Disgusting!

[a nameless entity]

Moyers & Company: On Winner-Take-All Politics
If you think America's vast economic inequality - the gap between the richest Americans and everyone else - happened by accident, think again. On the premiere episode of Moyers & Company (check local listings), Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson -- "the Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson of political science" -- delve into Winner-Take-All Politics, their book on "How Washington Made the Rich Richer -- And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class." Says Moyers: "Their account is the best account I've seen of how politicians rewrote the rules to create a winner-take-all economy that favors the 1% over everyone else, putting our once and future middle class in peril." The show includes testimony of middle class Americans at a Senate hearing about the impact of hard times on families, as well as an essay on how Occupy Wall Street reflects a widespread belief that politics no longer works for ordinary people. The show will also be available for free viewing on the BillMoyers.com website Friday, January 13. Uncovering the ways Washington helps the rich get richer. Next on Moyers & Company.
Duration: 00:56:45 TVG CC STEREO
http://www.BillMoyers.com

I tried to watch this on TV, but sadly the Buffalo PBS station which used to be the strongest analogue American TV signal I could receive, has now turned into the weakest digital signal that I can still receive. And the signal was just too choppy to be intelligible. So I will have to try again later or watch it online in January.

But I think the "blurb" for the program says it all.

I recall that Al Franken accused the Dubyah Bush administration of bald faced lying on many occasions. I also recall that Dubyah and his fellow conspirators plainly said that their tax cuts would benefit everyone. -Clearly the everyone that they meant were themselves and their rich friends.

And yes, I'm sure that the same kind of stuff is going on up here, or will be eventually. The Harper Conservatives sold off all of the gold in the Royal Canadian Mint's reserves a while back. I have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Namely that they will "privatize" the operations of the Royal Canadian Mint. Once they've handed over the control of our currency to a private company, they will have us in the same situation as the USA: Totally at the fiscal mercy of a nameless, faceless, cabal of miscreants.

[Hermskii]

So you're saying you want more Obama? Ok.

[a nameless entity]

To be perfectly blunt I don't think that Obama is much better. The lobbyists and influence peddlers have totally subverted the political process. It's a sham, just as George Carlin said it was.

It's the dishonesty and money grubbing that I am standing on a soap box about. The rich have rigged things so that they hoover up most of the wealth and pay next to nothing back in the form of taxes. The tax burden has been left to ordinary folk alone to bear, and they are not getting their fair share of the wealth, and have not been for at least 30 years.

The super rich don't care about America. If and when the country implodes, they will just go and live somewhere else.

[a nameless entity]

For those who still care, here is the latest in this story:

Moyers & Company: The Faces of America's Hungry
Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps. The debate is filled with tired cliches about freeloaders undeserving of government help, living large at the expense of honest, hardworking taxpayers. But a new documentary, A Place at the Table, paints a truer picture of America's poor. On the next Moyers & Company (check local listings), Kristi Jacobson, one of the film's directors and producers, and Mariana Chilton, director of the Center for Hunger-Free Communities, join Bill to break these stereotypes apart and share how hunger hits hard at people from every walk of life.

The story of American families facing food insecurity is as frustrating as it is heartbreaking, because the truth is as avoidable as it is tragic.
"If we could think about poverty during childhood as a type of a disease, if we could pay as much attention to poverty for children as we pay attention to infectious disease, we might be able to do something in this country," Chilton explains to Bill.


Also, on the program, journalist Greg Kaufmann -- who's dedicated himself to the beat of poverty, food and politics -- talks about the need to meet and accurately understand Americans in poverty to truly help them. A frequent contributor for The Nation, Kaufmann claims that the poor have been stereotyped and demonized in an effort to justify huge cuts in food stamps and other programs low-income Americans rely on to survive.
"People are working and they're not getting paid enough to feed their families, pay their utilities, pay for their housing, pay for the healthcare," Kaufmann tells Bill. "Fifty percent of the jobs in this country pay less than $34,000 a year. Twenty-five percent pay less than the poverty line for a family of four -- which is $23,000 a year. So if you're not paying people enough to pay for the basics, they're going to need help getting food."
Duration: 00:56:46 CC STEREO

(Please note that the italics used were added by me, for the purpose of clarity.)

Bill Moyers on the Colbert Report:
http://billmoyers.com/2013/06/27/stephe ... ll-moyers/

Mini Edit: OK, I just finished watching this PBS program on TV. There was a lot of "good stuff" in there. So much so that it overwhelms ones short term memory.

The interesting factoids I was able to take away and share here:

-There was talk in the program about getting the government to listen, and then actually do something positive about the problem, rather than going in the wrong direction. I heard the term "take back our democracy", a phrase I have been hearing up here in Canada more often than ever before lately. It is a phrase that I never heard when I was a young man.

(This by the way takes us back to earlier posts in this thread, that someone is pulling all of the strings in government for their own good, rather than the good of the people being governed. But I digress.)

-Less than one cent per dollar of the money given over to food stamps is lost to fraud.

-Agribusiness is being subsidized, and one of the subsidies is a form of insurance that guarntees them a minimum 14% annual profit. One suggestion in the US Congress was to reduce that guarantee to 12%, and thus avoid the proposed cuts to food stamps. That idea was forcefully shot down.

-Walmart made $17 Billion in profits last year, but pays their employees so little that they must use food stamps and other government programs. So Walmart is in effect being subsidized by the US government, for paying such low wages to their employees.

[Hermskii]

I'm tempted to post stuff here. I start with this staying on subject. Our public schools here in Houston have given kids lunch forever. Then they started giving them breakfast too. Now they do this through the summer too when school is out. Now they are talking dinner too I think I have heard.

