50 Statistics About the U.S. Economy That Are Almost Too Crazy to Believe

EndoftheAmericanDream.com
June 7, 2010

Most Americans know that the U.S. economy is in bad shape, but what most Americans don't know is how truly desperate the financial situation of the United States really is. The truth is that what we are experiencing is not simply a "downturn" or a "recession."

What we are witnessing is the beginning of the end for the greatest economic machine that the world has ever seen. Our greed and our debt are literally eating our economy alive. Total government, corporate and personal debt has now reached 360 percent of GDP, which is far higher than it ever reached during the Great Depression era. We have nearly totally dismantled our once colossal manufacturing base, we have shipped millions upon millions of middle class jobs overseas, we have lived far beyond our means for decades, and we have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world.

A great day of financial reckoning is fast approaching, and the vast majority of Americans are totally oblivious.

But the truth is that you cannot defy the financial laws of the universe forever. What goes up must come down. The borrower is the servant of the lender. Cutting corners always catches up with you in the end.

Sometimes it takes cold, hard numbers for many of us to fully realize the situation that we are facing.

So, the following are 50 very revealing statistics about the U.S. economy that are almost too crazy to believe....

#50) In 2010 the U.S. government is projected to issue almost as much new debt as the rest of the governments of the world combined.

#49) It is being projected that the U.S. government will have a budget deficit of approximately 1.6 trillion dollars in 2010.

#48) If you went out and spent one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend a trillion dollars.

#47) In fact, if you spent one million dollars every single day since the birth of Christ, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now.

#46) Total U.S. government debt is now up to 90 percent of gross domestic product.

#45) Total credit market debt in the United States, including government, corporate and personal debt, has reached 360 percent of GDP.

#44) U.S. corporate income tax receipts were down 55% (to $138 billion) for the year ending September 30th, 2009.

#43) There are now 8 counties in the state of California that have unemployment rates of over 20 percent.

#42) In the area around Sacramento, California there is one closed business for every six that are still open.

#41) In February, there were 5.5 unemployed Americans for every job opening.

#40) According to a Pew Research Center study, approximately 37% of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 have either been unemployed or underemployed at some point during the recession.

#39) More than 40% of those employed in the United States are now working in low-wage service jobs.

#38) According to one new survey, 24% of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.

#37) Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008. Not only that, more Americans filed for bankruptcy in March 2010 than during any month since U.S. bankruptcy law was tightened in October 2005.

#36) Mortgage purchase applications in the United States are down nearly 40 percent from a month ago to their lowest level since April of 1997.

#35) RealtyTrac has announced that foreclosure filings in the U.S. established an all time record for the second consecutive year in 2009.

#34) According to RealtyTrac, foreclosure filings were reported on 367,056 properties in March 2010, an increase of nearly 19 percent from February, an increase of nearly 8 percent from March 2009 and the highest monthly total since RealtyTrac began issuing its report in January 2005.

#33) In Pinellas and Pasco counties, which include St. Petersburg, Florida and the suburbs to the north, there are 34,000 open foreclosure cases. Ten years ago, there were only about 4,000.

#32) In California's Central Valley, 1 out of every 16 homes is in some phase of foreclosure.

#31) The Mortgage Bankers Association recently announced that more than 10 percent of all U.S. homeowners with a mortgage had missed at least one payment during the January to March time period. That was a record high and up from 9.1 percent a year ago.

#30) U.S. banks repossessed nearly 258,000 homes nationwide in the first quarter of 2010, a 35 percent jump from the first quarter of 2009.

#29) For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.

#28) More than 24% of all homes with mortgages in the United States were underwater as of the end of 2009.

#27) U.S. commercial property values are down approximately 40 percent since 2007 and currently 18 percent of all office space in the United States is sitting vacant.

#26) Defaults on apartment building mortgages held by U.S. banks climbed to a record 4.6 percent in the first quarter of 2010. That was almost twice the level of a year earlier.

#25) In 2009, U.S. banks posted their sharpest decline in private lending since 1942.

#24) New York state has delayed paying bills totalling $2.5 billion as a short-term way of staying solvent but officials are warning that its cash crunch could soon get even worse.

#23) To make up for a projected 2010 budget shortfall of $280 million, Detroit issued $250 million of 20-year municipal notes in March. The bond issuance followed on the heels of a warning from Detroit officials that if its financial state didn't improve, it could be forced to declare bankruptcy.

#22) The National League of Cities says that municipal governments will probably come up between $56 billion and $83 billion short between now and 2012.

#21) Half a dozen cash-poor U.S. states have announced that they are delaying their tax refund checks.

#20) Two university professors recently calculated that the combined unfunded pension liability for all 50 U.S. states is 3.2 trillion dollars.

#19) According to EconomicPolicyJournal.com, 32 U.S. states have already run out of funds to make unemployment benefit payments and so the federal government has been supplying these states with funds so that they can make their payments to the unemployed.

#18) This most recession has erased 8 million private sector jobs in the United States.

#17) Paychecks from private business shrank to their smallest share of personal income in U.S. history during the first quarter of 2010.

#16) U.S. government-provided benefits (including Social Security, unemployment insurance, food stamps and other programs) rose to a record high during the first three months of 2010.

#15) 39.68 million Americans are now on food stamps, which represents a new all-time record. But things look like they are going to get even worse. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is forecasting that enrollment in the food stamp program will exceed 43 million Americans in 2011.

#14) Phoenix, Arizona features an astounding annual car theft rate of 57,000 vehicles and has become the new "Car Theft Capital of the World".

#13) U.S. law enforcement authorities claim that there are now over 1 million members of criminal gangs inside the country. These 1 million gang members are responsible for up to 80% of the crimes committed in the United States each year.

#12) The U.S. health care system was already facing a shortage of approximately 150,000 doctors in the next decade or so, but thanks to the health care "reform" bill passed by Congress, that number could swell by several hundred thousand more.

#11) According to an analysis by the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation the health care "reform" bill will generate $409.2 billion in additional taxes on the American people by 2019.

#10) The Dow Jones Industrial Average just experienced the worst May it has seen since 1940.

#9) In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.

#8) Approximately 40% of all retail spending currently comes from the 20% of American households that have the highest incomes.

#7) According to economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, two-thirds of income increases in the U.S. between 2002 and 2007 went to the wealthiest 1% of all Americans.

#6) The bottom 40 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.

#5) If you only make the minimum payment each and every time, a $6,000 credit card bill can end up costing you over $30,000 (depending on the interest rate).

#4) According to a new report based on U.S. Census Bureau data, only 26 percent of American teens between the ages of 16 and 19 had jobs in late 2009 which represents a record low since statistics began to be kept back in 1948.

#3) According to a National Foundation for Credit Counseling survey, only 58% of those in "Generation Y" pay their monthly bills on time.

#2) During the first quarter of 2010, the total number of loans that are at least three months past due in the United States increased for the 16th consecutive quarter.

#1) According to the Tax Foundation’s Microsimulation Model, to erase the 2010 U.S. budget deficit, the U.S. Congress would have to multiply each tax rate by 2.4. Thus, the 10 percent rate would be 24 percent, the 15 percent rate would be 36 percent, and the 35 percent rate would have to be 85 percent.

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Abolish the Federal Department of Education

Lon Hosford's Blog
May 26, 2010

How can Congress both improve American education and reduce the Federal budget? Eliminate the Federal Department of Education.

In 1976 President Jimmy Carter signed the Federal Department of Education into law consolidating legislation back to Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 Title I. It passed Congress by a narrow vote. The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers lobbied Congress heavily for the legislation. Carter’s promise to create the Department made him the first candidate ever endorsed by the NEA.

Congress stopped President Ronald Reagan’s attempt to close the Department of Education in 1982. Alarmist reports about American education’s risk of poor results thwarted his attempt. Has the Department of Education mitigated those risks in 30 years?

The Department of Education’s main function is redistributing tax money to K-12 schools and to higher education. Every President since Reagan has expanded this function. In 2009 the Department will spend $667 for every household for a total of $78 billion.

What does it do with the money? It pays 4,100 Federal worker’s salaries plus the cost of their offices. They enforce 2,050 pages of regulations to distribute what is left over.

Has K-12 school performance improved? Although we have increased Federal subsidies every year since 1965, math and reading scores are flat lined. The National Assessment of Educational Progress scores for students near high school graduation reveal a negligible increase in math and imperceptible increase in reading.

