International

The Rest Of The World Is Absolutely Disgusted With Our Big Brother Spying Methods

June 11, 2013June 11, 2013 by Michael

The rest of the world has found out that the U.S. government has been listening to their phone calls and watching what they do on the Internet and they do not like it one bit. Outrage has been pouring in from all over the planet, and one member of the European Parliament is even comparing the NSA to the Stasi. But instead of stepping back and reevaluating our Big Brother spying methods now that they have been revealed, Barack Obama and other leading members of Congress are defiantly declaring that there is nothing wrong with these methods and that no changes will be made. The U.S. government is going to continue to invade the privacy of the citizens of the rest of the world as much as it possibly can, and our leaders don’t seem to really care what the international response is. And make no mistake – the goal of the U.S. intelligence community is to literally know everything about everyone. The chief technology officer of the CIA, Gus Hunt, made the following shocking admission back in March: “We fundamentally try to collect everything and hang onto it forever.” He followed that statement up with this gem: “It is really very nearly within our grasp to be able to compute on all human-generated information.” In other words, they want it all, and they nearly have the capacity to gather it all already. So where does this end? Will the U.S. intelligence community ever be happy until they have every piece of data on every single person on the entire planet? Do we really want a government that collects “everything” and hangs on to it “forever”?

Thanks to Edward Snowden, the rest of the globe is starting to understand the extent to which the U.S. government has been spying on them. Needless to say, a lot of people are extremely upset about this.

In Germany (a country that knows a thing or two about Big Brother tactics), some prominent politicians are publicly denouncing the surveillance that the U.S. government has been doing on their citizens. In fact, one German politician has accused the U.S. of employing “American-style Stasi methods”…

In a guest editorial for Spiegel Online on Tuesday, Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said reports that the United States could access and track virtually all forms of Internet communication were “deeply disconcerting” and potentially dangerous.

“The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less free it is,” she said.

“The suspicion of excessive surveillance of communication is so alarming that it cannot be ignored. For that reason, openness and clarification by the U.S. administration itself is paramount at this point. All facts must be put on the table.”

Markus Ferber, a member of Merkel’s Bavarian sister party who sits in the European Parliament, went further, accusing Washington of using “American-style Stasi methods”.

In Italy, the government official in charge of data protection, Antonello Soro, said that the surveillance that the NSA is doing “would not be legal in Italy” and would be “contrary to the principles of our legislation and would represent a very serious violation”.

In Russia (another country with a long history of using Big Brother tactics), President Vladimir Putin has expressed significant concern about the NSA spying program and there are even rumors that Russia will be offering asylum to Edward Snowden…

Alexey Pushkov, head of the Duma’s international affairs committee and a vocal US critic, said on Twitter: “By promising asylum to Snowden, Moscow has taken upon itself the protection of those persecuted for political reasons. There will be hysterics in the US. They only recognise this right for themselves.”

He continued: “Listening to telephones and tracking the internet, the US special services broke the laws of their country. In this case, Snowden, like Assange, is a human rights activist.”

But even more important than what foreign politicians think about the NSA spying scandal is what average people all over the globe think. This scandal is causing millions of average people all over the planet to look at the United States with disgust and disdain. How can we hold ourselves out as the “defenders of freedom” to the rest of the globe when we are openly telling them that we are going to spy on them as much as we possibly can? How do we expect the rest of the world to look at us as “the good guys” when we are selfishly grabbing and recording all of their emails, phone calls and Internet searches without any concern for their privacy whatsoever?

What makes all of this even worse is that our top intelligence officials are making jokes about this scandal. For example, just check out the wisecracks that the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, was making at an awards ceremony on Friday…

With the current and past directors of national intelligence at the Omni Shoreham to honor former CIA and National Security Agency chief Michael Hayden, the result in speeches and interviews with intel professionals was a gumbo of outrage, worry and humor.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the black-tie crowd of more than 700 he would “address the elephant in the room” and proceeded, to applause, to denounce “the unauthorized leaks as reprehensible and egregious.” Clapper characterized the program as completely legal, debated and reauthorized by Congress under strict oversight and by court order “to make our nation safe and secure.”

He then cracked a few jokes. “Some of you expressed surprise that I showed up—so many emails to read!” Clapper said. Greeting fellow banqueter John Pistole, the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration who recently reversed a planned policy to permit air travelers to carry certain knives on planes, Clapper said, “John, can I borrow your pocket knife?”

