exactly would constitute a “contamination” or an “emergency” is anyone’s guess.
#7 S. 510 mandates that the FDA facilitate harmonization of American food laws with Codex Alimentarius.
#8 S. 510 imposes an annual registration fee on any facility that holds, processes, or manufactures food. It also includes draconian fines for paperwork infractions of up to $500,000 for a single offense. Just one penalty like that would drive a small food producer out of business.
#9 S. 510 would give the FDA tremendous discretion to regulate how crops are grown and how food is produced in the United States. Basically, small farmers and organic farmers will now be forced to farm exactly how the federal government tells them to. It is feared that the U.S. government would soon declare that many organic farming methods are “unsafe” and would outlaw them. In addition, there is the very real possibility that at some point the U.S. government could decide that the only “safe” seed for a particular crop is genetically modified seed and would require all farmers to use it.
#10 S. 510 will give the FDA the power to impose a quarantine on a specific geographic area. Basically the FDA would have the power to stop the movement of all food in an area where a “contamination” has been identified. This would be very close to being able to declare martial law.
#11 S. 510 will give the FDA the power to conduct warrantless searches of the business records of small food producers and organic farmers, even if there has been no evidence at all that a law has been broken.
#12 Opponents of S. 510 believe that it would eliminate the right to clean and store seed. Therefore, control of the U.S. seed supply would be further centralized in the hands of Monsanto and other multinational corporations.
As mentioned above, this bill gives the FDA a ton of discretion. It is written very broadly and very vaguely. It opens the door for all kinds of abuses, but that doesn’t mean that the FDA will behave unreasonably.
So should we trust the FDA?
Is there a viable future for small food producers and organic farmers in America?
Or is the handwriting already on the wall?
“If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.”
-Thomas Jefferson
 The United States is rapidly becoming the very first “post-industrial” nation on the globe. All great economic empires eventually become fat and lazy and squander the great wealth that their forefathers have left them, but the pace at which America is accomplishing this is absolutely amazing. It was America that was at the forefront of the industrial revolution. It was America that showed the world how to mass produce everything from automobiles to televisions to airplanes. It was the great American manufacturing base that crushed Germany and Japan in World War II. But now we are witnessing the deindustrialization of America. Tens of thousands of factories have left the United States in the past decade alone. Millions upon millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost in the same time period. The United States has become a nation that consumes everything in sight and yet produces increasingly little. Do you know what our biggest export is today? Waste paper. Yes, trash is the number one thing that we ship out to the rest of the world as we voraciously blow our money on whatever the rest of the world wants to sell to us. The United States has become bloated and spoiled and our economy is now just a shadow of what it once was. Once upon a time America could literally outproduce the rest of the world combined. Today that is no longer true, but Americans sure do consume more than anyone else in the world. If the deindustrialization of America continues at this current pace, what possible kind of a future are we going to be leaving to our children?
Any great nation throughout history has been great at making things. So if the United States continues to allow its manufacturing base to erode at a staggering pace how in the world can the U.S. continue to consider itself to be a great nation? We have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world in an effort to maintain a very high standard of living, but the current state of affairs is not anywhere close to sustainable. Every single month America does into more debt and every single month America gets poorer.
So what happens when the debt bubble pops?
The deindustrialization of the United States should be a top concern for every man, woman and child in the country. But sadly, most Americans do not have any idea what is going on around them.
For people like that, take this article and print it out and hand it to them. Perhaps what they will read below will shock them badly enough to awaken them from their slumber.
The following are 19 facts about the deindustrialization of America that will blow your mind….
#1 The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001.
#2 Dell Inc., one of America’s largest manufacturers of computers, has announced plans to dramatically expand its operations in China with an investment of over $100 billion over the next decade.
#3 Dell has announced that it will be closing its last large U.S. manufacturing facility in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in November. Approximately 900 jobs will be lost.
#4 In 2008, 1.2 billion cellphones were sold worldwide. So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States? Zero.