Why is college tuition so high? Federal subsidies to higher education have artificially inflated tuition costs and created an oversupply of students not serious about attending college. We have a 56 percent graduation rate for four year colleges and billions of dollars in student loan defaults. That is an F grade.

There are many dubious educational earmarks. These appear to provide elected officials ribbon cutting opportunities for campaign reelection press coverage. Consider the $1,915,934 City University of New York Charlie Rangel Center for Public Service.

Other questionable educational earmarks include sports and leisure programs. College students spend more hours each day for these functions than hours on their education.

What happens when we abolish the Federal Department of Education? K-12 autonomy is returned to states, local communities and parents where they can innovate and improve performance. Great ideas like school choice can flourish. Restrictive Federal administrative overhead ends.

Colleges will have to drop bloated tuition costs to compete for a smaller pool of serious students. The cheaper tuition is then paid by more efficient funding sources such as personal savings, banks and charitable organizations.

The Federal budget deficit is decreased by $78 billion and we can apply it to reducing the national debt. Earmarks and the concomitant corruption are gone.

The Federal Department of Education is an expensive monopolistic middleman providing no benefit to education. Instead it is fraught with fraud, bloats education costs and adds layers of overhead. It creates unconstitutional regulations, failed results and perpetuates its own existence through failure. It is time to abolish the Federal Department of Education.

Personal Freedom, Where's the Line?

By GARY
Originally Published on April 9, 2004

Our Founding Fathers would not recognize this country as the one they founded. The Federal government is out of control, literally; it no longer answers to the States or the People. A powerful Federal government was a primary fear of the Founding Fathers, and the American Constitution was written to specifically limit the authority of the Federal government over the States and the People. The Founding Fathers KNEW that a powerful Federal government would be contrary to the vision of freedom and individual rights they had for America. Of course, they had little difficulty in convincing the colonial populace of the threat to individuals posed by an out of control government. Not so today.

Americans take freedom for granted and are blind to the basic principles and responsibilities of being free. We have already given up a large portion of the freedoms the Founding Fathers secured for us, and we continue to give up more on a daily basis. We have gone from punishing those who violate their responsibilities in a free society to imposing necessity and constraint upon everyone in a ludicrous attempt to "ensure" security for all.

We trade away our personal responsibilities and freedoms for false security without a moment's hesitation. We are stupefied by fear of our neighbors and any possibility they may be doing something we don't understand or may not agree with. We all want to be free but don't want our neighbors to be so. We recoil in shock and disgust at terrorist activity on our soil, as we should, but then allow the Federal government to take away more rights and freedoms without blinking an eye.

The loss of rights and freedoms should generate within the People a greater amount of shock and disgust than any terrorist attack. Alas, it does not, and America happily gives up the ideals and principles which set us aside from every other nation on Earth ...

Our security infrastructure is concerned only with security; with enforcing and imposing necessity and constraint upon choice and action. And we willingly let them do it. In fact, as a democracy, we impose it upon ourselves because we have come to believe that security is more desireable than freedom.

More and more regulations, fewer and fewer freedoms. When does it stop? When are there too many regulations and we are no longer free? Is there a number? Is there a limit? Should the government have the power to even regulate individual actions at all? To what extent? If you cannot answer these questions, we are already lost. If you do not understand how and why the Constitution was written as it was, there is little hope left and we have become, as Ben Franklin described, deserving of neither freedom nor security.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

The following is the full list of Departments in the Federal Register, many which exist to regulate and restrict the liberties, freedoms and rights of the States and the People.

Advisory Council on Historic Preservation
Agency for International Development
Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board
Arctic Research Commission
Broadcasting Board of Governors
Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
Commission of Fine Arts
Commission on Civil Rights
Committee for Purchase from People Who Are Blind or Severely Disabled
Committee for the Implementation of Textile Agreements
Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Consumer Product Safety Commission
Corporation for National and Community Service
Council on Environmental Quality
Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board
Delaware River Basin Commission
Denali Commission
Department of Agriculture
Department of Commerce
Department of Defense
Department of Education
Department of Energy
Department of Energy National Laboratories
Department of Health and Human Services
Department of Homeland Security
Department of Housing and Urban Development
Department of the Interior
Department of Justice
Department of Labor
Department of State
Department of Peace
Department of the Treasury
Department of Transportation
Department of War
Department of Veterans Affairs
Election Assistance Commission
Environmental Protection Agency
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Executive Office of the President
Farm Credit Administration
Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board
Federal Communications Commission
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
Federal Election Commission
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
Federal Housing Authority
Federal Housing Finance Agency
Federal Housing Finance Board
Federal Labor Relations Authority
Federal Maritime Commission
Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission
Federal Register
Federal Reserve System [Listed in the Register Even Though It is a Private Corporation]
Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board
Federal Trade Commission
Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission
Foreign Claims Settlement Commission
General Services Administration
Government Accountability Office
Inter-American Foundation Board Meeting
Internal Revenue Service
International Trade Commission
Judicial Conference of the United States
Legal Services Corporation
Library of Congress
Marine Mammal Commission
Merit Systems Protection Board
Millennium Challenge Corporation
Mississippi River Commission
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
National Archives and Records Administration
National Council on Disability
National Credit Union Administration
National Crime Prevention and Privacy Compact Council
National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities
National Indian Gaming Commission
National Labor Relations Board
National Mediation Board
National Science Foundation
National Transportation Safety Board
Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission
Office of Government Ethics
Office of Management and Budget
Office of National Drug Control Policy
Office of Personnel Management
Office of Science and Technology Policy
Office of Special Counsel
Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Office of the United States Trade Representative
Overseas Private Investment Corporation
Pacific Northwest Electric Power and Conservation Planning Council
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation
Postal Regulatory Commission
Postal Service
Railroad Retirement Board
Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board
Securities and Exchange Commission
Small Business Administration
Social Security Administration
Susquehanna River Basin Commission
Tennessee Valley Authority
The Broadcasting Board of Governors
U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission
United States Institute of Peace
United States International Trade Commission
United States Sentencing Commission

Well, as the old saying goes, "Careful what you wish for, you just might get it." You want more security? Go ahead, ask for it. Give up more rights and freedoms. Give away your responsibilities to a free society; give away the free society itself. It's almost gone now: Congress didn't ask if the Homeland Security Act was okay with America; they simply imposed it upon us.

The Government is so out of control that they see little reason to ask The People what they actually want. Let them go on. You may get a little more security, but you'll never be completely secure. And you won't be free, either. It's a trade-off, as Ben Franklin pointed out. It's absolutely disgusting to me because history is so full of stories about courageous people willing to die, to give up all security, to live free. And we are simply giving freedom away.

America's Last War

Editor's Note: While Rabbi Shifren addresses the decline of morality in America and the attack on Christianity, he fails to address the negative influence of Zionism on world peace.

Why the Saying "Merry Christmas" is Now Under Attack

By Rabbi Nachum Shifren, NewsWithViews.com
December 9, 2009

Here is a Pearl Harbor story you WON'T hear.

I am a teacher, as some of you might know, for 22 years now in the L.A. United School District. It was one particular Dec. 7, several years ago, that I received the biggest wake up call of my life, changing forever my relationship with America and giving me the understanding of her future battle, her Last War.

I had become sensitive, by now, to small aberrations in our "multiculturalism" policies that, even by L.A. standards, were off the charts. But today's announcements through the school P.A. system were amiss. The eight o'clock bell mentioned nothing about this profoundly important day in our nation's history. Business as usual. Nine o'clock rolled around, I thought surely that something would be mentioned. Nothing. Ten o'clock, nothing. Before the noon lunch break, I began to become agitated, and walked into the principal's office.

"Miss, I was wondering why you or the administration hadn't said anything about Pearl Harbor day," I started off, cautious optimism mixed with controlled outrage.

"I'm afraid that we won't be making such an announcement," she said matter-of-factly.

"And the reason?" I persisted, by now completely uninterested in professional protocols, like keeping my job.

"You don't seem to understand, Rabbi. We are a multicultural school district. We have many student here that are of Japanese ancestry. Such a show of overt patriotism might make them uncomfortable. Apparently, this delicate matter of cultural sensitivity on your part needs some attention."

I walked out wondering what world I was living in. But it gets better (or sadly, more tragic).

After lunch, there was a P.A. announcement. After the banal ding-dong, signaling the message, we heard the following:

"In order to show our patriotism and love for diversity and "multiculturalism," the L.A. High student council is proud to announce the Gay and Lesbian dance at noon in the cafeteria..."

