Video: Michael Parenti 2002 speech about capitalism and poverty

"Their fighting against every bit of political Democracy and every bit of Democracy and every bit of economic Democracy that benefits the people"

"if they had their way our kids would still be working 14 hours a day in factories"

"Their goal is a third-worldization of everywhere, their goal is to get us back to 1900"- Michael Parenti on capitalism

Speaking to a packed church house in 2002 at the Terrorism, Globalization and Conspiracy conference. From Google Video:

OCTOBER 9, 2002, VANCOUVER: Dr. Michael Parenti, one of North America's leading radical writers on U.S. imperialism and interventionism, fascism, democracy and the media, spoke to several hunded people at St. Andrews Wesley Church in Vancouver. Dr. Parenti has taught political science at a number of colleges and universities in the United States and other countries. He was written 250 majro magazine articles and 15 books and is frequently heard on public and alternative radio.

Michael Parenti at WikiPedia on racism:

Parenti argues that western racism is systemic and historical in nature and should be regarded as more than just an attitudinal problem. He claims western racism has its origins in imperialism and slavery: To justify the colonial plunder of another nation or entire continent (as in the case of Africa) as well as the enslavement of conquered populations, imperialists and/or slave traffickers dehumanize their victims and define them as moral inferiors and subhuman.

Parenti maintains that racism serves several functions for ruling interests in the United States:

1. It divides the working class against each other.
2. It creates a "super-exploited" group of people who are forced to work at below scale wages thereby depressing wage levels for the entire workforce.
3. It distracts the (United States) white population from its own legitimate grievances by providing an irrelevant scapegoat in the form of minority populations

Now we have a new slave class that divides us even more. The undocumented worker.

Big thanks to Common Man News for the heads up to the story

King Bush helps screw us more and other tidbit's you may have missed

Bush, partisanship, no extension for unemployment insurance, housing crisis history, largest oil profits ever, impudent congress, and Firestone.

It amazes how horrible a partisan House and Senate can be in this country, I mean what a bunch of drones, all ganging against one another when a bill to help working class people comes along. It certainly makes it hard to defend Republicans to the average person. Obviously we need a new party of free thinkers who can stand on their own two feet.

From The New York Times editorial Listening To Job Reports:

The most pressing data in the latest jobs report is this: The number of people who were unemployed for six months or more as of January was 1.38 million.

The last time the numbers looked that bad — when the nation was mired in joblessness after the 2001 recession — Congress extended unemployment compensation for people who had exhausted their initial 13 weeks of benefits. This time around, unfortunately, Congress may fail to include those much needed benefits in the upcoming economic stimulus bill.

The White House is wrongly insisting that lawmakers stick with a bill it negotiated with House leaders before the new data was released. That version omits jobless benefits and centers instead on — what else? — tax cuts. In the Senate, which may vote this week on its own stimulus bill, Republicans are blocking a Democratic push for jobless benefits. Their objection: Extended unemployment benefits encourage idleness.

Enough. Lawmakers should trim the less effective stimulus measures under discussion: tax rebates for the rich in the Senate version and corporate tax breaks in both bills. They can make room for more effective jobless benefits in the legislation’s final version.

As the slowdown continues, Americans will be looking to the government for relief and, ultimately, reform of the economic and labor policies that have led to this point. Congress should start by extending unemployment benefits in the stimulus package.

I suggest you read that entire article, and have a look at the Mike Hall article about it at the AFL-CIO Blog for more information, such as:

The economic stimulus package is stalled in the U.S. Senate. Senate Republican leaders—backed by the Bush White House—threatened a filibuster against efforts by Senate Democrats to extend unemployment insurance (UI) benefits for the millions of jobless workers who will run out of benefits in the next several months.

The bill, approved Wednesday by the Senate Finance Committee, improves on the House-passed stimulus package by adding the UI extension and also providing tax rebates to more than 20 million low-income senior citizens and veterans.

Along with the UI extension, the AFL-CIO has called for the stimulus bill to include a temporary increase in food-stamp benefits as one of the most efficient ways to pump money quickly into the economy. The Bush administration and Republican leaders strongly oppose both the UI and food-stamp measures. Says Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.):

"I can give you their own speech on unemployment compensation and food stamps. They don’t believe in them, O.K? So there was no way to agree when they don’t believe food stamps are important, when they believe that if you extend unemployment benefits, it only keeps people looking for a job, which is a little hard to comprehend."

When the Senate returns to the stimulus bill next week, Republicans likely will engage in a filibuster that requires 60 votes to overcome, again blocking action on the Finance Committee bill with the UI extension. If so, Democrats are expected to offer UI and food-stamp amendments to the House bill.

Why on earth are we adding corporate welfare into this bill and not taking care of the people? While our country is enjoying the fruits of our labor, a recession, big oil has posted it's largest gains ever, according to the World Socialist website:

Amid growing fears that the US economy is sliding into recession, accompanied by both mounting layoffs and an increased assault on the living standards of the working population, the big oil companies once again posted record profits.

ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil conglomerate, announced Friday that it had broken its own previous record for the highest corporate profit ever, raking in a staggering $40.6 billion last year, up 3 percent over 2006.

The profit taken in by this single company amounted to more than the gross domestic product recorded in two thirds of the world’s nations, placing the company midway between Ecuador and Luxembourg, while its total sales—more than $404 billion—top the GDP of 120 countries. It is more than the entire amount spent by the US federal government on K-through-12 education.

