Economic Stimulus = Treasury Bonds, Paid Back by Future Generations

I had a chat about economics with my family on mothers' day and I remember the question of China's loan for the economic stimulus checks. At the time I hadn't read too much detail about the stimulus checks so I didn't have an educated opinion of the subject.
It seems the answer was simpler than I thought; foreign owned treasury bonds bought by countries like Japan, China, UK and groups such as OPEC (see chart) pay for stimulus checks sent out to U.S. taxpayers. These countries own our country's debt.
Take a look at #4 on the chart, "oil exporters," footnote #3 lays out the list of included countries who are also under OPEC, which is important to note that its members started trading in Euros instead of Dollars (U.S. isn't part of OPEC) shortly before the U.S. began invading it's member countries. How many countries in that footnote were part of Bush's "axis of evil?" What a coincidence.

chart -Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Bonds

http://www.xe.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEC

"After the introduction of the euro (1999), pre-invasion Iraq decided it wanted to be paid for its oil in euros instead of US dollars causing OPEC to consider changing its oil exchange currency to euros, although after Iraq's invasion, the interim government reversed this policy, and the subsequent Iraq governments stuck to the US dollar.[16] Member states Iran and Venezuela have undergone similar shifts from the dollar to the Euro.

In 2000, Chávez hosted the first summit of heads of state of OPEC in 25 years. The next year, however, the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan,"
the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt against Hugo Chavez, "and 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation prompted a surge in oil prices to levels far higher than those targeted by OPEC during the preceding period.
On November 19, 2007, global oil prices reacted strongly as OPEC members spoke openly about potentially converting their cash reserves to the euro and away from the US dollar."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEC#Responding_to_war_and_low_prices
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Venezuelan_coup_d%27état_attempt


"The Bureau of the Public Debt borrows money needed to operate the Federal Government, accounts for the resulting debt, and provides reimbursable services to other Federal agencies. The bureau pays interest to investors and redeems investors' securities. Borrowings total about $5 trillion each year through 220 or so marketable securities auctions and savings bond sales at over 40,000 locations throughout the U.S. The Bureau of the Public Debt sells securities directly to and maintains accounts for investors in its TreasuryDirect system."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_the_Public_Deb

Right now the only presidential candidate with clear plans to prevent future generations from having to take the burden of paying off these debts is Ralph Nader.
"In recent years, the big five oil companies - ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips, BP and Shell - have booked record profits - a big chunk of which result from oil industry market manipulation and anti-competitive practices. (For example, oil companies have exploited their market position to intentionally restrict refining capacity by driving smaller, independent refiners out of business.)

Nader/Gonzalez would strictly regulate the oil industry - clamping down on speculators and enforcing the antitrust laws.

Nader/Gonzalez would also revoke federal subsidies to the oil industry, repeal multi-billion tax breaks and impose a windfall profits tax to fuel a transition to a solar energy economy.

Nader/Gonzalez would cut the bloated, wasteful military budget.
(Hillary Clinton and Obama have committed themselves to increasing the armed forces by tens of thousands of troops. John McCain would outdo them both.) http://www.votenader.org/issues/military-budget

Corporate crime costs Americans hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Tens of thousands of Americans are killed each year and hundreds of thousands of Americans injured and sickened each year by preventable corporate-bred violence.

From pollution, medical negligence, procurement fraud, product defects, and financial fraud, to antitrust, public corruption, foreign bribery and occupational homicide, corporate crime is widely ignored by politicians – yet acutely felt by all Americans.

Nader/Gonzalez would crack down on corporate crime and violence with a twelve point program: http://www.votenader.org/issues/corporate-crime/

Nader/Gonzalez proposes a straightforward carbon tax—set to annual benchmarks to bring, with the expansion of solar energy, US emissions to at least 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

A phased in initial price of $50 per ton of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions would harness $300 billion annually—money that would be put back in the pockets of American taxpayers, and money that would finance a green industrial revolution, providing a boon of 10 million new green collar jobs (in efficiency retrofits, cogeneration, geothermal, solar energy generation, and green grid enhancements) in the first five years. http://www.votenader.org/issues/carbon-tax/

Ralph/Gonzalez would work to end corporate personhood
http://www.votenader.org/issues/corporate-personhood/


Also check out:
http://www.votenader.org/issues/speculation-tax
http://www.votenader.org/issues/single-payer
http://www.votenader.org/issues/taft-hartley
http://www.votenader.org/issues/corporate-personhood
http://www.votenader.org/issues

Corporate Personhood

from VoteNader.org

In 1886 the Supreme Court, in the case of in the pivotal case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, was interpreted to have ruled that corporations were “persons”—before women were considered persons under the 14th amendment to have the right to vote.