The students didn't bat an eyelash. I stared at each of them, waiting to see if someone's demeanor would somehow be caught off guard and made sour by the hideous show of national perversity and lack of any sense of shame. No, these kids were not going to say anything. They didn't notice anything remiss, just another announcement.

My friends, from that day on, I have been at war with multiculturalism and "diversity." I want you to know that we are losing that war. There is no teacher in American public schools today that can say that we haven't been compromised by a foreign culture, with its foot in our collective door, letting in concepts and teachings that will ultimately destroy this country.

So when my dear friend, Pastor Jim Vineyard of Oklahoma City, warned me about the latest insanity in Kentucky, where "Merry Christmas" has suddenly become an "issue," I needed to write you.

I felt compelled to tell you that the only way we can defeat this evil is to confront it head on! Act as though your home was under attack by haters and bigots, and prepare to fight America's LAST WAR. This is a war we will not win with bullets or Marines. That's why it will be so difficult, because the enemy is camouflaged in many deceptive guises.

For many young people reading these words for the first time, it will come as a shock to you that you have never heard of the plan that our enemies have to destroy you. Your teachers have been complicit in hiding from you the very nature of the threat that hovers over the survivability of your dear ones and community. Your dumbed-down textbooks contain not one ounce of truth about the stealth and patience of those that stalk us, their absolute surety and hardened resolve to enslave us and transform the America we have known and love. Your very schools have been transformed into breeding camps, paving the way for the future shock troops of the alien culture that will supplant you.

This is right out of the books written by Marx, Lenin and those who have threatened us for generations. Look it up for yourself! Your teachers will not help you. They are in bed with those that want to control your thoughts and energies, channeling them into the future utopia sung about and praised on so many college campuses during my youth in the 60's.

Marxism 101: To destroy the fabric of a nation, like the United States, cannot be done through war. The U.S. is too strong to defeat militarily. In order to render it pacified, one must destroy it from within, through its institutions and moral belief systems. Turning neighbor against neighbor, creating political and labor unrest, inciting race against race, and CAUSING THE PEOPLE TO START TO DOUBT THEIR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS, CAST ASPERSIONS UPON THEIR SPIRITUAL LEADERS AND DOCTRINES, CREATING SOCIETAL ANARCHY THROUGH A SYSTEM OF MORAL RELATIVITY, WHERE ALL SOCIETAL RELIGIOUS FOUNDATIONS COME UNDER QUESTION--these are at the root of our present moral decay.

My dear friend, this is why saying "Merry Christmas" is now under attack! This is the first shot over the bow in a war, America's LAST WAR, that you will be forced to fight.

Don't like the idea of fighting? Get used to it! You (we) have dawdled too long. The night is spent, the dawn is near, and America must wake up to the new slave masters that are at the door. Someone once said that freedom is only won through the shedding of blood from time to time. I think this is true. But we can avoid it from being OUR blood only if we act now.

Witness:

• In San Diego, Calif., Muslim taxi drivers take up an entire street downtown with their prayer mats rolled out on the sidewalk. NO ONE DARE BOTHER THEM; THEY WALK AROUND THEM DURING PRAYER! Ask yourself: Would Christians blocking the path of shoppers and businesses be accorded the same niceties?


• In Dearborn, Mich., the residents must suffer the blaring from the Muslim minarets FIVE TIMES A DAY, calling for prayer in Allah's name. HERE! NOW! IN AMERICA, NOT AFGHANISTAN!! Ask yourself: What would the ACLU do if Christians were to affirm their prayer in such a brazen, incorrigible way?! You already know the answer.


• Harvard University was forced to spend PUBLIC FUNDS FOR MUSLIM FOOT BATHS so practitioners of that "peaceful" religion would feel "inclusive" during their prayer.
  Ask yourself the questions: If public funds were to provide Christians with beads, crosses, wafers, bibles--what would the local leftist politicians do?


• Many communities are under pressure in the U.S. to institute Sharia law (where Muslims are only held accountable according to the Koran). In Britain, the head of the Anglican church has already sanctioned such a concept!! Yet, to teach about the Holocaust has been outlawed in such communities, lest rioting and social conflict occur.

Ask yourself: If Christians were to declare that they wanted to be judged according to biblical precepts, who would be the first to be called a racist bigot????

• Kansas City airport (last time we checked, it was city property, accountable to taxpayers) has purchased foot washing basins for Muslim prayer. As has the universities of Boston, Washington, and Temple. Ask yourself: What if Christian groups were to petition such a singular use of government funds, how fast would the first law suit come?


• Carver Elementary School (San Diego, Ca.) has a district mandated 15-minute prayer period for Muslim kids. What? How, you'll ask? Isn't there a separation of church and state? Ah, of course, if you're a CHRISTIAN!

You get the picture. Here's the difficult part. You work hard, raise your kids to believe in G-d, you pay your taxes and pledge your support for America. To recoup from a blistering week, you relax on the weekend, go to church, be with your kids... another week has passed. What's missing from this picture? While you are either too busy to notice, or simply exhausted and have no energy, there are people out there who HATE YOU, 24-7, AND ARE WORKING AROUND THE CLOCK, QUIETLY, TO DESTROY YOUR WAY OF LIFE. Even more difficult, is that there is an increasing awareness among all of us, that our politicians ARE IN BED WITH THESE VERY GROUPS!!

Think about it!! How could any red-blooded American promote or enable Sharia law? How could any of our neighbors stab us in the back like this? Answer: corruption combined with political correctness. We are reaping the bitter harvest of those insane Vietnam years of dislocation and hammering away at America's values. Those 60's hippies are now on the boards of education and in our halls of Congress. The decay of our nation is not in some cave in Afghanistan, but right here in our communities and college campuses.

I was driving around the neighborhood one day recently when I had to pull over to the curb to write something down. By chance, I happened to be right next to a religious school, and could audibly make out a song coming from the classroom whose open door faced the street. I was struck as if by a trance, my whole essence became frozen for one moment as I heard the children sing:

"Oh beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain. For purple mountains' majesty, above the fruited plane. America... America... G-d shed His grace on thee. And crown Thy good, with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea."

I awoke from my trance, wiped away the tears, and knew the last time I heard that song was 50 years ago, as a lad in the 2nd grade!!

We just don't hear such overt manifestations of patriotism in our schools. But we hear plenty about Gay rights, lots of Christian bashing, and guilt trips laid on us by Muslim agitators and America haters. No limit to how we're destroying the world (never mind how our young soldiers are trying to save the world in some desolate hole where life isn't worth a plug nickel). We never get enough about how the Southwest U.S. is actually Mexico, and how the "reconquista" (the Hispanic re-conquering of America) will throw us back to Europe where we belong.

No, this LAST WAR that we face shall start right here. RIGHT NOW. WITH YOU AND ME!! No more Mr. Nice Guy. There will be a massive call by your local religious leaders to stand up and be counted. DO IT! Turn off the TV, put down the beer, go off-line for a few minutes on behalf of the country that has given you your FREEDOM AND INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY. GO AND PROTEST THE TAKING AWAY OF THE ONLY REASON FOR THE GOODNESS AND MIRACLE OF THE COUNTRY -- THE CREATOR OF HEAVEN AND EARTH!

Treat each example of "Happy Holidays" as a direct hit by haters of you and your family. Each time you hear this, boycott the station, whether radio or TV! Let them know who is the boss. How is it that Dr. Laura's TV debut was boycotted by ONE MILLION GAYS AND LESBIANS WHO THREATENED PALMOLIVE COMPANY. How is it that they succeeded in censoring one of the America's top personalities from expressing her constitutionally sanctioned right of free speech. Yet we are reconciled with politicians who bow to our enemies and are complicit in destroying the sanctity of Christmas? The answer: we let them do it.

My dear Americans, it's time to change the script. We must:

1. Insist, implore, advocate, and act to re-institute the teaching of the 10 commandments in our schools.
2. Support candidates that oppose Sharia law.
3. Monitor books and curricula for anti-christian or anti-Western culture biases while downplaying communism, Islam, and the Gay/Lesbian lifestyle.
4. Declare a war to the death on "multiculturalism" (this is nothing but propaganda and inculcating our youth to hate America, while yielding to the forces of Islam and radical activists whose target is middle class America and its values).
5. Promote, honor, sanctify and support marriage.
6. INSTITUTE AN OPEN, UNABASHED CAMPAIGN TO HAVE MORE CHILDREN, BRINGING THEM UP WITH PRIDE IN AMERICA, ITS VALUES AND RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.

