Oligarchy

Girl Gang Raped during Spring Break in Florida as Crowds Stand Around and Do Nothing to Stop It

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I’m simply speechless after reading the following.

From CBS News:

PANAMA CITY, Fla. – Two college students have been charged with sexually attacking a woman on a crowded Florida beach filled with spring break revelers who apparently did nothing to stop it, authorities said.

Delonte’ Martistee, 22, and Ryan Austin Calhoun, 23, were arrested Friday and charged with sexual battery by multiple perpetrators, according to the Bay County Sheriff’s Office.

The attack, recorded on a cellphone video, happened sometime March 10-12 in Panama City, Bay County Sheriff Frank McKeithen said at a news conference. Authorities learned of the assault when police in Troy, Alabama, discovered the video while investigating a shooting.

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Illinois Man Commits Suicide in Front of U.S. Capitol Holding a “Tax the 1%” Sign

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This. Is. Sparta!
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Yesterday, 21-year old Josephine Witt captured the world’s attention (and much of its admiration) for interrupting a press conference being held by the European branch of the global central banking cartel by sprinkling confetti all over ECB crime boss Mario Draghi. What was equally important, but didn’t make the headlines, was that just days earlier a 22-year old Illinois man committed suicide in front of the U.S. Capitol while holding a sign that said: “Tax the 1%.”

His death seems to have been, in part at least, a political statement. As such, people should pay close attention. While I don’t doubt the sincerity of his beliefs, I am troubled by the simplicity of the message on his sign because it reminds me of a phony political slogan. It likely demonstrates a deep ignorance of how the financial system actually works, and how the super rich exercise economic and political dominance.

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TSA Agents Caught Gaming System so Male Screener Could Grope Attractive Passengers; No Criminal Charges Filed

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Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

– Benjamin Franklin

When a society becomes sufficiently afraid of an outside enemy, it can be manipulated into irrational responses that are then easily abused by those in power. This has been the sad story of America in the decade and a half since 9/11 (for more, see: How I Remember September 11, 2001).

The TSA is just one of many shady and generally useless government agencies (and private companies) involved in a massive money and power grab since the kickoff of the endless, Orwellian “war on terror.” Rather than preventing any terrorist attacks, the TSA is engaged in security theatre. This has become very obvious to me during my many trips between Denver and New York City over the past five years.

As someone who has never gone through a naked body scanner, I am particularly sensitive to where they are positioned and where they are not. In Denver, they are basically everywhere, yet interestingly, in the terminal serving Frontier Airlines at La Guardia in NYC there are none. This seems incredible to me given how big of a terrorist target it is. Somehow New York City is able to screen passengers just fine without the naked body scanners, yet Denver can’t? How is that the case? It’s the case because the expensive new screeners are nothing more than security theatre. Security theater that pays very, very well for the device manufacturers.

Yet, it is much more dangerous than this. Whenever you give bureaucracies absurd powers “to protect you,” what you’ll invariably end up with is egregious abuse in the name of “for your own good.” The latest evidence of this was recently revealed in the emergence of a scheme by two TSA employees at Denver International Airport to allow a male screener to grope specific passengers that he found attractive. Importantly, this scam couldn’t have occurred if metal detectors were used.

We learn from CBS4 News that:

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All Hail Hillary – Iowa Students Locked in Classrooms as Clinton Arrives at College to Visit “Everyday Iowans”

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You can’t make this up. You really can’t.

So just days after oligarch extraordinaire Hillary Clinton finally put us out of our misery and announced her campaign for the U.S. Presidency, she decided it would be shrewd to kick things off by “having conversations with everyday Iowans” via a “van tour.” These aren’t my words, it is exactly how the PR stunt was marketed by her campaign. See:

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Naturally, the whole thing was staged, and the experience of most “everyday Iowans” was far from any sort of conversation. In fact, many were locked in their classrooms to prevent her highness from even having to view the rabble. The Des Moines Register notes that:

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New Report Finds $153 Billion in Corporate Welfare – Majority of Taxpayer Funded Public Assistance Goes to People Who are Employed

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Over the past few weeks, I’ve focused on the many dangerous myths people are encouraged to tell themselves by the various power structures. These myths prevent critical thinking and make people far more malleable and passive. I’ve discussed the stock market myth and the Hillary Clinton myth in some detail, but today I want to expound upon the public welfare, i.e., food stamp myth.

