Source – gallup.com – Net Number of New U.S. Firms Plummets: Business startups outpaced business failures by about 100,000 per year until 2008. But in the past six years, that number suddenly reversed, and the net number of U.S. startups versus closures is minus 70,000: The U.S. now ranks not first, not second, not third, but…
Source – mintpressnews.com – Can we call this neo-feudalism yet?: According to a new report by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) America’s 20 wealthiest people now own more wealth than the bottom half of the American population combined. IPS calculates the top 20 in the Forbes 400 richest list own more wealth than 152…
Source – alternet.org – Inequality is Fundamental to U.S. Capitalism: Tweaking the Edges Will Accomplish Nothing. The poorest Americans have no realistic hope of achieving anything that approaches income equality. They still struggle for access to the basics: The economic hoarding by those at the top has been termed “income inequality”, but that’s neither a…
Source – mediareform.org.uk – This exclusive investigation by Nafeez Ahmed is part of our series of posts on Media Democracy which people wrote in response to our invitation to reflect on how best to secure media democracy in the run up to our Media Democracy Festival. By Nafeez Ahmed John Pilger once wrote that journalism is the first…
Source – prwatch.org – The Kochs have been complaining about a “lack of civility in politics” as they seek to boost their public image–but one of their top operatives helped propel perhaps the most egregious case of race-baiting voter fraud hucksterism in recent years. At the same time that the Kochs have been on a…
Source – democracynow.org – Describing the United States as an “advanced Third World country,” longtime consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader calls for a new mass movement to challenge the power corporations have in Washington. “It is not too extreme to call our system of government now ‘American fascism.’ It’s the control of…
Source – cabaltimes.com – ‘…After the Federal Reserve completely removed the American dollar from the gold standard in 1970, America entered into a secret defence treaty with the Saudis in 1975. The main purpose of this treaty was to end the OPEC oil embargo, which was started by King Faisal in response to American support for Israeli aggression. While…
Source – theguardian.com – Special suite at LAX will let stars and the world’s wealthy glide directly from their limo to their first-class seat without having to interact with the public: Welcome to the 1%’s new airport terminal. Los Angeles international airport on Thursday won approval to build a special terminal to allow celebrities, sports…
Source – oftwominds.com – Even if nothing else doomed the status quo, the widening gap between household incomes and costs will push the corrupt contraption over the cliff by itself. The status quo (whatever you wish to call it) requires “growth” to sustain itself–growth in consumption, spending, sales, debt, asset valuations, profits and of course…
Source – davidstockmanscontracorner.com – Between 1989 and 2010, U.S. attorneys seized an estimated $12.6 billion in asset forfeiture cases. The growth rate during that time averaged +19.4% annually. In 2010 alone, the value of assets seized grew by +52.8% from 2009 and was six times greater than the total for 1989. Then by 2014, that number had…
Source – awdnews.com, By Mark Potok and Don Terry – “There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.” FRANCIS BACON, Of Suspicion, 1625 America, as the historian Richard Hofstadter famously noted in 1964, is a place peculiarly given to “the paranoid style” of politics — the idea that history is no accident,…
Source – alternet.org – New research from Princeton has shown an all-but-unprecedented increase in mortality rates. Here’s what to know: A fascinating and disturbing paper from Princeton social scientists Anne Case and Angus Deaton reveals a shocking deterioration of health among what can be called, to echo Michael Harrington’s famous 1962 book on poverty, the…
Source – nytimes.com, By Nicholas Confessore, Sarah Cohen and Karen Yourish – A stunning feature in the New York Times details how a mere 158 American households comprised nearly half of all the money donated to 2016 presidential campaigns thus far. These donors are disproportionately white, male, old, and unbelievably wealthy. In total, these families account for…
Source – wallstreetonparade.com – The New York Times has just completed a three-part investigative series on the evisceration across America of the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of a right to a jury trial under the Seventh Amendment, which mandates: “In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of…
Source – charleshughsmith.blogspot.ca – Those calling for an end of the Empire don’t seem to realize that the federal state’s vast entitlement programs are ultimately funded by the Empire. The Status Quo would have us believe that America and its Empire are one entity. This is handy for those with Imperial designs but it is…
Source – paulcraigroberts.org – On January 6, 2004, Senator Charles Schumer and I challenged the erroneous idea that jobs offshoring was free trade in a New York Times op-ed. Our article so astounded economists that within a few days Schumer and I were summoned to a Brookings Institution conference in Washington, DC, to explain our…
Source – robertfkennedyjr.com – Over and over again, citizens asked the legislature: who is asking for these bills? Now we know: Starting today, three bills are being rammed through the Wisconsin legislature that will put the final nails in the coffin of our state’s long history of clean elections and accountable governance. The same group…