Ever since, corporations have enjoyed most of the same constitutional rights granted to real people.

But corporations are not humans. They don’t vote. They don’t have children. They don’t die in Iraq.

The people who work for the corporations are of course real people, but the corporate “entity” should never be given equal constitutional rights to real human beings.

Even Business Week magazine, in a 2000 editorial, declared that “corporations should get out of politics.”

We cannot have equal justice under law between real people and corporations like Exxon Mobil.

Multinational corporations can be in 1000 places around the world at the same time obstructing governments, states, buying and renting politicians, and going to Washington to get bailed out by taxpayers.

Congress did not legislate corporate personhood. The courts performed this jolting display of runaway activism all by themselves.

The courts destroyed the semblance of equal protection under law because there is no way even an individual billionaire can approximate the raw power of these large corporations with their privileged immunities, and their control over technology, capital and labor.

Nader/Gonzalez will work to end corporate personhood.

Nader/Gonzalez will work to subordinate the artificial corporate entity to the constitutional sovereignty of the people.

Right now it is the reverse. The sovereignty of the people is subordinated to the sovereignty of the giant multinational corporations.

But the constitution still reads, “we the people”, not we the corporations.

Corporations were chartered in the early nineteenth century by state governments to be our servants, not our masters.

They are now are masters.

Time to restore the supremacy of real people.
References:

* Unequal Protection by Thom Hartmann
* Taming the Giant Corporation
* The Corporation
* Center for Corporate Policy
* Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy

Presidential Debates

from VoteNader.org

Nader/Gonzalez supports the opening up of the Presidential debates.

Right now, they are limited to the candidates from the two corporate parties.

The debates are controlled by the so-called Commission on Presidential Debates, a private corporation which was created by the Democratic and Republican Parties in 1987.

The Commission is headed by Frank Fahrenkopf -- the former head of the Republican National Committee, and Paul Kirk -- the former head of Democratic National Committee.

Fahrenkopf is a lobbyist for gambling interests, Kirk for pharmaceutical companies.

Debate sponsors have included Anheuser-Busch, Phillip Morris, Ford Motor Co., Yahoo Inc., 3Com, among other companies who gave soft money to the two parties’ national committees.

In 2000, some in the press dubbed the debates as the “Anheuser-Bush-Gore” debates.

In a memo by the CPD, the avowed goal for forming the commission was to "strengthen the two parties."

In 1988, the Commission seized control of the debates from the League of Women Voters.

The League had a history of allowing third party candidates to participate in the debates. In 1980 the League invited Congressman John Anderson to join Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan in the debates.

Anderson was given a boost from the public debates. At one point the polls had him at 21%. He won 7% of the vote.

When Jesse Ventura ran for Governor in Minnesota he was polling at 10 percent in the polls before the debates. After ten statewide debates he rose to 38 percent and won a 3-way race.

The Commission on Presidential Debates took a different tack from the League of Women Voters.

This Commission/corporation has excluded Ross Perot, Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan from the debates.

In 1996 Ross Perot was excluded from the debates. Even with all his money and after having won nearly 19 percent of the vote in 1992 it was determined that he did not have "a chance to win," despite the fact that he even led in the polls at one point in 1992.

Walter Cronkite called the presidential debates under the CPD an "unconscionable fraud" because the CPD format "defies meaningful discourse."

In early years the CPD determined who could be in a debate by vague criteria including interviews with columnists, pollsters and consultants who determined whether a candidate could win.

In the year 2000, the CPD changed their criteria for third party and independent candidates -- a candidate now needed 15 percent or more support as measured by the average of five private polling organizations -- which just happen to be owned by several major newspaper and television conglomerates.

In 2000, Ralph Nader was excluded from the debates because the parent corporations that conduct these polls were giving him scant attention.

Without the mainstream media attention there is no moving up, and without moving up, candidates like Nader do not get into the debates and reach tens of millions of people.

In 2000, a Fox poll revealed that 64% of likely voters wanted to see ‘other candidates’ including Ralph Nader in the debates.

Other polls in 2004 showed similar results.

But it didn't happen, thanks to the Commission on Presidential Debates.

Independents voices and third party candidates, including the Abolitionist, Women’s Suffrage Movement, Worker Protection, and Farmer Populace Party, have brought about many of the major changes in this country.

