If we are to ride Free we must be Free

 

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
- Samuel Adams

Local Blues man Pat Ramsey, in the wind

Renowned for his incendiary harmonica work on Johnny Winter's "White Hot & Blue" LP, Pat Ramsey has been called "a harp player's harp player".
The Blues Disciples latest CD release is "Live at the Big Bend Blues Bash"

He passed away 11-17-08

See more about pat on his site here.

My bet is he's got them angels rockin.Add to Technorati Favorites

Reflectons on the previous three posts and economic slavery

Freedom is somewhat of a vaugue term.  Websters defines it as follows:

1: the quality or state of being free: as a: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action b: liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : independence c: the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous <freedom from care> d: ease , facility freedom> e: the quality of being frank, open, or outspoken freedom> f: improper familiarity g: boldness of conception or execution h: unrestricted use freedom of their home>.

If one were to ponder on it's exact meanings one would be hard pressed to say that they have ever been truly free.  It's kind of one of those things that you don't know you have until you no longer have it. Or something you think you may have had, but never did. Only the sociopaths are free from conscience.


Personally I have lost my "freedoms" on more than one occasion.  On occasion through some act of stupidity for whom I  have only myself to blame. Yet more often than one might think, often times through external forces over which I had no apparent control.  Which might be one reason why this whole banking thing has me eating nine volt batteries by the dozen.


I'm not happy when my illusion of freedom is shattered by my own hand.  I get down right pissed when it is taken from me or anyone else, through abuses of power.


It is amazing how in this land of the free and the brave, economic slavery can not only exist but thrive.

Though me and my 3 sisters grew up poor, we usually ate something and did sleep in out of the rain.  But since the rest of the neighborhood was in somewhat similiar circumstances we really didn't know we weren't all that well off. And though I did spend some time traveling on the cheap it was by my choice, one I was  free to make. Poverty by choice can be an adventure, a test if you will.  Poverty imposed on the powerless has no such noble connotations.


It was the recession (which depressed the hell out of me) of the late 70's (remember that gig) that taught me the true difference between the "haves" and the "have not's".  Jobs disappeared over night and unemployment compensation and food stamp lines stretched around the block.


It wasn't long before I found myself in the groves picking oranges with migrant workers and degreed white collar workers who could not buy a job anywhere.  I learned much from the Mexican migrant workers. Like if you put 13 boxes in a 10 box bin (only getting paid for the 10) the grove boss would move you into a better grove.  And if you asked how come Social Security was being taken out of your money when they never asked for your number, well then, you went to about a $7.00 a day grove.

Mexican and blacks alike validated what I already knew but some of the white collar folk had yet to learn. You share what you got in the groves.



The difference between the "haves" vs. the "have nots" is relative I guess.  Once you have been bused into a grove in the middle of nowhere and the man came around offering booze, cigarettes and stuff for sale at a price that would probably cost you a days picking.  Bang you in debt. And do not think for a moment that there are not (or at least were not) slave camps scattered throughout the Florida "boonies".  And do not think for a moment that your debt would be forgiven easily, if at all.  Some of them buses took you places you were not going to easily walk out of.



The desperation of feeling trapped as an individual is one thing but when you look at a whole family, kids to grandpa, picking in desperation daily, with the knowledge that for them, there was no way out, this was their future, your perspective on "America" begins to get a little skewed.  Mans inhumanity to man is no longer some vague poetic reference but a stark reality.



I busted out however.  Got myself promoted to working out of the "labor pools" and "handy Andys" that in that day and time could only be found in the seedier parts of towns.  With a lady and kid living in a migrant shack in a Pecan Grove, the $14.00 a day didn't go far. So most evenings we found ourselves shoplifting our one meal a day from the local grocery store and occasionally finding a way to rip off some rent money.



It becomes a trap. It's hard to focus on how to improve your situation when most of your thoughts are consumed with, "what will we eat tonight" and God forbid, what will we do if somebody gets sick.
There is no time for dreams. Survival dictates that attention must be focused on opportunities and threats from the transients inhabiting the same world but imprisoned even more by personal demons that had long ago stolen their souls leaving them without knowing what hope was.


By God's grace, I escaped those chains only to trip over others.  Along the journey I met others chained to mere existence.  Christian construction workers with families. They would work their bodies to ruin while injured so they could keep a truck running so they could feed their kids housed in cheap motel rooms and maybe, just maybe, buy some medicine for their sick lady. And do it day after day without complaint.  Gut glad they had a job and always worrying what happens when that one plays out. Afraid to confront the Christian ram rod when shorted on there board count for fear they would be replaced by the endless train of others seeking the same existence.


These were not people like myself, who on occasion through my own defects of character placed myself in some of these situations. These were people that never screwed anyone over. Instead they got screwed over day after day after day, with little choice but to wake up and get screwed again. Living proof that nice guys finish last.


Like the woman forced to work the night shift at the waffle house putting up with the drunks after closing time so she can be home in the morning to insure the kids her ol man ran off and left her with will get fed and sent of to school.  If of course she doesn't have to pull a double and leave the tending to the oldest child who might be all of 12. 


Of course there are those who have never been in the trap that will insist that anyone if they work hard enough can get out of the trap.  Like the grandmother I know who took on the care of her four grandchildren after their parents ran off and left them. Sharing what meager subsistence she had with them equally while going from church to church begging, being turned down because she was not a member of the congregation.  Not all have the courage of the wolf that will chew of it's own leg to escape the trap.


There is an America out there that not many get to, our choose to see much less experience.  There are those that have been there and got out.  There are many more who will never get out.  And sadly there are many who will self-righteously proclaim it is of their own doing while those that would profit off their backs continue to beat them further into the ground.