This house I live in has paid taxes to the nearest school for 40+ years. When I tried to put my son in preschool there he was rejected because he could speak english. I still am paying taxes to this school system AND they are going up again this year though my kids go to a private school.

Try to guess where I stand on this issue.

[a nameless entity]

Actually I think you have three separate issues going on.

1)The school feeding program. Check and find out how much if any, of your school tax actually goes towards this program, and how much if any funding is State, Federal, and County. Off hand after watching this program on TV, I would applaud the expansion of the feeding program. But at the same time I would want the funding to come from sources other than the school tax. School taxes should be for their traditional purposes only, the funding of the school operations.

2)If your son was prevented from attending this school soley because his primary language is English, then you have a classic case of reverse discrimination and your civil rights have been violated. If he was merely denied preschool but could have attended Kindergarden and grade school, then you have a smaller but still stinky case of discrimination as regards the preschool.

3)Does the private school your boys attend get any funding from the State or Federal level?

I am aware that how US schools are funded is quite different from the system used here in Ontario, Canada. So I may be talking through my hat somewhat.

(Ontario's is quite a bit more regional, so the funding is more evenly spread on the whole. We generally don't have the problem of one school being excellent and the other just down the street awful because of local funding borders and the tax bases therein.)

[Hermskii]

1.) I should can and do feed my own kids every meal they eat. Everyone else should do the same.

2.) Yes, we were discriminated against. Plain and simple.

3.) Every way you mentioned other than school tax was still a tax. I pay it and other people's children get fed. Same pair of pants. Just a different pocket.

4.) Please send me every spare dime you have or stop defending the the folks that are already taking mine from me. It is really that simple. I understand paying taxes for certain things and I agree to them. Other things have no business being paid for with my money.

[a nameless entity]

Your comments indicate that you didn't watch the program.

Please do. They say what needs to heard better than I ever could. But you have to listen carefully, for they cover a lot of ground quickly. Rejecting out of hand what they are saying or refusing to even listen is uncharitable and makes effective solutions impossible.

[Terraniux]

I think this will help, nameless and Hermskii:

Please read this article

http://www.naturalnews.com/041220_fall_ ... ctory.html

[a nameless entity]

Wow I don't know what to say. I can see in the last two paragraphs a glimmer of truth, but the rest is a really frightening mish mash of twisted and nasty ingredients.

I think this guy just wants to sell things, and is seeking a congregation to sell them to.

The dozens of ads on the page made me scramble to activate all of my spyware removal programs once I had closed the page too.

I have already posted the following in a different thread, but will repeat it here so that there is a better chance that you saw it:

Hey Terraniux, here's a fellow whose books are very inspiring. I liked some of them so well I got tired of waiting in line at the library for a turn to borrow them. So I bought my own copy of each of the ones I liked best. But start by borrowing at the library. Check out the copyright date in the front of the book. Even Dr. Dyer says that his later books are more in tune with the message he had been seeking to send.

http://www.drwaynedyer.com/

Daily affirmations: (these work even better for me now that I"ve read some of his books)

http://www.drwaynedyer.com/affirmations/

[Terraniux]

Thanks, I will take a look it.

[a nameless entity]

Well I guess if you're looking for someone to blame for all of the world's ills, you could use A Little List. Here are 16 lists. Choose the one that suits you best.

(I have embedded the first one. Click on the link below to see more versions.)





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-_m6EZ1 ... yii_FcaKkC

p.s. The farther you can get through this list of lists, the more cultured you are.

Last night I made it through the first half, so I guess I'm a semi cultured, fat old biker lout.

[a nameless entity]

The plain fact of the matter is that everything in the world is now being run by a few handfuls of oligarchs who own or otherwise control everything. They have no empathy with ordinary folks. It's all about money and power for themselves. They like things just the way they are. If you try to fix something and it would hurt them somehow, you won't be allowed to succeed. They pull all the strings. It costs big money to get elected, so they own all of the politicians. Through their lobbyists they write all of the laws for the politicians. They own the corporations and the banks. They have killed or let die most of the trustworthy news outlets. Soon everything will be as in Rupert Murdoch's empire. Newspapers, radio, internet, and TV that spout nothing but trash talk, propaganda, and biased reporting. They have control. They do what they want, when they want.

what we will end up with is a new global feudal system, with a handful of lords and ladies at the top, and everyone else a serf down at the bottom.

I predict that the next step will be to gradually replace the failing school systems we now have with so called "schools" that will teach "practical" skills to our children. They will be of the types that now exist in India and Pakistan that are really just a front for child labour sweat shops.

And YES, I am coming to believe that all of these completely corrupt and broken systems (financial, political, economic, etc.) bedeviling us are not just happening on their own, but are all being planned or at least encouraged to happen. Why? Because that is what they want. To be Kings. And Dukes and Duchesses, in control of everything. On a global scale. Why? Because they can.

I tried to bring this thread to a close with a little joke, because it is so heavy and depressing. But I can't just leave it there. I keep finding new stuff that people are posting as comments and warnings about what is really going on in the world.

One wonders if it will be possible to take back control and save our democracies. I hope so, but have a bad feeling that it is already too late. Far too late. We live in a dictatorship, one that is still entrenching itself, and gathering power unto itself very slowly, and very patiently. Watch the following video to see another example of what they are presently getting up to, and when it all began in earnest.

[a nameless entity]

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. -- Soren Kierkegaard

People need to think about the overall theme of this thread. And then use their freedom of speech to speak about it, while they still have it. The internet will soon be completely Balkanized. This is the next step in the plan for the world. Push back now, or be silenced.

[Hermskii]

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