Nice, more corporate welfare, and our displaced workers haven't a leg to stand on. What about the mortgage crisis, heres a bit of history from Michael Collins from his writings on The money Party (see links at bottom of post) at Scoop.co.nz:

...Then Greenspan showed his supposed genius with this advice to home buyers and owners:

"American consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage. To the degree that households are driven by fears of payment shocks but are willing to manage their own interest rate risks, the traditional fixed-rate mortgage may be an expensive method of financing a home." Understanding household debt obligations, Federal Reserve Board, Feb. 23, 2004

The message was clear. Get an ARM!

Here's the back story. Greenspan got first rate analysis in 2001 from Ned Gramlich, a widely respected economist and Federal Reserve Governor. Gramlich warned, "that a fast-growing new breed of lenders was luring many people into risky mortgages they could not afford." Greenspan dismissed this advice and other warnings that followed. Predatory loan offerings; not to worry. It's all good.

The New York Times reported this epitaph of the Greenspan housing boom from a 2006 Gramlich speech to the Federal Reserve:

“Why are the most risky loan products sold to the least sophisticated borrowers? The question answers itself - the least sophisticated borrowers are probably duped into taking these products.” New York Times, Dec, 18, 2007

Why? Because that's what they do. It's their nature. The Money party just can't get enough and it will get it anywhere it can in any way it can.

So we're in a situation where a false housing boom was created by sticking the least qualified home buyers with very risky loans. The big banks and Wall Street got together and created securities and bonds based on "subprime" mortgages along with hedge funds and other schemes based on commercial real estate in order to profit from this madness.

But, I guess all is ok, even though Congress deemed it illegal for US Tax money to be spent on building military bases in Iraq, Bush just signed the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act, which provides the means for his office to completely ignore Congressional Law, with his John Hancock his Presidency gets to bypass according to ThinkProgress.org:

One such provision sets up a commission to probe contracting fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another expands protections for whistleblowers who work for government contractors. A third requires that U.S. intelligence agencies promptly respond to congressional requests for documents. And a fourth bars funding for permanent bases in Iraq and for any action that exercises U.S. control over Iraq’s oil money.

So glad that we can elect people to create laws, so they can be ignored, what a hand job. We cannot help our own citizens who are unemployed, but we can give out corporate welfare and build military bases to control oil which had the biggest gains ever. Oh and did I mention that Firestone, the sponsor of the halftime show isn't bothering to negotiate with the workers in the fields of Liberia. For 81 years the workers were under a company union, they ousted them and now have their own, according to James Perks at AFL-CIO Blog:

Workers at the plantation, located in Harbel—named for the tire maker’s founder Harvey Firestone, and his wife, Idabelle—earn a little more than $3 a day, and then only if they meet a burdensome quota. They are forced to carry heavy loads of rubber in metal pails on their backs and walk for miles to weighing stations. They live in shacks with no electricity, no running water or sanitary bathroom facilities. Their children have no access to a high school education.

The coalition, which includes U.S. and Liberia-based human rights, labor and environmental groups, is calling on Bridgestone Firestone to stop exploiting workers and the environment and to negotiate a fair contract with the newly elected union leaders on the plantation.

Recommended Reading by Michael Collins:
The Money Party (1). The Essence of Our Political Troubles
The Money Party (2). Lousy Leaders and How to Get Rid of Them
The Money Party (3). Big Lies that You Must Believe
The Money Party (4). Money Party to Citizens - Drop Dead!

And a video courtesy of Bert at MySpace
Warning: Not for the squeamish

Getting noticed, possibly making a difference.

It's nice to get noticed, especially by The Wall Street Journal, with the story "Remember, when Penn Station is shut down- Blame Amtrak, not the union workers", a preemptive retort to the main stream media response to Penn Station being closed and the Amtrak workers being on strike. Fortunately I think they will settle without going through all that, maybe Amtrak read my blog post. One can only hope. When facts outweigh conjecture, justice will surely prevail.



To the people answering the poll that the blogs confusing, please post a comment here and let me know exactly what the confusion is, I'd really like to make it easy for everyone, maybe I can start another blog with just the content and no sidebar. Let me know, all suggestions will be considered.

Today I got called a Liberal, which I guess is as repulsive as the last guy who called me a Republican, or the boo's and hisses when I spoke about how the lack of communication with non-English speakers works in favor of the bosses (it's hard to explain what the normal rate of pay is to someone who doesn't speak your language is), which people misconstrued my meaning and deemed me a racists. To all you jerks that don't understand what someone says and just consider him the opposite of what you think you are, or tell yourself you should be. A heavy fisted Brooklyn salute to you.

My fight is for the middle class American worker and the dream which we can still call reality. Most importantly to my heart is that my trade which my forefathers fought over the past 100 years to make it what it is today, remains intact for the longest duration and my brothers and sisters in my local union can survive with a decent quality of life. The only way to make certain of that is to fight together with other unions and workers to raise the bar of the ever downward spiral that is the lifestyle of the middle class American worker. To reverse the current war on the worker.

Remember kids, if there is only one union, there is nothing. An injury to one is an injury to all. United we stand, divided we beg. Yeah it sounds good, but who bothers. Do you?

With these man made tags as to what we are supposed to be, Republican, Democrat, Liberal, Conservative, and all the subdivisions, black, white, Puerto Rican, Jew, Christian, fat, ugly, jock, nerd, jets fan, dolphins fan, Italian, Irish, is it any wonder why we are so divided as union members, workers and as Americans. When will we learn that we are all just people who want to live the American dream, to put food on the table, make opportunities we didn't have be available for our children, to get home in one piece after a days work, to have the ability to receive health care that doesn't make us broke, and to have the security of knowing that one day we and our beloved can retire and have a few years with enough income to live comfortably. That American dream is harder than ever to achieve, is it possible that our own divisions are to blame?