People Are Waking Up to the Great Deception (Featured Stories)

2012-01-29T12:55:00.002-05:00

Caterpillar is a Prime Example of How Big Business Has Colluded with Government to Wipe Out America's Middle Class

In January 2009, Caterpillar announced that it would slash 22,000 people from its 112,000-person workforce. The new round of job cuts spanned five plants in Illinois, Indiana and Georgia. Caterpillar Inc. is the bulldozer manufacturer that President Barack Obama used to help push his $787 billion stimulus plan. At a Caterpillar Inc. plant in Peoria, Ill., President Obama said that his proposed economic stimulus would allow the company's CEO to rehire some of the 20,000 recently laid-off employees. But when asked on February 12, 2009, if the stimulus could do that, Caterpillar CEO James Owens said, "I think, realistically, no. The honest reality is we're probably going to have more layoffs before we start hiring again." More than half of the 15,000 people that Caterpillar Inc. hired in 2010 were outside the U.S. Also in 2010, Caterpillar made plans to build its second factory in China. Legislators have been bleeding the next two generations of Americans dry by pouring money into corporations that are building in overseas locations to avoid paying taxes. On January 26, 2012, Caterpillar reported a 58 percent rise in quarterly earnings; the results capped a record 2011 in terms of sales and profits. The company is enjoying solid growth in its resource-equipment sector due to solid demand and favorable prices in the commodities markets.

A Little Extortion Never Hurts the Bottom Line

The Economic Populist
March 30, 2011

It used to be if a corporation wanted to practice the dark art of extortion, it would do so well outside of the public eye. Not these days; company CEOs are out in the open and proud of it when they want to extract yet more money out of the taxpayers.

Take the case of Caterpillar CEO Douglas Oberhelman. He wrote a letter to Illinois state governor Pat Quinn, complaining about the state’s recent increase in the corporate tax rate from 4.8% to 7.0%. He said at least four other states have approached the company offering generous allowances if Caterpillar would move its headquarters out of Peoria, Illinois. Neighboring states of Indiana and Iowa have admitted to lobbying Caterpillar, as has the far-away state of Texas. The company said it wasn’t threatening Gov. Quinn over the tax increase, but it had “to do what’s right for Caterpillar.” That’s corporate-speak for “we’re threatening to leave the state if you don’t rescind this tax increase.”

Let’s All Pitch In to Help Corporations

Illinois is easy pickings in intra-state competition for jobs: it is the only state that has been able or willing to raise taxes to deal with its budget deficit. In percentage terms, it raised the personal income tax rate even more, from 3% to 5%. Douglas Oberhelman never complained in his letter that his 23,000 employees in Illinois are also going to have to pay higher taxes. Caterpillar is seemingly okay with this, because the Illinois state deficit is one of the largest in the nation, and the money necessary to plug the hole has to come from somewhere – just not from corporations.

In the business of “let someone else pay for government services”, corporations are the hands-down winners. Corporations use the same roads as everyone else, fly out of airports, enjoy the services of the water, electric, and gas utilities, clog up the courts, get police and fire protection, and if necessary have their overseas interests secured by the military and the diplomatic corps. They just don’t want to pay for it. Fifty years ago corporate income taxes at the federal level generated about 6% of GDP; today the amount is less than 2% of GDP. The difference has been made up in increased taxes on individuals, and dramatically increased federal government borrowing.

At the same time, corporate profits in relation to GDP have soared. In 2010, the ratio was 9.46%, and the last time the corporate take of national income was this high was in 1929, when corporations earned 9.9% of GDP (an all-time record). Back then, corporate profits were the result of a booming economy, and were matched by accelerating corporate revenues. That’s not the case today. Revenues have been relatively stagnant the past three years since the 2008 financial crash. But corporate profits have recovered nicely – they were up 36.8% in 2010 on a yearly basis according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis – because corporations have several things going for them at the same time.

For one, the Fed’s zero interest rate policy has dramatically reduced corporate borrowing costs, and corporations have loaded up on long term debt at exceptionally cheap rates to lock in these benefits for years to come. Second, corporations are making much more of their income in emerging markets, including China and India, than ever before. If you look at a subset of non-financial companies among the S&P 500, their US earnings as a percentage of national income in QIII last year were 7.0%. In 1949, this number was 15%, and throughout the 1950s and 1960s corporations generated profits at a rate in excess of 12% of national income. The steady decline in these earnings has been made up in money earned from overseas operations, which used to be a negligible part of US corporate activities.

Combine all this with aggressive efforts to cut the tax bill, and you can see how corporations can be earning record amounts of income.

But the real kicker to the bottom line has been the reduction in labor costs. Last year alone, labor costs fell 1.5% for corporations, and nothing reaches the bottom line quicker than cutting the biggest expense corporations have. Not surprisingly, this has been reflected in the unemployment rate, which has been stuck in the 9% - 10% range for three years now.

It’s the theory of Ben Bernanke and the Fed that the zero interest rate policy, plus all the liquidity added from Quantitative Easing programs, will induce corporations to start hiring again, and all will be well. Maybe Bernanke should take a look at Europe, where unemployment in many countries has been stagnant for decades in the 10% to 20% range.

While economists in the US are fretting how long it has taken for the unemployment rate to move down, they might be better off investigating the question whether chronic high unemployment is here to stay. There is a lot to indicate this might be the case, especially if you think employment arbitrage is here to stay.

It’s All About the Bottom Line

Douglas Oberhelman of Caterpillar is engaged in the game of employment arbitrage. He is placing the livelihoods of 23,000 Illinois workers in jeopardy so he can get a better tax deal elsewhere. This is the last large multinational company in America to be located in such a small town as Peoria, Illinois, which would have nothing much going for it if Caterpillar were to leave. The company has stayed in Peoria, where it was founded, because it makes farming equipment and has wanted to stay close to its agricultural roots. For most of the company’s history, this mattered, and the company identified in a positive way with its position in the heartland of America. Apparently that identification has been shattered, if the tax position and the bottom line now matter more.

It may be hard to believe, but there was a time in America when corporate identity wasn’t so fixated on revenue and earnings. Reading through corporate annual reports from 1940 through 1970, much of the management discussion focused on customers and employees, and the communities the company served. There was no need for quarterly earnings statements, and the stock price was mentioned in passing. No one expected 15% earnings growth rates per annum except for clever start-up companies, like IBM. There was no such thing as executive options or deferred share grants, and executive salaries were shockingly low by today’s standards.

The change came in the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan ushered in an era of low corporate tax rates and a reduced regulatory environment.

See: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street

See: Since 1980 the Majority of Economic Gains Have Gone to the Wealthiest 1% of the Population

This was timed perfectly with the baby boomer generation coming into their peak earning years, and the result was a stock market which took off and never looked back (the Dow was at 1,000 when Reagan took office, and by 2000 was over 14,000 with hardly any corrections along the way). In such a market, it was quite possible for corporations to earn 15% on their equity year after year, double what had been the case in the previous decades. It was also possible for executives to earn unthinkable fortunes, for the stock market to turn into a casino, and for national income to shift away from the middle class and average worker, towards a select fortunate few.

Money Talks, But Threats Talk Louder

The corporate world has long forgotten about the old days when an 8% ROE would be considered respectable, and when customers and employees mattered more than the stockholders. Corporations think they are entitled to record high earnings and the resulting record high bonuses, and even if this practice over so many decades has nearly wiped out the middle class in the US and expanded greatly the number of people living in poverty, corporations have no intention of changing their expectations nor their behavior.

After all, they have the politicians on their side. It’s not just that corporate money buys votes in Congress. Fixing the campaign financing problem is only a part of the solution to reducing corporate influence in government.

Something also needs to be done about corporate extortion, and this problem is much harder to eradicate. Part of the dispute underway between the European Union and Ireland is on this issue of corporate extortion, aka tax arbitrage.

Ireland has a very low tax rate on corporate earnings – 15% - and Germany and France have made it a condition of granting loans to Ireland in its current budgetary crisis that the country increase its corporate tax rate to EU levels, thus eliminating the arbitrage possibility. Ireland has refused – the low taxes after all are deemed to be the source of the “Irish Miracle” of the last decade, when the country achieved envious growth rates by attracting new companies from abroad. Never mind that the Irish Miracle blew up under a mountain of unsupportable debt, and that many of the new companies packed up and moved away. The ones that stayed fired most of their Irish work force.

Here you see the problem. Despite the obvious evidence that corporations are very fickle employers, politicians cling eternally to the myth that government must attract corporations in order to generate jobs. The Republican Party in the US has bought into this myth so thoroughly that even the Tea Party activists who are suspicious of corporations nonetheless, the minute they get into office, suck up to the corporate lobbyists.

See: Corporate Psychopaths Occupy Positions of Power

Money talks, and threats talk even louder. Time and again corporations will stage competitions among states and cities eager to be the home of a proposed new company plant, and the winner will be that government body which offers the largest tax breaks as bribes. Once the company decides, within a few years it will threaten to leave again, renege on its tax obligations, and move all its employees elsewhere. Yet there are no politicians to be found anywhere who stand up to these extortionist tactics.

The trend now is to take these tactics global, by moving the entire company to a different country. George Buckley, the CEO of 3M Corporation, said recently that he’s sees his company moving either to Canada or Mexico altogether if the business climate in US does not prove more amenable to corporate interests. How much more amenable does Mr. Buckley want the climate to be? Does he want no corporate taxes whatever – a free ride paid entirely by individual taxpayers? Should he be able to operate without any regulations? Should the 15% capital gains tax payable largely by corporate executives be abolished entirely? Maybe corporate executives should be exempt altogether from personal income taxes, the way the French nobility avoided taxes before the French Revolution.

Multinationals as Sovereign Powers in Their Own Right

We are already operating in a world where corporations float around from country to country, impervious to control by any one nation. The US had a hard enough time last year during the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to get British Petroleum to pay any attention to the federal government. BP had outsourced a lot of its offshore drilling operations to an American company called Transocean, but when it came time to get this company to cooperate, the US found out that the year before Transocean had shifted its headquarters to Zug, Switzerland. It was essentially out of reach of the US government.

Zug is a town of 26,000 people, but it is home to over 30,000 corporate headquarters. It offers one thing: a 15% corporate tax rate (just like Ireland). Transocean is typical of the companies that have headquarters in Zug; the company has no more than 15 employees in its headquarters, while it has 1,300 employees in Houston, Texas. Its headquarters is a corporate shell, yet it is a strong enough shell to avoid oversight or the reach of the taxman from the US. The Swiss government, of course, doesn’t care what the company does outside of Switzerland.