Source – sputniknews.com – A new probe has revealed that drug enforcement agents who were disciplined for attending sex parties with prostitutes on government leased property in Colombia received hefty bonuses ranging from $1,500 to $32,000 during the investigation. On Thursday, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz issued a report finding that the agency violated…
Source – theeconomiccollapseblog.com – When it comes to “prepping”, many among the elite take things to an entirely different level. As you will see below, the elite are willing to pay big money for cutting edge home security measures, luxury bomb shelters and superyacht getaway submarines. Some of the things that the elite are demanding…
Source – politicalblindspot.com – Payoff from a college degree does not provide the same economic rewards for African Americans and Hispanics as it does for other groups. In fact, in households of color, those with a college degree actually fared worse than their counterparts without college degrees. A recent study from the Federal Reserve Bank…
Source – oftwominds.com – If you don’t think these definitions apply, please check back in a year. The mainstream is finally waking up to the future of the American Dream: downward mobility for all but the top 10% of households. A recent Atlanticarticle fleshed out the zeitgeist with survey data that suggests the Great Middle…
Source – usuncut.com – “A civil rights lawsuit isn’t a probability. It’s a certainty”: While institutionalized racism has been a much-discussed topic since the Black Lives Matter movement put it in the national conversation, one story is going overlooked — Alabama shuttering state offices where residents can get official identification in almost exclusively black communities,…
Source – TomDispatch.com – It was an impressive effort: a front-page New York Times story about a “new way of war” with the bylines of six reporters, and two more and a team of researchers cited at the end of the piece. “They have plotted deadly missions from secret bases in the badlands of Somalia. In Afghanistan, they…
Source – shtfplan.com, By Mac Slavo – Government poses a threat to liberty, that much is clear. But what may be surprising is that almost half of Americans clearly identified government as a clear and “immediate” threat, and are obviously outraged about what is going on. Oddly, the number of angry Americans has remained consistent…
Source – rawstory.com – A Kansas mathematician said this week that she had retained a lawyer and had scheduled a discovery hearing to force Secretary of State Kris Kobach to hand over voting records after they showed evidence of election fraud. “I don’t understand why those patterns are there, the patterns are very definitely real.…
Source – paulcraigroberts.org – Before the West spreads democracy abroad maybe it could get some for itself. The US is an oligarchy in which government is answerable to six powerful private interest groups. In Europe governments are answerable to the EU, Washington, and private bankers and not to their peoples. In the UK the military…
Source – nationofchange.org – One in every three African American men will be sent to prison in their lifetime. In this video, Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses how so many black Americans get trapped behind bars: Earlier this week, The Atlantic published an extensive, detailed, and compelling article in nine chapters by Ta-Nehisi Coates, outlining the historical…
Source – collectivelyconscious.net – NOTE: This article is part of a three-part series detailing the three primary nemeses of the cabal. Part 2 and Part 1 will be released soon. Many of us were raised by our parents to respect those who fought to ensure our freedom and taught that we should vote because the vote…
Source – ericpetersautos.com – Democracy is an incredibly successful long con. It works because of the illusion of consent. People actually believe they are “represented.” And so, they accept impositions that would otherwise be intolerable, if imposed on them by a king or a fuhrer or generalissimo. But when the “people” have decided… . Except…
Source – theantimedia.org – Author A.J. Jacobs and a team of researchers with genealogy web sites myheritage.com and geni.com have recently developed a family tree showing that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are distant cousins. They share royal blood that runs deep in their family lines. Jacobs told Extra in a recent interview that “Their 19th…
Source – gallup.com – Three in four Americans (75%) last year perceived corruption as widespread in the country’s government. This figure is up from two in three in 2007 (67%) and 2009 (66%). While the numbers have fluctuated slightly since 2007, the trend has been largely stable since 2010. However, the percentage of U.S. adults…
Source – truthinmedia.com – Two years after Edward Snowden first leaked information about the National Security Agency’s illegal domestic spying programs, the once-cynical whistleblower is now striking a more optimistic tone about what he sees as a rising “post-terror” America. In an op-ed published Thursday in The New York Times, whistleblower and former National Security…
Source – yesmagazine.org – The real reason you have so much debt has more to do with stagnant wages and predatory banks, than shopping sprees: – What if all the low-hanging fruit of outsourcing jobs and financialization have already been plucked by Corporate America? The connection between soaring corporate profits and stagnant wages is both…
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