#5 According to a new study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, if the U.S. trade deficit with China continues to increase at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone.
#6 As of the end of July, the U.S. trade deficit with China had risen 18 percent compared to the same time period a year ago.
#7 The United States has lost a total of about 5.5 million manufacturing jobs since October 2000.
#8 According to Tax Notes, between 1999 and 2008 employment at the foreign affiliates of U.S. parent companies increased an astounding 30 percent to 10.1 million. During that exact same time period, U.S. employment at American multinational corporations declined 8 percent to 21.1 million.
#9 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of U.S. economic output. In 2008, it represented 11.5 percent.
#10 Ford Motor Company recently announced the closure of a factory that produces the Ford Ranger in St. Paul, Minnesota. Approximately 750 good paying middle class jobs are going to be lost because making Ford Rangers in Minnesota does not fit in with Ford’s new “global” manufacturing strategy.
#11 As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.
#12 In the United States today, consumption accounts for 70 percent of GDP. Of this 70 percent, over half is spent on services.
#13 The United States has lost a whopping 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
#14 In 2001, the United States ranked fourth in the world in per capita broadband Internet use. Today it ranks 15th.
#15 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.
#16 Printed circuit boards are used in tens of thousands of different products. Asia now produces 84 percent of them worldwide.
#17 The United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United States.
#18 One prominent economist is projecting that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040.
#19 The U.S. Census Bureau says that 43.6 million Americans are now living in poverty and according to them that is the highest number of poor Americans in the 51 years that records have been kept.
So how many tens of thousands more factories do we need to lose before we do something about it?
How many millions more Americans are going to become unemployed before we all admit that we have a very, very serious problem on our hands?
How many more trillions of dollars are going to leave the country before we realize that we are losing wealth at a pace that is killing our economy?
How many once great manufacturing cities are going to become rotting war zones like Detroit before we understand that we are committing national economic suicide?
The deindustrialization of America is a national crisis. It needs to be treated like one.
If you disagree with this article, I have a direct challenge for you. If anyone can explain how a deindustrialized America has any kind of viable economic future, please do so below in the comments section.
America is in deep, deep trouble folks. It is time to wake up.
 For most Americans, the economic collapse is something that is happening to someone else. Most of us have become so isolated from each other and so self-involved that unless something is directly affecting us or a close family member than we really don’t feel it. But even though most of us enjoy a much closer relationship with our television sets than we do with our neighbors at this point, it is quickly becoming undeniable that a fundamental shift is taking place in society. Perhaps you noticed it when two or three foreclosure signs went up on your street. Or perhaps it got your attention when that nice fellow down the street lost his job, and he and his family seemingly just disappeared from the neighborhood one day. The Census Bureau made front page headlines all over the nation this week when they announced that one out of every seven Americans was living in poverty in 2009. Every single day more Americans are getting sucked out of the middle class and into soul-crushing poverty.
Unfortunately, most Americans don’t really care because it has not affected them yet.
But this year, millions more Americans will discover that the music has stopped playing and they are left without a seat at the table.
Meanwhile, neither political party has a workable solution. They just like to point fingers and blame each other.
The Democrats blame Bush for all the poverty and advocate expanding programs for the poor. Not that there is anything wrong with a safety net. But the “safety net” was never meant to hold 50 million people on Medicaid and 40 million people on food stamps. The number of Americans on food stamps has more than doubled since 2007. So do we just double it again as things get even worse?
The truth is that welfare programs are only short-term solutions. Unfortunately, the Democrats do not understand this. What Americans really need are good jobs.
The Republicans are so boneheaded that they don’t even like to talk about poverty because they think it is a “liberal issue”. Some conservative commentators have even been so brutally cold as to mock the “99ers” (those who have been unemployed so long that even their extended federal benefits have run out).
Instead of showing some compassion and being the party of the American worker (as they should be), the Republicans are often very uncompassionate and they allow the Democrats to be “the party of the poor” by default.
