Month: June 2015

Hillary Clinton’s Poll Numbers Plunge to the Worst Since 2001

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Although I continue to believe that Hillary Clinton will be the next President of these United States unless the Republicans nominate Rand Paul (read why I think he is the only candidate who can beat her here), the public’s plunging distrust in her is a very positive development for the nation.

For example, if crowned, I mean elected, she will enter the office severely damaged with almost no credibility. A large percentage of the population will see her as the illegitimate oligarch puppet that she is, which is good, because as James Baldwin accurately noted:

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

We learn from the National Journal that:

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America’s Most Wanted Secret – Wikileaks is Raising $100K Reward for Leaked Drafts of the TPP

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The only real information we have about the shady corporate giveaway known as the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), is via three chapters released by Wikileaks. Now, the whistleblower organization is raising $100,000 as a reward for additional leaked draft chapters. From Wikileaks.org:

America’s most wanted secret. The TPP is a multi-trillion dollar international treaty that is being negotiated in secret by the US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico and others. This massive agreement has 29 chapters, of which 26 are still secret. It covers 40% of global GDP and is the largest agreement of its kind in history. The treaty aims to create a new international legal regime that will allow transnational corporations to bypass domestic courts, evade environmental protections, police the internet on behalf of the content industry, limit the availability of affordable generic medicines, and drastically curtail each country’s legislative sovereignty. US Senator Elizabeth Warren has said “[They] can’t make this deal public because if the American people saw what was in it, they would be opposed to it.” Over the last two years WikiLeaks has published three chapters of this super-secret global deal, despite unprecedented efforts by negotiating governments to keep it under wraps. The remaining 26 chapters of the deal are closely held by negotiators and the big corporations that have been given privileged access. The TPP is also noteworthy as the icebreaker agreement for the proposed ‘T-treaty triad’ of TPP-TISA-TTIP which would see TPP style rules placed on 53 nations, 1.6 billion people and 2/3rds of the global economy.

$24,000 has already been raised, which is pretty impressive considering I only heard about the campaign this morning.

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Conversations with Everyday Americans – Hillary Launches $2,700 per Person “Grassroots” Fundraiser in Boston

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If you want to see how completely disconnected Hillary Clinton is from the “everyday Americans” she claims to represent, you need to look no further than her recent campaign invitation to a Boston fundraiser where attendees are asked to shell out $2,700 per person for a “ticket.”

It was only just yesterday that I highlighted a recent Federal Reserve study that showed that 47% of Americans couldn’t handle an unexpected expense of $400. In the post, Use of Alternative Financial Services, Such as Payday Loans, Continues to Increase Despite the “Recovery,” we learned that:

The most frightening finding in the Federal Reserve’s Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2014 concerns a matter of $400. Four-hundred bucks. Twenty twenties. Four Benjamins.

Or just enough to crush half of all American households.

“Forty-seven percent of respondents say they either could not cover an emergency expense costing $400, or would cover it by selling something or borrowing money,” reads this year’s annual report.

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New Jersey Judge Orders Newspaper to Take Down Article; Newspaper Refuses

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Here’s a very interesting case in which Bergen County Superior Court Judge Jane Gallina-Mecca issued an order directing the Bergen Dispatch to remove a news article. The newspaper refused the demand. Techdirt reports:

This seems to happen all too often, but a local judge has forgotten about the whole 1st Amendment thing. Last week, Bergen County Superior Court Judge Jane Gallina-Mecca ordered the Bergen Dispatch to take down a news article. The article was about a specific family court case, involving custody of a child. It’s not surprising that there might be some concern over privacy rights in such cases, but even so, that does not allow a judge to flat out order a newspaper to take down an article — even more so when the order came out of a closed hearing where no one from the newspaper was even present. In response, the Bergen Dispatch posted a fairly snarky article that reiterates some of the details from the case, and concludes with this wonderful paragraph:

While the Bergen Dispatch reviews its options we have confirmed that Bergen County does currently remain part of the State of New Jersey and that currently New Jersey is still part of the Union of states that is governed by the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights. As such, Bergen County citizens continue to enjoy the right to freedom of speech and the right to a free press.

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464 Americans Have Been Killed by Police in 2015 – Here are Their Stories

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A couple of months ago, I highlighted the horrifying fact that U.S. police killed more civilians in March than UK police killed in 100 years. With May 2015 in the history book, we now have some updated stats, and the results are not pretty. 464 Americans have been killed by police so far this year, which amounts to more than three deaths every single day. If you don’t think this is a problem, I don’t know how to help you.

The Guardian put together an incredible list of all 464 people killed by date, as well as a summary of the circumstances of their deaths.

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Use of Alternative Financial Services, Such as Payday Loans, Continues to Increase Despite the “Recovery”

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Families’ savings not where they should be: That’s one part of the problem. But Mills sees something else in the recovery that’s more disturbing. The number of households tapping alternative financial services are on the rise, meaning that Americans are turning to non-bank lenders for credit: payday loans, refund-anticipation loans, pawnshops, and rent-to-own services.

According to the Urban Institute report, the number of households that used alternative credit products increased 7 percent between 2011 and 2013. And the kind of household seeking alternative financing is changing, too.

– From the Citylab article: Half of All American Families Are Staring at Financial Catastrophe

It’s an economic recovery so lopsided, corrupt and fraudulent only an oligarch could love it.

One of the key themes at Liberty Blitzkrieg since inception has been to point out that the current economic recovery is largely a sham. While there are certainly meaningful innovations happening in the less regulated and corrupt parts of the economy, such as the technology sector, much of the landscape is riddled with waste, fraud, cronyism and stagnation. So much so, that I have gone ahead and characterized the entire post crisis economic environment to be the “oligarch recovery.”

Nowhere is this more evident than within the many statistics demonstrating that things for the growing American underclass are getting worse, not better. An article published last week by Citylab makes the point. It notes:

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