The US government represents Israel and the one to ten percent. Everyone else is disposable. PAul Craig Roberts

Two Parties for the One-Percent

Disposable America

by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

If political conventions are ranked on a one to ten scale for intelligence, I give the Republican Convention zero and the Democrats one.

How can the United States be a superpower when both political parties are unaware of everything that is happening at home and abroad?

The Republicans are relying for victory on four years of anti-Obama propaganda and their proprietary programed electronic voting machines. For nearly four years Republican operatives have flooded the Internet with portraits of Obama as a non-US citizen, as a Muslim (even while Obama was murdering Muslims in seven countries), and as a Marxist (put in power by the Israel Lobby, Wall Street, and the military/security complex).

Most Republican voters will vote against Obama based on these charges despite the curious fact that no committee in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives held a hearing to determine if Obama is a citizen. If Obama were not a citizen, why would the very aggressive House Republicans not capitalize on it? It would be easy for a Congressional committee to determine if Obama were a citizen. Despite the propaganda, the Republicans in office have shown no interest in the propaganda charges spread by Republican operatives over the Internet.

Either Republicans have no confidence in the charges and do not want to end up proving with Congressional hearings that Obama is a citizen, or the Republicans, having destroyed every other aspect of the US Constitution, reducing it to “a scrap of paper,” feel that making an issue of the last remaining Constitutional provision other than the Second Amendment would be the height of hypocrisy and don’t want to risk opening the constitutional issues that Republicans have run roughshod over.

If the Republicans can destroy habeas corpus, due process, violate both US statutory and international law, ignore the separation of powers, and create a Caesar, why can’t the Democrats run a non-citizen?

Why didn’t the Republican convention raise the issue about the Obama regime’s claim that the executive branch has the power to assassinate US citizens without due process of law? No such power exists in the US Constitution or in US statutory law. This gestapo police state claim exists only as an assertion. Republicans ignored this most important of all issues, because they support it.

Why did not either party raise the question of how can the US economy recover when corporations have offshored millions of US middle class jobs, both manufacturing jobs and professional service jobs. For at least a decade, the US economy has been able to create only lowly paid domestic non-tradable (not exportable) service jobs, such as waitresses, bartenders, and hospital orderlies.

Both parties talk total nonsense about jobs. The Republicans say they can create jobs by not taxing the rich. The Democrats say they can create jobs by financing jobs programs. The Republicans say that the Democrats’ jobs programs simply take money from business investments and give it to those who patronize bars and the drug trade. The Democrats say that the low taxes of the Republicans just subsidize yachts, exotic cars, private aircraft, and $800,000 wrist watches for the one percent, most of which is produced abroad.

Neither political party will admit that when US corporations offshore their production for US markets, Americans are removed from the incomes associated with the production of the goods and services that they consume. Offshoring is defended by both moronic political parties as “free trade.” In fact, offshoring is the gift of what was US GDP to China, India, and the other countries to which US corporations locate their production that they sell to Americans. US GDP goes down, the GDP of the countries who make the American goods sold to Americans goes up. The idiot free market economists call the de-industrializing of America “free trade.”

As an intelligent economist–an oxymoron– would know, destroying consumer incomes by moving their jobs to other countries, leaves consumers without incomes to purchase the imported offshored goods.

Neither American political party recognizes this disconnect. Neither party can afford to recognize it, as both parties are dependent on corporate campaign financing, and offshoring boosts executive bonuses and share prices. A political party that opposes offshoring of US jobs simply does not get financed.

So, the great “superpower,” the “indispensable nation,” the world hegemon, is going into an election, and no one knows what are the stakes.

Why did not either political party ask: if Washington has demonized Iran, why did the 120 countries that comprise the non-aligned movement convene in Iran last week?

Is Washington’s propaganda failing? Can Washington no longer convince the world that the countries that Washington wants to destroy are evil and must be destroyed?

If Washington’s propaganda is failing, the world rule of the hegemonic power will not succeed. As world rule is Washington’s goal in keeping with the neoconservative ideology, then Washington is failing and is not the superpower it pretends to be.

Most credible foreign policy experts, none of which either political party has, believe that Washington has thrown away US “soft power” by its obvious lies and unjustified military attacks on seven Muslim countries, its encirclement of Russia with missile bases, and its encirclement of China with air, naval, and troop bases.

In other words, Washington’s moral force no longer exists. All that exists is financial and military force, and both will fail as they are insufficient.