Both political parties need a big wakeup call. There is a tsunami of poverty sweeping the United States, and somebody better wake up and do something about it. More handouts will help people get by in the short-term, but there is no way that the federal government can financially support tens of millions more poor Americans.
How long is it going to be before the “safety net” simply collapses under the weight of all this poverty?
The path we are on is not sustainable.
The economy is falling apart, and somebody better wake up and do something before even more Americans find themselves drowning in poverty.
The following are 20 signs that the economic collapse has already begun for one out of every seven Americans…..
#1 The Census Bureau says that 43.6 million Americans are now living in poverty and according to them that is the highest number of poor Americans in 51 years of record-keeping.
#2 In the year 2000, 11.3 percent of Americans were living in poverty. In 2008, 13.2 percent of Americans were living in poverty. In 2009, 14.3 percent of Americans were living in poverty. Needless to say the trend is moving in the wrong direction.
#3 In 2009 alone, approximately 4 million more Americans joined the ranks of the poor.
#4 According to the Associated Press, experts believe that 2009 saw the largest single year increase in the U.S. poverty rate since the U.S. government began calculating poverty figures back in 1959.
#5 The U.S. poverty rate is now the third worst among the developed nations tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
#6 Today the United States has approximately 4 million fewer wage earners than it did in 2007.
#7 Nearly 10 million Americans now receive unemployment insurance, which is almost four times as many as were receiving it in 2007.
#8 U.S. banks repossessed 25 percent more homes in August 2010 than they did in August 2009.
#9 One out of every seven mortgages in the United States was either delinquent or in foreclosure during the first quarter of 2010.
#10 There are now 50.7 million Americans who do not have health insurance. One trip to the emergency room would be all it would take to bankrupt a significant percentage of them.
#11 More than 50 million Americans are now on Medicaid, the U.S. government health care program designed principally to help the poor.
#12 There are now over 41 million Americans on food stamps.
#13 The number of Americans enrolled in the food stamp program increased a whopping 55 percent from December 2007 to June 2010.
#14 One out of every six Americans is now being served by at least one government anti-poverty program.
#15 California’s poverty rate soared to 15.3 percent in 2009, which was the highest in 11 years.
#16 According to an analysis by Isabel Sawhill and Emily Monea of the Brookings Institution, 10 million more Americans (including 6 million more children) will slip into poverty over the next decade.
#17 According to a recently released Federal Reserve report, Americans experienced a $1.5 trillion loss in combined household net worth in the second quarter of 2010.
#18 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.
#19 Median U.S. household income is down 5 percent from its peak of more than $52,000 in 1999.
#20 A study recently released by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College University found that Americans are $6.6 trillion short of what they need for retirement.
How anyone can look at those numbers and think that things are about to “get better” absolutely boggles the mind.
It is time to wake up.
Things are not going to get better.
Things are only going to get worse.
The United States is rapidly becoming a nation where poverty is absolutely rampant.
As poverty continues to spread, crime will not be far behind.
Meanwhile, the international community wants to impose a global tax on us so that they can “redistribute” even more of our wealth around the world.
The following was just reported by CNSNews.com….
A group of 60 nations will meet next week at the United Nations to push for a tax on foreign currency transactions as a way to generate revenue to meet global poverty-reduction goals, including “climate change” mitigation.
Well isn’t that great? As American descends into poverty, the rest of the world is pushing for a global tax that will drain us of wealth even more.
It is just a tax on foreign currency transactions, but history has taught us that once taxers get their foot in the door they always go for more eventually.
Sadly, it is not just the United Nations that is discussing a global tax. In fact, the IMF and the World Health Organization have both been very open about the fact that they want to impose global taxes of their own.
Not that we aren’t taxed enough already. We already pay dozens of different kinds of taxes each year, and 2011 is already being dubbed as “the year of the tax increase“.
But most Americans don’t have any more to give. Most Americans can barely make it from month to month. More Americans than ever are slipping into poverty.
What a mess we have on our hands.
Do any of you have any suggestions for how we should go about fixing all of this?