So forgive me if  I have no use for any, republican, democrat, whatever,  in a position of power who would waste our time and tax dollars on such inane issues as which direction should a license tag point while their brethren seek more efficient ways to steal from the poor and give it to those who could not possibly spend what they have already stolen.


For whatever "Freedom" I think that I may have is cheapened by the suffering of those who have none!

From Man was made to Mourn: A Dirge, 1785:

'Many and sharp the num'rous ills
Inwoven with our frame!
More pointed still we make ourselves
Regret, remorse, and shame!
And Man, whose heav'n-erected face
The smiles of love adorn, -
Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn!

Robert Burns-1785Add to Technorati Favorites

America has become an Autocratic form of governance

 The Judicial Aristocracy: Alexis de Tocqueville in his famous book Democracy in America has a chapter (Ch 8 in Part II) explaining how lawyers and the legal system temper democracy in America. He pointed out that lawyers and judges function as aristocrats in America. Tocqueville was right then and if anything this group has more rather than less power today. In Tocqueville's day the Supreme Court was just learning how to exercise its great power under Marberry v. Madison . In this 1803 decision the Court gave itself the right to determine if a law was Constitutional (or Unconstitutional). Later in 1954 the Supreme Court in Cooper v. Aaron simply stated that the "Constitution says what we say it says". Recently the Supreme Court in Missouri v. Jenkins allowed a local Federal judge to not only take over the Kansas City school system but also to double local property taxes against the expressed will of the taxpayers who had voted against this tax increase, a vote which was required by Missouri Law. Taxation without representation had thus returned to America. The power of America's legal establishment led by the Federal judiciary to act as an aristocracy is without question.

The Banking Aristocracy: Accounts of the October 13 meeting between US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and top bank CEOs on the government’s bailout of Wall Street—now estimated at $2.5 trillion—paint an extraordinary portrait of class relations in America. Though they were to receive hundreds of billions of dollars from the Treasury to stave off a credit collapse of their own making, the bankers arrogantly refused to accept the slightest limits on their prerogatives.

Instead, the Treasury approached the bankers as a supplicant, agreeing that if they accepted the bailout, it would place no real caps on exorbitant CEO pay and exercise no effective oversight of bank operations. Such conditions, one need hardly point out, are never granted to ordinary mortals.

Working class mortgage holders typically face foreclosure after missing three monthly payments. A small business receiving a loan from a bank must make all interest payments and can typically operate at a loss for at most two quarters before the bank places it in workout, effectively taking over its operations.

The Treasury also committed itself to guaranteeing $1.5 trillion in bank debt and $500 billion in non-interest-bearing bank accounts, used mainly by businesses. In total, and despite massive popular opposition to the initial $700 billion bailout passed earlier this month, the Treasury increased US liabilities by $2.25 trillion, without any Congressional vote or semblance of democratic consultation with the American people.

The bailout deal underscores a powerful social reality: There is a ruling class in America, whose interests the government is dedicated to defend, by blatantly unequal treatment if necessary. Despite ritual invocations of democracy, the American ruling class will not allow any popular interference in matters affecting its fundamental interests.

The deference paid to this financial aristocracy, amid predictions of a global economic depression, recalls nothing more than the dying days of the Ancien Régime monarchy before the French Revolution. One can imagine similar meetings as Louis XVI’s last finance minister, Viscount Charles Alexandre de Calonne—whose role is now played by Paulson, the multimillionaire ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs—drew up doomed plans attempting to stave off state bankruptcy, while preserving the nobility’s privileges.

The Corporate aristocracy: Wealth inequality, corporate welfare, and industrial pollution are like the fevers and chills of the economy. The underlying illness is shareholder primacy: the corporate drive to make profits for shareholders, no matter who pays the cost. It's a form of discrimination based on wealth. It's economic aristocracy. In The Divine Right of Capital, Marjorie Kelly shows that corporations are built on six aristocratic principles (only those who own property can vote, for example). That work in the interests of wealth-holders and against those of employees and the community. Most importantly, Kelly shows how to use democratic principles to build a new corporate order that serves the many rather than the few. Newly updated with information that connects the book to current events - including the Enron debacle, other corporate misdeeds, and the crash of many stock price

The legislative Aristocracies: Cooper worried about the United States. "Aristocracies are oftener republicks than any thing else," he wrote in The American Democrat, observing that "they have been among the most oppressive governments the world has ever known" (19-20). In his view, this was because aristocrats were particularly adept at manipulating the democratic masses. "Demagogues and editors" were a prime example of such "aristocrats," he pointed out in The Redskins (472). In political affairs these aristocrats were motivated by economic se1f-interest, not the real interests of the people. Cooper thought the legislature was the center of their political power, so he was anxious about legislative infringement on executive rights. To counter the threat of aristocracy he advocated a powerful executive: a strong president such as Andrew Jackson. The office and the man, he hoped, would have the strength to withstand the intrigues of aristocratic demagogues.

Nonetheless, Cooper worried about the interconnectedness of business and Congress, for he was certain that the chief threat of aristocracy in America came from the commercial sector. "It is a mistake to suppose commerce favorable to liberty," he explained in The American Democrat, for "the polity" preferred by "every community of merchants" was "a monied aristocracy" (160). Both as "a class" and "as politicians," he wrote his English publisher in 1835, American merchants "are aristocrats."29 In a richly revealing 1836 letter to the sculptor Horatio Greenough, he exclaimed: "Alas! my good Greenough, this is no region for poets, so sell them your wares, and shut your ears. The foreigners have got to be so strong, among us, that they no longer creep but walk erect. They throng the presses, control one or two of the larger cities, and materially influence public opinion all over the Union." Cooper was no nativist. "By foreigners, I do not mean the lower class of Irish voters," he explained, "but the merchants and others a degree below them, who are almost to a man hostile in feeling to the country, and to all her interests, except as they may happen to be their interests."30 The real "foreigners" to American democracy, in his opinion, were not Irish-Catholic immigrants but native-born Protestant merchants, businessmen, and bankers. Fast accumulating influence and power, they sought to turn America into an aristocracy.