Neither party asked why the US is at wars with Muslims for Israel. Why should Americans be losing lives and limbs for Israel while going broke and running up enormous war debts for our children and grandchildren? The answer from both parties is to blame the country’s bankruptcy on what Washington does for its own economically disenfranchised citizens. America’s financial problems are all the fault of Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, housing subsidies, Pell grants–any and every thing that gives a leg up to the non-one percent.

In short, the attitude of both parties is: if you are not the one percent, you are disposable.

Both Obamacare and the alternative Republican voucher program dispose of ill Americans who confront potentially terminable diseases. The American people and the ill no longer count; only the budget counts. Letting the elderly die sooner is cheaper. We can therefore afford more wars for hegemony and more tax cuts for the one percent.

Have any peoples in human history ever been less represented by their government and political parties than Americans?

The US government represents Israel and the one to ten percent. Everyone else is disposable.

Regardless of the political party whose lever is pulled in November, every American who votes will be voting for Israel and for their own demise.

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, Wirtschaft am Abgrund (Economies In Collapse) has just been published.

Pennsylvania Voter Suppression: It' always something!

By David A. Love JD

Executive Director

Black Commentator

The veterans card issued by the federal government is not acceptable under the Pennsylvania law.

A challenge to Pennsylvania’s infamous new voter ID law is headed to the state Supreme Court. Unless the courts block the new law before November 6, all voters in the Keystone state will have to present an acceptable, state-approved photo ID when they go to the polls on Election Day.

For those Pennsylvanians who do not have the necessary identification, obtaining one has its challenges and hurdles.

Based on the state’s own data, 758,000 Pennsylvanians lack the proper identification - 9.2 percent of the state’s voting population. In Philadelphia, 186,830 people - 18 percent of the city’s voting population - don’t have the ID.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), to obtain a photo identification card, the person must go to a driver license center with a completed application and a social security card. The applicant also must either have a certificate of U.S. citizenship or naturalization, a U.S. passport or a birth certificate with a raised seal, and two proofs of residency such as a lease, mortgage, utility bill, W-2 or tax form. Once the application is processed, the person’s photo is taken and the ID card is issued.

Those who have no such proof may bring their roommate as one proof of residency. Students at least 18 years old may supply a dorm room assignment, credit card bill, pay stub or bank statement as proof of residency. The homeless can use their shelter address, but must visit the driver’s license center accompanied by an employee of the shelter. That employee must have a shelter-issued photo identification card and a letter on shelter letterhead stating that the homeless person is staying at the shelter.

However, if the voter does not drive, does not have a birth certificate with a raised seal and was born in Pennsylvania, he or she can apply for a special voter card.

Applicants must present their name, address, social security number and proof of residency, and complete and sign a form stating they are registered to vote but lack the required ID. The DMV office then verifies the applicant’s birth with the Department of Health, and issues an ID for $10. If the office cannot verify the applicant’s birth, it will issue the non-driver ID if the Department of State verifies the applicant is registered to vote. This process takes up to 10 business days.

Civil rights and civil liberties groups criticize the voter ID application process for the barriers it presents for some voters, and its discriminatory impact on certain groups who are more likely to vote Democratic. They claim the voter ID requirement resembles the poll tax, literacy test and other tactics employed in the Jim Crow South to suppress and disenfranchise the black vote.

Meanwhile, conservative Republicans who support the voter ID law point to the need to protect the integrity of elections and combat voter fraud, although Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration cannot identify a single case where someone voted by impersonating someone else. Further, Pennsylvania state Rep. Mike Turzai - the Republican leader in the Pennsylvania House - said the voter ID law will help Mitt Romney win the state on Election Day.

The ACLU of Pennsylvania - one of the organizations leading the challenge to the law in court - argues that an estimated 37 percent of Pennsylvania voters think there is no voter ID law or are unaware of it. Meanwhile, the vast majority of those who lack a valid ID card believe they have a valid form of ID. According to the ACLU, demographic groups such as women, Latinos, the elderly, the poor, and younger voters are less likely to possess an acceptable ID.

She would have to pay $100 to search census records, and hire an attorney to petition the court for a delayed birth certificate.

The law poses a catch-22 for voters who need an ID to get an ID. For elderly African-American voters, who perhaps were born with the aid of midwives in the Jim Crow South and later moved to Pennsylvania, a birth certificate never existed, was destroyed, or contained errors. A number of the Pennsylvanians who are challenging the law are elderly African Americans who live in Philadelphia, the largest city in the Keystone state.

Gloria Cuttino, 61, lives in Philadelphia and was born in Summerville, South Carolina. For over a year, Ms. Cuttino has attempted to secure a birth certificate from South Carolina, but was told the state has no record of her birth. She would have to pay $100 to search census records, and hire an attorney to petition the court for a delayed birth certificate.