 Are you ready for a currency war? Well, buckle up, because things are about to get interesting. This week Japan fired what is perhaps the opening salvo in a new round of currency wars by publicly intervening in the foreign exchange market for the first time since 2004. Japan’s bold 12 billion dollar move to push down the value of the yen made headlines all over the world. Japan’s economy is highly dependent on exports and the Japanese government was becoming increasingly alarmed by the recent surge in the value of the yen. A stronger yen makes Japanese exports more expensive for other nations and thus would harm Japanese industry. But Japan is not the only nation that is ready to go to battle over currency rates. The governments of the U.S. and China continue to exchange increasingly heated rhetoric regarding currency policy. In Europe, there is growing sentiment that the euro needs to be devalued in order to help European exports become more competitive. In addition, exporters all over the world are already loudly complaining about the possibility that the Federal Reserve is about to unleash another round of quantitative easing. Virtually all major exporting nations want the value of the U.S. dollar to remain high so that they can keep flooding us with lots of cheap goods. The sad reality is that our current system of globalized trade rewards exporting nations that have weak currencies, and many nations have now shown that they are willing to take the gloves off to make certain that their national currencies do not appreciate in value by too much.
Some nations have been involved in open currency manipulation for some time now. For example, Singapore is well known for intervening in the foreign exchange market in order to benefit exporters. Also, the Swiss National Bank experienced losses equivalent to about 15 billion dollars trying to stop the rapid rise of the Swiss franc earlier this year.
But as we race toward the end of 2010, currency manipulation is becoming a major issue on the world stage.
Rumors that the Federal Reserve is considering a substantial new round of quantitative easing is already causing many major exporting nations around the world to howl in outrage.
Why?
Well, quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve could put substantial downward pressure on the value of the dollar and that would make exports significantly more expensive in the United States. The reality is that even a relatively small change in the value of the U.S. dollar can have a major impact on exporters.
But what could really set off a massive currency war is the ongoing dispute between the U.S. and China.
For years, China has kept the value of their currency artificially low. Even though China has made a few small moves toward a more free-floating currency policy, at this point China’s currency is still pretty much pegged to the U.S. dollar. It is estimated that the Chinese government is keeping China’s currency at a value about 40 percent lower than what it should be. This is essentially a de facto subsidy to China’s exporters.
This has enabled China to flood the United States with cheap goods and it is killing entire industries in the United States. Americans have loved rushing out to Wal-Mart to get super low prices on all kinds of stuff, but in the process we have slowly but surely been shipping our manufacturing base and our standard of living over to China.
In recent years both the Bush administration and the Obama administration have been whining about this currency manipulation by China, but both administrations have stopped short of taking any real action.
But are there now signs that the Obama administration is going to get serious and start a currency war?
Well, last week Barack Obama did send the head of his national council of economic advisers, Larry Summers, to Beijing to discuss currency issues.
But what can we do other than whine at this point?
Are we willing to start a trade war?
Considering the fact that China holds nearly a trillion dollars worth of U.S. Treasuries, that probably would not go so well for us.
Even though China’s currency manipulation is absolutely raping the U.S. economy, China has so much leverage over us at this point that it isn’t even funny.
For example, China has almost a complete and total monopoly on rare earth elements. If China totally cut off the supply of rare earth elements, we would have no hybrid car batteries, flat screen televisions, cell phones or iPods. Not only that, but rare earth elements are used by the U.S. military in radar systems, missile-guidance systems, satellites and aircraft electronics.
But something has to be done. Essentially we are caught between a rock and a hard place.
Today, the United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United States.
Last month, the monthly trade deficit with China was approximately 26 billion dollars. For the year, the trade deficit with China will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 billion dollars or so. The transfer of wealth to China that represents is absolutely mind blowing.
The U.S. economy is getting poorer and the Chinese economy is getting richer each and every month.
We are in decline and China is on the rise. In fact, one prominent economist is projecting that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040.