How in the world can he make a joke about reading our emails at a time like this?

This is how arrogant the U.S. intelligence community has become. They feel like they can do whatever they want and get away with it.

For example, back in March Clapper flat out lied to the U.S. Congress about the surveillance that the NSA is doing. When he was asked by Senator Ron Wyden if the NSA was collecting any information on the American people, Clapper completely denied it.

The following is from a transcript of that exchange…

“Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Oregon Republican Sen. Ron Wyden asked Clapper at the March 12 hearing.

“No, sir,” Clapper responded.

“It does not?” Wyden pressed.

Clapper recanted and said: “Not wittingly. There are cases where they could, inadvertently perhaps, collect — but not wittingly.”

Apparently Clapper must have “forgotten” that the government is forcing all of the big telephone companies to turn over all of their call records to the NSA every single month.

And you know what? The truth is that the government is not just collecting “metadata” about our phone calls. The content of our calls is being recorded and stored as well. Just check out this story from the Blaze…

Hollywood actor Shia LaBeouf in 2008 during an appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno detailed how he learned phone calls were allegedly being recorded.

Promoting the film “Eagle Eye,” which according to IMDb shows how “technology of everyday life [is used] to track and control,” LaBeouf told Leno that an FBI consultant for the movie said one in five phone calls made are recorded and logged.

“And I laughed at him,” LaBeouf said.

“And then he played back a phone conversation I’d had two years prior to joining the picture,” LaBouf continued.

Both Leno and LaBeouf concluded it was “extremely creepy.”

The American people, along with the people of the entire planet, deserve the truth about this.

Unfortunately, Barack Obama is certainly not going to tell us the truth, and there will probably only be a half-hearted effort by some members of Congress to get to the bottom of things.

That is why it is going to be important to take this to court, and thankfully a couple of lawsuits are already in the works.

According to U.S. News & World Report, one of these lawsuits is being filed by a former Justice Department prosecutor…

Former Justice Department prosecutor Larry Klayman amended an existing lawsuit against Verizon and a slew of Obama administration officials Monday to make it the first class-action lawsuit in response to the publication of a secret court order instructing Verizon to hand over all phone records of millions of American customers on an “ongoing, daily basis.”

Klayman told U.S. News he will file a second class-action lawsuit Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia targeting government officials and each of the nine companies listed in a leaked National Security Agency slideshow as participants in the government’s PRISM program.

And according to USA Today, the ACLU has also filed a lawsuit…

National Security Agency surveillance programs came under more scrutiny Tuesday as the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit and a prominent senator and Internet giant Google called on the Obama administration to disclose more information.

In its lawsuit, the ACLU said an NSA program that harvests phone calls violates the rights of all Americans.

“The program goes far beyond even the permissive limits set by the Patriot Act and represents a gross infringement of the freedom of association and the right to privacy,” said Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU’s deputy legal director.

Hopefully these lawsuits will reveal more details about the spying that has been taking place.

There is also a “bipartisan coalition” of 86 Internet companies and civil liberties organizations that have sent a letter to Congress demanding action on these issues. You can read the full letter right here. Some of the organizations involved include the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reddit, Mozilla, FreedomWorks, and the Center for Digital Democracy.

Will Congress listen to them?

Probably not.

But at least they are trying to do something about this.

The key will be to get the American people outraged enough about all of this that they won’t forget about it in a week or two. And that is not an easy thing to do.

There have been a couple of public opinion polls taken over the past few days that show some very curious results. A Rasmussen survey found that 59 percent of Americans are against the government secretly collecting our phone records and only 26 percent are in favor. But a Washington Post survey found that 56 percent of Americans consider the collecting of our phone records to be “acceptable” and only 41 percent consider the practice to be “unacceptable”.

How could those two surveys get such wildly different results?

A lot of it is in the way that they ask the questions.

In the end, our politicians don’t really care too much about what the general public thinks anyway. They are just going to continue to do what they have been doing and the rest of the world will continue to become even more disgusted with us.

We are recklessly destroying our global reputation and our leaders do not even seem to care. But someday America will need some friends, and when that day arrives we may find that we don’t have too many left.