This myth has two components to it, which work brilliantly to manipulate two different segments of the U.S. population. On the one hand, the wealthy and upper middle classes who do not need public assistance have generally bought into either one of two notions about it.

1) That their tax dollars are actually helping out the poor, and they are happy to pay their share of it.

or

2) That those on public assistance are intellectually and professionally inferior to themselves, and that these people are just lazy deadbeats who should get off the couch.

Interestingly, neither of these perspectives are accurate, but they serve the corporate-state perfectly. The reason is that by dividing the affluent classes into two false memes they never actually see the issue for what it really is. At the same time, public assistance is actually padding corporate profit margins at the expense of society. I discussed this a couple of years ago in the post, McDonald’s Math: You Can’t Survive Working for Us. Here are a few excerpts:

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“He Woke up on 3rd Base and Thought He Hit a Triple” – A Community Banker Responds to Jamie Dimon

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The recent shareholder letter by JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon provides a crystal clear example of why it’s so dangerous to encourage and subsidize the corporate welfare babies known as the “Too Big to Fail” mega banks. The letter, which features a gigantic photograph of the executive seated casually with legs crossed in jeans, a shirt that appears almost uncomfortable around his neck in the absence of a tie, and all ten fingers touching flawlessly in what undoubtably took multiple takes to provide the sufficient creepiness factor (the presence of presidential cufflinks cannot be confirmed or denied), expounded on how well the mega banks performed during the financial crisis compared to the hundreds of small banks that failed.

This was understandably too much to handle for Camden R. Fine, president and chief executive of the Independent Community Bankers of America. He wrote a scathing piece in American Banker in rebuttal titled, Dimon’s Defense of Big-Bank Model: An Exercise in Hubris.

Here are some choice excerpts:

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Portrait of the American Oligarchy – The Very Troubling Income and Wealth Trends Since 1989

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One of the primary purposes of Liberty Blitzkrieg is to dispel the myth that America is politically a democracy and economically a free market, and prove that it is in fact a centrally planned oligarchy. If the people were well aware of this and fine with it, that’s one thing, but my contention is that the vast majority of the public is merely buying into the myth. This is why the population is so passive and easily controlled. They simply don’t understand what is happening to them. The proverbial frog slowing boiling to death.

Whenever I note that real median incomes in America haven’t increased for decades, many people have a hard time believing it. Nevertheless, as John Adams famously proclaimed: “facts are stubborn things.” Indeed they are, and an article published today by Bloomberg View provides some disturbingly stubborn facts that must be admitted to and faced. We learn that:

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The Stock Market Myth and How the Japanese Middle Class is on the Precipice Thanks to Abenomics

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Data back this up. According to labor ministry figures announced April 1, the number of households living on welfare hit a record 1,618,817 in January. This figure has been on the rise for the last two decades.

On the other hand, data also show that the rich became even wealthier under Abe’s tenure.

– From the Japan Times article: Under ‘Abenomics,’ Rich Thrive but Middle Class on Precipice

Although a sizable amount of people globally are now aware of the historic theft being perpetrated on them by the various oligarchies in control of their respective nation-states, the number of people cognizant and angry about it remains far too low relative to the degree of theft. There are many reasons for this, but I believe the most powerful factor is that extremely sophisticated propaganda has convinced the majority of humanity to buy into all sorts of myths about their particular country or tribe, which keeps them complacent, passive and focused on an exaggerated external threat.