In order to do something about corporate extortion, you have to eliminate the corporate tax havens in places like Zug, the Bahamas, and the Cayman Islands. You have to convince states and provinces and nations to stop offering tax breaks and other incentives in order to garner precious corporate jobs.

Caterpillar Continues Strong Run

Reuters
January 26, 2012

Caterpillar Inc reported a 58 percent rise in quarterly earnings on Thursday that blew away Wall Street expectations and it projected strong growth for 2012 despite global economic uncertainly.

Caterpillar's results cap a record 2011 in terms of sales and profits. Acquisitions, increased demand for mining equipment, favorable commodity prices and growth in construction machinery and parts sales supported the company during the year.

Investors reacted positively to the report, with shares up 2.7 percent in premarket activity.

Peoria, Illinois-based Caterpillar said it would continue to break records in 2012, with profit expected to rise 25 percent to $9.25 a share, and revenue projected to increase between 30 percent and 19 percent.

"We're expecting 2012 to be another year of good growth," Caterpillar Chief Executive Doug Oberhelman said in a press release. "We have to be prepared for recovery in the developed world beyond 2012 and continued growth in emerging markets."

The world's largest heavy machinery maker said net income for the fourth quarter was $1.55 billion, or $2.32 per share, compared with $968 million, or $1.47 per share, a year ago. That result was 59 cents above the analysts' average estimate of $1.73 a share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Sales rose 35 percent to $17.24 billion, above Wall Street estimates of $16.05 billion.

Caterpillar's forecast for 2012 is above current Wall Street estimates.

Caterpillar warned that costs will rise to meet production needs, and the company is facing production capacity constraints. Oberhelman said construction markets in the United States and Europe will remain "depressed."

Caterpillar will invest about $4 billion on capital expenditures in 2012, compared with $2.6 billion in 2011.

Still, the company is enjoying solid growth in its resource-equipment sector due to solid demand and favorable prices in the commodities markets. It also is seeing steady demand for after-market parts needed for equipment already in use.

China Has Became the World's Second Largest Economy Thanks to Companies Like Caterpillar

Federal News Radio
December 28, 2010

Corporate profits are up. Stock prices are up. So why isn't anyone hiring?

Actually, many American companies are -- just maybe not in your town. They're hiring overseas, where sales are surging and the pipeline of orders is fat.

More than half of the 15,000 people that Caterpillar Inc. has hired this year were outside the U.S. UPS is also hiring at a faster clip overseas. For both companies, sales in international markets are growing at least twice as fast as domestically.

The trend helps explain why unemployment remains high in the United States, edging up to 9.8 percent last month, even though companies are performing well: All but 4 percent of the top 500 U.S. corporations reported profits this year, and the stock market is close to its highest point since the 2008 financial meltdown.

But the jobs are going elsewhere. The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, says American companies have created 1.4 million jobs overseas this year, compared with less than 1 million in the U.S. The additional 1.4 million jobs would have lowered the U.S. unemployment rate to 8.9 percent, says Robert Scott, the institute's senior international economist.

"There's a huge difference between what is good for American companies versus what is good for the American economy," says Scott.

American jobs have been moving overseas for more than two decades. In recent years, though, those jobs have become more sophisticated -- think semiconductors and software, not toys and clothes.

And now many of the products being made overseas aren't coming back to the United States. Demand has grown dramatically this year in emerging markets like India, China and Brazil.

Meanwhile, consumer demand in the U.S. has been subdued. Despite a strong holiday shopping season, Americans are still spending 3 percent less than before the recession on essential items like clothing and more than 10 percent less on jewelry, furniture, electronics, and big appliances, according to MasterCard's SpendingPulse.

"Companies will go where there are fast-growing markets and big profits," says Jeffrey Sachs, globalization expert and economist at Columbia University. "What's changed is that companies today are getting top talent in emerging economies, and the U.S. has to really watch out."

With the future looking brighter overseas, companies are building there, too. Caterpillar, maker of the signature yellow bulldozers and tractors, has invested in three new plants in China in just the last two months to design and manufacture equipment. The decision is based on demand: Asia-Pacific sales soared 38 percent in the first nine months of the year, compared with 16 percent in the U.S. Caterpillar stock is up 65 percent this year.

"There is a shift in economic power that's going on and will continue. China just became the world's second-largest economy," says David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's, who notes that half of the revenue for companies in the S&P 500 in the last couple of years has come from outside the U.S.

Take the example of DuPont, which wowed the world in 1938 with nylon stockings. Known as one of the most innovative American companies of the 20th century, DuPont now sells less than a third of its products in the U.S. In the first nine months of this year, sales to the Asia-Pacific region grew 50 percent, triple the U.S. rate. Its stock is up 47 percent this year.

DuPont's work force reflects the shift in its growth: In a presentation on emerging markets, the company said its number of employees in the U.S. shrank by 9 percent between January 2005 and October 2009. In the same period, its work force grew 54 percent in the Asia-Pacific countries.

"We are a global player out to succeed in any geography where we participate in," says Thomas M. Connelly, chief innovation officer at DuPont. "We want our resources close to where our customers are, to tailor products to their needs."

While most of DuPont's research labs are still stateside, Connelly says he's impressed with the company's overseas talent. The company opened a large research facility in Hyderabad, India, in 2008.

A key factor behind this runaway international growth is the rise of the middle class in these emerging countries. By 2015, for the first time, the number of consumers in Asia's middle class will equal those in Europe and North America combined.

"All of the growth over the next 10 years is happening in Asia," says Homi Kharas, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and formerly the World Bank's chief economist for East Asia and the Pacific.

Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent often points out that a billion consumers will enter the middle class during the coming decade, mostly in Africa, China and India. He is aggressively targeting those markets. Of Coke's 93,000 global employees, less than 13 percent were in the U.S. in 2009, down from 19 percent five years ago.

The company would not say how many new U.S. hires it has made in 2010. But its latest new investments are overseas, including $240 million for three bottling plants in Inner Mongolia as part of a three-year, $2 billion investment in China. The three plants will create 2,000 new jobs in the area. In September, Coca-Cola pledged $1 billion to the Philippines over five years.

The strategy isn't restricted to just the largest American companies. Entrepreneurs, whether in technology, retail or in manufacturing, today hire globally from the start.

Consider Vast.com, which powers the search engines of sites like Yahoo Travel and Aol Autos. The company was founded in 2005 with employees based in San Francisco and Serbia.

Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria worries that the trend could be dangerous. In an article in the November issue of the Harvard Business Review, he says that if U.S. businesses keep prospering while Americans are struggling, business leaders will lose legitimacy in society. He exhorted business leaders to find a way to link growth with job creation at home.

Other economists, like Columbia University's Sachs, say multinational corporations have no choice, especially now that the quality of the global work force has improved. Sachs points out that the U.S. is falling in most global rankings for higher education while others are rising.

"We are not fulfilling the educational needs of our young people," says Sachs. "In a globalized world, there are serious consequences to that."

After Laying Off 22,000 U.S. Workers and Then Receiving Stimulus Funds from U.S. Taxpayers, Caterpillar Plans to Install Second Factory in China

AFP
September 29, 2010

Caterpillar, the world's largest manufacturer of construction equipment, will build a factory in China to produce mini hydraulic excavators, the company said in a statement.

Construction will begin in Wujiang, near Shanghai, at the end of 2010 and the facility should be ready in 2012 to begin production of mini excavators of less than eight tons, the company said Tuesday.

Caterpillar did not say how much the project will cost.

It is part of a long-term plan for investments in China that will make Caterpillar one of the leading manufacturers of construction equipment in the country.

"China is the world's largest market for excavators in the below eight ton class, and the development of this new facility will better position Caterpillar to provide our customers in China with solutions that will help them succeed," said Mary Bell, a Caterpillar vice president.

Caterpillar already has a factory in Xuzhou, which is also near Shanghai.

Obama to 'Invest' $500 Million Tax Dollars in 'Partnership' Between the Feds and 11 Major Corporations

CNSNews.com
June 26, 2011

In his weekly address released June 25, 2011, President Barack Obama called for a campaign of "nation building here at home," citing as an example of what is needed to rebuild the American economy an initiative he announced Friday to "invest" tax dollars in what he called a "partnership" between the federal government and an initial group of 11 major corporations.

The administration's corporate partners in this venture include Caterpiller, Corning, Dow Chemical, Ford, Honeywell, Intel, Johnson and Johnson, Allegheny Technologies, Stryker and Proctor and Gamble.

In addition to the 11 corporations, the administration also picked a small group of universities to participate in the government-corporate partnership. These include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Michigan.

The White House did not say how these universities were selected.As described in the White House statement, the largest single element of the partnership program will have the Departments of Commerce, Agriculture, Homeland Security, Energy and Defense spending an estimated $300 million in tax dollars to "co-invest with industry" in the development of products including "small high-powered batteries" and "alternative energy."

Obama also put a focus on government "investment" in "clean energy" and pointed to the government bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler as successes.

The White House said the creation of the government-corporate partnership program was based on a recomendation by the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST). PCAST is co-chaired by John Holdren, head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

In Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions, a 1973 book that he co-authored with Paul Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, Holdren and his co-authors wrote: "Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided for every human being."

U.S. Big Business Tries to Prevent the U.S. from Imposing Economic Sanctions on Iran

Weekly Standard
December 5, 2011

USA*Engage is concerned that sanctioning Iran will hurt the economy—not at all about allowing a rogue regime to acquire nuclear weapons.

But who is USA*Engage anyway?

It’s a coalition of corporations, companies, and organizations, a subsidiary of the National Foreign Trade Council. Although USA*Engage does not reveal who their members are, here is the list of those who make up the National Foreign Trade Council’s board of directors:

ABB Incorporated
American International Group, Incorporated
Applied Materials
Baxter International, Incorporated
Boeing Company
Caterpillar Incorporated
Chevron
Chrysler, LLP
CIGNA International
Citigroup Inc.
Deloitte & Touche, LLP
Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP
DHL North America
E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company
Eastman Kodak Company
Ernst & Young LLP
ExxonMobil Corporation
Fluor Corporation
Ford Motor Company
General Electric Company
General Motors Corporation
Google Inc.
Halliburton Company
Hanesbrands Inc.
Hercules, USA
Hewlett-Packard Company
Ingersoll-Rand Company
Johnson & Johnson
JPMorganChase & Co
KPMG, LLP
Mars Incorporated
Microsoft Corporation
National Foreign Trade Council
Occidental Petroleum Corporation
Oracle Corporation
PepsiCo, Inc.
Pernod Ricard USA
Pfizer Inc.
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
Procter & Gamble Company
Prudential Insurance Company
Ridgewood Group International
Rockwell International Corporation
Siemens Corporation
Sullivan & Worcester LLP
TE Connectivity
Tyco Electronics
United Technologies Corporation
Wal-Mart Stores, Incorporated

Fed Aid in Financial Crisis Went Beyond U.S. Banks to Industry, Foreign Firms

The Washington Post
December 2, 2010

The financial crisis stretched even farther across the economy than many had realized, as new disclosures show the Federal Reserve rushed trillions of dollars in emergency aid not just to Wall Street but also to motorcycle makers, telecom firms and foreign-owned banks in 2008 and 2009.