A Letter To His Countrymen (1834), like numerous letters in the mid-1830s to family, friends, and The Evening Post, expressed Coopers fear of the rise of aristocracy and subversion of the Constitution. In one response, a newly elected Whig Congressman from Massachusetts, Caleb Cushing, authored a pamphlet entitled A Reply To The Letter of J. Fenimore Cooper by One of His Countrymen. Speaking to Coopers central political issue, he wrote: "what I specially deny and impugn is the strange heresy [your letter] puts forth, -- a misconception so palpable as not even to possess the faint lustre of mere paradox, -- that, in the United States, the great object of public suspicion and watchfulness should be the legislative, rather than the executive, department of government." As a Whig partisan and legislator, Cushing worried about "executive usurpation" and "tyranny" in President Andrew Jacksons "monarchical" behavior.31 But he was right that Congress was "the great object" of the Democrat Coopers "suspicion."

Congress, in Coopers opinion, was the biggest threat to the Constitution and American liberty as it represented the business community and was thus inclined toward aristocracy. Everywhere he looked in the western world, legislators were trespassing on executive rights and promoting aristocracy.32

The plight of the common man :
Besides, when has the average common man been told the correct, just views about Aristocracy? How people are deceived about Aristocracy:

        Even in promptly giving the palm to Democracy, however, they follow no guides more intelligent than I have just quoted. Take, for instance Dr. Spitz, who, in PATTERNS OF ANTI-DEMOCRATIC THOUGHT, tells his readers quite solemnly that the fundamental advantage of Democracy is the chance it gives the People of dismissing unsatisfactory and electing satisfactory governments.

        Thus here we have a learned political philosopher addressing a multitude much less learned who will naturally be commensurately impressed. His statement certainly reads so plausibly and, at first glance, sounds so irrefutable, that few would be alert enough to question it.

        And yet, scrutinized more narrowly, we immediately perceive its fundamental falsity. For it takes for granted two essential conditions of which Dr. Spitz neither attempts to prove the existence, nor even once mentions.

        To be true, the statement would have to refer to a people who.
        (1) Had the necessary reliable criteria, discrimination, and knowledge of men, always to choose the best when they were confronted with it — a condition, which, if we are to judge from the kind of men and women who get into Parliament, has never yet been demonstrated; and,

        (2) Besides possessing the ability and knowledge always to select the Best in a Parliamentary Election, also live in a world where a pool, or reserve, of superior men exists from whom representatives can be chosen who are better than those that have been dismissed.

The false assumptions of Democracy

        To assume that both of these conditions exist in England is, of course, a pure pretence. For, not only are the vast majority of the electorate utterly destitute of the means of judging their fellows correctly — a difficult task even to those trained in psychology, human morphology and physiognomy — but even if they were fully equipped for the task, they could still not overcome the present-day appalling problem of finding the better political personnel with which to replace those who have been dismissed.

        Who could legitimately claim that to-day the dismissal even of an unsatisfactory servant enables us to choose a better one? How, therefore, can Dr. Spitz so confidently assume that Democracy gives the people the chance of dismissing unsatisfactory and electing satisfactory governments?

        But with such sophisms as we have examined, whether about Aristocracy or Democracy, being bandied from oar to car and circulated largely by the educated men of the Age, how can we wonder if the average common man finds it childishly easy to debate the relative merits of those opposing forms of government and always to hand the palm to Democracy?

From Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America:
I shall conclude with one general idea, which comprises not only all the particular ideas that have been expressed in the present chapter, but also most of those of which it is the object of this book to treat. In the ages of aristocracy which preceded our own, there were private persons of great power and a social authority of extreme weakness. The outline of society itself was not easily discernible and was constantly confounded with the different powers by which the community was ruled. The principal efforts of the men of those times were required to strengthen, aggrandize, and secure the supreme power; and, on the other hand, to circumscribe individual independence within narrower limits and to subject private interests to the interests of the public. Other perils and other cares await the men of our age. Among the greater part of modern nations the government, whatever may be its origin, its constitution, or its name, has become almost omnipotent, and private persons are falling more and more into the lowest stage of weakness and dependence. In olden society everything was different; unity and uniformity were nowhere to be met with. In modern society everything threatens to become so much alike that the peculiar characteristics of each individual will soon be entirely lost in the general aspect of the world. Our forefathers were always prone to make an improper use of the notion that private rights ought to be respected; and we are naturally prone, on the other hand, to exaggerate the idea that the interest of a private individual ought always to bend to the interest of the many.
The political world is metamorphosed; new remedies must henceforth be sought for new disorders. To lay down extensive but distinct and settled limits to the action of the government; to confer certain rights on private persons, and to secure to them the undisputed enjoyment of those rights; to enable individual man to maintain whatever independence, strength, and original power he still possesses; to raise him by the side of society at large, and uphold him in that position; these appear to me the main objects of legislators in the ages upon which we are now entering. It would seem as if the rulers of our time sought only to use men in order to make things great; I wish that they would try a little more to make great men; that they would set less value on the work and more upon the workman; that they would never forget that a nation cannot long remain strong when every man belonging to it is individually weak; and that no form or combination of social polity has yet been devised to make an energetic people out of a community of pusillanimous and enfeebled citizens.
I trace among our contemporaries two contrary notions which are equally injurious. One set of men can perceive nothing in the principle of equality but the anarchical tendencies that it engenders; they dread their own free agency, they fear themselves. Other thinkers, less numerous but more enlightened, take a different view: beside that track which starts from the principle of equality to terminate in anarchy, they have at last discovered the road that seems to lead men to inevitable servitude. They shape their souls beforehand to this necessary condition; and, despairing of remaining free, they already do obeisance in their hearts to the master who is soon to appear. The former abandon freedom because they think it dangerous; the latter, because they hold it to be impossible.