Who Controls The Money? An Unelected, Unaccountable Central Bank Of The World Secretly Does

February 5, 2013 by Michael

An immensely powerful international organization that most people have never even heard of secretly controls the money supply of the entire globe. It is called the Bank for International Settlements, and it is the central bank of central banks. It is located in Basel, Switzerland, but it also has branches in Hong Kong and Mexico City. It is essentially an unelected, unaccountable central bank of the world that has complete immunity from taxation and from national laws. Even Wikipedia admits that “it is not accountable to any single national government.” The Bank for International Settlements was used to launder money for the Nazis during World War II, but these days the main purpose of the BIS is to guide and direct the centrally-planned global financial system. Today, 58 global central banks belong to the BIS, and it has far more power over how the U.S. economy (or any other economy for that matter) will perform over the course of the next year than any politician does. Every two months, the central bankers of the world gather in Basel for another “Global Economy Meeting”. During those meetings, decisions are made which affect every man, woman and child on the planet, and yet none of us have any say in what goes on. The Bank for International Settlements is an organization that was founded by the global elite and it operates for the benefit of the global elite, and it is intended to be one of the key cornerstones of the emerging one world economic system. It is imperative that we get people educated about what this organization is and where it plans to take the global economy.

Sadly, only a very small percentage of people actually know what the Bank for International Settlements is, and even fewer people are aware of the Global Economy Meetings that take place in Basel on a bi-monthly basis.

These Global Economy Meetings were discussed in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal…

Every two months, more than a dozen bankers meet here on Sunday evenings to talk and dine on the 18th floor of a cylindrical building looking out on the Rhine.

The dinner discussions on money and economics are more than academic. At the table are the chiefs of the world’s biggest central banks, representing countries that annually produce more than $51 trillion of gross domestic product, three-quarters of the world’s economic output.

The article goes on to describe the room that these Global Economy Meetings are held in. It sounds like something out of a novel…

The Bank of England’s Mr. King leads the dinner discussions in a room decorated by the Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron, which designed the “Bird’s Nest” stadium for the Beijing Olympics. The men have designated seats at a round table in a dining area scented by white orchids and framed by white walls, a black ceiling and panoramic views.

The central bankers that gather for these meetings are not there just to socialize. No staff members are allowed into these meetings, and they are conducted in an atmosphere of absolute secrecy…

Serious matters follow appetizers, wine and small talk, according to people familiar with the dinners. Mr. King typically asks his colleagues to talk about the outlook in their respective countries. Others ask follow-up questions. The gatherings yield no transcripts or minutes. No staff is allowed.

So the fate of the world economy is determined by unelected central bankers in secret meetings that nobody ever hears about?

That certainly does not sound very “democratic”.

But this is the direction that “global governance” is taking us. The elite believe that the “big decisions” are far too important to be left “to the people”, and so most of the “international institutions” that have been established by the elite operate independently of the democratic process.

Sadly, the truth is that all of this has been planned for a very long time.

In a recent article entitled “Who Runs The World? Solid Proof That A Core Group Of Wealthy Elitists Is Pulling The Strings“, I included a quote from Georgetown University history professor Carroll Quigley from a book that he wrote all the way back in 1966 in which he discussed the big plans that the elite had for the Bank for International Settlements…

[T]he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.

Back then, the Bank for International Settlements was only just starting to play a major role in global affairs. But over the years the BIS began to become increasingly important. The following is an excerpt from an article by Ellen Brown…

For many years the BIS kept a very low profile, operating behind the scenes in an abandoned hotel. It was here that decisions were reached to devalue or defend currencies, fix the price of gold, regulate offshore banking, and raise or lower short-term interest rates. In 1977, however, the BIS gave up its anonymity in exchange for more efficient headquarters. The new building has been described as “an eighteen story-high circular skyscraper that rises above the medieval city like some misplaced nuclear reactor.” It quickly became known as the “Tower of Basel.” Today the BIS has governmental immunity, pays no taxes, and has its own private police force. It is, as Mayer Rothschild envisioned, above the law.

Yes, it most definitely does bear a striking resemblance to the Tower of Babel as you can see from the photo in this article. Once again the global elite are trying to unite humanity under a single system, and that is most definitely not a good thing.

But many of these elitists are entirely convinced that “global governance” is what humanity desperately needs. They even publicly tell us what they plan to do, but most people are not listening.

For example, the following is an excerpt from a speech that former president of the European Central Bank Jean-Claude Trichet delivered to the Council On Foreign Relations in New York…

In the area of central bank cooperation, the main forum is the Global Economy Meeting (GEM), which gathers at the BIS headquarters in Basel. Over the past few years, this forum has included 31 governors as permanent members plus a number of other governors attending on a rotating basis. The GEM, in which all systemic emerging economies’ Central Bank governors are fully participating, has become the prime group for global governance among central banks.