There was once a dark moment in our history at Valley Forge. Under siege, General Washington was wont to pray on his knees in full sight of the troops. Let us contemplate his words so long ago:

"The honor and safety of our bleeding country, and every other motive that can influence the brave and heroic spirit, call loudly upon us to acquit ourselves with spirit. In short, we must now determine to be enslaved or free. If we make freedom our choice, we must obtain it by the blessings of Heaven on our united and vigorous efforts."

© 2009 Nachum Shifren - All Rights Reserved

Rabbi Shifren is a southern California native. He graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a degree in Spanish and German literature. He has been a language teacher in L.A. City schools since 1992. He is also fluent in Hebrew.

Rabbi Shifren received his ordination in Jerusalem in 1990 and is a talmudic scholar. Having lived in Israel for nearly a decade, he has been an observer and commentator of developments in Israel, the Israeli and foreign press, and the recent rise of Islamic Jihad.

He is also the dirctor of "surf and soul" surfcamp, where teens learn self-discipline, proper attitude, and physical fitness. A Malibu surfer since 1962, he is known universally as the surfing rabbi. Through his seminars and classes, he has taught thousand the challenge and thrill of wave riding and the postive aspects of the surfing life style.

Rabbi Shifren has declared his candidacy for the Calif. State Senate in 2010 and is the only candidate to openly pledge to oppose the advent of Sharia law in the United States. He is a tireless supporter of individual freedoms and preserving the distinctive greatness of America, her language and culture. Known for his no-nonsense approach to education and prison reform, Rabbi Shifren is in his own class of patriotism and staunch conservative values.

Rev. Jesse Lee Petersen said: "If we had 10 more teachers like Rabbi Shifren, we could turn America around tomorrow."

E-Mail: rabbi.shifren@gmail.com

Website: http://www.rabbiforsenate.com/

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The British Are Coming!

Britain: A Glimpse of America's Future?

By Dale Hurd, CBN News
November 18, 2009

Former President Ronald Reagan said the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'

Yet the size of America's government is exploding; and if you want to see where big government will lead the U.S., take a look at Britain.

European Makeover

Wouldn't it be great if America was more like Europe? You might not think so, but someone in Washington, D.C. apparently does. Because a lot of the legislation going through Congress, if passed, could make America look a lot more like a European nation.

Such a scenario would include government-run health care, cap and trade energy rationing, and a massive overall explosion of government, which means massive government spending, massive government debt, and massive government intrusion into your life. It sounds to some people like Britain.

British author James Delingpole wrote a book titled Welcome to Obamaland. He says he's seen America's future, and it's in Britain. And he says our future doesn't work.

"I've seen America's future because what is happening in America now has been happening in Britain for at least the last 12 years," Delingpole said. "I've seen my country pretty much ruined by what is essentially a socialist administration, presented by this plausible likable guy (former Prime Minister Tony Blair).

"And I see the same thing happening in America. And I think America should worry about that," he warned.

Delingpole says America is on the same course toward the kind of sprawling expensive big government that Britain has -- one that will suffocate our economy and our freedoms.

Police State

Britain today is almost a police state. The British people are under more government surveillance than the Chinese. There are cameras everywhere.

Dr. Eamonn Butler, Director of the Adam Smith Institute in London and author of The Rotten State of Britain, said:

"In the half mile between Westminster cathedral near where we're sitting and Westminster abbey, I counted 160 surveillance cameras."

There's also a government plant to put cameras in the homes of families considered "at risk."

Not only that, a new law would mandate that every phone call, e-mail or Web site a person visits be stored for a year in case the government wants to snoop on them.

There's also a law under consideration that would limit energy use in Britain through an annual carbon allowance. Use too much fuel, and you could be penalized.

And big brother is also snooping through the trash. Some local governments are experimenting with smart garbage can sensors that can tell if Brits are, in the opinion of some bureaucrat, throwing away too much.

Butler said:

"There's this attempt really to control our lifestyles. Now we're having more and more pressure to drink less and eat less fatty food and all the rest of it. All of these things are done with the best of intentions, but in fact you have built up the apparatus of a police state.

"We haven't voted for it, but we haven't resisted it," he said. "And we've put enormous power into the hands of our politicians. And if bad guys got into power, they would have huge power and control over us."

Health Care Stalin Style

Britain also has government-run health care, like a lot of Democrats want in America.

But Delingpole has a warning.

"I'm not going to try to tell you that the American healthcare system is perfect. What I am going to tell you is, definitely do not copy our healthcare system."

"We call the NHS, our National Health Service, the envy of the world. It's the envy of the third world, maybe. It's a form of health care through almost Stalinist state allocation; health care through rationing," he said.

The horror stories about care rationing in Britain's National Health Service are many. British cancer specialist Karol Sikora told CBN News how difficult it can be to get lifesaving medicines for some patients if the drugs are expensive. Katie Brickell told us how she was denied a pap smear by the NHS, after which she developed terminal cervical cancer.

Big Government = Bankruptcy?

But big government isn't just inefficient. It's expensive. And some analysts are now saying that the British government has run out of money. Delingpole said:

"We are bankrupt. Britain is bankrupt."

"The official public debt figure is 47 percent. I think the real figure is something like 147 percent because there is so much of our debt that doesn't actually appear on the government's books," added Butler.

Britain has been in this mess before. It was the sick man of Europe in the 1970s; over-taxed, over-regulated, even needing a bailout from the International Monetary Fund before Margaret Thatcher's fiscal conservatism straightened out the economy.

Under Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the size of government ballooned again, and now the bill for Britain's 12-year socialist experiment has come due.

So is bigger government better government? Some Britons would tell you that, unless you want the government snooping through your trash can someday, it's not something America should strive for.

Welcome to Obamaland

Regnery Publishing, Inc.
February 2009

The Silver Lining to Barack Obama’s Election: It’s About to Get Much, Much Worse

Does the election of Barack Obama fill you with dread, rather than elation? Do you feel like your country has been high-jacked by a bunch of liberal fruitcakes who have no idea how to fix the economy, but know exactly how to ruin your life? Then good news: you're not alone!

So what's the bad news? It's about to get a lot worse, as witty British journalist James Delingpole shows in his laugh-out-loud funny, Welcome to Obamaland.

Offering conservatives courage (and comedy) for the dark days ahead, Delingpole reveals the future in Welcome to Obamaland. No, he's not clairvoyant. He's just British. Delingpole saw what "change" (read: socialism) did to Britain, and knows exactly where America is heading: into a morass of sprawling government that will slowly suffocate our economy, our liberties, and our culture.

In Britain, socialism came in under the smiling face of Tony Blair; in America, "change" has arrived under the vibrant guise of Barack Obama. But the result will be the same: the brave, independent American eagle will become the American turkey, oven-basted by the nanny state of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid.

With his coruscating wit and side-splitting asides, Delingpole shows the damage smiling socialists can do and examines the new era of well-named but disastrous policies facing us:

"UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE": Socialized medicine that will cost billions and introduce unprecedented waste, incompetence and malpractice to American hospitals.

"ETHICAL FOREIGN POLICY": A powerless national security policy created because the left refuses to believe the truth-terrorists have a violent, homicidal hatred for our culture and will do anything to wipe it off the Earth.

"ENVIRONMENTAL CARE": Climate-change hysteria, legislation and vastly expensive projects to conquer global warming. You'll be made to feel anything less is un-American.

"SOCIAL JUSTICE": State-enforced "fairness" through policies that reward those who make no effort and punish the successful.

Hilarious, impassioned, and perceptive, Welcome to Obamaland will have you laughing through your tears and taking courage from the eternal truth of conservative convictions.

Britain faces return to Victorian levels of poverty

The Disappearing Middle Class Dream

Coping with the Recession: Savings, Banking, Housing and Investing

By mybudget360
October 10, 2009

Last month the American Community Survey detailed the painful 2008 year for American households. This is a comprehensive survey looking at multiple financial, economic, and social characteristics of Americans.

What we find is that the average American is having a tougher time maintaining a hold on the middle class dream. This isn’t a revelation but it does help us determine what to expect in the next few years.

The American family in fact over the past decade has maintained the illusion of middle class living by going deeper into debt because of stagnant wages. The U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve allowed this to occur by injecting liquidity and creating a credit market that had no brakes.

In the latest data, the median American household brings in $52,000 per year. Let us break down this data:

Using Texas or any state with no income tax is a good starting point because it puts us at the higher end of the take home pay bracket. Some states like California have state income taxes reaching up to 10 percent. However, this allows us to see how much actual take home pay the average American family is working with.

