Deregulating the Dream

America is close to being a 3rd world country when it comes to class and wealth.

My take:
Americans (mostly republican) constantly brag about how we are the BEST at everything, the problem is that we are not.
Its time we faced facts and started actually DOING something about it, instead of hiding our head in the sand not wanting to beleive it.
If you tak to most republicans, they will DENY that our educational system isnt the BEST, instead of realizing it, and wanting to gdo something about it.
Fighting the truth gets us no-where.

Our educational system is comparatively marginal at best.

Our health care system hardly gives any help at all to low income people.

Our prison system is VERY overcrowded, and we have more people in jail per-capita than any other country on earth.

We spend 288,000,000 a DAY on the war in Iraq.
Army "deserters" are up over 80%

Our military is stretched to far in case we need them for a REAL threat,
OR, a natural disaster.

More Arabs and Muslims hate us than they did 5 years ago.

1 million Iraqis are dead.

We have lost many of our civil rights.

We are being spied on (probably right now)

We havent invested (fast enough) on clean renewable energy.

Oil prices can bring this country to its KNEES,
and nothing is being done about it.

Global warming threatens our future, and not only are we EXTREMELY unprepared, but some people actually believe its not a threat.

We trot along in our daily lives with memories of "Leave it to Beaver",
thinking that our world will not change as long as we follow goos Christian morals and defend our country from the "terrerasts".
We dont realize that 1 of 100 things could put a damper on our dreams, like the Yellowstone caldera blowing and destroying 80% of our country.
Not only is our military not here, or prepared to help us, but we are not prepared for it physically, OR mentally.
What if we go to war with Iran, the biggest Saudi refinery blows up,
and send oil prices to 15$ or $20 a gallon ?

With $20 a gallon gas, the country WILL shut down as we know it.
Food prices would soar, companies would shut down, people couldnt leave their homes, the Gov would have food lines, there would be martial law, and all chaos would break out.

We are already in a class warfare, and only 1 side is waging the war.
Most of us are totally complacent thinking that as long as our daily lives are not too disrupted, like loosing cable TV, or our cell phone, that our Government is taking care of us.

But what if its not ?
If some major change happens, and its very possible, it could throw this class "warfare" in a spin, leaving only the top 1% of the country able to live comfortably.

I read a report the other day saying the 1/2 of all the BEES in the U.S. have died.
If not stopped, this could leave no fruits or vegetables in our grocery stores, and could have much farther reaching implications.

This is one small example, but MANY things could happen.
Our society is very fragile, and we need to realize this and prepare for it.
Spending 288 million dollars a day on an illegal war isnt helping much.

Its time we stop bragging about how good we are,
and start ACTUALLY DOING something about it.

Hopefully a DEM will do that.

Brad
http://911review.org

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Deregulating the Dream

No natural disaster has hit the American middle class, scholars and activists who gathered in North Carolina last week agree, just a series of political decisions that have privileged the powerful.

November 12 , 2007

Just 1 percent of Americans currently hold about half the financial wealth of the entire United States.

Meanwhile, notes Washington University sociologist Mark Rank, the nation’s bottom 60 percent hold less than 1 percent of that wealth, and 75 percent of Americans, sometime in their adult lives, can now expect to “experience a year either in poverty or near poverty.”

How much more unequal can the United States become? Plenty

If the United States keeps to its present course, Rank predicted last week at an insight-rich national conference on inequality in North Carolina, the nation could “begin to reflect the bifurcation patterns more typical of third-world countries,” with the privileged opting to “physically separate themselves from the middle and bottom.”

That separation, Rank added, has already begun — via everything from gated communities to growing private school enrollments.

The good news? Inequality amounts to an unnatural disaster. Conscious political decisions have helped make the United States deeply unequal. Conscious political decisions can, by the same token, help undo that inequality.

That theme sounded repeatedly last week on the University of North Carolina campus as Mark Rank and dozens of other academics, activists, and policy makers converged for two days of discussion and debate on “Wealth Inequality and the Eroding Middle Class.”

The conference — hosted by the university law school’s Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity — didn’t make many headlines. The conference had perhaps a more important role: helping Americans make sense of the headlines we already see.

Headlines, for instance, on the subprime mortgage market collapse. The subprime market, University of Connecticut law professor Patricia McCoy explained last week, didn’t even exist a quarter-century ago.

But in 1980 “waves of federal deregulation” began reshaping the banking industry, stripping away meaningful limits on mortgage terms and rates. Lenders soon became able, for the first time, to “segment the mortgage market between stronger and weaker borrowers” — and manipulate the weaker into paying through the nose.

By 2006, American families were carrying adjustable rate mortgages with interest rates that could double at the first reset. And if these families went to refinance those mortgages, they faced prepayment penalties that could hit as high as $9,000 on a $150,000 loan.