The speech was entitled “Global Governance Today”, and you can find the full transcript right here. But most people have never even heard that such a thing as a “Global Economy Meeting” even exists because the mainstream media rarely discusses these sorts of things. They are too busy focusing on the latest celebrity scandal or the latest cat fights between the Republicans and the Democrats.

If you go to the official BIS website, the purposes of the organization sound fairly innocent and quite boring…

The mission of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is to serve central banks in their pursuit of monetary and financial stability, to foster international cooperation in those areas and to act as a bank for central banks.

In broad outline, the BIS pursues its mission by:

promoting discussion and facilitating collaboration among central banks;

supporting dialogue with other authorities that are responsible for promoting financial stability;

conducting research on policy issues confronting central banks and financial supervisory authorities;

acting as a prime counterparty for central banks in their financial transactions; and

serving as an agent or trustee in connection with international financial operations.

The head office is in Basel, Switzerland and there are two representative offices: in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China and in Mexico City.

But when you start looking into the details, things get much more interesting.

So exactly how does the BIS achieve “monetary and financial stability”? An article posted on investorsinsight.com described how this is accomplished…

It accomplishes this through control of currencies. It currently holds 7% of the world’s available foreign exchange funds, whose unit of account was switched in March of 2003 from the Swiss gold franc to Special Drawing Rights (SDR), an artificial fiat “money” with a value based on a basket of currencies (44% U.S. dollar, 34% euro, 11% Japanese yen, 11% pound sterling).

The bank also controls a huge amount of gold, which it both stores and lends out, giving it great leverage over the metal’s price and the marketplace power that brings, since gold is still the only universal currency. BIS gold reserves were listed on its 2005 annual report (the most recent) as 712 tons. How that breaks down into member banks’ deposits and the BIS personal stash is unknown.

By controlling foreign exchange currency, plus gold, the BIS can go a long way toward determining the economic conditions in any given country. Remember that the next time Ben Bernanke or European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet announces an interest rate hike. You can bet it didn’t happen without the concurrence of the BIS Board.

In recent years, it has become increasingly obvious who really has power over our economy.

When Barack Obama speaks, the markets usually move very little.

When Ben Bernanke speaks, the markets often respond with wild gyrations.

A recent CNBC article entitled “Central Banks: How They Are Ruling the Financial World” detailed the enormous impact that central banks had on the global financial system during 2012…

In all, 13 other central banks in the world have followed the Fed’s lead and set interest rates at or near zero in an effort to keep the liquidity spigots open and prop up their ailing economies. Those 14 economies represent a staggering $65 trillion in combined equity and bond market capitalizations, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Later on in that same article, the author discussed the enormous amounts of money that global central banks were creating out of thin air…

“When you add up all the central banks in the world, it’s going to be over $9 trillion,” said Marc Doss, regional chief investment officer for Wells Fargo Private Bank. “That’s like creating the second-largest economy in the world out of thin air.”

Indeed, central banking has become an economy unto itself, a multi-trillion-dollar empire that massages and manipulates markets, which respond to the slightest news out of the respective entities’ policy making committees.

So who controls the money?

The central banks of the world do.

And who controls those central banks?

The Bank for International Settlements does.

If we don’t like what the Bank for International Settlements is doing, can we do anything about it?

Nope. The Bank for International Settlements is above the law…

Maybe we’d feel better about the BIS if it were more transparent, but most everything about it, including its bi-monthly member and board meetings, is shrouded in secrecy. And perhaps more worrisome is that the BIS is free from oversight. By rights granted under its agreement with the Swiss Federal Council, all of the bank’s archives, documents and “any data media” are “inviolable at all times and in all places.” Furthermore, officers and employees of BIS “enjoy immunity from criminal and administrative jurisdiction, save to the extent that such immunity is formally waived . . . even after such persons have ceased to be Officials of the Bank.” Finally, no claims against BIS or its deposits may be enforced “without the prior agreement of the Bank.”

In other words they can do whatever they want, without consequences. How’s that for a leak-proof legal umbrella?

If the BIS wants to “intervene” in the financial markets, they simply just do it.

If the BIS wants to bail out big banks or even entire nations, they simply just do it.