The Fed's efforts to prop up the financial sector reached across a broad spectrum of the economy, benefiting stalwarts of American industry including General Electric and Caterpillar and household-name companies such as Verizon, Harley-Davidson and Toyota. The central bank's aid programs also supported U.S. subsidiaries of banks based in East Asia, Europe and Canada while rescuing money-market mutual funds held by millions of Americans.

The biggest users of the Fed lending programs were some of the world's largest banks, including Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Swiss-based UBS and Britain's Barclays, according to more than 21,000 loan records released Wednesday under new financial regulatory legislation.

The data reveal banks turning to the Fed for help almost daily in the fall of 2008 as the central bank lowered lending standards and extended relief to all kinds of institutions it had never assisted before.

Fed officials emphasize that their actions were meant to stabilize a financial system that was on the verge of collapse in late 2008. They note that the actions worked to prevent a complete financial meltdown and that none of the special lending programs has lost money. (Some have recorded healthy profits for taxpayers.)

But the extent of the lending to major banks - and the generous terms of some of those deals - heighten the political peril for a central bank that is already under the gun for a wide range of actions, including a recent decision to try to stimulate the economy by buying $600 billion in U.S. bonds.

"The American people are finally learning the incredible and jaw-dropping details of the Fed's multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and corporate America," said Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime Fed critic whose provision in the Wall Street regulatory overhaul required the new disclosures.

"Perhaps most surprising is the huge sum that went to bail out foreign private banks and corporations. As a result of this disclosure, other members of Congress and I will be taking a very extensive look at all aspects of how the Federal Reserve functions."

The Fed launched emergency programs totaling $3.3 trillion in aid, a figure reached by adding up the peak amount of lending in each program.

Companies that few people would associate with Wall Street benefited through the Fed's program to ease the market for commercial paper, a form of short-term debt used by major corporations to fund their daily activities.

Tens of Thousands More Layoffs Announced

The Associated Press
January 26, 2009

Tens of thousands of fresh layoffs were announced Monday and more companies are expected to cut payrolls in the months ahead... The recession, which started in December 2007, and is expected to stretch into this year, has been a job killer. The economy lost 2.6 million jobs last year, the most since 1945. The unemployment rate jumped to 7.2 percent in December, the highest in 16 years, and is expected to keep climbing...

Thousands more jobs cuts were announced Monday. Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc., which is buying rival drugmaker Wyeth in a $68 billion deal, and Sprint Nextel Corp., the country's third-largest wireless provider, said they each will slash 8,000 jobs. Home Depot Inc., the biggest home improvement retailer in the U.S., will get rid of 7,000 jobs, and General Motors Corp. said it will cut 2,000 jobs at plants in Michigan and Ohio due to slow sales.

Caterpillar Inc., the world's largest maker of mining and construction equipment, announced 5,000 new layoffs on top of several earlier actions. The latest cuts of support and management employees will be made globally by the end of March. An additional 2,500 workers already have accepted buyout offers, and ties have been severed with about 8,000 contract workers worldwide. In addition, about 4,000 full-time factory workers already have been let go.

Just last week, Microsoft Corp. said it will slash up to 5,000 jobs over the next 18 months. Intel Corp. said it will cut up to 6,000 manufacturing jobs and United Airlines parent UAL Corp. said it would get rid of 1,000 jobs, on top of 1,500 axed late last year...

U.S. Government [Taxpayers] Pays Subsidies to Large Companies to Help Pay Prescription Drug Benefits for Their Retirees

Reuters
March 30, 2010

U.S. companies have started to tally up the financial hit they say they will take as a result of the U.S. healthcare overhaul signed into law last week by President Barack Obama.

The government continues to pay subsidies to large companies, including AT&T Inc, Caterpillar Inc and Deere & Co, to help pay for prescription drug benefits for their large ranks of retirees.

However, the revamped law no longer allows companies to deduct the amount of the subsidies from their taxable income. Corporate America complains that the change amounts to a tax hike, while the White House says it essentially closes a tax loophole.

Not all big companies are warning of trouble. General Electric Co, for example, says it does not expect a "significant material impact" on its first-quarter results.

But a number of large U.S. employers have started detailing the expected hit to their bottom line. The latest warnings came from Prudential Financial Inc, which said on Monday that it would take a $100 million charge in the first quarter, and Allegheny Technologies Inc, which expects a $5 million charge.

The tally so far:

AT&T said it would record a $1 billion noncash charge for the first quarter and evaluate prospective changes to the healthcare benefits it offers to both active and retired workers, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

In a regulatory filing, Caterpillar described the regulatory change as a tax hike. It said accounting standards require the world's largest maker of earth-moving equipment to book a $100 million after-tax charge to reflect the change during the first quarter.

Deere, a maker of farm equipment, said it expects to record a $150 million charge, mostly in its current fiscal second quarter. The expense was not included in the company's earlier 2010 forecast, which called for net income of about $1.3 billion.

No. 2 life insurer Prudential said it expects a $100 million charge during the first quarter.

3M Co, which makes products ranging from Post-It notes to optical films for flat-panel televisions, will record a one-time non-cash charge of up to $90 million, or 12 cents per share. It said its January forecast of 2010 earnings did not include the impact of the healthcare law.

Diversified U.S. manufacturer Honeywell International Inc in January estimated that healthcare reform would trim its first-quarter earnings by 4 cents to 5 cents per share. A Honeywell spokesman said last week that the company had not updated the earlier cost estimate and would continue to review the legislation.

AK Steel Holding Corp will record a non-cash charge of about $31 million in the first quarter due to a reduction in the value of its deferred tax asset as a result of a change to the tax treatment of Medicare Part D reimbursements.

Valero Energy Corp said it expects to take a charge of $15 million to $20 million in the first quarter due to the new healthcare legislation, and said it expects further tax costs to be calculated later.

Metals processor Allegheny looks for a first-quarter one-time, non-cash charge of about $5 million, or 5 cents per share, due to the new healthcare law.

Caterpillar Inc. of Illinois announced nearly 2,400 layoffs despite President Obama using his home state’s company as an example of a struggling manufacturer that would benefit from his economic stimulus plan and save jobs. The new round of job cuts will span five plants in Illinois, Indiana and Georgia, and follows the January news that Caterpillar would slash 22,000 people from its 112,000-person workforce. Mr. Obama hosted an event in support of his stimulus plan at the company’s Peoria, Ill., headquarters in mid-February, saying the $787 billion stimulus would be “a major step forward on our path to economic recovery.” [Caterpillar slashes jobs despite stimulus, Washington Times, March 17, 2009]

Caterpillar Inc. is the bulldozer manufacturer that President Barack Obama used to help push his $787 billion stimulus plan. Chief Executive Officer Jim Owens, 63, is a member of the president’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Obama visited the Peoria, Illinois, headquarters on February 12, 2009, the final day of his campaign to press for Congressional passage. [How’s the stimulus working out for Caterpillar?, Michelle Malkin, April 21, 2009]

At a Caterpillar Inc. plant in Peoria, Ill., President Obama said that his proposed economic stimulus would allow the company's CEO to rehire recently laid-off employees. But the head of the company said he will have to fire more workers before he can rehire anyone who has been let go. Obama has said twice in the past two days that Caterpillar CEO James Owens indicated his company would be able to rehire some of the 20,000 recently laid-off employees. "Yesterday, Jim, the head of Caterpillar, said that if Congress passes our plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off," Obama said today in Peoria. But when asked today if the stimulus could do that, Owens said, "I think, realistically, no. The honest reality is we're probably going to have more layoffs before we start hiring again." - CEO Contradicts Obama on Rehiring Employees, ABC News, February 12, 2009

Legislators have been bleeding the next two generations of Americans dry by pouring money into corporations that are building in overseas locations to avoid paying taxes while “those of us making $250,000 less” get to choose our government-run health insurance and ain’t none of us paying one thin dime more according to TPTB. Yeah – that’s a huge run-on sentence, but I am just that upset! [What Stimulus Money Did For Caterpiller- But at What Cost to The American Taxpayer?, The PPJ Gazette, September 29, 2010]

2012-01-26T20:36:00.024-05:00

The Social Welfare State: With Voter Bribery, Government as Santa Claus Was Possible

The Social Welfare State – Motivated Not By Compassion But Political Self-Interest

By Monty Pelerin, Monty Pelerin's World
January 26, 2012

The siren song of Socialism contains the seeds of destruction that now threaten the very foundations of civilization. Socialism as a disease progresses slowly, but has been underway for more than 100 years. The malignancy is now metastasizing. Unfortunately we are the generations that will experience its pernicious outcomes.

Feckless politicians blame anyone and everything but themselves for the impending tragedy. They are responsible for the condition of the world. Ultimately, “we the people” are also responsible. We allowed these political opportunists to create this world threat.

What Went Wrong?

Deterioration in the quality and orientation of government is a long story which has been a long time developing. No one political villain can be blamed.

The decline did not begin with the rants and ravings of Karl Marx nor any of his disciples. The fountainhead was Otto von Bismarck in the late 19^th Century.

Bismarck is considered the founder of the welfare state, which is modern day Socialism. He detested Marxian Socialism. He was a pragmatist, not an ideologue and is considered the founder of realpolitik which translates to “practical politics.” He was not an idealist trying to improve people’s lives. He acted purely in his own best interest.

The motive behind Bismarck’s concept of a social welfare state was simple. It was to placate the masses in order to obtain votes and solidify his hold on office. As he expressed it (emboldening added):

My idea was to bribe the working classes, or shall I say, to win them over, to regard the state as a social institution existing for their sake and interested in their welfare.

Bribery to create an illusion designed to expand the wealth and power of the State at the expense of productive people is hardly an admirable course of action or objective. His simple deception provided powerful means for subsequent political classes. Specifically it provided the means for politicians to grow and expand their power and wealth while solidifying their tenure in office.

Despite the pious claims of current welfare state advocates, Bismarck never espoused noble purposes beyond that of his political self-interest.