By looking at the above it looks like people have roughly $3,400 a month for all additional expenses. Keep in mind that we are also not putting money away in any retirement accounts or paying for health insurance, and that can add a large line item.

Let us see how the average family spends money:

So let us use these estimates with the monthly take home to get an idea of what people are working with:

From here you can understand why the current recession is hurting so deeply. Take for example the housing expense. The current median home price in the U.S. is $174,000. So if the family above with the median income went to purchase this median priced home, how much are they looking to spend? Let us assume they buy the home via a FHA insured loan requiring only 3.5 percent down:

Down payment: $6,009

Mortgage: $167,910 (at 5.5 percent, 30-year fixed)

Principal & Interest: $953

On the surface this may seem okay. But we are not including taxes and insurance above. If you include taxes and insurance -- let us assume this family buys in Texas -- the taxes with insurance can range from 2.5 to 3 percent of the purchase price of the home:

Insurance & Taxes: $362 per month

Total monthly housing payment: $1,315

The median family in the U.S. spends $1,165 per month on housing. This may not seem like a big difference, but we are looking at an 11 percent difference for the biggest line item here. That is why housing in many parts of the country is still having trouble. Americans have become more price conscious in a time with 17 percent unemployment and underemployment.

The transportation item in the budget above is also high. Spending nearly $600 a month, Americans have become more reluctant to buy expensive autos (this number looks to include one car payment and fuel cost for the average family with two cars). Assuming a $300 car payment, and $300 in insurance and fuel cost per month, many families are now unable to purchase a new car that averages close to $30,000. That is why the government found it necessary to offer a program like cash for clunkers to get people buying. But that program has run out of steam:

Source: Calculated Risk

It is obvious what occurred above. Sales for autos were front loaded into August and fell off when the cash for clunkers program wore off. We can expect a similar thing to happen for home sales that have benefited from the $8,000 tax credit.

What is largely missed in all of this is the actual money Americans have in their wallet. That money comes from working: with unemployment rising, more and more people are having less and less money to spend.

With no job or hours being cut, Americans are all feeling this recession including those who are working:

The above gives a better perspective on the new consumption era. Even those that are working are having shorter work weeks. This is happening from less overtime and also employees who are furloughed. These people are still considered fully employed yet their wages do not reflect a fully employed work schedule.

So when we break down the above budget and see what is happening, it is clear that Americans are going to permanently shift their spending habits short of us going back to the bubble peak days. It is not by choice that this change is occurring, but by economic force.

The U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve are targeting the dollar, so we can expect imported good prices to increase in the next few years (short of the dollar becoming strong again). It is a new era for the middle class dream.

U.S.: 2008 Census Figures Show Severe Impact of Recession on Workers

By Jerry White, World Socialist Web Site
September 23, 2009

The US Census Bureau’s 2008 American Community Survey Data, released yesterday, provides a statistical picture of the growing levels of social distress in the United States. The survey, which covers the year following the official start of the recession in December 2007, shows a year-to-year decline in median household income, a rise in the number of people without medical insurance, declining home values, and other indices of the social crisis.

Household Incomes

Real median income fell 1.2 percent nationally between 2007 and 2008, with stagnant or declining incomes in 40 of the 50 US states and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, the data showed. The sharpest falls were in states most affected by the collapse of manufacturing and construction and the housing bust.

Florida had the steepest decline in the nation, with median household incomes falling by $1,860 to $47,800—or by 3.9 percent—followed by Montana (-3 percent), Indiana (-2.8 percent), Maine (-2.5 percent), Michigan (-2.5 percent), Arkansas (-2.1 percent) and California (-2 percent).

Only five states—Kansas, Louisiana, New Jersey, New York and Texas—had a statistically significant increase in median household income last year, ranging from 1 to 3.7 percent. In 2007, 33 states saw an increase.

California lost 462,000 jobs last year, the most of any state, according to the Labor Department. Florida came next with 375,000 job cuts in 2008, followed by Michigan with 204,000. Construction accounted for 29 percent of the job losses in California and Florida in 2008, while manufacturing contributed to 31 percent of the job cuts in Michigan.

Michigan’s household income fell from $49,807 in 2007 to $48,591 in 2008, the Census Bureau reported. The present situation is even worse since this figure does not take into account the forced bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler earlier this year and the massive job cuts and wage and benefit reductions imposed by the Obama administration. At 15.2 percent, Michigan continued to lead the country in unemployment last month, with Detroit reporting a staggering 28.9 percent jobless rate in July.

The states with the lowest median household incomes in 2008 continued to be in the Deep South, including Mississippi ($37,790), Arkansas ($38,815) and Alabama ($42,666). The depressed coal state of West Virginia had the second lowest income at $37,989, the Census Bureau reported. The highest median household income—$70,545—was in Maryland, which includes the affluent suburbs of Washington, DC. The highest levels of income inequality were in the New York City area.

Housing and Health Care

For the first time, the American Community Survey included the percentage of state residents without health insurance. Texas led the nation with 24.1 percent of its residents lacking health care coverage in 2008. An earlier census report showed that the number of uninsured Americans increased by about 600,000 in 2008, reaching 46.3 million or 15.4 percent of the population.

Particularly hard hit were part-time workers, 1.1 million of whom lost their health insurance in 2008. Another 1.1 million workers in the 35 to 45 age bracket became uninsured due to layoffs and the continuing trend of companies abandoning employer-paid benefits. The number of people in Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and other government plans increased by 1.2 million in 2008, while those with private coverage fell by 1 million.

Meanwhile, plunging home values continued to decimate household wealth. Home values fell 2 percent nationally between 2007 and 2008, with 22 states reporting declines.

The biggest falloffs were in Nevada, where housing values fell 16 percent, California (15.5 percent) and Florida (8.6 percent). The share of the population that owned a home fell to 66.6 percent, the lowest rate since 2002 and down from 67.2 percent in 2007, according to an analysis of the census figures by the Wall Street Journal. African Americans—who were disproportionately hit by subprime mortgages and other predatory lending practices—saw home ownership rates fall even sharper, to 45.6 percent from 46.5 percent.

At the same time, the Census Bureau reported, renters faced higher housing costs, with gross rents rising from $817 to $824 in 2008. More renters were also spending more than 35 percent of their household income on their dwellings—a figure that reached 40.6 percent in 2008.

As a result of the wave of home foreclosures and job losses, the number of Americans moving in with family members also greatly increased. The Census Bureau reported that there were 3.8 million multigenerational households in 2008.

This was only one of many changes in living arrangements produced by the economic crisis. The census reported that an increased number of couples were putting off marriage, with the percentage of women who never married rising to 28.1 percent in 2008, up from 27.6 percent in 2007 and 27.3 percent in 2006.

In an effort to cut expenses, an increased percentage of people were also carpooling or taking public transportation, although the latter figure had risen to only 5.0 percent due to the general lack of public transport in the US.

Perhaps most significantly, the number of immigrant workers seeking employment in the US has declined after significantly increasing throughout this decade. About 38 million foreign-born people lived in the US in 2008, the Census Bureau reported, some 100,000 fewer than the previous year. Between 2000 and 2006, the immigrant population increased by about 1 million people a year. In 2007, the increase was cut in half, particularly as the number of construction jobs collapsed, and fewer immigrants, especially from Mexico, could find work and send money home to their families.

Social Inequality

The staggering decline in living standards recorded in the 2008 census figures are the product of a fundamental restructuring of class relations in America, which began with the Bush administration and is now being accelerated by the Obama White House.

The decades-long assault on the working class, carried out under Republican and Democratic administrations alike, has produced staggering levels of inequality in the US. In 2007, the richest one ten-thousandth of households took home 6 percent of the nation’s income, up from 0.9 percent in 1977, the highest level since the Internal Revenue Service began collecting data in 1913. The top 1 percent of earners took home 23.5 percent of income, up from 9 percent three decades earlier.

The bursting of the housing bubble and the decline in stock dividends and share values, however, caused a significant decline in the income of the wealthiest Americans, whose reckless and destructive speculative activities were chiefly responsible for producing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

The Bush administration, and then Obama, responded by emptying the public treasury to cover the bad gambling debts of the Wall Street investors and help the biggest banks consolidate their monopoly. At the same time, taking Obama’s assault on auto workers as a signal, corporate America has used the threat of unemployment to slash wages and benefits and impose speed-ups to drastically increase productivity. These measures have led to a significant “recovery” for the corporate and financial elite.