This would not have ever happened if we had not put up with China’s open and blatant currency manipulation all this time.
But now they have us over a barrel and standing up to China would be incredibly painful for the U.S. economy in the short-term.
So will we actually see a currency war break out soon?
Well, it seems almost a certainly that countries throughout the world will continue to manipulate their currencies in order to gain a competitive advantage, but if you are waiting for the Obama administration to truly stand up to China you are probably going to be waiting for a very, very long time.
 Most Americans don’t really care about the economic minutiae that many of us who study the U.S. economy love to pour over. When it comes to the economy, the typical American citizen just wants to be able to get a good job, make a decent living and put bread on the table for the family. For generations, this arrangement has worked out quite well. The U.S. economy has provided large numbers of middle class jobs and the American people have worked hard and have helped this nation prosper like no other. But now people are starting to notice that something has shifted. Millions of people are looking around and are realizing that the jobs that are supposed to be there are not there anymore. The American people are still working hard (and in many cases harder than ever) but all of that hard work is producing fewer and fewer rewards. Often politicians will placate voters by telling them that they are working harder and harder for less and less. That tends to ring true with voters because that is a very accurate description of what so many of them are actually experiencing, but what the politicians don’t tell us is that they are the ones to blame for the situation that we are in. As millions of jobs become obsolete because of technology and millions of other jobs are shipped overseas, our politicians tell us over and over that we can “compete” with anyone and that if we will just go out and get some more education we can make it happen. But those of us who are extremely over-educated know what a fraud that line is. The truth is that there are not nearly enough jobs for all of us no matter how “educated” we are. This is creating a lot of anger and frustration, and now even the IMF is warning that we could see “an explosion of social unrest” if high unemployment persists.
But what can be done? You can’t force large corporations to hire people. The reality is that there are a couple of huge factors that have brought us to this point. First of all, advanced technology means that big corporations need fewer people to do the same amount of work now. Secondly, the globalization of our economy means that U.S. workers have now been merged into a global labor pool where they are in direct competition with workers who are more than happy to make less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world.
This all means that the labor of American workers is less valuable to global corporations than it ever has been before. Advanced technology and computers have enabled corporations to operate leaner and meaner. If they do need some old-fashioned muscle for certain tasks they can always run out and set up a facility in some third world nation where they can pay people close to slave labor wages and where they don’t have to worry much about taxes, regulations, unions, health benefits or pension plans.
What did you think was going to happen when the United States entered into all of these “free trade” agreements with nations around the world that did not have minimum wage laws?
U.S. corporations are not in existence to provide the American people with jobs. They are in existence to make money. If they can make more money by shipping jobs overseas, then that is exactly what they are going to do.
According to Tax Notes, between 1999 and 2008 employment at the foreign affiliates of U.S. parent companies skyrocketed 30 percent to 10.1 million. During that same time period, U.S. employment at American multinational corporations declined 8 percent to 21.1 million.
Are you starting to see the picture?
Global corporations based in the U.S. have been creating lots of jobs – just not in the United States.
In fact, things only seem to be accelerating.
In 2008 alone, U.S. employment at American multinational corporations fell by 445,500.
In the old days, you could give tax breaks to U.S. firms and that would spur them to do more business and to hire more workers. But today, if U.S. multinationals decide they wish to expand they will just go hire more third world workers and pocket the rest of the profits for themselves.
The reality is that we are facing a very disturbing long-term trend in the United States. Today, over half of all unemployed workers in the United States have been out of work for over six months. In fact, the duration of unemployment in the United States has spiked up to the highest level it has been at since World War II.
This has created a growing subclass of people in the United States who feel that the system has failed them. The anger and the frustration in the country is rising every day. You can almost feel it.
In fact, the IMF is warning that we are at risk of “an explosion of social unrest” due to this unemployment crisis.
The head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, recently made the following statement at an Oslo jobs summit with the International Labour Federation….
“The labour market is in dire straits. The Great Recession has left behind a waste land of unemployment.”
So exactly what is going to turn that around?