When Abraham Lincoln ran for office, the two major parties were the Whigs and the Democrats.

As a Republican, Lincoln was elected as a third party candidate -- even after being left off the ballot in the 11 states that seceded from the Union.

In 2004, 17 national civic leaders from the left, center and right of political spectrum - including Paul Weyrich, Chellie Pingree of Common Cause, Alan Keyes, Tom Gerety of the Brennan Center for Justice, Bay Buchanan, Randall Robinson, former FEC General Counsel Larry Noble, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, and Jehmu Green of Rock the Vote - created the Citizens' Debate Commission.

Bolstered by an advisory board comprised of 60 diverse civic groups, the Citizens' Debate Commission goal is to sponsor presidential debates that serves the American people, not political parties, first.
References:

* Open Debates
* No Debate by George Farah

Debating the Role of Third Parties in the U.S.

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5

Europeans Confused About the US Election

from Dvorak Uncensored

We in Denmark cannot figure out why you are even bothering to hold an election in the US.

On one side, you have a bitch who is a lawyer, married to a lawyer, running against a lawyer who is married to a bitch who is a lawyer.

On the other side, you have a war hero married to a good looking woman with big tits who owns a beer distributorship.

Is there really a contest here?

Esoteric Agenda

You may want to take a break to watch this, it's definitely worth a watch.

Different Approaches to Poverty

Summing up this article:

I don't have to sum up McCain because you can guess that he's still using Voodoo Economics, or what Reagan's administration like to call "starving the beast," (cut taxes for rich people and business and EVERYBODY saves!). This has shown time and time again to only create class divide and not wealth across the board.

"Raising the Earned Income Tax Credit, a tax credit for low-income workers, has been suggested by Democratic contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and would allow higher-income families to claim the credit."

Clinton

• Proposing tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for single workers, supposedly this would provide an average tax cut of $750 for 4 million people
• Offer $1,000 in investing incentives to encourage low-income people to build wealth
• 5 million jobs in energy efficiency and renewable energy technology
• $1 billion annually to states to create 100,000 new jobs to improve energy efficiency in public buildings
• A program to weatherize 20 million low-income homes would reduce heating bills and create 2,000 new jobs
• Take 300,000 families off welfare
• Force capable fathers to pay child support
• job programs would help struggling fathers through job training/counseling

Obama

• Reduce the marriage penalty, which taxes some married couples at a higher rate than if each partner filed as a single person

• Plans to tap into alternative energy to create a "green jobs corps" made up of disadvantaged youth
• Responsible Fatherhood programs
• Address Domestic violence
• Sponsor activities to sustain healthy relations and marriages
• Limit reductions in welfare payments if both parents work
• Grants for programs to educate young people about the consequences of early parenthood
• Aims to remove penalties on married families and "break the cycle of early parenthood" (good luck)
• Grants would be given to states to fund transitional job programs
• Require states to give full child support to the families

Ya, they're pretty much the same thing, numbers are slightly different and Obama wants to encourage fathers instead of forcing them in to anything, as Clinton suggests. Both seem to want to create another unemployment division.

Ralph Nader

"Stop tax cuts and start dealing with real problems."

As far as environmental issues/jobs, Ralph Nader was instrumental in establishing EPA, Clean Water Act, and Clean Air Act. Personally, I feel poverty has less to do with focusing on "deadbeat dads" and removing people from welfare when the U.S. education system is a joke. Take college tution:

In February (2006) Congress ... cut $12 billion out of the student loan programs, mostly from students and parents. In a report just out, the California Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG) found that in California, 17.9% of public college students and 28.8% of private college graduates have unmanageable student loan debt were they to take jobs as teachers or social workers. Yet these critical careers desperately need college graduates to replenish their ranks. (To download the full report, go to http://www.calpirg.org. See also http://www.studentloanjustice.org.
"Sallie Mae and the Student Loan Swindle" Ralph Nader, Counterpunch.org May 13/14, 2006
see also "Sallie Mae's Success Too Costly?" CBS 60 Minutes May 7, 2006

If a student can't start working on their career because of the burden of debt ruining their credit, how can they begin raising a family? A lot of single mothers and fathers put themselves through college with student loans.

Nader on Education

• Invest in K-12 education; that will reduce poverty
• Teach democratic principles & citizenship in schools
• Kick Channel One & commercialism out of class
• Focus on civic & consumer education
• Help people grow up civic instead of growing up corporate is an important function of the Department of Education
• Children are spending more and more money directly -- under 12 years of age they spent $ 12 billion last year, and they caused their parents to spend $ 150 billion. They need a consumer perspective, how to become a smart shopper.
• Charity work is good; but politics addresses root causes
• While the minimal government benefits still afforded the poor are provided only to the most impoverished, no such “means testing” is applied to corporate welfare beneficiaries. By and large the bigger the company, the more it extracts in government supports.