The BIS reminds me of this old joke…

Q: Where does an 800 pound gorilla sit?

A: Anywhere it wants to.

So what is next for the Bank for International Settlements?

Well, many have speculated that eventually the goal is to have just a single global currency which will be administered by a single global central bank. The BIS is already using Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), which are considered to be a precursor to the coming global currency. The BIS played a big role in the adoption of the euro, and more currency integration is almost certainly on the way in future years…

But in the end, how you feel about the BIS may come down to how you feel about a one-world currency. The bank was a major player promoting the adoption of the euro as Europe’s common currency. There are rumors that its next project is persuading the U.S., Canada and Mexico to switch to a similar regional money, perhaps to be called the “amero,” and it’s logical to assume the bank’s ultimate goal is a single world currency. That would simplify transactions and really solidify the bank’s control of the planetary economy.

But if the United States ever did give up the U.S. dollar, it would be a massive blow to our national sovereignty.

When someone else controls your money, it doesn’t really matter that much who makes the laws.

Unfortunately, the global elite seem absolutely obsessed with the idea of a global currency, a one world economic system and a global government.

None of those things will happen this year, but that is where we are moving. With each new crisis that arises, the solutions that we will be given will always involve more centralization and more globalization.

So what do you think about all of this?

Please feel free to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below…

Is Obama Negotiating A Treaty That Would Essentially Ban All “Buy American” Laws?

May 6, 2012 by Michael

69 members of the U.S. House of Representatives have sent Barack Obama a letter expressing their concern that a new international treaty currently being negotiated would essentially ban all “Buy American” laws. This new treaty is known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and it is going to be one of the biggest “free trade” agreements in history. Critics are referring to it as the “NAFTA of the Pacific“, and it would likely cost the U.S. economy even more jobs than NAFTA did. At the moment, the Trans-Pacific Partnership includes Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore. Barack Obama is pushing hard to get the United States into the TPP, and Australia, Peru, Malaysia, Vietnam, Canada, Japan and South Korea are also reportedly interested in joining. But quite a few members of Congress have heard that “Buy American” laws will essentially be banned under this agreement, and this has many of them very concerned. You can read the entire letter that was sent to Obama right here. Unfortunately, the leaders of both major political parties are overwhelmingly in favor of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, so the objections of these 69 members of Congress are likely to fall on deaf ears. The Trans-Pacific Partnership will accelerate the flow of American jobs out of this country, and meanwhile our politicians will continue to insist that they are doing everything that they can to “create jobs”.

There is not much protecting American jobs these days. The “Buy American” laws are one of the last remaining barriers that helps protect against much, much cheaper foreign labor, but now “Buy American” laws are in danger of being banned permanently as a recent article in the Huffington Post explained….

Since the 1930s, the American government has offered preferential treatment to American producers in the awarding of federal contracts. If a domestic producer offers the government a more expensive bid than a foreign producer, it can still be awarded the contract under certain circumstances, but more recent free trade agreements have granted other nations the same negotiating status as domestic firms. The Obama administration is currently pushing to grant the several nations involved in the Trans-Pacific deal the same privileged status, according to the Thursday letter.

The big problem is that foreign companies often have huge advantages over firms based in America.

In the United States, we have minimum-wage laws. On the other side of the globe, it is legal to pay workers less than a dollar an hour with no benefits.

In the United States, we have thousands upon thousands of laws and regulations that businesses must comply with. On the other side of the globe, there is often very little red tape.

The truth is that “free trade” is a really bad deal for the average American worker. In the emerging one world economic system, labor has become a global commodity and U.S. workers must now compete for jobs with people on the other side of the planet.

Since U.S. workers are often 10 to 20 times more expensive than workers on the other side of the world, there has been a massive outflow of jobs from this country. Treaties such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership will accelerate those job losses.

You would think that our politicians would notice that our formerly great manufacturing cities are turning into hellholes.

For example, the following is how James Kunstler described what he saw when he traveled through Gary, Indiana recently….

Between the ghostly remnants of factories stood a score of small cities and neighborhoods where the immigrants settled five generations ago. A lot of it was foreclosed and shuttered. They were places of such stunning, relentless dreariness that you felt depressed just imagining how depressed the remaining denizens of these endless blocks of run-down shoebox houses must feel. Judging from the frequency of taquerias in the 1950s-vintage strip-malls, one inferred that the old Eastern European population had been lately supplanted by a new wave of Mexicans. They had inherited an infrastructure for daily life that was utterly devoid of conscious artistry when it was new, and now had the special patina of supernatural rot over it that only comes from materials not found in nature disintegrating in surprising and unexpected ways, sometimes even sublimely, like the sheen of an oil slick on water at a certain angle to the sun. There was a Chernobyl-like grandeur to it, as of the longed-for end of something enormous that hadn’t worked out well.