Politicians in Western democracies saw the power in Bismarck’s idea and patterned their careers on winning election and re-election via the Bismarckian bribe. Convincing the public that government existed for their sake and their welfare enabled expansion into areas previously considered off limits.

Tradition and law were eventually brushed aside. The US, constrained by a magnificently sculptured Constitution and a predisposition toward liberty, held out longer than its European counterparts. Its later start and slower progression is a fact often cited as a reason why the US economy was able grow from a backwoods beginning to an economic colossus by the early 1900s.

Progressives in the US initially used the “general welfare” clause of the Constitution as justification for a social welfare state. Deliberate ignorance and distortion of the Founders’ original intent was an important aspect of their attacks. Subsequent attacks used the argument that the Constitution was a “living document” meant to be changed to reflect modern day”needs.”

Eventually tradition and law succumbed to the incessant battering of progressive activists in the US. The people’s defense against government tyranny was weakened. Government was then emboldened to redefine itself in almost whatever fashion it chose.

Bismarck’s method of “bribery” was the model that altered the nature of politics practiced in democracies. With voter bribery, Government as Santa Claus was possible. The people loved this myth and the initial effects. Politicians loved buying votes as evidenced by political campaigns where competing political factions tried to outbid each other with more “freebies.”

Collective Bargaining Gives Enormous Political Power to Public Sector Unions

Obama, Bought and Paid for By Big Labor and Big Business, Brings Chicago, the Most Corrupt City in America, to Washington in the Form of Big Government

The Elite Island of Federal Workers: They Are Above the People They Serve

In 2011, Taxpayers Will Pay $19 Billion to Fund Federal Pensions, While Federal Employees Will Contribute Only $1 Billion

The Truth About Public Education in the U.S.: Public School Systems Are Overfunded and Public School Employees Are Overcompensated

Society Is Becoming Dependent on the Government to Care for Them

Blame the Fed for the Pension Crisis Because They Engineered It

The Advance of Socialism

For almost one hundred years, Bismarckian bribery, via an expanding welfare state, has been the predominant political strategy. Over time strategies grew bolder, ratcheting to higher levels each election cycle.

Today modern economies are being destroyed by Socialism as practiced via the welfare state. After generations of propagandizing Statism, the goodness of government intervention as a necessary means to equity and prosperity and the need to invade and manage virtually every aspect of our lives, a majority of voters believe the myth.

Even the term “welfare state” was phony. It was a marketing euphemism to avoid the proper, but pejorative, description — Socialism. The euphemism conveniently conveyed the Bismarckian myth that government cared for and could take care of its citizens.

In reality, the social welfare state was backdoor Socialism. The euphemism also provided convenient cover for what amounted to political enrichment and job security.

The Effects of Socialism

A good description of the effects of current Socialism was provided by Joseph A. Harriss. Although Mr. Harriss described France and Sarkozy’s re-election chances, these conditions apply to most other leaders in European states as well as the US:

What no politician had the courage to say was that the French are witnessing, in slow motion, the end of their welfare state, known locally as the French Social Model. For the last 30 years it has been sustained through political sleight of hand and financed on credit. The French were assured they were entitled to work only 35 hours a week, take five weeks vacation, have single payer health care, pocket generous unemployment benefits, and enjoy a cornucopia of handout programs. As a result, they work on average six fewer weeks a year than the Germans, fewer hours even than the laidback Greeks.

Let the good times roll was the implicit program of politicians both left and right. Now the inevitable bill is coming due right at election time. There’s no way Sarkozy can avoid paying the political price.

Countries have now run out of both time and money. The malignancy of Socialism nears its ugly end, in the manner predicted by Margaret Thatcher:

The trouble with Socialism is, sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.

All welfare states have attained her “sooner or later” point, with most at the “sooner” end of the spectrum.

Sarkozy is in political trouble for the same reason that politicians in all social welfare states are in trouble. Whether he is the right or wrong man for the job is irrelevant. He, like his peers, is a victim of history. He just happens to be the unfortunate one holding the bag when the music is ending. There is no right man for the job in France or anywhere else. The Socialist scam is imploding.

The three-legged stool that supported the fantasy of the social welfare state for the last 100+ years was based on the following:

Prosperity is available without effort.

Government creates prosperity.

Government will take care of its people

Politicians were able to support this hoax only with “other people’s money.” It is now apparent to many that none of these premises were true.

The money obtained to sustain the myth has seriously damaged economies. Some of it was obtained by destroying the seed capital provided by previous generations. Some of it was obtained via obscene levels of taxation. Much of it was obtained via borrowing funds that were never intended to be paid back. The ability to obtain additional funds from these sources is dubious, particularly the last one.

The funds were obtained via coercion and under false pretenses. Inarguably, the social welfare state has crippled modern economies. The game is about over as the scam becomes more apparent by the day.

The damage done to our political system is likely irreparable. Consider current day politicians as compared to our Founders. George Washington was offered a kingship and turned it down. How many current politicians would reject a similar offer?

Current politicians are indistinguishable from clever street hustlers with inflated self-images of their importance and wisdom. They pass laws in areas they cannot possibly understand, often not even bothering to read the bills on which they vote. One wonders whether they would even understand them.

Self aggrandizement has transformed into pay and perquisites that even some well-to-do are unable to obtain. The immoral economic rewards of public office, both above and below the table, have turned politics into a career rather than public service. The political class has set themselves apart as elites in every regard, including protection from laws the rest of us must follow.

As bad as the changes to the political system and the character of politicians have been, the effects of Bismarckian bribes have ruined modern day economies. Here are a few examples:

The incentive structure and work ethic for large sections of each country’s population has been destroyed. Instead of having citizens with the natural human spirit to progress, all countries now have a zombie class, untrained, unmotivated citizens living off government handouts.

The regulatory state and its onerous taxes has destroyed productivity. Entrepreneurs and risk capital have fled to climes where they are treated fairly. Much of the manufacturing base has been outsourced to emerging countries where jobs and not snail darters are appreciated.

The zombie class is growing. The “takers” rather than “makers” find it more comfortable (or lucrative) to not work but to collect welfare. This class has forgotten or never learned work habits and consider themselves entitled to live at the expense of others.

The shrinking productive sector is forced to support the growing zombie class. Up til now, much of this support has come via enormous government borrowings, sheltering the productive class from the real costs that they will eventually have to bear. The era of leverage is ending and with it will come lack of support for the government-created and supported zombies.

Developed economies have been crippled and hollowed out to the point where decades of slow or no growth is the best that can be expected. Many of these economies will implode.

Standards of living are decreasing and have been for a while. Bill Bonner points out that the average real hourly wages of non-high school graduates has declined by 47% percent over the last 32 years! Separately it has been shown that the average weekly earnings in this country, again in real terms, are below where they were in 1966.

Governments have bankrupted themselves, their financial systems and their central banks. They attempt to continue the charade by having bankrupt central banks bail out bankrupt financial systems so that they can purchase bankrupt government securities.

Despite all the propaganda from the Statist machine, government produces nothing and never has. It depends upon a thriving private sector and bond market to play Santa Claus and continue the pretension that it is the source of prosperity.

The fraud cannot go on much longer because governments have crippled the golden goose via onerous rules, regulations and taxes. For three or four decades government was able to hide the problem by spending more than it took in. Governments around the world have reached the point where spending levels can no longer be sustained via tax revenues and bond markets. The latter source has practically dried up for some governments. Eventually it will for all.

France and other social welfare states (including the US) are virtually tapped out. Living standards are going down and insolvent Governments can no longer hide this fact via the charade of “debt” prosperity.

The dirty secret of Socialism has become apparent: It was never anything more than a political gimmick to gain or retain office and power. Politics has turned into what Bismark envisioned – an elaborate scam of voter bribery.

As a result, the world faces sovereign defaults, financial system collapse, civil unrest and a Depression that will make the 1930s look mild in comparison.

Thanks Otto von Bismarck for providing the the clever idea to our modern day criminal class who pose as politicians. One can only hope that civilization is not destroyed in the coming financial apocalypse.

The New American Divide

By Charles Hugh Smith, OfTwoMinds
January 25, 2012

A recent Wall Street Journal article entitled The New American Divide by demographer Charles Murray described a widening cultural divide between the "haves" (the upper middle class, roughly the top 20% managerial/creative class) and the "have-nots," what many would call the lower middle class and working class.

Murray chose to focus on Caucasian Americans to avoid all the issues and emotions of ethnicity, but I think we can apply many of his class-related observations to ethnic minority populations in the U.S. as well.

This article (based on a forthcoming book) is important not because it encapsulates this tangled subject, but because it offers a well-researched first step to a much broader spectrum of issues that the author touches upon in passing.

The cultural divides the author cites is symptomatic of powerful financial and social forces that operate well below the surface of everyday life. I don't claim to have "answers" to these issues, but I find it remarkable that the author ends up concluding that community has been displaced by the Savior State, and the ultimate solution is to return to a life based on community rather than handouts and subsidies from the Savior State.

This aligns with my own conclusions stated in my books.

I think there is much that was left out of his carefully apolitical exploration of class in America and much left out of his general explanation for the widening divide between the "haves" and the "have-nots."

I think he is correct in fingering Savior State "free money" as the primary cause of the dissolution of working-class America's communities and households: with welfare, Section 8, food stamps, Medicaid, etc. then working-class women no longer need a husband to afford children, and men either drop out, become financially dependent on someone else, enter the "war on drugs"/prison complex or "work the system" to avoid working altogether.

He is also correct in pointing out the self-sustaining feedback loops created by Savior State support and Power Elite membership: both groups' children grow up in worlds where welfare or Elite status and perquisites are the expected norm. In this profound way, people grow up in completely different Americas, and these culturally inherited mindsets are very difficult to pierce and change.

What he delicately avoids exploring is the reality that the Status Quo works very well not just for the top 1% but also for the top 20% that forms what I call the Upper Caste of American society: the technocrat, managerial, creative class that does the heavy lifting for the top 1% who own most of the assets and income streams.

The bottom 80% is employed as service workers/debt serfs or bought off with bread-and-circus welfare to keep them quiet and passive. The system doesn't have to work for the bottom 80%, it just has to sustain them at a level that doesn't spark revolt.

The housing bubble was a gigantic scam foisted on the top layer of the working class and the lower layer of the middle class as a "sure-fire way" to join the speculative financial frenzy that enriched the top 1% and their enablers, the Upper Caste technocrat class. When the bubble burst, so did fantasies of living the Upper Caste lifestyle without the hard slog to a meaningful university degree and long hours slaving away for Corporate America to join the Upper Caste.