Since March, Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index has risen 49 percent. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and other Wall Street firms plan to hand out billions in end-of-year bonuses to top executives and traders.

Meanwhile, conditions for working people have only worsened. Since the slump began 21 months ago, the US economy has lost nearly 7 million jobs. There is already talk of a “jobless recovery,” where millions of decent paying jobs, with health care and retirement benefits, will never return and the next generation of workers will be condemned to poverty-level jobs.

The cost of the bailout of Wall Street, the Obama administration insists, will be borne by the working class through the gutting of Medicare, Medicaid, public education, and other vitally needed social programs, as well as a severe and permanent reduction in workers’ living standards. This is the motive behind the president’s demand for reducing health care and other costs and ending the days when ordinary Americans supposedly lived “beyond their means.”

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The Plundering of the Public Treasury

One Year Since the U.S. Bank Bailout

By Barry Grey, World Socialist Web Site
October 3, 2009

One year ago today, the United States Congress passed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, establishing the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and authorizing the use of $700 billion in Treasury—i.e., taxpayer—funds to bail out the banking and finance industry.

The creation of TARP inaugurated the greatest plundering of the public treasury and transfer of wealth from the working class to the financial elite in history.

One year later, the analysis of the World Socialist Web Site that the bank bailout was part of a fundamental and permanent restructuring of American capitalism, whose central aim was the impoverishment of the working class, has been richly vindicated.

While the Obama administration points to an astonishing rally on the stock market and a revival of bank profits to proclaim an end to the recession, the working class is being devastated by near-double-digit unemployment, falling wages and pensions and health benefits, the collapse of family savings, record home foreclosures, and a precipitous growth of homelessness and hunger. Even as they tout the “recovery,” government officials warn that unemployment will remain at the highest levels since the 1930s for years to come.

The passage of the TARP legislation was the culmination of three weeks of closed-door crisis meetings between government officials and Wall Street bankers, combined with a public propaganda campaign depicting the bailout as the only alternative to an immediate descent into another Great Depression.

On September 7, the Bush administration announced the government takeover, at a cost of $200 billion, of the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The following weekend, after round-the-clock meetings with Wall Street CEOs led by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and then-President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (now Treasury Secretary) Timothy Geithner, the government refused to provide emergency funds to Lehman Brothers, allowing the Wall Street icon to collapse.

No credible explanation for the decision to deny funds to Lehman while rescuing Merrill Lynch and the insurance giant American International Group (AIG) has ever been offered. It is now clear, however, that this move reflected the conclusion that nothing short of a massive diversion of public funds to cover the bad debts of the banks could protect the wealth of the financial oligarchy. To create the political conditions for such an unprecedented action it was necessary to deliberately stoke up an atmosphere of panic and fear.

Lehman, the smallest of the Wall Street investment firms, was sacrificed for the greater good of the financial aristocracy. Not coincidentally, the chief beneficiary of the disappearance of Lehman and Merrill Lynch was the largest investment bank, Goldman Sachs, which Paulson had headed prior to entering the Bush administration. As for the rescue of AIG, Goldman, its largest trading partner, stood to lose at least $20 billion if the world’s largest insurer of bank assets went down.

The following weekend, once again in talks conducted behind the backs of the American people, Paulson handed congressional leaders a four-page blueprint for a $700 billion bailout of the banking system and demanded that they immediately enact it into law. On the evening of September 24, Bush went on national television and, in apocalyptic terms, insisted that if Congress did not quickly pass Paulson’s plan “America would slip into a financial panic.”

The official line was that the bank bailout was being undertaken with the greatest reluctance and for the benefit of “Main Street,” not Wall Street. Barack Obama, then the Democratic presidential candidate, immediately declared his support for the bailout, and Democratic leaders in Congress were its most vociferous backers.

The eruption of the financial crisis and the rush to enact TARP coincided with a remarkable improvement in Obama’s electoral prospects. Prior to the crisis, Obama’s campaign was foundering. His lead in the polls over his Republican opponent, John McCain, had evaporated and his campaign was in visible disarray.

But with the events of early September came a sharp shift in the media in his favor. A political decision had been taken at the highest levels of the ruling elite that the implementation of a massive bailout of Wall Street combined with sharp attacks on workers’ jobs and wages and an offensive against basic social programs would be politically more difficult under a McCain administration than an Obama White House.

Obama’s relative youth, his ethnic background, and his Democratic brand could be utilized to confuse and disorient a public that would overwhelmingly view a McCain administration as the continuation of the policies of the hated and despised Bush. A clear consensus emerged within the ruling class to push for the election of the tribune of “change you can believe in.”

They could count, moreover, on the Obama enthusiasts within the middle class liberal and ex-radical milieu to provide much needed political cover for a right-wing Democratic administration.

On September 22, 2008, the World Socialist Web Site published a statement of the Socialist Equality Party (US) National Committee entitled “No to Wall Street bailout! The socialist answer to the financial crisis.” The statement declared:

Both the plan itself and the manner in which it is being imposed are deeply undemocratic. Exploiting the breakdown in US and global financial markets, the financial aristocracy, which is responsible for the crisis, is exercising its control over the government, both political parties, and the media to implement policies of the most far-reaching character without any genuine debate or discussion. As in the aftermath of 9/11, it is seeking to utilize the crisis to push through policies that would otherwise be considered entirely unacceptable…

Make no mistake: the working people, who are the victims of the financial parasitism of the ruling elite, will foot the bill to bail out those who have enriched themselves by plundering the social wealth. The massive expansion of budget deficits and the national debt as a result of this plan will be used to justify a brutal assault on basic social programs, education, housing and the wages, jobs, pensions, and health benefits of the working class.

Not a word of this citation needs to be changed in light of subsequent developments.

The stock market continued to fall sharply in the first weeks of the new administration, reaching its low-point on March 6. This in part reflected a degree of uncertainty within the financial elite over how resolute the Obama administration would be in protecting its interests. Such doubts were largely dispelled in the course of March, when the administration emphatically demonstrated its obeisance to Wall Street.

In rapid fire, Obama intervened to scuttle a bill passed by the House of Representatives, in response to public outrage over tens of millions in bonuses awarded by AIG, which would have imposed limits on the pay of bank executives; his treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, announced a plan to offload the banks’ “toxic assets” at public expense; and Obama rejected the turnaround plans submitted by General Motors and Chrysler, demanding deeper cuts in jobs, wages and benefits and driving the firms into bankruptcy in order to carry through an unprecedented attack on auto workers.

The markets reacted enthusiastically, setting off an extraordinary stock market rally that has thus far continued, despite the growth of unemployment and trillions of dollars in “toxic assets” that remain on the banks’ balance sheets.

The forced bankruptcy of General Motors, in particular, shored up Obama’s credentials on Wall Street. It demonstrated, first, that his industrial policy would remain completely subordinated to the interests of finance capital and, second, that he would pursue a policy of intensifying the exploitation of the working class, using mass unemployment as a bludgeon to impose wage cuts and speedup.

Since then, Obama’s domestic economic policy has been focused on the drive to slash health care costs at the expense of the working class, which he himself has presented as the spearhead of a campaign to cut spending for basic entitlement programs, such as Medicare, and permanently reduce domestic consumption (of the working class, of course, not the financial aristocracy).

The balance sheet one year since the bank bailout constitutes the most telling proof of the reactionary character of the Obama administration, the class interests it serves, and the need for the working class to initiate an independent struggle for a socialist alternative to the bankrupt capitalist system.

The New Forbes 400: Provocative Wealth Amidst Social Misery

By Tom Eley, World Socialist Web Site
October 3, 2009

The 400 richest Americans have so far weathered the second year of the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression with a combined $1.27 trillion, according to Forbes magazine’s annual list.

The total net worth of the wealthiest 400 Americans actually declined by $300 billion in 2009, down from $1.57 trillion a year earlier.

This is hardly a tale of woe. The average net worth of the 400 richest Americans was $3.17 billion, and it took nearly a billion dollars, $950 million, in order to make the Forbes list.

The decline in the fortunes of the super-rich did not result from a redistribution of wealth. On the contrary, a spate of recent statistics demonstrates an impoverishment of workers and the middle class, alongside heightening income and wealth polarization.

Instead, the fall-off in the billionaires’ fortunes resulted largely from the souring and collapse of certain speculative financial ventures and the stock market.

This is what makes the fortunes of the richest Americans in 2009 so provocative—it is precisely their reckless gambling and insatiable greed that caused the economic crisis now subjecting masses in the US to a level of social misery not experienced in generations.