The economic guts of this country are being ripped to shreds right in front of our eyes.

Overall, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been shut down since 2001.

That number is so crazy that it is hard to fully grasp.

The truth is that the “free trade” agenda of globalists such as Barack Obama is absolutely devastating our economy.

There are hundreds of statistics which prove this. I don’t have space in this article to reproduce them all, but if you are interested in examining many of them I recommend checking out the following articles….

1) 35 Facts About The Gutting Of America’s Industrial Might That Should Make You Very Angry

2) 47 Signs That China Is Absolutely Destroying America On The Global Economic Stage

3) America Is Being Transformed From A Wealthy Nation Into A Poor Nation At Breathtaking Speed

4) 17 Facts About The Decline Of The U.S. Auto Industry That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe

5) If You Are A Blue Collar Worker In America You Are An Endangered Species

6) The Worst In The World – The U.S. Balance Of Trade Is Mind-Blowingly Bad

7) Free Trade Or Fair Trade? 20 Reasons Why All Americans Should Be Against The Insane Trade Policies Of The Globalists

When you combine a market that has expensive labor with markets that have ultra-cheap labor, it is inevitable that large numbers of jobs will migrate to the areas that have the ultra-cheap labor.

This isn’t rocket science.

That is why “Buy American” laws are such a good thing. They help to protect American jobs.

But even if you do not work in an industry where large numbers of jobs are being sent out of the country, the loss of jobs still affects you. The millions of Americans that are being displaced from jobs that have been sent overseas end up applying for other kinds of jobs. So they become your competition. This increases the demand for the jobs that remain and it keeps wages down.

As I wrote about the other day, 95 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were middle class jobs. Many of those jobs have been replaced by low income jobs, but you can’t support a family on a low income job.

The Obama administration tells us that the unemployment rate is going down, but the truth is that there are now almost 101 million working age Americans that do not have jobs.

Instead of looking at the “unemployment rate” which is manipulated so much, what I prefer to do is to look at the “employment rate“. And sadly, the percentage of Americans with a job has been steadily declining. The following are the percentages of working age Americans with a job during April during the past six years….

April 2007: 63.0%

April 2008: 62.7%

April 2009: 59.8%

April 2010: 58.7%

April 2011: 58.4%

April 2012: 58.4%

Some Americans have decided to escape the lousy job market by going back to school. Others have decided to retire early. Yet others have decided to become full-time dependents of the government, and a shocking number have decided to try to get on to the Social Security disability rolls.

But most Americans that are unemployed just want to get back to work. Many suffer in complete anonymity and many never take a single penny from the government. They just want someone to hire them so that they can put in an honest day of work for an honest day of pay once again.

Even if you still have a good job, it could be gone tomorrow. This point was underscored by a comment that a reader identified as “DaytoDay” left on a recent article….

Well, I can relate to this, I just lost my job Tuesday. I worked for Uhaul and on the DAY that I became eligible for my benefits and 401k they canned me, exactly 90 days.

So, it’s just another reminder that those who work for corporations are nothing more than numbers. It’s sad reality, they don’t care if you have a family to feed, they don’t care about your bills, and they damn sure don’t care about quality…

I was notified while working, and was instantly let go, up until that point, there had been no warnings, no emails, no conferences, nothing… They simply fired me to avoid paying the benefits and 401k that was would have been entitled to.

And to think, this is the reward for being a good hard worker?

Other Americans are not able to find any work at all. This is especially true for young Americans. Millions upon millions of hard working Americans are graduating from college only to find that the “real world” can be very cruel.

For example, just check out the comment that a reader named “Simon” left on one of my recent articles….