This notion that America no longer works for the bottom 80% (I would even say the bottom 90%) is something that standard-issue pundits like Murray cannot speak to or even admit. His "solution" is ultimately for the 80% to get on with life as an underclass and make the best of living in an economy which serves their interests only enough to avoid open insurrection.

Murray, a media-pundit in his field, studiously avoids the role of mass media in the creation of the divide. He touches briefly on the fact that we all once watched the same TV shows, a unifying cultral factor, but only because they were the only shows on TV. What I see, and what I believe research supports, is a vast chasm between the media the Upper Caste consumes and what the "have-nots" consume.

The really creative class is too busy to watch much TV or many films, or while away time texting and talking on cellphones. Rather, they create the context and content for these media and devices, and do so by avoiding addiction to their own creations--much like drug pushers never sample their own wares.

The managerial Upper Caste have all the devices and services, but their workload limits the amount of time they have to consume "entertainment" and communicate with text, twitter, email, etc. for amusement. But it is not just a matter of time constraints; they are highly conscious of the fact that consuming media and "entertainment" in quantity does not further their career. What provides the elitist sheen they desire to "fit in" to the upper tier of their caste?

The signifiers of membership in this High-Caste status are leisurely foreign travel in prestigious cities or exotic areas and foreign postings, study abroad, the ability to speak a foreign language, tasteful art in the home and office, facility with corporate-speak, participation in High-Caste cultural events such as the symphony, art-house foreign films, theater, an association (however flimsy) with an Elite university or other respected institution, pursuit of costly sports such as skiing, boating, etc., and last but not least, a network of associates and "friends" (real friendship being an increasingly rare commodity in America) who can be mentioned in conversation as owning/participating in these same high-caste signifiers.

The working class, on the other hand, is a voracious consumer of all media and entertainment; the TV is often left on 24/7 in working-class households and merely muted at night, and an iPod or internet radio is always providing a soundtrack to every activity, while Facebook (i.e. Global Channel of Me) can be a near-obsession, interrupting or taking precedence over all other activities, including, it seems, sex. Texting is constant, and social success is measured by signifiers such as the latest film on bootleg DVD, high-quality street drugs, large collections of films and music (i.e. media) and in rural areas, fishing and hunting trophies.

As correspondent Chuck D. recently observed, the divide extends to money management: the High-Caste class is deeply interested in investments and view high-earning investments as signifiers of status while the working class only sees the spectrum of consumption.

When High-Caste politicos like Al Gore or Mitt Romney attempt to cross the divide and mimic working-class signifiers, their attempts are either comical, wooden or downright painful. They live in a completely different America from the voters they are clumsily appealing to.

In some ways I have a bit of experience on both sides of this divide, having been lucky enough to graduate from an Elite prep school, snag a (non-Elite) university degree and gather the requisite bits of foreign languages and travel.

On the other hand, I worked in the construction/building field for many years alongside both deserters from Corporate/Central State America and working-class guys for whom construction was a relatively high-paying avenue to a middle-class life, if they saved their money (unfortunately not the norm).

There are two other critical long-term issues not addressed in the article:

1. The "mancession"-- the trend toward an economy that values the "female" skills of communiciation, cooperation and education, while the "male" virtues of a strong back and a physical-world skill have steadily lost value. This is a very complex set of issues, but we can "state the obvious" by noting that the decline in factory/manufacturing work has apparently hurt males more than females, who have shifted to retail, healthcare, pink-collar and government work more readily than working-class males.

2. The ladder from the lower classes to the Upper Caste--upward mobility--is crumbling. Many commentators have noted that the gateway of upward mobility has narrowed. Yes, anyone can "make it in America," but making it America requires an increasing number of cultural knowledge bases and values--the very values and knowledge bases that are eroding in the classes below the top 20% Upper Caste.

While Murray describes the complex and knotty issue of declining marriage rates and soaring out-of-wedlock births, the larger question is what is powering these trends. Are men simply no longer needed as breadwinners, or are they being "selected out" for other reasons? Could the mass media once again be a critical if unspoken factor, as it has presented malehood as little more than an extended adolescence without end and fatherhood as a role for bumbling losers?

Yes, it's easy to "blame the media" but once again we must start by asking who is absorbing thousands of hours of this politically convenient (i.e. distracting and deranging) "entertainment" and who avoids it like the plague. How can ceaseless propaganda not influence those who watch it daily for hours on end?

As many oftwominds readers have noted, Step 1 in liberating oneself from propaganda is to stop watching broadcast TV.

This divide speaks very directly to the core problems we face, which are not simply financial or political but cultural.

For historical perspective, back in 1986, the top 1% of earners reported 11% of all income and paid 26% of the income taxes (compared to 20% and 38.02% in 2008); the lower-earning 50% made 17% of the income and paid 6% (compared to 12.75% and 2.7% in 2008) of the nation's individual income tax bill.

How the U.S. Feels About the Wealth Gap

Only about 10 million (or seven percent) of the 140 million people in the U.S. workforce earn more than $100,000 per year. Only 25 percent of the U.S. workforce earns $65,000 per year or more (the average salary of federal employees is $79,197 per year or $119,982 per year when benefits are factored in; the average U.S. worker's salary is $39,336 per year). The widening divide between the Upper Caste and everyone below is not just of income and wealth--it is also cultural and values-based.

American Public Radio
February 8, 2010

Most everybody has lost economic ground the past few years, but some people are still wealthy while others are getting by on less. Monthly contributor Dan Ariely talks with Kai Ryssdal about wealth distribution.

TEXT OF INTERVIEW

Kai Ryssdal: Most everybody has lost economic ground over the past two years or so. But before the recession and the financial crisis and the wealth destruction that they brought, people in the upper reaches of society were proportionately way better off than most of the rest of the country. While over the past decade or two everybody else has been figuring out how to get by with less. Dan Ariely polled more than 10,000 people -- including, via our Web site, some of you -- to discover how we feel about the ever-increasing U.S. wealth gap. Dan, it's good to talk to you again.

DAN ARIELY: Same here, as always.

Ryssdal: So it is the haves and the have nots, a little wealth distribution that you've been looking at.

ARIELY: Yes, and the first thing I should tell you is that you don't have many people listening to you.

Ryssdal: To this show?

ARIELY: Yeah, only about 600 people filled out the survey.

Ryssdal: All right. So it's actually 601 because you gotta count my mom.

ARIELY: OK, so aside from the fact that not many people are listening or at least not many people filled the survey, here is the question that we're interested in. The philosopher Rawls proposed a long time ago that a fair society is a society that if you knew everything about it, you'd be willing to join it in a random place in the distribution. You would be willing to toss the dice and put you in one bin of wealth, for example. So we posed people two questions, we said: What do you think the wealth distribution in the U.S. is? And what do you think is the ideal wealth distribution?

Ryssdal: So in other words, what do you think in the United States now, who has most of the money and then what ought it be, right?

ARIELY: That's right. And what happened is that first of all, people dramatically underestimate the wealth inequality in the U.S.

Ryssdal: Underestimate. So the fact of the matter is fewer people have more of the money.

ARIELY: That's right. So if you look at the whole world in terms of wealth distribution -- before the recession, I don't have data about after the recession -- but before the recession we're basically between the Western world and South America. We were the most skewed distribution of the Western world in terms of the haves and the have nots. But now the more interesting question is what do people think it should be. And what we found was that actually there's a huge agreement between people in terms of what it should be. And this happened to both your listeners and the general sample population. You would take, for example, Republicans and Democrats, and you would think that they would vary dramatically, and they don't, I mean they differ but they don't differ so much. So you take Republicans and they basically agree with Democrats, and you take people with low income versus high income, and they basically agree.

Ryssdal: Can you quantify what we have right now? I mean, what percentage of people have what percent of the wealth?

ARIELY: Right now the top 20 percent of the people have about 85 percent of the wealth. People think that they only own 68 percent of the wealth, so people underestimate the inequity, but if you ask them what's kind of an ideal world in the Rawls kind of sense that you would actually want to participate in, they say 33 percent. So they say in an ideal world, we want the top 20 percent to own more than 20 percent, we want them to be wealthier, but we want them to own about 33 percent of the wealth.

Ryssdal: That's so interesting. They still want the rich to be rich, but just not as rich?

ARIELY: Yeah, you know, actually, rich to be rich is a perfectly reasonable idea, right? I mean, people that have money can create jobs, they can create factories, so there is benefit in non-equal distributions of wealth, the question is what is the ideal?

Ryssdal: I'm stuck on the idea that there is a segment of society out there that thinks that inequality is the way it ought to be.

ARIELY: Yeah, you know, everybody thinks inequality is the way to be. The main lesson for me from this whole study is that when we look at the political arena, we kind of have this huge polarization, and yet when we ask people a question that is not tainted by saying Republicans or Democrats -- it's just formed and here are the numbers, and what kind of society do you want to live in -- the answers come out quite close. And for me that's kind of the optimistic outcome of all -- of this -- is, in fact, as a society, I think we're much more similar to each other than the political arena plays out how it looks like.

Ryssdal: You learn something new everyday. Dan Ariely teaches behavioral economics at Duke University. Dan, thanks a lot.

ARIELY: My pleasure.

The 'Haves' and 'Have Nots': Is the U.S. Government the Last Great Source of Middle Class American Jobs?

If you drive through Northern Virginia, you will find nearly entire neighborhoods of $500,000 to $900,000 homes owned by government workers or contractors. Then you can drive five streets over and find $200,000 to $400,000 homes owned by those who pay the salaries for those government employees. It’s a fascinating distribution of wealth. Most government employees and contractors could not earn more than $60,000 on the free market. Their only chance to make that kind of money comes from having an employer that not only never has to make a profit but can forcibly take money through taxation. - Public Servants Live Better Than the Public, and Federal Pay Continues to Skyrocket, The Daily Bail, October 26, 2009

End of the American Dream
August 10, 2010

Once upon a time, private industry was the engine of the great American economic machine. From coast to coast, expanding industries spawned massive cities filled with optimistic Americans who were able to achieve middle class lifestyles on the good jobs that American companies were providing for them.

The largest middle class in the history of the world had been created and it seemed possible for just about everyone to live the American Dream. But today all of that has changed. The private sector is being dominated by gigantic global corporations that have shown absolutely no hesitation to ship jobs overseas. Millions upon millions of good jobs have been sent to China, India and the third world and they are never coming back.

Pay and benefits for middle class Americans working in private industry have been slowly eroding and are now at dangerously low levels. Meanwhile, working as a "government servant" has never been more rewarding. Today, the average government worker makes far more than the average worker in the private sector does.

How much more?