And last from Sir Winston Churchill in 1910 with words that eerily apply to us today:

"THE LIBERTIES OF BRITAIN"

January 10, 1910. Friends' Institute, Birmingham

I have come before you to-night for one reason. I think it is time that Birmingham should strike another blow in defence of the liberties of Britain. The Metropolis of the Midlands has always been a historic centre from which all the principal steps in the extension and consolidation of democratic government in our country have been driven forward. It was so in 1832, in 1867, and in 1885, and now, in 1910, Birmingham is not going to be unworthy of its sires [cries of "No"]; is not going feebly and pusillanimously to allow the rights which they won to be filched away from them.

The democratic character of the British Constitution is at stake. Some of our friends of the opposite party will say, "How can that be true when all that the House of Lords have done is to invite the electors to pronounce?" It is true for this reason. The Tory party arc demanding two great and momentous changes. Each is of memorable importance, and both are violently reactionary.

First, they ask the nation to agree to the establishment of a protective system, including taxes on bread and meat; and, secondly, they ask that the Lords shall be granted not merely the veto they have used so freely over legislation but a hereditary veto over finance as well. I say that both these claims affect the democratic character of our Constitution. [Cheers.]  The House of Lords have no right to touch finance. [Cheers.] Custom, authority, precedent, and usage all forbid it. The control of finance by the representative Assembly is the keystone of the constitutional fabric under which we have all dwelt so safely and peacefully all our lives. It is by the application of the power of the purse that we have moved forward, slowly and prosaically, no doubt, but without any violent overturning, and have grown from being a small island in the Northern seas to be the centre of a world-wide Empire.

It is not merely a question of the rejection of the Budget that we have to discuss [A voice: "We pay taxes,” and a disturbance, during which a woman was removed from the gallery], but the claim of a hereditary Chamber over which you have no control, which may be civil to you if it likes, but which if it chooses to cut up rusty is altogether beyond the reach of your remonstrances the claims of that Assembly to make and unmake Governments. The recognition by the country of that claim means that the House of Lords must become the main source and origin of all political power in our country. The quarrel is one upon which we had believed the sword had been victoriously sheathed for nearly 300 years.

Do not think that these constitutional doctrines are pressed upon you out of mere pedantry. They are matters of vital and striking importance to all of you every day. Upon your votes hangs your political status as citizens. [A voice: "What about the status of women?"] Some day I hope women will have votes too. [Cheers.] But they will have to adopt another plan to get them. [Cheers.] If you allow that power of finance upon which alone the reality and strength of the House of Commons depend to be taken away, or to be divided even in the smallest degree, you will have weakened the value of your votes. Your votes may remain, but they will be only votes to elect members to an inferior Assembly, much less powerful than now exists, and that involves an immense contraction and diminution in the democratic character of the government of the country.

Underneath all political action there is usually a social cause, and there is a deep social cause underlying the present attack on representative Government. Workmen are beginning to use the electoral machinery for their own purposes. The House of Lords has had an increasingly poor opinion of the House of Commons for a very long time. It was bad enough when Catholics and Jews and Dissenters claimed and captured equal political rights. It was worse still when pushing, bustling manufacturers from Lancashire and the Midlands shoved their way into the House of Commons and took their seats on the benches by the side of the sons of peers and their nominees. But now that small tradesmen and school teachers and trade unionists and co-operators and working engineers and an actual navvy and even one or two avowed Socialists have begun to come into the House of Commons, the opinion of the House of Lords has, I am afraid, sunk to a very low ebb indeed. [Laughter.]

But, gentlemen, you and I here to-night who try to look at the real truth of things see in this process, which is bringing new classes into the governing machinery year by year, the same old process by which we have always grown stronger, more stable, more generous, and more free.? [Loud cheers.]

I feel myself offended by the air of aristocratic insolence in which the House of Lords indulge. Lord Curzon [prolonged booing] — Lord Curzon quotes a great French agnostic and adopts his phrase: “All civilisations are the work of aristocracies.” [Ironical laughter.]  It would be much more true to say that the upkeep of aristocracy has been the hard work of all civilisations. (Prolonged cheering.)

You don't need to be told that thirty years ago there was a Mayor of Birmingham who said with a force and terseness certainly never surpassed all and more than all the doctrines that have been put forward by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and when I hear Lord Curzon say all civilisations are the work of aristocracies I only wish that the Chamberlain of 1885, that proud and famous citizen of Birmingham, were able to deal with these contemptible pretensions as they deserve. [Cheers.]

What does Lord Lansdowne say about old-age pensions? He says, "We allowed them to pass." More than that, he said in a recent speech at Plymouth, "We have allowed a lot of the bills to pass: the Port of London, Labour Exchanges, Small Holdings, the Patents Bill." We have allowed a lot of them to pass! We have given you a lot of rope, you miserable members of the House of Commons! Why, we have never thrown out a Budget before this year; we have actually allowed a Radical Government to go on governing the country for four whole years; we have allowed all this, and yet you complain, yet you unreasonable Radicals are not satisfied with all our generosity, all our magnanimity! [Laughter.]

That is their point of view. Very often a man shows much more his real inner point of view in a single unguarded phrase which slips out straight from the mint of his mind than he does in the most carefully prepared diplomatic statement or most eloquent peroration.

What does it mean—"We allowed them to pass?" It means that the hereditary institution which Lord Lansdowne leads regards all our liberties and political rights as enjoyed and enjoyable only so long as they choose to let us go on having them. But once we touch reality, once we touch their interests and privileges [here Churchill kicked the platform vigorously]: "Out!" [Cheers and laughter.]