I graduated from a top university just after the Collapse of 2008 (Class of ’09). I had already seen the number of customers at my college job go way down in that year. Got my four-year degree, had good grades, good work record. Now I live in south FL and I can’t even get a job in fast food, there is so much competition for minimum-wage jobs. No one wants to hire me to wait tables or bag groceries because I have a prestigious degree. The only thing I got out of college was 10 grand in debt, which is actually quite small (I came from a poor family, so I got a lot of free tuition to bribe me to be part of the university indoctrination). Good thing I defaulted on my loans a year or two ago or I would be in worse trouble. I just throw out all their threatening letters and never answer their calls- my friend told me it would work, and it did. Of course I’m no longer a “good citizen”- I don’t earn money, don’t pay taxes, don’t have health insurance, my credit is horrible, I’ll never buy a home or a new car—but who cares?

Millions of other Americans that have lost their jobs have been forced to take whatever they can get. A reader identified as “Gary2” recently left a comment on one of my articles describing what his family has been through….

Check this out—I had 12 years as a good worker (regional manager level position) several promotions-steller reviews-which I kept copies of BTW) regular good pay increases heck I even saved a persons life, got a big award plack for it, pictures with everyone etc and 4 months later was downsized–no warning no thanks for helping them pass many JACHO inspections (I was a regional manager for a hospital chain) nothing. Just that we decided to outsource your entire department and that you are no longer needed.

So now I get to be grossly underemployed making 1/2 of what I used to make with NO benefits. My wife is no longer a stay at home raise the kids mom and is also working. Together we still make less than I did on my own. This sucks.

As millions upon millions of Americans suffer deeply month after month, it is creating a volcano of anger and frustration that could absolutely devastate our society at some point. A reader identified as “Cinderella Man” left the following comment on a recent article….

If anyone thinks that almost 50 million Americans on food stamps is a sign of recovery and pardon my language but you have **** for brains. The other day I went shopping and I spent $170 on my ten bags of food and I watched a man and his daughter ring up ten packs of cheap balogna he meekly asked the clerk if those were the 10 for 10 deal and she said yes. Then the Dad said to the daughter “I hope you like it were going to be eating it till we bust!” This is what our world has come to. A man is feeding his kid trying to stretch their meager food stamp budget by eating balogna for several meals. I couldnt help but think of the movie of my namesake Cinderella Man with Russell Crowe when his wife was frying balogna for every meal back during the first Great Depression. Ive seen it all in these past 4 years. From beautiful women in souplines and ****** hotels to living in my car and watching inflation destroy all of our lives. We are all 9 meals from anarchy.

Sadly, thousands upon thousands more good jobs are being lost each and every month.

But our politicians continue to integrate us even more deeply into the emerging one world economic system. Huge numbers of jobs will continue to leave this nation and the standard of living for most American workers will continue to decline.

So have any of you ever had your job shipped out of the country? Feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below….

Sheeple: Government Handouts = 35 Percent Of U.S. Wages But For Michael Moore That Is Not Nearly Enough

March 9, 2011March 9, 2011 by Michael

The ratio of government handouts to wages and salaries in the United States is now at an all-time high. According to TrimTabs Investment Research, government handouts have reached a level that is equivalent to 35 percent of all wages and salaries in the United States. Considering the fact that this figure was only 21 percent back in the year 2000 and only 10 percent back in 1960 that is very frightening. The sad truth is that today the American people are more dependent on direct government payments than they ever have been before. What this does is that it takes formerly independent Americans and transforms them into “sheeple” and pets of the government. Today we have tens of millions of Americans that eagerly await the crumbs that the federal government tosses them each month. This is one reason why our national debt is exploding, but our politicians like this system because it enables them to buy votes. Meanwhile, the federal government and the international corporations that dominate our economy have rigged the game so that power and money are becoming increasingly centralized in their hands. As a result of the system that the “big boys” have developed, millions of small businesses across the country are being absolutely crushed, the standard of living of the middle class is gradually being destroyed and more American families slip into poverty ever single day. What we need to do is to dramatically reduce the power of both the federal government and the big corporations so that small businesses and individuals can thrive once again, but instead “activists” such as Michael Moore are out there demanding even more taxes and even more government handouts.

Not that a “safety net” is a bad thing. We simply are not going to allow tens of millions of Americans to starve out in our streets. However, it has gotten to the point where the majority of American families are now dependent on the U.S. government in one form or another and that is very, very wrong.

More government handouts are never a long-term solution to anything. Handouts do not give people dignity. Handouts do not teach people to be independent. Handouts do not enable people to live the “American Dream”. Handouts are not the path to prosperity.

What the American people need are jobs and an environment where small businesses can thrive. But instead, the federal government has allowed the big global corporations to ship millions of our jobs out of the country and the federal government continues to burden our small businesses with an endless array of new taxes and regulations.