Dorothy Barksdale, 86, was born with the aid of a midwife in rural Virginia. Virginia has no record of Ms. Barksdale’s birth, and while she has voted in Pennsylvania for years and worked as a poll worker, her voting rights are in danger because she does not have a driver’s license. Similarly, Grover Freeland, 72, has tried unsuccessfully to obtain his birth certificate from New York. He does not have a driver’s license and has not driven in years, but the veterans card issued by the federal government is not acceptable under the Pennsylvania law.

Viviette Applewhite, 93, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit challenging the law, rode two buses to a DMV office to receive a temporary ID card, after years of being denied an ID. Applewhite’s Social Security card was stolen a number of years ago, and since she was adopted at a young age, the name on her birth certificate does not match the name on other documents.

Another barrier facing many Pennsylvanians is distance.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, nearly 2.3 million voting age citizens in Pennsylvania - 24 percent of Pennsylvania voters - live 10 miles or more from the nearest government office issuing the ID.

The homeless can use their shelter address, but must visit the driver’s license center accompanied by an employee of the shelter.

In July, the Brennan Center issued a report highlighting the challenges facing hundreds of thousands of poor Americans in obtaining the proper voter identification. Pennsylvania is one of ten states with the most restrictive laws requiring citizens to produce a government issued ID in order to vote.

Further, of the 10 states highlighted in the study, Pennsylvania has the highest percentage of voting age people without access to a car - 10.4 percent, or 985,414 voters. Of those citizens without access to a vehicle, 135,544 - 13.8 percent of all voters - live over 10 miles from a state ID center.

The 10 states cited by Brennan make up 127 of the 270 electoral votes needed to capture the presidency. With 20 electoral votes, Pennsylvania favors President Obama in most polls. Yet, if thousands of legitimate voters are unable to obtain a valid photo ID in time for the election, this could influence the race in Pennsylvania and the national election.

Voter Supression a Big Issue in Charlotte

Sept 6, 2012 - Issue 484

Cover Story:  Voter Supression a Big Issue in Charlotte

By Amy V. Simmons - Reporting from the Convention

BC Editorial Board

Note: Ms. Simmons is attending the Democratic Convention as a representative of BlackCommentator.com. Additionally, we welcome her as a member of the BC Editorial Board.

The voter ID issue was on everyone's mind as the Democratic National Convention officially opened in Charlotte NC on Tuesday, September 5. Delegates and politicians alike were in agreement that the recent attempts at voter suppression were as blatant a move that had been attempted since the passing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Pennsylvanians, in particular, had strong opinions, given the recent voter ID legislation which was challenged and deemed constitutional there, despite strong opposition.

Republicans have proven themselves quite adept at voter suppressions, having twice stolen Florida for George W Bush Dick Cheney.  Voter suppression will likely be rampant once again in Ohio, as urban dwellers (black folks) search high and low for the polling places and then must endure long lines when they find them; same holds true for students going to liberal arts Chc

Although several efforts have been made as a result to assist those most affected to obtain the required ID at no cost, and with some relaxing of normal requirements, there are still strong opinions about this latest blatant and unrepentant disenfranchisement effort by Republicans, spearheaded by Tea Party legislators who rode the wave of 2010 mid-term election victories. A large group particularly at risk by this cynical move, although by no means the only one, are African Americans.

State Representative Curtis Jones (D- PA) summarized both what is happening , and the proper response to it, mirroring what everyone at the convention was discussing amongst themselves.

"This is nothing new", he reflected. "Since Reconstruction, grandfather clauses, dimpled chads and more have been used to disenfranchise African Americans. There are one million more Democrats than Republicans in Pennsylvania. We are launching a marked effort targeting young people and seniors."

Equal rights for all, regardless of gender and sexual preference, public sector job protections and a strong focus on the middle class seem to be trending as the priorities for this election cycle. And yet, as the 2012 convention opened, aside from some references and examples noted throughout the evening in some speeches, there was no mention of the poor, many of whom are the former middle class or the so - called “working poor”.

The fact that this group is the most vulnerable to the current voter suppression attempts, makes a solution imperative. Without the active participation of the poor and working poor in this election, all of the most pressing concerns of the party are in jeopardy.

The issue of voter intimidation must be taken more seriously or the active campaign by Republican operatives and ideologues to destroy, discourage and suppress voter turnout will succeed.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member Amy V. Simmons is a media professional well respected in many circles; she studied journalism and communications at Point Park College in Pittsburgh , PA, and English at LaSalle University in Philadelphia, PA. The daughter of two lifelong social justice, community and civil rights activists, she is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists, the world's largest journalism organization, as well as its founding chapter, the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. She is also a member of the Native American Journalists Association.