Well, according to a new study from the Heritage Foundation, U.S. government workers earn 30 to 40 percent more money than their private sector counterparts on average.

So, in essence, the "servants" make substantially more money than the taxpayers who employ them.

Isn't the system great?

In fact, according to the study, if you add in retirement and health care benefits, the average federal employee now earns nearly twice as much as the average private sector employee.

Ouch.

Just check out this excerpt from the study....

"Including non-cash benefits adds to this disparity. The average private-sector employer pays $9,882 per employee in annual benefits, while the federal government pays an average of $32,115 per employee."

Yes, it is very good to be a U.S. government employee in 2010.

Meanwhile, the private sector continues to bleed jobs. The U.S. economy lost 131,000 more jobs during the month of July. Needless to say, the vast majority of those job losses came from private industry.

The truth is that it is becoming very, very difficult to live a middle class lifestyle if you do not work for the government.

A reader of this column named Tim recently shared the difficult experiences he has been going through as an employee in the private sector....

Been with my current company over 12 years. Last pay raise I got was six years ago. The last two years we’ve had our salaries actually reduced. 401K matching, vacation time, company stock purchase plans, actual pay, all gone or reduced. Me and buddies figure it to be about ~14% overall reduction. At my level I was averaging a 10% annual bonus (which are now a vague memory).

All in all, I am NOW working longer hours, at a much less satisfying job (it actually sucks), for about 20-25% less than I was making just 3 years ago.

My company was once a very highly respected company for the way it treated employees and the loyalty that created. We were long term focused, made great products. But now? ha! Upper management pushes harder and harder so they get their *quarterly* bonuses. Below VP level, people, and I mean a LOT of people are now pushing 55-60+ hour weeks for fear of losing their jobs.

With all this said – I still consider myself LUCKY. Even with the ~20% pay reduction, I still make very good money. But one thing has drastically changed. I no longer circulate my money. It all goes into savings. Every spare penny. And while this is good for me, we all understand it is at the expense of the local economy.

The saddest thing is to see my kids now graduating from college (two in the last four years!). They are entering a dismal job market with no hope of “true” recovery in the foreseeable future.

Of course the U.S. government cannot keep paying their workers above market wages forever.

But for now, if you need a good job and can stand to do it, working for the U.S. government pays really, really well.

Might as well jump on the gravy train for as long as it lasts.

So is this a good system?

Of course not.

The true wealth of a nation is produced by the private sector. But unfortunately, the private sector is providing fewer and fewer good jobs in the United States.

The truth is that the U.S. government has become the last great source of middle class American jobs. This will not be able to last indefinitely, but for now those seeking the safety and security of a job ("just over broke") should be looking to the government because the chances of getting a great job in the private sector are getting slimmer by the day.

Why Can't We All Work for the Feds?

It is becoming very, very difficult to live a middle class lifestyle if you do not work for the government. More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs in the private sector, which are often very low paying. So the tables have turned: the private sector now works to service the public sector, the last great source of middle class.

wiseGEEK

Socialism and communism are ideological doctrines that have many similarities as well as many differences. It is difficult to discern the true differences between socialism and communism, as various societies have tried different types of both systems in myriad forms, and many ideologues with different agendas have defined both systems in biased terms. Some general points distinguishing the two concepts, however, can still be identified.

One point that is frequently raised to distinguish socialism from communism is that socialism generally refers to an economic system, while communism generally refers to both an economic and a political system. As an economic system, socialism seeks to manage the economy through deliberate and collective social control. Communism, however, seeks to manage both the economy and the society by ensuring that property is owned collectively, and that control over the distribution of property is centralized in order to achieve both classlessness and statelessness. Both socialism and communism are similar in that they seek to prevent the ill effects that are sometimes produced by capitalism.

Both socialism and communism are based on the principle that the goods and services produced in an economy should be owned publicly, and controlled and planned by a centralized organization. Socialism asserts that the distribution should take place according to the amount of individuals' production efforts, however, while communism asserts that that goods and services should be distributed among the populace according to individuals' needs.

Another difference between socialism and communism is that communists assert that both capitalism and private ownership of the means of production must be done away with as soon as possible in order to make sure a classless society, the communist ideal, is formed. Socialists, however, see capitalism as a possible part of the ideal state and believe that socialism can exist in a capitalist society. In fact, one of the ideas of socialism is that everyone within the society will benefit from capitalism as much as possible as long as the capitalism is controlled somehow by a centralized planning system.

Another difference between socialism and communism is centered on who controls the structure of economy. Where socialism generally aims to have as many people as possible influence how the economy works, communism seeks to limit that number to a smaller group.

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. [Justice Litle, Is America’s Economic Recovery on the Whole Based on a Rotten Sham?, Daily Markets, April 20, 2010]

Freedom and initiative are being replaced by ever higher taxation, regulation and centralization of power in Washington. Our economy is now stagnant and our standard of living is declining. Each year government takes a bigger share of our earnings, employs more and more of our people, enacts more rules that strangle our economy, and controls more and more of our lives. In the enjoyment of plenty, have Americans lost the memory of freedom? When citizens are willing to sacrifice their liberty for security, they will have neither liberty nor security and will soon find themselves living under tyranny. [Ellen Sauerbrey, The Spark That Has Triggered Rebellion, American Thinker, September 13, 2009]

The government does not create a traditional sellable product and thus produces no revenue outside of what it collects from taxpayers or what it seizes from the people. Public sector workers are the most protected and most over compensated group of workers in the world. They have the powerful, politically-backed unions on their side, taking away the voices and votes of the taxpayers who pay their salaries. Like typical government dependents, they display a sense of entitlement at the expense of others. They don't want to make the same sacrifices that the private sector is forced to make. It comes down to this: Either the government workers must contribute more toward their benefits or taxes will have to be increased.

"If one understands that socialism is not a share-the-wealth programme, but is in reality a method to consolidate and control the wealth, then the seeming paradox of super-rich men promoting socialism becomes no paradox at all. Instead, it becomes logical, even the perfect tool of power-seeking megalomaniacs. Communism or, more accurately, socialism is not a movement of the downtrodden masses, but of the economic elite." [Gary Allen, None Dare Call It Conspiracy, Concord Press, 1971]

2012-01-16T12:07:00.004-05:00

NDAA Places U.S. Citizens Under Military Rule

Indefinite Detention- The NDAA and the Enemy Expatriation Act

Edgar Steele and the National Defense Authorization Act

“And if the truth was as the government claims, I wouldn’t be standing up for my husband here today, because as I have said, I will not put my life at risk for anyone. So the reason I’m standing here today, is because I know my husband is innocent and he rightfully should be at home or after all the misconduct, he at the very least deserves a new trial with counsel who can and will present his case.” - CYNDI STEELE

By Sartre, Infowars.com
January 9, 2012

From the ACLU to hard-core traditional conservative pundits, opposition to the National Defense Authorization Act is united. Yet you hear almost nothing in the propaganda media about the final nail in the coffin of the Republic.

Legalizing a draconian police state is in place. Burning the final copy of the Bill of Rights accomplished at last. Finally, the goal of inflicting universal fear in the minds of every American who still possesses the ability of critical thinking is now complete. Will anyone care about the interment of citizens in the entombment of maximum security prisons? The NDAA leaves no doubt. No one is safe.

Ask E.D. Kain, who writes in Forbes,

“If Obama does one thing for the remainder of his presidency let it be a veto of the National Defense Authorization Act – a law recently passed by the Senate which would place domestic terror investigations and interrogations into the hands of the military and which would open the door for trial-free, indefinite detention of anyone, including American citizens, so long as the government calls them terrorists.”

Well, we know that Obama signed this draconian edict into law. The intention of this legislation is to eradicate the constitution. Jonathan Turley writes in the Guardian, The NDAA’s historic assault on American liberty, agrees.

“On the NDAA, reporters continue to mouth the claim that this law only codifies what is already the law. That is not true. The administration has fought any challenges to indefinite detention to prevent a true court review. Moreover, most experts agree that such indefinite detention of citizens violates the constitution.”

Chuck Baldwin warns in the essay, BILL OF RIGHTS IS NO MORE and chastises the Statist NeoCons for their complicit silence or even their phony arguments and apology for the loss of Liberty.

“Americans should realize that, coupled with the Patriot Act, the NDAA, for all intents and purposes, completely nullifies a good portion of the Bill of Rights, turns the United States into a war zone, and places US citizens under military rule. And what is even more astonishing is the manner in which the national press corps, and even the so-called “conservative” talking heads, have either completely ignored it, or have actually defended it. The likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, et al., should be ashamed of themselves!”

Think you are secure and never to be one of the prey hunted by an American Gestapo? Even before the passage of the NDAA legislation, targeting of dissenting voices is a common practice. In the era of “Guantanamo Incarceration”, silencing internal rebellion means eliminating voices of political opposition.

The case of attorney Edgar J. Steele is a frightening example of the corrupt iniquity of the state and the lengths taken to destroy one man (and his family).

If you are not familiar with this tragedy, read and review the full account and details in THE FRAME-UP OF EDGAR STEELE, the outrageous railroading of a truth-teller whom the liars don’t like. The summary posed by the kangaroo court proceedings states,

“In an appalling miscarriage of justice, the exceedingly politically incorrect lawyer Edgar J. Steele was found guilty on all four trumped-up charges.”

Rayelan, the publisher of Rumor Mill News offers up this analysis in Edgar J. Steele… Did the ADL Set Him Up?

“Edgar J. Steele was thrust into the public eye when he defended Pastor Richard G. Butler, founder of a white supremacist organization, the Aryan Nations.

IMO his arrest and conviction was a direct payback by the ADL.

Here is the ADL url for the article about him. All you have to do is read the url to see what I mean.”

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Watch the YouTube four part series in his own words. Political Prisoner Edgar J. Steele’s Nov. 3rd, 2011, PRISON interview Part 1, Part II, Part III and Part IV.

If you have doubts about Steele’s veracity, his wife clearly confirms the truth. Now read the text of Mrs. Cyndi Steele’s victim statement, sentencing hearing, 11/9/2011.

“So a year and a half has brought us to this day where I’m supposed to stand here as a victim… a victim of my husband. How do I do that, when he is not the one that has victimized me. How do I do that, when the only ones I have been victimized by is Larry Fairfax, our own government agents, an overly aggressive woman prosecutor, and yes your honor, even this court system itself with its own prejudices has victimized me. Of course, this means that my husband is a victim as well.