"Democracy can’t co-exist with gross income inequality" (on welfare and poverty)
In 1941, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis made a prescient observation when he wrote: “We can have a democratic society or we can have the concentration of great wealth in the hands of the few. We cannot have both.” Today, that concentration of wealth and its political power has reached stunning intensities. In large companies, people who work in the same enterprise are now earning $1 for every $416 that the CEO takes away. In 1940, it was $1 for every $12. Today the financial wealth of the top 1% of households exceeds the combined wealth of the bottom 95% of American households. Earlier this year Bill Gates’ wealth was equal to the combined wealth of the poorest 120 million Americans. Whatever this enormous imbalance says about the Great software imitator from Redmond, Washington, it means that about tens of millions of Americans, who work year after year, decade after decade, are nearly broke. What democracy worth its salt would have led to this profound inequity?"
Source: Nomination Acceptance Speech Jun 25, 2000

"While the minimal government benefits still afforded the poor are provided only to the most impoverished, no such “means testing” is applied to corporate welfare beneficiaries. By and large the bigger the company, the more it extracts in government supports."

"The new welfare law sets strict time limits for how long poor people can receive government supports, but no such time limitations attach to government handouts to big business."

"The welfare law denies benefits even to legal immigrants; corporate welfare, by contrast, is far more non-discriminating-Uncle Sam subsidizes foreign corporations as well as domestic businesses., including millions to Canadian mining companies. "


Homelessness
He proposed a "Domestic Marshall Plan to abolish poverty and the class/race system;" a public works project to rebuild America’s cities; a big affordable housing program, and an effort to expand mass transit.

[Instead of economic statistics, ] let’s look at the people indicators. We have homelessness. Affordable housing levels are at a peak in terms of not being met even though Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are reporting record profits. And then the facilities, the schools, the clinics, the public works that serve ordinary Americans aren’t being repaired. If you take people indicators, there’s quite a different economy.
Source: Interview on ‘Meet the Press’ May 7, 2000

14M families spend half of their income on housing
Fourteen million families spend more than half of their entire income on housing much of it crowded and substandard, leaving little for other necessities such as food, clothing and medical care. Any payout for housing beyond that often leads to serious economic problems which push families into bankruptcy and homelessness - not to mention the fact that many forgo proper nutrition and medical care in an attempt to keep their homes. Source: In the Public Interest, "Tax Cuts Homeless Problems Grow" Jun 3, 2003

1.35 million children are homeless
Lack of a stable place to live is traumatic for adults, but for children the experience is particularly cruel. More than 1.35 million children are homeless at some point each year. They exist in shelters, cars, parks or pushed into already badly overcrowded quarters. The homeless life disrupts their education, exposes them to communicable diseases, malnutrition, depression and drug addictions.
Source: In the Public Interest, "Tax Cuts Homeless Problems Grow" Jun 3, 2003

How is Nader Polling

Last week, we reported on a poll showing Ralph Nader at 10 percent in Michigan.

Last month, a Fox News poll showed that one in seven voters (14 percent) would seriously consider voting for Ralph Nader for President in November.

And just this morning, a Suffolk University poll of Pennsylvania Democrats shows Nader at four percent.

But then the pollsters at Suffolk University reported this finding:

Nader's four percent could potentially quadruple, as 17 percent of Democratic respondents said that if their first choice does not get the Democratic nomination, they may vote for Nader.

Here's the point:

This is a volatile election year.

Both parties are securely in the hands of large multinational corporations.

And as a result, on key issues that the American people care about, Nader/Gonzalez are on one side of the political fence, McCain/Clinton/Obama are on the other.

Jeremiah Wright's Sermon: Democrats Distancing Themselves from Truth

I can't say I disagree with anything Rev. Jeremiah Wright is saying in these quotes. Really the only thing I'm iffy about is the AIDS conspiracy. I don't know much about AIDS/HIV so I don't know if I'll every come to the same conclusion as Jeremiah Wright.
Obama and Clinton both have a history with this guy, but are both trying to politically distance their campaigns from him.

"It's as if we took the five dumbest things that I've ever said or you've ever said in our lives and compressed them and put them out there - I think that people's reaction would, understandably, be upset."^[14]
-Barack Obama, "ABC's Charles Gibson Talks to Barack Obama" ABC News March 28, 2008.