Are millions of jobs going to suddenly hop up and return home from overseas?
Is the U.S. government going to suddenly eliminate a whole raft of taxes and regulations and are U.S. workers going to suddenly become much cheaper?
Is the U.S. trade deficit crisis suddenly going to reverse and turn into huge trade surpluses for the United States?
Of course none of those things is going to happen.
America is going to continue to bleed jobs, wages inside the United States are going to continue to be forced down and the standard of living for most Americans is going to continue to deteriorate.
Plus, if the American people don’t have good jobs, they can’t buy homes. In fact, a growing number of Americans are finding out that they can’t even afford the homes they are in right now. CNBC is reporting that the nation’s banks repossessed a record number of homes in August.
But for many Americans, a foreclosure is just the beginning of their problems. People are falling out of the middle class at an alarming rate. Approximately 45 million Americans were living in poverty during 2009. That is an absolutely astounding figure.
The American people are getting mad and faith in the economy is plummeting. According to Gallup, confidence in the economy is way down compared to to the same period last year.
So what is going to happen when (not if) things get even worse?
Well, some investors are already anticipating rough times ahead and are flocking to commodities. The price of gold soared to a record intra-day high of $1,276.50 an ounce on Tuesday, and the price of gold and other commodities will probably continue to climb as economies around the world continue to destabilize.
These are very, very difficult times that we are moving into. There are not going to be nearly enough jobs for everyone. People you know are going to be unemployed. People you know are going to lose their homes. People you know might even end up living on the streets.
Just hope that you don’t end up being one of them.
 The “America” that so many of us have taken for granted for so many decades is literally disintegrating right in front of our eyes. Most Americans are still operating under the delusion that the United States will always be “the wealthiest nation” in the world and that our economy will always produce large numbers of high paying jobs and that the U.S. will always have a very large middle class. But that is not what is happening. The very foundations of the U.S. economy have rotted away and we now find ourselves on the verge of an economic collapse. Already, millions upon millions of Americans are slipping out of the middle class and into the devastating grip of poverty. Statistic after statistic proves that the middle class in the United States is shrinking month after month after month. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are starting to wake up and are beginning to realize that we have very serious problems on our hands, but they have no idea what is causing our economic distress and they are unaware that most of our politicians have absolutely no idea how to fix the economic disaster that we have created.
On the mainstream news, the American people are treated to endless footage of leaders from both political parties proclaiming that the primary reason that we are in the midst of such an economic mess is because of what the other political party has done.
Republicans proclaim that we are experiencing all of this economic chaos because of the Democrats.
Democrats proclaim that we are experiencing all of this economic chaos because of the Republicans.
Even many readers of this column (who are generally more educated and more informed than most average Americans) leave comment after comment blaming either the Democrats of the Republicans for our current economic mess.
But do you really want to know who is to blame for our economic problems?
Both of them.
This economic nightmare has taken literally decades to develop, and both Democrats and Republicans have contributed greatly to this disaster.
Both parties have absolutely refused to stand up to the Federal Reserve and the horrific economic policies that they have been shoving down our throats for decades.
Both parties have stood idly by as the U.S. trade deficit has absolutely exploded in size and the United States has become significantly poorer month after month after month.
Both parties have refused to do anything as month after month after month large numbers of factories and good paying jobs leave the United States.
Both parties have shoved the spending accelerator to the floor when they have been in power and now we have the largest national debt in the history of the world.
Both parties have done essentially nothing as the health care industry, which was once the envy of the world, has degenerated into a cesspool of corruption and greed and now seems designed to do little more than to provide pharmaceutical companies and health insurance crooks with obscene profits.
If factories keep leaving the United States and jobs keep leaving the United States and the federal government keeps going into more debt and state governments keep going into more debt and local governments keep going into more debt, then things are going to keep getting worse.
It does not take a genius to figure that out.
The United States is continually getting poorer and is continually going into more debt.
Can anyone out there explain how that is a formula for economic prosperity?
Seriously.