I come to you to-night because the need is urgent and the crisis grave, and I ask you all whether we are prepared to hold our liberties on their sufferance. [Cries of "No."]  You have heard the saying, "Freedom broadens slowly down from precedent to precedent." What we are confronted with now is, "Freedom narrows quickly up from privilege to privilege." [Cheers.]

I do not think that we can hold our rights upon the permission and amiable disposition of Lord Lansdowne and his majority. I do not recognise that they have any rights against representative persons and elected assemblies. [Cheers.]  The people have the right to vote, and as they vote so the action of the legislature and of the Government should follow. We are not a lot of savages and Hottentots in the depths of Africa. We are not children in the schools. We are the leading community in the civilised world. We have taught all nations to fight for freedom. We have taught all nations the principles and practice of representative government institutions. We require no tutelage. If Parliaments are too long, let them be shortened. The policy of the Government is that of five-year Parliaments. If you think some check or delay is needed upon hasty legislation to prevent anything being done in a single session which might afterwards be regretted, if you think some process of revision by another body differently constituted to the House of Commons is necessary, by all means let there be, within proper limits and under proper conditions of constitution, a Second Chamber.

But I stand here to-night on a very simple plan. I ask you to stand for the effective supremacy of the House of Commons. [Loud cheers.]  Your first choice on Saturday is whether you will or will not vote for the supremacy of the House of Commons which you yourselves elect. Some people are afraid of the future if the working man gets what he asks.

Your forefathers looked out on a world far stormier than any which confronts us now. It was darkened with threats of violence and revolution such as we have not known in England now for many years. But they pushed steadily ahead towards a broadening of the Constitution on democratic foundations, and we are to-day a richer, happier, and more contented people, enjoying the fruits of their courage and sagacity.

Working men's politics must bulk largely in the affairs of a community which has so many millions of educated working men. What would happen if they did not, if working class politics did not receive the attention which they deserve and require? An utter break would soon be Created between the governing forces and the great masses of the nation, and it might easily lead to a bloody struggle to restore the shattered balance and integrity of our national life. [Cheers.]

But let us look at the facts of to-day. Has democratic government in the last three years—has the attention paid to labour matters—injured industry or credit? Let the figures of the last three years be the answer. Take the three first complete years of this Government, the most Radical and democratic Government which has ever borne sway in our land [cheers] and compare them with the last three years of the last Conservative Administration. Oversea trade, imports and exports, in the last three years of a Conservative Administration amounted to £2,797.000,000. During three years of democratic and Liberal Administration that trade amounted to £3,271,000.000, an increase for the period of three years of £474,000,000. Take the bankers' clearing-house returns not an accurate sign of actual prosperity, but an invaluable sign of business activity. The amounts cleared in the last three years of Conservative Government—a Government of stability and order [laughter]—were £32,900,000,000—gigantic figures, and we are only asking for a little in the Budget. [Laughter.] In the first three years of Liberal Government the amount was £37,561,000,000 an excess during our Government over theirs of £4,500.000,000. That is leaving out the present year, a record year in respect of banking clearances. The grand total for the year is £13,500,000.000, an increase of £1,400,000,000 over last year. This is after the Budget [laughter], since the introduction of the Budget which you were told would ruin everything.

The hereditary veto of the House of Lords not only over finance but over legislation must be swept away. The present agitation is not against the Peers as peers, but against the Peers as hereditary legislators. Nor does the Lords' veto stand alone. It has to be considered in conjunction with the other tremendous change which is involved in a reversion to Protection. Protection is like dram drinking — it produces a transient exhilaration that is succeeded by other less satisfactory symptoms, and in the cheerless grey of the morning no remedy can be found for the fumes of the previous night's debauch except another pull at the Protectionist bottle. [Laughter and cheers.] To repeat and increase the dose is the only cure to be suggested. It is easy to get into such habits. To get free again is a much more painful business. [“Hear, hear.”]

I would repeat that to all those who ask "Why not give Tariff Reform a chance?" The choice is irrevocable, in your lifetime at any rate. Once the fateful step has been taken, retreat is impossible. You would have a great network of trusts woven together, joined together on the simple principle of "You scratch my back and I will scratch yours," all trying to organise themselves to get advantages and favours from the Government, all sitting down to besiege the Government through their millionaire bosses, their political organisations, their multitudes of shareholders, through the working men whose interests would be associated with these selfish trade organisations. The whole force of this great network of tariff-fed trusts will be brought to bear on the representatives of the people in the House of Commons. If you have at the one end this vast organisation and at the other end the veto of the House of Lords, able to dismiss by a contemptuous gesture any Government, why, they will play battledore and shuttlecock* with your liberties. [Loud cheers.]

*Not an original Churchillism, but an example of his comprehensive memory: Battledore and Shuttlecock was a racquet game that evolved into Badminton in the mid-1800s.

The movement of the Conservative party towards these two great changes for which they seek authority from the nation is curiously timed. Their backwash meets in full ebb our onward tide. At the very moment when the Tories are attempting to extend the absolute veto of the House of Lords over finance as well as legislation, we have resolved to restrict it in legislation as well as in finance. [Cheers.] At the very moment when they are forging new chains of monopoly for national industry, we are preparing to break the old chains which oppress the people's land. [Loud cheers.]