"..words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialog, whether it's on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue."
-Barack Obama, "On my Faith and My Church" Huffington Post, March 14, 2008.

"Had the reverend not retired, and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn't have felt comfortable staying at the church."
-Barack Obama, "Obama Would Have Left if Wright Stayed".Associated Press, March 28, 2008.

Barack Obama denounced the harshness of Wright's words — not because they were false, he said, but because they did not acknowledge the strides that the U.S. has made in the fight against racism. Obama said his own candidacy shows how far the country has come. (All Things Considered, March 18, 2008)

I think condemning the statements is a mistake, but then again, Democrats seem to be trying to cater to conservatives and do not want to seem too controversial. In my opinion, these topics are only controversial to people who do not study history and/or not directly affected by our government's military decisions. In other words, Democrats are catering to those who are quite possibly some of the most ignorant constituents:

Excerpts from Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sermon (in context here):

"I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday. Did anybody else see him or hear him? He was on Fox News. This is a white man, and he was upsetting the Fox News commentators to no end. He pointed out — did you see him, John? — a white man, he pointed out, ambassador, that what Malcolm X said when he got silenced by Elijah Muhammad was in fact true — America's chickens are coming home to roost."

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and The Pentagon, and we never batted an eye... and now we are indignant, because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."

"Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y'all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people that we have wounded don’t have the military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to grips with that."

"And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating her citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains, the government put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton field, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness."

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, not God Bless America. God damn America — that's in the Bible — for killing innocent people. God damn America, as long as she pretends to act like she is God, and she is supreme. The United States government has failed the vast majority of her citizens of African descent."

“The government lied about the Tuskegee experiment. They purposely infected African American men with syphilis. Governments lie. The government lied about bombing Cambodia and Richard Nixon stood in front of the camera, ‘Let me make myself perfectly clear…’ Governments lie. The government lied about the drugs for arms Contra scheme orchestrated by Oliver North, and then the government pardoned all the perpetrators so they could get better jobs in the government. Governments lie. The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. Governments lie. The government lied about a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein and a connection between 9.11.01 and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Governments lie.”

Nader at Ten Percent in Michigan

For fully a month now, the national media has largely ignored the Nader/Gonzalez campaign.

And yet, when the people of Michigan were asked earlier this month if the choice in November were between McCain, Clinton or Nader, 46 percent said McCain, 37 percent said Clinton and fully 10 percent said Nader.

If the choice were between McCain, Obama and Nader, Obama pulled 43 percent, McCain 41 percent, and Nader 8 percent.

This reflects national polling. For example, a Fox poll last month showed that about one in seven voters - 14 percent - say they would "seriously consider" voting for Ralph Nader.

Given the virtually total corporate media blackout, this is a remarkable result.

And we are heartened by it.

For Clinton, Obama and McCain, ten percent might seem like peanuts.

But for Nader/Gonzalez, it shows we're on our way up.

It has been our contention all along that the corrupt two-party system cannot stand.

Perhaps we are now seeing the first cracks in the facade of the duopoly.

We have joined with you in a rebuilding project.

Rebuilding a people-powered democracy.

That will deliver single payer, Canadian style, private delivery, public health insurance.

That will cut the bloated, wasteful military budget.

That will reverse U.S. policy in the Middle East.

That will secure a living wage.

That will end the illegal war in Iraq.

Last month the Zogby poll put Ralph Nader at five to six percent nationwide.

This month, it's ten percent in Michigan.

Thanks to you, we have made great strides over the past few months.

But we see this as just a beginning.

Here is what we must do now.

We are very close to securing federal matching funds.

What does it mean to secure matching funds?

For every dollar you give up to $250 - and we thank you for each and every dollar - the federal government will match it.

But to secure matching funds, we must first collect $5,000 in matchable donations in each of at least 20 states.

We are almost there.

So, please, be as generous as you can be.

Give whatever you can now - to help push us over the top.

Together, we can make a difference.

Onward

The Nader Team

PS: We invite your comments to the blog.

Election Season

What's been pulled off the table by the corporatized political machines in this momentous election year?

Answer:

-Cutting the huge, bloated and wasteful military budget,
-adopting a single payer Canadian-style national health insurance system,
-impeaching Bush/Cheney,
-opposing nuclear power - among many others.


What candidate, if any, would address these issues?
Post with your opinion and provide references if you have them. Thanks!
Watch NBC Sunday Feb 24th at 8am