Who is successful in America today?

It is the big boys. Everyone else is being crushed.

This is what the founding fathers tried to warn us about. They did not want the federal government to have much power at all, and they were deeply suspicious of large corporations.

But we have turned our backs on the principles of the founding fathers.

We should be figuring out how to get back to the America that our founding fathers originally tried to create, but instead all of the attention is being given to “activists” such as Michael Moore who are calling for even more taxes and even more government handouts. The following video is of Michael Moore giving a speech to protesters in Madison, Wisconsin on March 5th, 2011. His speech was entitled “America Is Not Broke”….

Yes, the “little guy” is being absolutely crushed in America today. But for people like Michael Moore the solution is always to tax the middle class more and to pass out even more government handouts.

That isn’t going to solve anything. Most of the ultra-wealthy have turned avoiding taxes into an art form. A third of all the wealth in the world is now held in “offshore banks“. Many of our largest corporations don’t pay a dime in federal taxes even as they pass out multi-million dollar bonuses to their executives.

Raising taxes in most definitely not the answer. Those that have mastered the art of avoiding taxes will continue to do so no matter how high you raise them.

The truth is that we need to shut down the IRS and scrap the current tax system entirely. It simply does not work.

What we need to do is to get the federal government and the big corporations under control and transfer the power back to the American people.

That is what our founding fathers intended. They intended for the common man to be empowered to start businesses, create wealth and pursue happiness.

But instead tens of millions of Americans have become addicted to government handouts. When large numbers of people give up and willingly become wards of the government that is not good for society.

Unfortunately, more Americans today are dependent on the U.S. government than ever before. Just consider the following statistics….

-According to TrimTabs Investment Research, social welfare benefits in the United States have risen by $514 billion over the past two years alone.

-As 2007 began, only about 26 million Americans were on food stamps, but today over 44 million Americans are now on food stamps.

-Over 50 million Americans are now on Medicaid.

-Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 American is on Medicaid.

–53 million Americans received $703 billion in Social Security benefits in 2010.

-Right now the U.S. government is either writing or guaranteeing well over 90 percent of all mortgages in the United States.

-It is being projected that extended unemployment benefits will cost the federal government $34 billion over the next two years.

-30 U.S. states have borrowed a total of $41.5 billion from the federal government just so that they could continue paying out unemployment benefits during the recession.

-Entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare now account for 58% of all U.S. government spending.

But what else should we expect? The federal government has been using a sledgehammer to endlessly pound away on the capacity of small businesses and individuals to create wealth and jobs and opportunities. The business atmosphere in the United States is now so toxic that it is amazing that any small businesses have survived.

Most Americans find themselves with no other way to make a living other than to work for someone else. But the big global corporations have discovered that they can make much larger profits by getting rid of American workers and by shipping our jobs overseas and our politicians are allowing them to get away with it.

The truth is that both political parties don’t have the answers. Neither party seems to have any clue about how to stop millions of jobs from leaving the United States and neither party seems to have any clue about how to create a business environment inside the United States where individuals and small businesses can actually thrive.

How much longer will it be before we all finally admit that we are experiencing total system failure in this country? Should we all just quit trying and sit on our couches waiting for the next government handout? The truth is that there aren’t nearly enough jobs for all Americans anyway.

The middle class is dying and the establishment has us all fighting with each other. The left and the right are busy fighting about taxes and budget cuts while the ultra-wealthy continue to enjoy massive profits and incredibly low taxes in the globalized economic system that we have allowed our politicians to create.

Yes, there are tens of millions of Americans that are deeply suffering right now and they need to be helped.

But government handouts are never a long-term solution to anything. What we need to do is to massively reduce the power of the federal government, massively reduce the power of the big corporations and stop businesses and jobs from being shipped out of the country. We also need to create an environment in the United States that is very favorable to small businesses. That would give our country a chance to start creating good jobs again.

But instead, we continue to allow our politicians to destroy our economy. We actually have 10 percent fewer middle class jobs in this country than we did just ten years ago. The middle class is being systematically destroyed. All of the wealth and all of the power are slowly being transferred into the hands of big government and the big corporations.

The vast majority of the rest of us are being transformed from strong, independent, prosperous Americans into dehumanized sheeple that can’t wait for the next government check to come in.

Does anyone out there actually believe that this is what our founding fathers originally intended?