Mr. Chamberlain, of whom I speak with all proper sympathy and respect, is appealing to Birmingham to be true to the traditions of its past. [Voice: "I hope we shall."]  I am content with that. [Cheers.]  I was reading again this morning pages in Martineau's History of the Thirty Years' Peace, in which the crisis of the great Reform Bill is described. The Lords had rejected the Reform Bill. It had been passed by the Commons and rejected by the Lords, and a deadlock was created from which it seemed there was no issue except by the creation of peers or civil war. There is reason to believe, writes the historian, that what passed at Birmingham immediately determined the issue of this mighty contention. A famous meeting of the Birmingham Political Union was held, at which over 150,000 persons were present. While the Scots Greys in the Birmingham Barracks were sharpening their swords and  serving out ball ad cartridge, and the Duke of Wellington was preparing to suppress the people by force of arms, the men of Birmingham assembled to the number of 150,000. and rolled out the tremendous hymn of right and freedom:

God is our guide! From field, from wave.

From plough, from anvil, and from loom.

We come our country's rights to save.

And speak the tyrant faction's doom.

And. hark, we raise from sea to sea

The sacred watchword—Liberty!

[Loud cheers.]  Let Birmingham be true to the traditions of its past. [Cheers.] Let Birmingham be true, and "it must follow as the night the day, thou can'st not then be false to any man." [Loud cheers.]

AMEN!Add to Technorati Favorites

We were warned from the begining of America about banks. How come we didn't Listen?

"History records that the money changers have used

every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible

to maintain their control over governments

by controlling the money and its issuance".

James Madison
(1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President


    "If Congress has the right [it doesn't] to issue paper money [currency], it was given to them to be used by...[the government] and not to be delegated to individuals or corporations" -- President Andrew Jackson, Vetoed Bank Bill of 1836

"Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws" -- 

Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild

     "It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." -- Henry Ford

"The Federal Reserve banks are one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever seen.  There is not a man within the sound of my voice who does not know that this nation is run by the International bankers -- Congressman Louis T. McFadden (Rep. Pa) 

"I have never seen more Senators express discontent with their jobs....I think the major cause is that, deep down in our hearts, we have been accomplices in doing something terrible and unforgiveable to our wonderful country. Deep down in our heart, we know that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected." -- John Danforth (R-Mo) 

"We are completely dependant on the commercial banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system.... It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects remedied very soon."
--Robert H. Hamphill, Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank

 

  "A great industrial nation is controlled by it's system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the world--no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men." 

--President Woodrow Wilson

 

"While boasting of our noble deeds were careful to conceal the ugly fact that by an iniquitous money system we have nationalized a system of oppression which, though more refined, is not less cruel than the old system of chattel slavery. - Horace Greeley

 "By this means government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and not one man in a million will detect the theft."--John Maynard Keynes (the father of 'Keynesian Economics' which our nation now endures) in his book

"THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES
OF THE PEACE" (1920).

  "Capital must protect itself in every way...Debts must be collected and loans and mortgages foreclosed as soon as possible. When through a process of law the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more easily governed by the strong arm of the law applied by the central power of leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known among our principal men now engaged in forming an imperialism of capitalism to govern the world. By dividing the people we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us except as teachers of the common herd."--
Taken from the Civil Servants' Year Book, "The Organizer" January 1934. 

..I am convinced that the agreement [Bretton Woods] will enthrone a world dictatorship of private  finance more complete and terrible than and Hitlerite dream. It offers no solution of world problems, but quite blatantly sets up controls which will reduce the smaller nations to vassal states and make every government the mouthpiece and tool of International Finance.  It will undermine and destroy the democratic institutions of this country - in fact as effectively as ever the Fascist forces could have done - pervert and paganise our Christian ideals; and will undoubtedly present a new menace, endangering world peace. World collaboration of private financial interests can only mean mass unemployment, slavery, misery, degradation and financial destruction. Therefore, as freedom loving Australians we should reject this infamous proposal. -- Labor Minister of Australia, Eddie Ward, during the inception of the World Bank and Bretton Woods, he gave this warning.

“I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principles of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale” Thomas Jefferson

   "You are a den of vipers and thieves and I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out. If Congress has the right to issue paper money, it was given them to be used by themselves, and not to be delegated to individuals or corporations.Add to Technorati Favorites." Andrew Jackson's address to Congress 1829

Freedom is relative, if you have relatives in the new Aristocracy

Aristocracy: is a form of government in which ruler ship is in the hands of an "upper class" known as aristocrats. (The Greek origins of the word aristocracy imply the meaning of "rule by the best".). This inevitably means those with the power to hold wealth, and to define who shall remain in poverty and slavery.

Currently the average American joe or joe-ette's economic standing consists of: A job (if they can keep it), A home (if they can keep it), A vehicle (if they can keep it) Credit (if they have any left), maybe a 401K or IRA (if it is still worth anything) and probably a little cash stashed away somewhere (maybe a month or so worth).

We have been chastised for taking on loans we can't afford and living beyond our means. Though there is talk of a bail out for some, my suspicions would be that it is talk and if were it to happen it will be to little to late. Whoops, sorry, already to late for many.

No one doubts that what was predicted years ago, is occurring now. Countries overseas are abandoning the "R" (recession) word daring to use the "D" Word (Depression).

So what is the governments plan of attack to resolve this economic crises?

Give money to the big boy's that are sitting on mountains of cash, at no risk of using their homes or jobs and despite having demonstrated that they have no conscience abusing credit, get their credit restored? Hellooooo?

Listening to the sound of bullshit, and yes bullshit makes a very loud sound, emanating from the mouths of those who would save us from themselves all day yesterday I wanted to go ballistic. Until I started laughing.

After all, we had no problem with the "robber barons" as long our home (those of us lucky enough to own homes) prices escalated. We had no problem with them using our money to give themselves outrageous bonuses as long as we made a paltry 3 or 4% on our money.

It is funny isn't it? We fear walking down dark streets on the bad side of town for fear we may be robbed and raped yet blithely curl up with a bear while wathcing football on our plasma T.V.'s not recognizing that the whole time we do nothing we are continue to be mugged and rapped.

Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's (you know, head dude in charge. Aparently over the president even), net worth has been estimated at over US $700 million.

In 2004, at the request of the major Wall Street investment houses, including Goldman Sachs, then headed by Paulson, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission agreed unanimously to release the major investment houses from the net capital rule, the requirement that their brokerages hold reserve capital that limited their leverage and risk exposure.

Changes to the net capital rule are thought to be an important factor in the credit market meltdown of 2008.

O.K. you see how this works, you take the guy who played a major role in creating the mess and put him in charge of fixing it?????

And how about Former Senator from Texas Phil Gramm  now head lobbyist for the Swiss-based banking giant, UBS, as well as chief economic adviser for his old chum John McCain? In 1999 he pushed through a bill to dissolve the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, a New Deal reform that prohibited banks, investment houses, and insurance companies from combining into one corporation. By keeping these components of our financial system separate, Glass-Steagall made sure that the crash of one of them would not bring down the other two. But a number of Wall Street banks, led by what would become Citigroup, saw a profit windfall for themselves if only they could scuttle the old law and merge banking, investment, and insurance into huge financial conglomerates.

Leave us not leave out the democrats however as  "Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had drunk deeply from the holy cup of derivatives deregulation, and Clinton's top economic advisors Robert Rubin (formerly with Goldman Sachs and now with Citigroup) and Lawrence Summers (also a veteran of Wall Street) were in harness with the Republicans on this effort."

or:

Alan Greenspan: As Federal Reserve chairman from 1987 to 2006, he held the regulatory power to prevent the irrational inflation of the huge derivatives bubble that has now burst-- yet he fought fiercely through four presidencies to prevent even the meekest oversight by the Fed or any other agency

 Investment banker Felix Rohatyn described them (derivatives) as "hydrogen bombs." Back in 2003, investment guru Warren Buffett called them (derivitives) "financial weapons of mass destruction" that were "potentially lethal" for our economy.

Chris Cox: A GOP member of Congress for 17 years, Cox was another deregulation die hard and a reliable advocate for Wall Street's pampered CEO class--a role he continued to play after Bush chose him in 2005 to succeed Donaldson as SEC chair. At the commission, he weakened the ability of the enforcement staff even to investigate securities violations by Wall Street firms, much less prosecute them. Also, in an act of pure ideological folly, he eliminated an office that had been set up specifically to watch out for future problems with such high-risk investments as derivatives.

In essence, he took the cops off the beat at the very time more cops were needed. In October, when the stuff was hitting the fan, a chagrined Cox offered this brilliant insight: "The last six months have made it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work." Thanks, Chris.

William Donaldson: The Securities and Exchange Commission supposedly regulates investment banks, and in 2004 it was headed by--guess who?--a Wall Street investment banker, Bill Donaldson. On April 28 of that year, he presided over a little-noticed SEC meeting held in the commission's basement to consider an obscure rule change urgently requested by the Big Five investment banks (including Goldman Sachs, then headed by Henry Paulson--yes, the same treasury secretary who just designed George W's Wall Street bailout). The bankers wanted an exemption from a sensible requirement that they keep a sizeable pool of money on hand to cover potential losses. Turn these reserve funds loose, pleaded the bankers, so we can put more of our investors' money into this opaque but lucrative area known as derivatives.

After less than an hour of discussion, Donaldson and his four SEC colleagues voted unanimously to do this favor for the bankers. As a bonus, the generous commissioners also decided to let the banks themselves monitor the level of risk they were putting on investors--and ultimately on the backs of taxpayers.

Henry Paulson As honcho of Goldman Sachs, Hank drew a $37 million paycheck the year before Bush waved him into the Treasury Department to oversee the whole U.S. economy. At Goldman, he was considered one of Wall Street's "smart guys" who had figured out how to make billions in brokerage fees by packaging and selling these wondrous pieces of wizardry called derivatives, and he came into government as an unquestioning believer in deregulatory doctrine. Now that deregulated derivatives have turned out to be so much hokum, Hank's in charge of the bailout--and his former firm is in line to get at least $10 billion from it.

The Paulson bailout plan is flawed in many awful ways, but start with this basic one: the money (some estimates now put the total taxpayer cost above $2 trillion) is being handed to the same schemers and finaglers who caused the crash. The public gets to contribute the funds, but it gets no seat at the table to decide how the system (and who in it) will be "rescued."

Now these are the folk who listened to their buddies at the banks and gave the banks permission to rape, pillage and plunder (If you think rape is to strong a word check out your 401K). 

Now, Just who is it that we are saving anyway?????

AIG:  Despite calls for the company's CEO to resign, AIG has announced plans to pay out $503 million in deferred executive compensation.

The announcement comes one week after an ABC15 investigation showed eight of AIG's top executives holding poolside meetings and dining out at an upscale Valley restaurant while attending a training seminar for independent financial advisors at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort in Phoenix.

Congressman Elijah Cummings said AIG's response and decision to spend $503 million to keep its executives "is demonstrative of the type of mismanagement that led this company to its current situation. While the rest of the country is receiving pink slips for the holidays, AIG continues to dole out hundreds of millions of dollars even as it comes to the government, cashmere hat in hand, begging for more money."

 Goldman Sachs : doled out one of its highest honors on Wednesday, naming 115 employees as partner managing directors, or P.M.D.’s. The status, awarded to a select group every two years, comes with a broad array of perks, including the right to share a larger portion of the investment bank’s earnings.


In 2005, the firm’s 287 partner managing directors split $2 billion, for an average of about $7 million each. This year, the kitty at 85 Broad Street is bound to be bigger, because Goldman’s overall compensation pool has grown. Goldman said last month it had earmarked $13.9 billion for salaries, bonuses and benefits for its employees through the third quarter, 19 percent more than the total for all of 2005. (The latest P.M.D.’s will not become partners until Goldman’s next fiscal year, which begins Nov. 25.)