All this deregulation would prove spectacularly lucrative for the nation’s biggest lenders — Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo, for instance, pocketed $295.7 million over a five-year span — and spectacularly devastating for struggling families.

“By year-end 2008,” notes the University of Connecticut’s McCoy, “over 2 million subprime loans are expected to go into foreclosure.”

The inequality that deregulation has nurtured could, in theory, be offset by tax policies that target extremely high incomes. But current tax policies, University of Oklahoma law professor Jon Forman pointed out last week, are doing precious little to redistribute excess.

We now have, Forman noted, “hardly any taxes on wealth and investment income.” Taking just one small step to change this situation — by eliminating the current tax break for capital gains and dividends — “could raise about $130 billion a year.”

Lawmakers could take all sorts of other steps, conference presenters made clear, to broaden the distribution of America’s wealth. You can check them out outline, where the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity is this week posting conference highlights.

— Sam Pizzigati

nowpublic.com

god and all

911review.stumbleupon.com

colboard.com

tpmcafe.com

Iraq whistleblower Dr Kelly WAS murdered to silence him, says MP

By FIONA BARTON - More by this author » Last updated at 00:18am on 20th October 2007

Comments (36)

Weapons expert Dr David Kelly was assassinated, an MP claims today.

Campaigning politician Norman Baker believes Dr Kelly, who exposed the Government's "sexed-up" Iraq dossier, was killed to stop him making further revelations about the lies that took Britain to war.

He says the murderers may have been anti-Saddam Iraqis, and suggests the crime was covered up by elements within the British establishment to prevent a diplomatic crisis.

Scroll down for more ...

'Murdered': Weapons' expert David Kelly

Read more...

• Why I know weapons expert Dr David Kelly was murdered, by the MP who spent a year investigating his death

The LibDem MP, who gave up his front bench post to carry out his year-long investigation, makes his claims in a book serialised exclusively in the Daily Mail today and next week.

The official Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr Kelly ruled in 2004 that he slashed one of his wrists with a garden knife and took an overdose after being "outed" as the mole who revealed the flawed argument for invading Iraq.

But Norman Baker is convinced the scientist was murdered.

He says he was told by a secret informant that British police knew about the plot but failed to act in time and that the death was later made to look like a suicide to prevent political and diplomatic turmoil.

The highly-respected MP's personal quest to uncover the truth about Dr Kelly's death was prompted by deep concerns over the circumstances surrounding the apparent suicide.

He - and a group of eminent doctors - were greatly troubled by the evidence presented to Lord Hutton.

They claimed medical evidence proved that the alleged method of suicide - the cutting of the ulnar artery in the wrist and an overdose of co-proxamol painkillers - could not have caused the scientist's death.

Mr Baker said: "The more I examined [Lord Hutton's verdict], the more it became clear to me that Hutton's judgment was faulty and suspect in virtually all important respects."

His findings are today revealed in the first extract from his book The Strange Death of David Kelly. In it, he claims:

• No fingerprints were found on the gardening knife allegedly used by the scientist to cut one of his wrists;

• Only one other person in the whole of the British Isles committed suicide in the same way as the scientist allegedly did in 2003;

• There was an astonishing lack of blood at the scene despite death being officially recorded as due to a severed artery;

• The level of painkillers found in Dr Kelly's stomach was "less than a third" of a normal fatal overdose.

The Lewes MP also suggests that the knife and packs of painkillers found beside Dr Kelly's body were taken from his home in Southmoor, Oxfordshire, during a police search after his death and later planted at the scene.

He tells in his book how he was contacted by "informants" during his "journey into the unknown".

One is alleged to have told him Dr Kelly's death had been "a wet operation, a wet disposal".

Mr Baker explains: "Essentially, it seems to refer to an assassination, perhaps carried out in a hurry."

Another secret contact told him that a group of UK-based Iraqis had "named people who claimed involvement in Dr Kelly's death".

The informant was later the victim of "an horrific attack by an unknown assailant".

The MP, who has repeatedly called for the police to re-open the case, alleges that the scientist had "powerful enemies" because of his work on biological weapons. A colleague of Dr Kelly, Dick Spertzel, America's most senior biological weapons inspector, confirmed to Mr Baker that the scientist was "on an Iraqi hit list".

Mr Baker alleges that opponents of Saddam Hussein feared Dr Kelly would "discredit" them by revealing "misinformation" they had deliberately planted to bolster the case for Britain and America's intervention in Iraq.

The MP claims Kelly's integrity might have "signed his own death warrant".

The book also alleges that British police "had got wind of a possible plan to assassinate Dr Kelly but were too late to prevent his murder taking place".

The MP suggests that the police may have tried to make the killing appear to be a suicide "in the interests of Queen and country" and to prevent any destabilisation of the sensitive relationship between the Allies and Iraq.