The obscene wealth of a tiny handful is proof of a dramatic misallocation of resources.

The combined wealth of the Forbes 400, $1.27 trillion, is greater by $483 billion than the entire “stimulus package,” the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The combined fortune of the richest 400 Americans, who comprise just .00013 percent of the population, is greater by about 50 percent than the price of the health care “overhaul” promoted by the Obama administration, which, in the name of “controlling costs,” will carry out substantial cuts in Medicare, ration treatment to the sick and aged, and force families to purchase private insurance.

The personal fortunes of three men, computer magnates Bill Gates and Larry Ellison, and financier Warren Buffett, would each have been more than enough to resolve the 2009-2010 budget deficit of the nation’s most populous state, California, which has been met through deep cuts to social programs and public education, and the furloughing of state workers.

California is home to more than a fifth of the Forbes 400. Eighty-three California oligarchs have a combined net worth of about $234 billion, according to Forbes. That is a multiple of about eight times California’s two-year budget deficit.

Michigan’s ten billionaires have a combined net worth of about $20 billion, about seven times the state budget deficit of $2.8 billion. Among other savage cuts, Michigan lawmakers intend to save $350,000 by shutting down the state’s poison control call center, and about the same amount of money by scaling back a program that pays farmers to send their excess produce to food charities, helping to feed one million people.

New York’s 66 billionaires, 57 of whom reside in New York City, have a combined wealth of $216 billion, roughly 18 times the size of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Afghanistan, whose population of 28 million the US military is attempting to subdue through a brutal counterinsurgency campaign.

In fact, the personal fortunes of individual Americans on the list are larger than the GDPs of a number of countries.

“Bill Gates, America's richest man with a net worth of $50 billion, has a personal balance sheet larger than the GDP of 140 countries, including Costa Rica, El Salvador, Bolivia and Uruguay,” Forbes notes.

And the combined wealth of the Forbes 400 is larger than the GDP of India, the world’s 12th largest economy, and home to 1.2 billion people.

The fabulous wealth that the US financial and corporate elite continue to enjoy in the midst of a financial crisis of its own making is the outcome of long historical processes.

When Forbes first published its compilation of richest Americans in 1982, the wealthiest individual listed was shipping magnate Daniel Ludwig. Ludwig’s estimated fortune of $2 billion would place him far down the list today.

The list of 1982 included names such as Ford, Du Pont, Whitney, Duke, and Harriman, to name a few. These empires were associated with the expansion of US industrial production.

It is notable that on today’s list there are few whose fortunes were built up through the production of industrial goods, except indirectly through inheritance. Two categories, “finance” and “investments,” provided the fortunes of 106 of the wealthiest Americans. Other major sources of wealth that Forbes identified include media, real estate, oil and retail.

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The Decline of Morality and Spirituality in Western Civilization

The Socialization of America

By Dr. David Noebel, The August Review
March 27, 2009

In retrospect, we might discover that 1883 was a most significant year. We’re familiar with 1848 giving us The Communist Manifesto and 1859 giving us The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

But 1883 gave us three portentous happenings, and these seemingly unrelated happenings turned history toward socialism:

1. Karl Marx died on March 14, 1883, and was buried in Highgate Cemetery in London, England. The assumption that Communism died with him was logical since only six people attended his funeral. But the truth is that it had not yet begun its murderous journey through the 20th century.

2. John Maynard Keynes was born on June 5, 1883, in Cambridge, England. His political, economic, and moral influence continues to affect every American.

3. The Fabian Socialist Society was an offshoot of The Fellowship of the New Life, which was born in October 1883 in London, England.

Today’s financial events illustrate that America is not exempt from being led toward socialism. Predictions differ, depending on one’s perspective, as to whether this will be a socialistic paradise or a socialistic hell. Time will tell. In the meantime, we’d do well to listen to warnings from the past.

Russian thinker and author Fyodor Dostoyevsky offered the following take on socialism:

“The future kingdom of socialism will be a terrible Tyranny of criminals and murderers. It will throw humanity into a true hell of spiritual suffering and poverty.”

Socialist George Bernard Shaw added:

“You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you liked it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner.”

That’s probably why Margaret Thatcher added that the “problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

Today, we can link the U. S. House of Representatives—and its radical, progressive, socialistic societies and caucuses— directly to Karl Marx through Keynes and the Fabians.

Before identifying many of the House members caught up in the socialist web, however, let’s first identify the major economic dogma of the early socialists.

Socialism is the economic system of both the Marxist-Leninist worldview and the Fabian Society worldview. John Maynard Keynes was a member of the British Fabian Society, whose American counterparts were the Intercollegiate Socialist Society and the League for Industrial Democracy. Their American voices were centered in the ideas of Norman Thomas and John Dewey among others. Dewey, you may remember, was an early signatory of The Humanist Manifesto (1933) and its atheistic, socialist gospel.

Socialists are united in their desire to see capitalism destroyed, either forcefully or gradually, and most would rejoice if Christianity were destroyed along with it. Socialists and liberals generally see in Christians “an infallible marker of mental retardation” (Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2008/09, p. 6).

The Christian worldview endorses sound or hard money, fiscal responsibility, saving for a rainy day, deferred gratification, paying off monthly credit card bills, living within one’s means, etc. Keynesian economics, by contrast, argues for consumption, extravagance, and not providing for the future, arguing that “the great vice is saving, thrift, and financial prudence” (Keynes At Harvard, p. 63). Keynesians love huge national spending, debt, and high inflation—anathema to Christians and conservatives.

Socialists see capitalism as an evil economic system founded on the concepts of profit, individualism, private property, private business, freedom to buy and sell products and services, etc. Indeed, a working definition of capitalism is “the peaceful and free exchange of goods and services without theft, fraud, and breech of contract.”

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).

Marx advanced the socialist cause by calling for social or public ownership of property and the abolition of private property. He believed that people were best suited to work on state farms, public parks, nationalized banks, or the government bureaucracy rather than for private employers, who would certainly take advantage of their employees, causing them both social and economic harm. Marx was an economic leech on fellow communist Engels, who supported him with his capitalistic father’s monies.

George Bernard Shaw represented the Fabian point of view by calling for “the socialization of the means of production, distribution, and exchange” to bring about an equal distribution of goods and services to all members of society and to make the State “the ALL of social well-being.” The State “subsumes all economic life of the nation.”

In other words, socialism is an economic system that downplays the individual in favor of the group, social order, or the State. It is a system in which the State directs the economic activity of the social order through central planning and by placing economic activity under the jurisdiction of the State. Socialism is also known as collectivism or Statism and, to Marx, Communism.

Today, we call this economic system “interventionism” or Keynesism. Interventionism is a kind of socialism or communism, but without the destruction of the bourgeoisie (which were slaughtered in the millions by Soviet and Chinese communists).

Today’s Fabians/Progressives/Radicals allow their capitalist enemies to create wealth, but acquire it by taxing them instead of slaughtering them (Marx’s “reign of terrorism on the bourgeoisie”). They are then free to distribute the wealth among the economically disadvantaged, the intellectual elites, and the superior governing classes.

Such (re)distribution of wealth ensures the favorable vote of the masses being fed, entertained, housed (with sub-prime loans) and doctored. ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and socialism fit hand-in-glove just as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fit Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and Chris Dodd to a “T.”

Most Americans are totally unaware that the U.S. House of Representatives crawls with a large, well-organized assembly of socialist organizations. These organizations are dedicated to (a) bringing about the destruction of the capitalist economic system (portrayed as greedy, conservative, religious, and/or filthy rich), and (b) slowly but surely bringing production, education, food, and health care under the complete control and regulation of the federal government [which is run by the elite ruling class; i.e., the international banking cabal - editor's note].

A prime example of this governmental takeover is the carbon tax currently under discussion. It would punish business and industry’s use of gas and oil products (which according to Al Gore will warm the planet by one degree over the next 100 years) by “allowing the federal government to ‘control every aspect of our economy,’ according to Christopher Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute” (The Weekly Standard, March 16, 2009, p. 17).

The legislators involved in this socialistic undertaking belong to one or more radical House organizations: the Progressive Democrats of America (6 House members), the Congressional Progressive Caucus (74 House members), the Congressional Black Caucus (43 House members), and the Democratic Socialists of America.

Incidentally, the Democratic Socialists of America do not identify their House members since they consider all members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus part of their membership due to the fact that “they both shared operative social democratic politics.” The most prominent national member of DSA is AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney, who could well be the most powerful influence in the House of Representatives. And for the record, the Chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus is Congressional Progressive Caucus member Barbara Lee (CA-9). The interconnections between all these socialist-based organizations is staggering.