Yet, no matter what I have said here today, there is only one thing that matters. Today, there is great injustice being done. As the alleged victim and the wife of the falsely accused, I have to ask your honor, that a stop is put to this injustice and the court free my husband so he can come home, where he belongs and so our family can be whole again. Otherwise, at least grant him a new trial so he gets a trial that is fair. He is innocent and has wrongly been convicted of crimes he did NOT commit. Otherwise, the court is condemning an innocent man and destroying his family. The court will not only be sentencing an innocent man to what is a death sentence, but it will wrongly be sentencing his children to live without their father and wrongly be sentencing me, his wife, to live without her husband. How am I supposed to see that as justice?

It has been the lies, the misconduct, the violations of my statutory crime victim rights, violations of the constitution, the unfair trial, ineffective assistance of counsel by McAllister and the false conviction that is causing my family to be destroyed, my finances (including retirement savings) to deplete such that I fear bankruptcy and a host of other issues, too long to list here. It is because of all these injustices that has made me a VICTIM!”

Now that Mr. Steele is being moved into the black hole of a modern Alcatraz, his final fate is sealed if the government has its way. This injustice needs to be national news and the public must confront this selective prosecution of political prisoners.

Cyndi Steele makes an appeal for Edgar in a mailing, Victorville death prison protest, 1/5/2012.

Ed has been designated to the US Penitentiary in Victorville, CA. As if it is not bad enough what they have unjustly done to him, they have designated him to a max security, death trap prison and as far away from me as they possibly can.

I don’t know if you are aware that Victorville was originally the George Air Force base, the first jet facility in America. When the Air Force abandoned it, they dumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of jet fuel in the ground water table. Jet fuel, when ingested, or when placed on the skin (showers) over prolonged periods, causes Astrocytoma, a deadly form of cancer. Astrocytoma builds tumors on the spine and in the brain, which kill you.

A campaign to help Karla Fuller a former inmate, who suffered from this poisoning while incarcerated there, finally got out of this death trap, but it was too late. She died within a year.

I’m again asking for your help in asking people write to Senator Mike Crapo and demand that Ed be housed at a different facility. Please send this information as far and wide as possible to every politician at the Federal level, Senators, and Congressmen, etc.

You may conclude that Edgar Steele, a person you never met, is unfortunate but it does not affect you. Such a conclusion could not be more confused or shortsighted. The NDAA legal cover now makes it procedurally efficient and politically sanctioned to save a bunk in the same cell as Mr. Steele.

There is a direct connection in the political prosecution of Edgar Steele, for being a defender of unpopular clients against the despotism of the state, and the government’s thirst for enslaving any citizen for expressing dissent against a tyrannical empire. Wake up to the reality that the National Defense Authorization Act is meant to include you in the net of punishment for all political prisoners.

The NDAA is the climax of the destructive police state, intended and implemented against the American people. Anyone who believes that this law exempts boot sucking government supporters is a fool beyond salvation.

There is a reason why the United States has the largest prison population in the world. Wait for the next contrived terror excuse and you will witness even more of your neighbors sitting behind locked doors for their resistance to another false flag operation.

What will you do when you seek a lawyer to represent you at your Star Chamber? If the system can rail road an accomplished attorney like Edgar Steele, your per se defense seems irrelevant, because the legal system is designed for the courts to strip you of all your natural rights. Learn this lesson now, and do your best to help Free Edgar Steele.

2012-01-07T02:15:00.025-05:00

The Secret History of Western Education: the Scientific Destruction of Minds

"Both the Republican National Committee and the White House resorted to stopping me from continuing this investigation in the direction Carroll Reece had personally asked me to go. That direction was to utilize this investigation to uncover the fact that this country had been the victim of a conspiracy. That was Mr. Reece's conviction. I eventually agreed to carry out that direction.

I explained to Mr. Reece that his own Counsel wouldn't go in that direction. He gave me permission to disregard our own Counsel and to set up an aspect of the investigation outside of our office — more or less secretly. The Republican National Committee got wind of what I was doing, and they did everything they could to stop me. They appealed to Counsel to stop me. Finally, they resorted to the White House.

[Their] objection was, as they put it, my devotion to what they called "anti-Semitism." That was a cooked-up idea. In other words, it wasn't true at all. But, any way, that's the way they expressed it. Then they made it stick. They had to have something in the way of a rationalization of their decision to do everything they could to stop completion of this investigation, given the direction that it was moving. That direction would have been exposure of this Carnegie Endowment story, and the Ford Foundation, and the Guggenheim, and the Rockefeller Foundation — all working in harmony toward the control of education in the United States."

- Norman Dodd, Chief Investigator in 1953 for the Reece Committee on Tax Exempt Foundations

Exclusive: Charlotte Iserbyt Reveals Skull & Bones and the Destruction of America

“Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.” - Joseph Stalin in an interview with H.G. Wells, 1934

Anything coming out of Washington is a total Marxist brainwash, and Marxism is the world of the future unless we stop it right now. - Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, former head of policy at the U.S. Department of Education under Ronald Reagan (approximately 33 minutes into the second video)

By Aaron Dykes, Infowars.com
January 6, 2012

DOWNLOAD PDF TRANSCRIPT: Charlotte Iserbyt: America’s Road to Ruin

Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt served as the head of policy at the Department of Education during the first administration of President Reagan, and has since become a treasure trove for a wealth of information on the secret agendas working against America -- not the least of which is the secret society Skull and Bones -- as well as a coordinated plan to undermine education, eradicate individualism and brainwash the masses to create a subservient population ruled by the super-elite.

Last year, Infowars researchers conducted many hours of exclusive interviews with Charlotte Iserbyt at her home in Maine, including a thorough examination of many archive documents never before seen by the public, forgotten books with important hidden history and other relics, and even the official membership lists from Yale’s Skull & Bones rosters -- which Iserbyt herself leaked to the public through author Antony Sutton. Infowars then released two video presentations, both of which have been among the most detailed, researched and significant that this website has released -- the first on the Secret History of Western Education, and the second, Secrets of Skull & Bones Revealed.

Charlotte Iserbyt: Secrets Of Skull & Bones Blown Wide Open

IN PARTS ON THEALEXJONES CHANNEL:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Video production by Alex Jones (PrisonPlanet.com and InfoWars.com) October 2011, Length 58:01

Charlotte & her team took the time and effort to release of a full transcript of the first of those interviews, here re-titled America’s Road to Ruin and available for free download via PDF (Download PDF). Together, with the exclusive PrisonPlanet.tv interview, it is the ultimate research companion to share with friends, family, colleagues and contacts so they can understand the truth about our world.

Now, Charlotte Iserbyt has re-issued and revised her seminal work, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, a book replete with a lifetime of study aimed at behind the scenes manipulation of America’s schools -- aimed at re-engineering the future of the United States. With the hope of putting that information in the hands of all patriotic Americans, Iserbyt has worked long hours from retirement to condense that information and re-print this essential work in a presentable format that anyone can read. Psychological techniques of domination. Secret mergers with the Soviet Union. A plan to dumb down the people and destroy the U.S. economy. It’s all documented, but it’s something you were never told in the classroom, on television, or in the political arena.

Transcript of Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt speaking on the Secret History of Western Education: the Scientific Destruction of Minds

DOWNLOAD PDF TRANSCRIPT HERE

IN PARTS ON THEALEXJONESCHANNEL: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Video production by Alex Jones (PrisonPlanet.com and InfoWars.com)
May 2011; Length 1:14:50.

The Secret History of Western Education: The Scientific Destruction of Minds

By Aaron Dykes, Infowars.com
January 6, 2012

Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt served as the head of policy at the Department of Education during the first administration of [President] Ronald Reagan. While working there she discovered a long-term strategic plan by the tax-free foundations to transform America from a nation of rugged individualists and problem solvers to a country of servile, brainwashed minions who simply regurgitate whatever they are told. We now present to you the 'Secret History of Western Education: the Scientific Destruction of Minds.'

Onscreen text: On November 25, 1910, Andrew Carnegie established a 10 million dollar endowment to “hasten the abolition of international war, the foulest blot upon our civilization.”

He selected a board of 28 trustees and directed them to use, “the widest discretion as to measures and policies they shall from time to time adopt,” in carrying out the purpose of the fund.

In the early 1950s, the Reece Commission led by Norman Dodd, uncovered minutes from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace dated 1910.

Charlotte Iserbyt [reading from Lines of Credit: Ropes of Bondage by Robert H. Goldsborough (Washington Dateline Publishers, Baltimore, Maryland, 1989)]:

The minutes reveal that in 1910 the Carnegie trustees asked themselves this question:

“Is there any way known to man more effective than war to so alter the life of an entire people?”

For a year the trustees sought an effective “peaceful” method to “alter the life of an entire people”; but ultimately, they concluded that war was the most effective way to change people.

Charlotte Iserbyt: The Miseducation of America [A MUST SEE VIDEO!]

Iserbyt: World War I — horrible [15 million deaths and 20 million wounded] — made every other war look like nothing!… They sent a confidential message to President Wilson insisting that the war not be ended too quickly. After the war the Carnegie Endowment trustees reasoned if they could get control of education in the United States, they would be able to prevent a return to the way of life as it had been prior to the war; and they recruited the Rockefeller Foundation to assist in such a monumental task.

Iserbyt: [reading quote from Bertrand Russell’s The Impact of Science on Society (Columbia U. Press, 1951)]:

“Education should aim at destroying free will so that pupils thus schooled will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished ... Influences of the home are obstructive; and in order to condition students, verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective ... It is for a future scientist to make these maxims precise and to discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.”

Onscreen clip of a 1930s era instructor lecturing teachers:

“Young people cannot be trusted to form their own opinion. It’s our job to tell them!”

I had never intended to become involved in the battle that all of us are involved in. I had no idea anything was wrong with the way the country was going as I was growing up. Even during my foreign service experience [I was basically unaware of the strange direction in which our nation was being directed] I found myself mysteriously — (I would say the good Lord works in wondrous ways) — being put in spots, around the world or in my country, where extraordinary things were taking place under the guise of “change.” We’ve all heard that so much; from the Obama administration, Bill Clinton — he was the first one to mention “change agents,” etc. For some reason I was plucked out. I found myself being sort of pushed.

My name is Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt. My maiden name is Thomson. My husband, who I want to give great credit to at this point, was Belgian, from the Flemish part of Belgium. I met him — I’ll explain that later — in Europe when I was working at the Embassy in Brussels. Without my late husband’s help throughout the last [40] years, certainly when we came back to Maine [in 1970], my work never would have happened . . . He had been highly educated in Europe and he understood the whole plan! In fact, about five years after we had come back to the United States someone gave me Gary Allen’s book None Dare Call It Conspiracy. I was on the school board [in Camden, Maine] and this lady called me. She loved the work I was doing on the school board

Read Full TRANSCRIPT in PDF HERE.