Goldman created its partnership pool when it changed from a private firm to a public company in 1999. The system was intended to “maintain various core aspects of the firm’s partnership culture,” according to a Goldman Sachs press release. The last time Goldman appointed new P.M.D.’s, in 2004, 99 names were added.

 Rewards are likely to diminish this year after Goldman transformed itself into a bank holding company, raised more than $10 billion in equity from private investors and took $10 billion from the U.S. government.

REWARDS????? FROM TAX PAYER MONEY???

JPMorgan: consider JPMorgan Chase, which is expected to receive a $25 billion investment from the Treasury. For 2007, the bank said it paid out some $88.63 million in compensation for James Dimon, chairman and CEO, and four other top executives. That counts salary, bonus, stock awards, and perks likely covered under the tax-deduction provision. Using the company's effective tax rate of about 33 percent, it comes out to perhaps $29 million in deductions for their pay.


CitiGroup: Pandit received about $165.2 million in connection with the sale of Old Lane Partners, the investment firm that Citigroup bought last April for as much as $800 million to lure him to the company. He received an additional $2.7 million in annual pay in the roughly six months he led Citigroup's investment bank and alternative investments group. And in January, Pandit was given a sign-on grant of stock and performance-based options worth more than $48 million, though the options have no cash value. That brings the total to at least $216 million. Details of Pandit's pay and that of several other top executives were found in Citigroup's proxy statement, released Thursday. Unlike other Wall Street firms that withheld bonuses for their senior management teams, Citigroup gave at least six executives $1 million or more.

Merrill Lynch's newly recruited chief executive, John Thain, stands to share a $200m (£111.4m) payout with two senior lieutenants for less than a year's work which culminated this week in the bank surrendering its 94-year-old independence. The Wall Street bank known as the "thundering herd" agreed to a $50bn takeover by Bank of America on Monday after a hasty 48 hours of negotiation. The talks were prompted by fears over banking stability arising from the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
Thain, who was previously the head of the New York Stock Exchange, joined Merrill in December with a mandate to steer the bank out of financial trouble. When he arrived, he was given a $15m signing on bonus. If he leaves in Bank of America's takeover, he stands to get a further $11m in accelerated stock payouts. Two former Goldman Sachs executives hired by Thain are likely to do even better. Merrill's head of global trading, Thomas Montag, who joined in August, has already received a $39m bonus. Together with stock options accelerated by a buyout, he could end the year with $76m. The bank's head of strategy, Peter Kraus, was given a $95m package including bonuses and stock awards to replace his generous compensation at Goldman when he joined in May, according to figures obtained by Bloomberg News.It is yet to be determined whether any of the trio will have a role at Bank of America. Even by the standards of Wall Street payouts, the sums are unusually high for such a short period of employment.

And what do they do on your dime:

• AIG’s St. Regis blowout bill: $443,344
• Prez didn’t push for bailout so execs could get facials
• Obama on AIG’s $400,000 party: ‘Fire the scoundrels!’
• Behind the AIG party: A look at the St. Regis

Bailout Money Going to Wall Street Bonuses You know the $125 billion that our leaders gave Wall Street to unfreeze credit markets?  $108 billion of that is being held for employee bonuses.  Really. 

Now, not everyone on Wall Street caused the meltdown.  It was a few high-placed executives (people like our current Treasury Secretary).  Investment banks employee a lot of staff and other "non-Wall Street" types. But those people, frankly, are lucky to still have jobs.  A bonus is just that - something extra that depends on the profitability of your employer.  When your employer is bailed out rather than allowed to go out of business, you shouldn't expect a bonus.  You should just be happy to have a job.
Still, if bonuses were only going to people who just did their jobs rather than the actual captains of the Titanic, there'd be less cause for outrage.  But giving bonuses to the people who made the reckless decisions?  That's beyond the pale.

ANd so beside enriching the fat cats that got us into the problem in the first place, where is the money going??? Well, nobody really seems to know according to CBS news:
Yet ask the most basic question - how exactly are the banks using your money - and the answer can't be found. Consider the following:

The Treasury Department agreed to post every transaction on the Internet, but all it shows is the list of banks and how many billions they got.

The brand new Financial Stability Oversight Board has met four times already but they don't know how the banks are using the money.

There's no hint in the first official Treasury report to submitted to Congress last week.

And Congress promised to create its own special oversight board, but more than five weeks later not one person has been named to the panel.

So, CBS News decided to ask the banks what they're doing with the money. We talked to the nine biggest recipients, who pointed out there's nothing in the bailout law that requires them to disclose specifics.

CBS News does know from public information that at least four of the banks are using bailout funds to merge with or take over other banks.

Bank officials told Attkisson that taxpayers will have to trust that the money will be used wisely.

Congress does have the power to hold back the second half of the $700 billion if it thinks the first half isn't working out.

But as one bank official put it: If anyone thought for a minute that every penny was somehow going to be tracked, they're going to be sorely disappointed.

Can you see now why I am really getting over the anger and actually finding the whole gig quite amusing. As one who has worked carnivals and spent more than a night or two in a pool hall one really has to have a certain amount of admiration for one of the best scams perpetrated on the "sucker born every minute" that "P.T. Barnum" referred to. That sad thing is, "We the People" are the suckers.

If you read the above this scam could not have been perpetrated on the American public by the Markets alone.  And it wasn't.  The fat cats had much help from those whom we elect to represent us, YOU and I.  Anybody want to calrify for this ol country boy just what the hell they are doing for YOU and I? See the preeding post.Add to Technorati Favorites