These organizations and their members quite literally comprise a Socialist Red Army within the very contours of the House of Representatives. According to the Wikipedia article on the organization:

“The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) is the single largest partisan caucus in the United States House of Representatives and works together to advance progressive [socialist] issues and causes. The CPC was founded in 1991 by independent [socialist] Congressman Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who remains a member as Senator. [The CPC] represents about a third of the House Democratic Caucus. Of the twenty standing committees of the House, eleven are chaired by members of the CPC.”

When the CPC claimed 64 members in 2006 (now 74 and gaining), the leftist publication The Nation boasted:

“The largest ideological caucus in the new House Democratic majority will be the Congressional Progressive Caucus, with a membership that includes New York’s Charles Rangel, Michigan’s John Conyers, Massachusetts’s Barney Frank, and at least half the incoming chairs of House standing committees” (The Nation, November 12,2006).

These current eleven chairs are CPC members:

George Miller (CA-9)—Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee;
Henry Waxman (CA-30)—Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce;
Bob Filner (CA-51)—Chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee;
Barney Frank (MA-4)—Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee;
John Conyers (MI-14)—Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee;
Bennie Thompson (MS-2)—Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee;
Nydia Velazquez (NY-12)—Chairwoman of the House Small Business Committee;
Charles Rangel (NY-15)—Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee;
Louise Slaughter (N Y-28)—Chairwoman of the House Rules Committee;
Bob Brady (PA-1)—Chairman of the House Administration Committee; and
Edward J. Markey (MA-7)—Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

As of February 20, 2009, the Co-Chairs of the CPC are Raul M. Grijalva (AZ-7) and Lynn Woolsey (CA-6). The Vice Chairs are Diane Watson (CA-33), Sheila Jackson-Lee (TX-18), Mazie Hirono (HI-2), and Dennis Kucinich (OH-10). Incidentally, the CPC website was “hosted by the Democratic Socialists of America” until 1999, a group affiliated with the Socialist International, which was founded by Karl Marx, Saint-Simon, and Fourier!

The Commission for a Sustainable World Society is one of the Socialist International’s sub-organizations. Until President Obama picked Carol M. Browner as his global warming czar, Browner was a member in good standing of the Socialist International. Upon her appointment, her name and biography were removed from its website, “though a photo of her speaking June 30 to the group’s congress in Greece was still available” (The Washington Times, January 12,2009, p. 1).

We can expect Browner to manipulate and push for every piece of socialist legislation to advance the defeat of capitalism and the imposition of more government on the American people. Oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear energy represent capitalism, and we can expect Congressional socialists to do everything in their legislative power to thwart their discovery, drilling, usage, and distribution. Socialists promote wind(mill) power because they know it alone cannot meet the energy needs of a capitalist economy and will, therefore, hasten the death of capitalism.

Browner will enjoy a great deal of support from the newly appointed Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, who is also a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. And when Browner needs further help, she can rely on the committee chairs, co-chairs, and vice chairs listed above to assist her in using the global warming/climate change scare to bring the United States of America into a socialistic world governing body. She can also count on former CPC member Nancy Pelosi (who is already manifesting dictatorial tendencies) to drive the socialist agenda as fast as humanly possible. Pelosi’s San Francisco district (CA-8) is synonymous with socialism / progressivism / collectivism / statism / leftism / radicalism that in turn are synonymous with scientific socialism / communism / Marxism / Leninism / Maoism.

We have yet to address the ideological role played by John Maynard Keynes in the demise of American capitalism and Christian influence. Anyone with a Christian, conservative-bent fears the reality that the United States is falling headlong off the cliff into socialism and all that this will entail.

It is no secret that the radical left is both anti-capitalist and anti-Christian. Marx would be ecstatic, no doubt, realizing that his life’s work of dethroning God and destroying capitalism are about to be accomplished.

Zygmund Dobbs conducted the research for Keynes at Harvard (KeynesatHarvard.org) and summarizes the political, moral, and economic slant of Keynes and his friends at Cambridge University:

“Singing the Red Flag, the highborn sons of the British upper-class lay on the carpeted floor spinning out socialist schemes in homosexual intermissions...The attitude in such gatherings was anti-establishmentarian. To them the older generation was horribly out of date, even superfluous. The capitalist system was declared obsolete and revolution was proclaimed as the only solution. Christianity was pronounced an enemy force, and the worst sort of depravities were eulogized as ‘that love which passes all Christian understanding.’ Chief of this ring of homosexual revolutionaries was John Maynard Keynes… Keynes was characterized by his male sweetheart, Lytton Strachey, as ‘a liberal and a sodomite, an atheist and a statistician.’ His particular depravity was the sexual abuse of little boys.”

Keynes, like Marx, had a fixation that should have been a clue to his character. Marx practiced phrenology (the study of bumps on one’s head), and Keynes practiced chirognomy (the study of people’s hands). After studying the hands of Charles Darwin’s brother, Sir George, Keynes remarked, “His hands certainly looked as if they might be descended from an ape.”

Overall, Keynes despised free or private enterprise, considered homosexuality superior to heterosexuality, sought to replace the gold standard with fiat paper money which was more easily produced by government printing presses, did not believe in the family unit, despised “savings” as a stumbling block against the march of socialism, called on the state to control the number of children per family.

The Keynesian economic formula fits all totalitarianisms, including Fascism, Nazism and Communism. Sir Oswald Mosley, for example, was a Fascist leader and a member of the Fabian Society. Lauchlin Currie, a prominent Keynesian advocate, was a Soviet spy and an economic aide to F.D.R. Joan Robinson, a Marxist economist, assisted Keynes in some of his economic writings, arguing that “the differences between Marx and Keynes are only verbal” (Keynes At Harvard, p. 68; also see Mark Skousen, The Making of Modern Economics, p. 433).

Keynes also had a strong relationship with the notorious Soviet spy Harry Dexter White. Keynes considered White to be “the central figure in the Keynesian manipulations in the United States.” Harry Dexter White just happened to be the Assistant to the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. Even after White was exposed as a Soviet spy, Keynesians to this day “see nothing wrong in White’s Soviet role,” a “typical . . . attitude of Fabian socialist elements toward the whole coterie of spies and Fifth Amendment communists in the United States” (Keynes At Harvard, p. 83).

It was Keynes himself who admitted that by “a continuous process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method, they not only confiscate, but confiscate arbitrarily: and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some [e.g., Al Gore]. The process engages all of the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner that not one man in a million can diagnose.”

Thus it is astounding that Larry Summers, head of President Obama’s National Economic Council and former president of Harvard University, when asked by Charlie Rose “what idea, what person has most influenced your thinking on how to deal with this [financial] mess?” without hesitation answered “Keynes.”

Following the economic advice of Keynes (huge government spending, debt, and inflation) is kissing the American capitalist system goodnight! His advice is what every socialist would give, even though clear-thinking, common sense Americans know that excessive debt and excessive spending are the main ingredients that created this current financial mess (with the help of Congressional Progressives like Barney Frank hatching socialist schemes in the House of Representatives).

When Whittaker Chambers took up his sling and aimed his rock at Communism, he admitted that he hit “something else.” What he hit “was the forces of that great socialist revolution, which, in the name of liberalism, spasmodically, incompletely, somewhat formlessly, but always in the same direction, has been inching its ice cap over the nation for two decades.”

That inching is fast becoming a rout with national and international socialists alike thinking their best opportunity to strike a deathblow to the greatest, freest economic system in all of human history is now.

Because capitalism has raised more human beings out of poverty than all other economic systems combined, we should remember the wisdom of Robert Heilbroner, a former Marxist economist who changed his position before the fall of the Berlin Wall:

“The Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe have given us the clearest possible proof that capitalism organizes the material affairs of humankind more satisfactorily than socialism: that, however inequitably or irresponsibly the marketplace may distribute goods, it does so better than the queues of a planned economy; however mindless the culture of commercialism, it is more attractive than state moralism; and however deceptive the ideology of a business civilization, it is more believable than that of a socialist one.”

Little wonder that Winston Churchill painted socialism as a philosophy of failure, a creed of ignorance, and a gospel of envy whose inherent virtue “is the equal sharing of misery.”

Dr. David Noebel is founder and president of Summit Ministries and a best-selling author. He is recognized as an expert on worldview analysis and the decline of morality and spirituality in Western Civilization.