ORIGINAL, UNABRIDGED VERSION FREE PDF DOWNLOAD AT:
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/

AND THOUSANDS OF OTHER IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS IN FREE PDF AT:
http://americandeception.com/

REVISED & REPRINTED: THE DELIBERATE DUMBING DOWN OF AMERICA

Get Your Copy at Infowars.com

The revised and abridged edition of the deliberate dumbing down of america is the updated and smaller version of Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt’s original, now out of print, masterpiece about the American education system. This revised and abridged edition is Internet interactive and allows you to access the abridged material online. Most importantly, it includes a new “Update” chapter which covers the long-planned institutionalization of three new activities that have occurred since the publication of the original book in 1999.

Author Charlotte Iserbyt is the ultimate whistle blower. As former Senior Policy Advisor in the U.S. Department of Education, she blew the whistle in the `80s on government activities withheld from the public. Her inside knowledge will help you protect your children from controversial educational methods and programs.

This book is organized as a chronological history of the past 100+ years of education reform. Each chapter takes a period of history and recounts the significant events, including important geopolitical and societal contextual information. Citations from government plans, policy documents, and key writings by leading reformers record the rise of the modern education reform movement. Americans of all ages will welcome this riveting expose of what really happened to what was once the finest education system in the world.

The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America: Revised and Abridged Edition exposes how American social engineers have systematically gone about destroying the intellect of millions of American children for the purpose of leading the American people into a socialist world government controlled by behavioral and social scientists. It documents the gradual decline of our once academically successful education system into one devoted to training compliant children to be used by government and industry. The successful implementation of this fascist-socialist philosophy of education will spell the end of the American dream of individual freedom and opportunity.

This powerful book will change forever the way you look at your child’s education.

Norman Dodd and the Reece Commission: Tax-exempt Foundations Changed History and the U.S. Education System (Excerpt)

Canada Free Press
December 16, 2010

Norman Dodd (June 29, 1899 - January 1987) was a banker/bank manager, financial advisor, and chief investigator in 1953 for U.S. Congressman B. Carroll Reece's Special Committee on Tax Exempt Foundations (commonly referred to as the Reece Committee).

Dodd learned that the major tax-exempt foundations (Carnegie Endowment, Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others) had been operating since at least 1945 to promote an agenda that has little to do with charity, good works or philanthropy, but with controlling the education system in the United States and altering the teaching of American History and building their own stable of historians.

A group of twenty historians ultimately became the nucleus of the American Historical Association, receiving a grant of $400,000 from the Carnegie Endowment in the late 1920’s which provided funding for revisionist research that produced a 7 volume study of our history, presented in a manner consistent with the way the Endowment wished it to be taught here in the future. This policy diverted away from support of the “out dated” and “no longer practical” principles and “self evident truths” embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and insinuated instead one of “collectivism” (communism), the so called wave of the future, and how this country should be, as they wished to have it be.

The real objectives include the creation of a world-wide collectivist state which is to be ruled from behind the scenes by the same elite who control the foundations. His allegations stem from reviewing the minutes of the Carnegie Institute and their explicitly stated plans listed therein. [Other Sources: Wikipedia and Reality Zone]

Google Video of 1982 Interview of Norman Dodd by G. Edward Griffin
Transcript of 1982 Interview of Norman Dodd by G. Edward Griffin

"Alan Gaither was, at that time, President of the Ford Foundation. Mr. Gaither had sent for me when I found it convenient to be in New York, asked me to call upon him at his office, which I did. On arrival, after a few amenities, Mr. Gaither said, 'Mr. Dodd, we have asked you to come up here today because we thought that, possibly, off the record, you would tell us why the Congress is interested in the activities of foundations such as ourselves.' Before I could think of how I would reply to that statement, Mr. Gaither then went on to say, 'Mr. Dodd, all of us who have a hand in the making of policies here, have had experience operating under directives, the substance of which is, that we use our grant-making power so as to alter life in the United States that it can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union'." - Norman Dodd

Is there a connection between federal education aid and the inflation rate in higher education? Increased availability of student loans should theoretically make college more affordable, but research has proven government lending to be grossly counterproductive. Though these programs attempt to make school more accessible to people of low income, they have defeated their intended purpose by driving tuition costs up exponentially. Initially, banks refused to offer loans to college students, because young adults typically lack any substantial assets or collateral. The abnormal nature of this market eventually led to government involvement in funding of higher education, but with many unintended consequences. Universities race to absorb the greatest portion of federal funding by raising tuition costs. This research builds upon the Bennett Hypothesis, an idea circulated in the 1980s by U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett. Many factors play a role in the convoluted issue of spiked tuition costs, but a strong case can be made for the Bennett Hypothesis. - Federal funding directs tuition, The Daily Evergreen, September 28, 2010

The Triumph of Socialism

By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., LewRockwell.com
November 12, 2009

Do you think ideas don't matter, that what people believe about themselves and their world has no real consequence? If so, the following will not bug you in the slightest.

A new BBC poll finds that only 11 percent of people questioned around the world — and 29,000 people were asked their opinions — think that free-market capitalism is a good thing. The rest believe in more government regulation.

Only a small percentage of the world's population believes that capitalism works well and that more regulation will reduce efficiency. One quarter of those asked said that capitalism is "fatally flawed." In France, 43% believe this. In Mexico, it is 38%.

A majority believes that government should rob the rich to give money to poor countries. In only one country, Turkey, did a majority say that less government is better.

It gets even worse. While most Europeans and Americans think it was a good thing for the Soviet Union to disintegrate, people in India, Indonesia, Ukraine, Pakistan, Russia, and Egypt mostly think it was a bad thing. Yes, you read that right: millions freed from socialist slavery — bad thing.

That news must lift the heart of every would-be despot the world over. And it comes as something of a shock twenty years after the collapse of socialism in Russia and Eastern Europe revealed what this system had created: backward societies with citizens who lived short and miserable lives.

Then there is the China case, a country rescued from bloody barbarism under communism and transformed into a modern and prosperous country by capitalism.

Capitalism is tailored to individual initiative rather than groupthink or community initiative. Nearly all inventions that have furthered the capitalistic enterprise and blessed humanity in the process have been the result of individual initiative rather than committee, group or government activity (compare previous centuries to the accelerated rate of inventions since America gained its independence in 1776). - Dr. David Noebel, The Socialization of America, The August Review, March 27, 2009

What can we learn? Far from not having learned anything, people have largely forgotten the experience and have developed a love for the ancient fairy tale that all things can be fixed through collectivism and central planning.

As to those who would despair at this poll, consider that it might have been much worse were it not for the efforts of a relative handful of intellectuals who have fought against socialist theory for more than a century. It might have been 99% in support of socialist tyranny. So there is no sense in saying that these intellectual efforts are wasted.

Ideas also have a life of their own. They can lie in wait for decades or centuries and then one day, the whole of history turns on a dime. Especially these days, no effort goes to waste. Publications and essays, or any form of education, is immortalized, ready for the taking by a desperate world.

As for the opinion poll, we have no idea just how intensely these views are held or even what they mean. What, for example, is capitalism? Do people even know? Michael Moore doesn't know, else he wouldn't be calling bailouts for elite, Fed-connected financial firms a form of capitalism. Many other people reduce the term capitalism to "the system of economics in the United States." It is no more complicated than that. This is despite the reality that the United States has a comprehensive planning apparatus in place that is directly responsible for all our current economic troubles.

Now, let's take this further. Among the many people around the world who do not like the US empire, many believe they don't like capitalism either. If the US economy drags the world down into recession, that is a prime example of capitalism's failure. Even more preposterous, if you didn't like George W. Bush, his ways, and his cronies, and Obama is something of a relief, then you don't like capitalism and you do like socialism.

Another point of view misunderstands the idea of capitalism itself. It is not about creating economic structures that benefit capital at the expense of labor or culture or religion. It is about a system that protects the rights of everyone and serves the common good. Capitalism is just the name that happened to be identified with this system. If you want to call freedom a banana, fine, what matters is not words but ideas.

I do know that none of these messed-up definitions of capitalism follow. You know this too. But for the world at large, serious ideological analytics are not the animating force of daily life. Many people attach themselves to vague slogans.

Further, as Rothbard has forcefully argued, free-market capitalism serves no more than a symbolic purpose for the Republican Party and for conservatives. Economic liberty is the utopia that they keep promising to bring us, pending the higher priority of blowing up foreign peoples, jailing political dissidents, crushing the left wing on campus, and routing the Democrats.

Once all of this is done, they say, then they will get to the instituting of a free-market economic system. Of course, that day never arrives, and it is not supposed to. Capitalism serves the Republicans the way Communism served Stalin: a symbolic distraction to keep you hoping, voting, and coughing up money.

All of which leaves true capitalism — a product of the voluntary society and the sum total of all the exchanges and cooperative acts of people all over the world — with few actual intellectual defenders. They are growing, but the educational work we need to do is daunting, and we are facing the most powerful forces in the world.

There is nothing new in this. In the history of the world, freedom is the exception, not the rule. It must be fought for anew in every generation. Its enemies are everywhere, but the leading enemy is ignorance. For this reason, the main weapon we have at our disposal is education.

One task assigned to the investigators of the 1953 Reese Commission, was "to educate them as to the effect on the country, as a whole, of the activities of large, endowed foundations over the then past forty years. That affect was to orient our educational system away from support of the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence, and implemented in the Constitution; and to educate them over to the idea that the task now was to effect an orientation of education away from these briefly stated principles and self-evident truths. And, that’s what had been the effect of the wealth which constituted the endowments of those foundations — foundations that had been in existence over the largest portion of the span of fifty years — and holding them responsible for this change. What we were able to bring forward was — what we had uncovered was — the determination of these large endowed foundations, through their trustees, actually to get control over the content of American education." - Norman Dodd, 1982 Interview by G. Edward Griffin

Education includes explaining that socialism is an unworkable idea. There is nothing better than Ludwig von Mises's 1922 book Socialism, a comprehensive presentation of the fallacy of the socialist idea. Another essential work is the Black Book of Communism. Here we have a wake-up call that shows that the dream of socialism is actually a bloody nightmare.

Then there is the issue of the positive case for capitalism. One can do no better than Mises's own Human Action, which is not likely to ever be surpassed as a treatise on the free economy. True, it is not for everyone. And that's fine. There are many primers out there too.

The fashion for socialism and the opposition to capitalism should alarm every lover of freedom the world over. We have our jobs cut out for us, but with numbers this bad, it is not difficult to make a difference. Every blow you can land for free markets helps protect freedom from its enemies.