Mr Baker adds: "It is all too easy to dismiss so-called conspiracy theories. But history shows us that conspiracies do happen - and that suicide can be staged to cover murderers' tracks.

"All the evidence leads me to believe that this is what happened in the case of Dr Kelly."

=============

Anti Saddam Iraqi's killed him ?

Yea, right...

He was Wellstoned,
also see Danny Pearl...
Truth Lies Pearl - 9-11Review

Bush vetos $23 billion for projects like repairing hurricane damage.

The Christian Science Monitor Nov 2, 4:34 PM EDT
Bush Vetoes Water Projects Bill
By JENNIFER LOVEN Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- An increasingly confrontational President
Bush on Friday vetoed a bill authorizing hundreds of popular
water projects even though lawmakers can count enough votes to
override him.

Bush brushed aside significant objections from Capitol Hill,
even from Republicans, in vetoing legislation that provides
$23 billion for projects like repairing hurricane damage,
restoring wetlands and preventing flooding in communities
across the nation.

It appears certain Bush will have his veto overridden for the
first time in his presidency. The bill passed in both chambers
of Congress by well more than the two-thirds majority needed
to override Bush's decision and make the measure law.

"When we override this irresponsible veto, perhaps the
president will finally recognize that Congress is an equal
branch of government and reconsider his many other reckless
veto threats," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

"More than two years after failing to respond to the
devastation and destruction of Hurricane Katrina, he is
refusing to fund important projects guided by the Army Corps
of Engineers that are essential to protecting the people of
the Gulf Coast region," Reid said.

Bush objected to $9 billion in projects added during
negotiations between the House and Senate. He hoped that his
action, even though it is sure not to hold, would cast him as
a friend to conservatives who demand a tighter rein on federal
spending.

Bush never vetoed spending bills under the Republican
Congress, despite budgetary increases then, too. Attempting to
demonstrate fiscal toughness in the seventh year of his
presidency, Bush risked being criticized for doing too little,
too late and of waging a transparently partisan attack against
the Democrats who now run Capitol Hill.

The president took the gamble, though without any public
fanfare, as part of a broader effort to take on Democratic
leaders frequently and more pointedly.

It was Bush's fifth veto. Four of those have come since
Democrats took over Congress in January.

Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, pledged to work to override the
veto. "We are facing a water infrastructure crisis and our
national investment in water resources has not kept pace with
our level of economic expansion," Voinovich said.

But Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin applauded Bush
for vetoing a "flawed, bloated bill. Instead of trying to
override the veto, Congress should take this opportunity to
fix the bill."

Stephen Ellis, vice president of the watchdog group Taxpayers
for Common Sense, said lawmakers should "go back to the
drawing board and come back with a responsible bill that meets
the country's needs while not sinking our fiscal ship."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Bush issued veto
threats under the GOP-controlled Congress that were enough to
do the job.

"Republicans heeded the president's concerns, stayed within
his spending caps, and avoided vetoes," he said. "Democrats
are intent on exceeding those caps, and if they do the
president will veto those bills."

The water project legislation originally approved by the
Senate would have cost $14 billion and the House version would
have totaled $15 billion. Bush and a few Republicans
complained that the final version was larded with unneeded pet
projects pushed by individual lawmakers - sending the overall
cost of the bill much higher.

Bush vetoed the bill because it is "fiscally irresponsible"
and falls outside the scope of the mission of the Army Corps
of Engineers, White House press secretary Dana Perino said.

Critics noted the Corps already has a backlog of $58 billion
worth of projects and an annual budget of only about $2
billion to address them.

If Bush is overridden, the measure would give a green light to
projects in virtually every state. It only authorizes the
projects; the actual funding must be approved separately.

The authorizations include:

-$3.6 billion for major wetlands and other coastal
restoration, flood control and dredging projects for
Louisiana, a state where coastal erosion and storms have
resulted in the disappearance of huge areas of land;

-nearly $2 billion for the restoration of the Florida
Everglades;

-nearly $2 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers to build
seven new locks on the upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers;

-$7 billion for various projects related to hurricane
mitigation in Mississippi and Louisiana, including assuring
100-year levee protection in New Orleans;

-hundreds of smaller dredging, wetlands restoration and flood
control projects across the country.

Previous Bush vetoes include two of bills allowing expanded
federal research using embryonic stem cells, a spending bill
that would have required troop withdrawals from Iraq, and
legislation to expand a children's health insurance program.

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BUSH_VETO?
SITE=MABOC&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-11-02-16-
34-03

--
A government, of, by, and, for: Rich, Elite, Freemasons.
But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the
light:
for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.
The light shineth in darkness;
and the darkness comprehended it not.
The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be
single,
thy whole body shall be full of light.
But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of
darkness.
If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great
is that darkness!
Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead,
and Christ shall give thee light.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.