While many of these myths are targeted to specific groups or nationalities, the most powerful ones are those that target humanity on a global scale. Of these, one of the most effective has been the stock market. Pretty much everyone is taught, and buys into the idea, that rising stock markets mean rising prosperity and a strong economy. Part of this has to do with the history of the Great Depression, which is primarily associated with crashing equity markets. The idea of a rising stock market equating to a healthy economy and shared prosperity; however, is in fact a myth. A very powerful and dangerous myth at that.

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Warren Buffett the Slumlord – Predatory Loans, Kickbacks and Preying on the Poor at Clayton Homes

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The disastrous deal ruined their finances and nearly their marriage. But until informed recently by a reporter, they didn’t realize that the homebuilder (Golden West), the dealer (Oakwood Homes) and the lender (21st Mortgage) were all part of a single company: Clayton Homes, the nation’s biggest homebuilder, which is controlled by its second-richest man — Warren Buffett.

Buffett’s mobile-home empire promises low-income Americans the dream of homeownership. But Clayton relies on predatory sales practices, exorbitant fees, and interest rates that can exceed 15 percent, trapping many buyers in loans they can’t afford and in homes that are almost impossible to sell or refinance, an investigation by The Seattle Times and Center for Public Integrity has found.

Berkshire Hathaway, the investment conglomerate Buffett leads, bought Clayton in 2003 and spent billions building it into the mobile-home industry’s biggest manufacturer and lender. Today, Clayton is a many-headed hydra with companies operating under at least 18 names, constructing nearly half of the industry’s new homes and selling them through its own retailers. It finances more mobile-home purchases than any other lender by a factor of six. It also sells property insurance on them and repossesses them when borrowers fail to pay.

Former dealers said the company encouraged them to steer buyers to finance with Clayton’s own high-interest lenders.

Buyers told of Clayton collection agents urging them to cut back on food and medical care or seek handouts in order to make house payments. 

To maintain its down-to-earth image, Clayton has hired the stars of the reality-TV show “Duck Dynasty” to appear in ads…

– From the excellent Seattle Times article: The Mobile-Home Trap: How a Warren Buffett Empire Preys on the Poor

In so many ways, Warren Buffett and modern America are the same thing. An idea packaged and marketed so brilliantly, most of humanity unquestionably believes the myth. Warren Buffett and the U.S. both sell themselves as encompassing the very best of human qualities; highly successful, extraordinarily intelligent, yet at the same time, extremely ethical. It’s that last part that’s actually most important to the continued power and prestige of both the man and the nation-state. However, when you look beneath the surface, it becomes increasingly clear that neither of them actually come close to what’s printed on the package.

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Poor Jeb Bush – Poll Numbers Plunge in Home State of Florida and Remain Dismal in Ohio and Pennsylvania

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While Hillary Clinton is undoubtably an authoritarian, crony fraud, she can at least say she’s got hapless Democrat party lemmings firmly behind her. Not so for Jeb Bush, a candidate so bad only an oligarch could love him.

What’s been so amusing about his campaign thus far, is the lengths to which big money Republican donors have gone to try to manufacture support and create a likable candidate out of someone with zero grassroots support. The best example of this came about a month ago, and was highlighted in the post, Jeb Bush Forced to Bus Supporters From Washington D.C. to CPAC as Attendees Walk Out On Him. Here’s an excerpt:

It sounds like Jeb Bush’s supporters are taking CPAC pretty seriously this year. Emails provided to Slate show that backers of the former Florida governor are busing supporters from downtown Washington D.C. to CPAC in National Harbor, Maryland, and organizing to get them day passes into the event.

One long-time CPAC insider said these organized efforts impressed him, and that he didn’t know of any other potential 2016 candidates busing backers in. Perhaps that’s because no other potential candidates are worried about the regular crowd turning against them—the Washington Times reports today that some CPAC attendees are planning “to stage an informal protest when he hits the stage.”

Unfortunately for Jeb, busing in supporters doesn’t translate into genuine support. This was recently on full display with the latest Quinnipiac University poll.

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