Can anyone explain how that would work?
Please leave a comment and explain that to all of us if you can.
The truth is that as wealth continues to leave the United States and as the U.S. gets even deeper into debt, more Americans are going to become poor.
It really is that simple.
The following are 15 shocking poverty statistics that are skyrocketing as the American middle class continues to be slowly wiped out….
#1 Approximately 45 million Americans were living in poverty in 2009.
#2 According to the Associated Press, experts believe that 2009 saw the largest single year increase in the U.S. poverty rate since the U.S. government began calculating poverty figures back in 1959.
#3 The U.S. poverty rate is now the third worst among the developed nations tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
#4 According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, on a year-over-year basis, household participation in the food stamp program has increased 20.28%.
#5 The number of Americans on food stamps surpassed 41 million for the first time ever in June.
#6 As of June, the number of Americans on food stamps had set a new all-time record for 19 consecutive months.
#7 One out of every six Americans is now being served by at least one government anti-poverty program.
#8 More than 50 million Americans are now on Medicaid, the U.S. government health care program designed principally to help the poor.
#9 One out of every seven mortgages in the United States was either delinquent or in foreclosure during the first quarter of 2010.
#10 Nearly 10 million Americans now receive unemployment insurance, which is almost four times as many as were receiving it in 2007.
#11 The number of Americans receiving long-term unemployment benefits has risen over 60 percent in just the past year.
#12 According to one recent survey, 28% of all U.S. households have at least one member that is looking for a full-time job.
#13 Nationwide, bankruptcy filings rose 20 percent in the 12 month period ending June 30th.
#14 More than 25 percent of all Americans now have a credit score below 599.
#15 One out of every five children in the United States is now living in poverty.
As millions more Americans continue to climb on to the “safety net”, how long is it going to be before it breaks?
The reality is that the system can only support so many people. We are now at a point where our anti-poverty programs are clearly unsustainable in the long-term, but nobody has a solution for how we are going to get all of these people off of these programs or how we are going to provide good jobs for all of them.
The cost of every U.S. government anti-poverty program is absolutely soaring. Meanwhile, the U.S. government is already running a budget deficit that is approaching 1.5 trillion dollars every year. If you cannot understand that we have a very serious problem on our hands then you are probably not awake.
The U.S. economic system is dying. Blaming the other political party is not a solution. Running around the country offering “hope” and “change” and giving people a vague sense that things will get “better” soon is not going to cut it either.
The American people need very real economic solutions to very real economic problems.
But nearly all of our politicians are way too busy either trying to get elected or trying to stay in office to tackle the very serious problems which are destroying our economy.
Unfortunately, the American people love to watch our politicians play politics. They love to watch the little ping-pong ball of blame go back and forth. They love to pick sides and to cheer for their “team”.
None of that is doing any good. Right now millions of Americans are getting sucked into poverty each year and neither major political party is doing anything real to address the very real economic problems that are causing that to happen.
But most Americans have become so “dumbed down” that they don’t even understand what the real problems are anymore.
All most Americans seem to want these days is to watch a good show.
So send in the clowns.
There are certainly enough of them in Washington D.C. to keep Americans entertained for quite a long time.
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S. 510: 12 Reasons Why The Food Safety Bill From Hell Could Be Very Dangerous For The U.S. Economy
Because of how vaguely it is written and because of how much discretion it gives to the FDA, it is potentially a very, very dangerous law.
So who is actually in favor of it?
Well, big food corporations and big agriculture are actually very much in favor of this bill.
Why?
Is it because they are so concerned about food safety?
No.
In fact, virtually every major case of food contamination in recent U.S. history has come from large-scale industrial agriculture or large-scale industrial food production.
The real reason why they are backing S. 510 is because it will devastate their primary competition – small food producers and organic farmers.
In recent years, the demand for organic food has skyrocketed as the American people have learned the truth about how our food is actually made. Big agriculture and the giant food producers are losing profits as Americans increasingly vote with their wallets.
So now the food giants are using “food safety” as a way to get market share back. It is an open secret that many of those involved in drafting this bill and in pushing it through Congress have ties to food industry giants.
Thousands of small food producers and organic farmers will have their very existence threatened by this bill. It imposes a bureaucratic nightmare on all food producers that the big corporations will be able to handle easily but that will cripple much smaller operations.
Already, many farmers can see the writing on the wall. One small farmer recently described the mood among her fellow small farmers to the Wall Street Journal….
“I know people who have been small farmers for 25 to 30 years who are looking to get out of the business because food safety is becoming so alarmist.”
But the bureaucratic nightmare is just the tip of the iceberg. To get an idea of just how dangerous S. 510 could potentially be to the already staggering U.S. economy, just check out the following quote from one opponent of this bill….
“If accepted [S 510] would preclude the public’s right to grow, own, trade, transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes. It will become the most offensive authority against the cultivation, trade and consumption of food and agricultural products of one’s choice. It will be unconstitutional and contrary to natural law or, if you like, the will of God.”
-Dr. Shiv Chopra, Canada Health whistle blower
It would be hard to understate how dangerous this bill potentially could be. This bill gives the FDA the ability to exercise a ton of discretion. The FDA could end up exercising that discretion in a very reasonable way, or they could use it to shut down small food producers left and right.
When it comes to S. 510, the question that you need to ask yourself is this….
Do you trust the FDA?
If not, then there are some very real reasons for you to be concerned.
The following are 12 reasons why S. 510 could be absolutely disastrous for small food producers and for the U.S. economy….
#1 All food production facilities in the United States will be required to register with the U.S. government. No food will be allowed to be grown, distributed or sold outside this bureaucratic framework unless the FDA allows it.
#2 Any food that is distributed or sold outside of U.S. government control will be considered illegal smuggling.
#3 The FDA will hire an army of new inspectors to enforce all of the new provisions in the bill.
#4 The FDA will be mandated to conduct much more frequent inspections of food processing facilities.
#5 The fees and paperwork requirements will be ruinously expensive for small food producers and organic farms.
#6 S. 510 would place all U.S. food and all U.S. farms under the Department of Homeland Security in the event of a major “contamination” or an “emergency”. What exactly would constitute a “contamination” or an “emergency” is anyone’s guess.
#7 S. 510 mandates that the FDA facilitate harmonization of American food laws with Codex Alimentarius.
#8 S. 510 imposes an annual registration fee on any facility that holds, processes, or manufactures food. It also includes draconian fines for paperwork infractions of up to $500,000 for a single offense. Just one penalty like that would drive a small food producer out of business.
#9 S. 510 would give the FDA tremendous discretion to regulate how crops are grown and how food is produced in the United States. Basically, small farmers and organic farmers will now be forced to farm exactly how the federal government tells them to. It is feared that the U.S. government would soon declare that many organic farming methods are “unsafe” and would outlaw them. In addition, there is the very real possibility that at some point the U.S. government could decide that the only “safe” seed for a particular crop is genetically modified seed and would require all farmers to use it.
#10 S. 510 will give the FDA the power to impose a quarantine on a specific geographic area. Basically the FDA would have the power to stop the movement of all food in an area where a “contamination” has been identified. This would be very close to being able to declare martial law.
#11 S. 510 will give the FDA the power to conduct warrantless searches of the business records of small food producers and organic farmers, even if there has been no evidence at all that a law has been broken.
#12 Opponents of S. 510 believe that it would eliminate the right to clean and store seed. Therefore, control of the U.S. seed supply would be further centralized in the hands of Monsanto and other multinational corporations.
As mentioned above, this bill gives the FDA a ton of discretion. It is written very broadly and very vaguely. It opens the door for all kinds of abuses, but that doesn’t mean that the FDA will behave unreasonably.
So should we trust the FDA?
Is there a viable future for small food producers and organic farmers in America?
Or is the handwriting already on the wall?
“If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.”
-Thomas Jefferson