The economy is in the toilet, (and probably headed for recession) mainly because Obama and Co. didn’t have the balls to stand up for what’s right. That’s not to say that the carpetbagging Romney would be a better choice for president. He wouldn’t be. But let’s not delude ourselves about Obama. He is not the man he pretends to be.

The Great Pretender


Did Obama Scuttle the Recovery?

by MIKE WHITNEY

The New York Times believes that Barack Obama is responsible for today’s sputtering economy. In an article titled “Cautious Moves on Foreclosures Haunting Obama”, Times journalist Binyamin Applebaum says that Obama’s failure to seriously address the housing crisis has left the economy weaker than it should be at this point in the recovery.

According to the Times, Obama rejected the idea of “a broad bailout of homeowners” similar to the multi-trillion dollar lifeline he provided for the Wall Street banks. The president figured that his modest mortgage modification program (HAMP) would suffice until the economy rebounded “taking care of the rest.” Here’s an excerpt from the article which illustrates Obama’s uneven approach to the suffering of homeowners who were facing foreclosure in record numbers:

“During his first two years in office, Mr. Obama and his advisers repeatedly affirmed this carefully calibrated strategy, leaving unspent hundreds of billions of dollars that Congress had allocated to buy mortgage loans, even as millions of people lost their homes and the economic recovery stalled somewhere between crisis and prosperity.”

So the money was available, but the administration refused to use it for its designated purpose. Why? And why did Obama decide that it was okay for homeowners to suffer while the perpetrators of the crisis were lavished with taxpayer-funded bailouts and golden parachutes?

Here’s more from the Times:

“The nation’s painfully slow pace of growth is now the primary threat to Mr. Obama’s bid for a second term, and some economists and political allies say the cautious response to the housing crisis was the administration’s most significant mistake.”

“Mistake”? Was it a mistake because it undermined Obama’s chances for reelection or because the people he was supposed to serve ended up losing their homes or seeing their equity wiped out in the bat of an eye?

More from the Times: “They were not aggressive in taking the steps that could have been taken….And as a consequence they did not interrupt the catastrophic spiral downward in our economy.”

Precisely, which is why it is ridiculous for Obama loyalists to argue that this is still Bush’s economy. It’s not. This is Obama’s economy. The reason unemployment is high, growth is anemic and the economy is on the brink of another slump, has to do with the policies that were implemented by the current administration. That’s where the buck stops.

Obama only wanted to help “responsible borrowers”, a standard that was never applied to the thieving class that runs the Wall Street banks and brokerages. For them, it was carte blanche– unlimited loans, subsidies and bailouts amounting to trillions of dollars. Everyone knows what happened.

Obama also wanted to modify loans, to tweak the interest rate or extend the life of the loan, instead of reducing the principal which would have prevented millions from losing their homes, but would have also dug into the windfall profits of crooked bankers. So, he nixed the idea outright. Is there any doubt whose interests were being served?

As a result, Obama’s mortgage modification program was a spectacular flop that kept less than 1 million people in their homes while nearly 6 million homeowners got the boot. Even so, the administration still hasn’t changed its approach. Policy is largely in the hands of the bankers who communicate their demands through their agents in the White House.

Here’s more from the Times:

“Mr. Obama sponsored cramdown legislation as a senator, endorsed it as a presidential candidate and called on Congress to pass it in the Arizona speech.

But he also repeatedly pressed the pause button. When proponents sought to add a cramdown to the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act in September 2008, Mr. Obama, who had flown back to Washington from the campaign trail, persuaded them to postpone the “partisan” effort as an example to Republicans, who said the measure would violate existing contracts.

In February 2009, after Mr. Obama became president, the White House asked Democrats not to attach the measure to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, fearing it would cost votes. In March, a watered-down version finally passed the House, but the mortgage industry rallied opposition to block it in the Senate.”

Can you believe it? Obama repeatedly torpedoed the one measure that the experts agree would have kept more people out of foreclosure and stabilised prices after promising that he would support it! Incredible! This is what it means to be a “creature of the banks”; only the interests of big finance matter. Everything else is dismissed as claptrap.

The Times article points out that even crackpot senator John McCain would have done more to spare delinquent homeowners and mend housing than Obama. McCain wanted to put $300 billion into a Home Owners’ Loan Corporation-type operation that would have bought and refinanced distressed mortgages in the interest of keeping people in their homes and normalizing the market. But, as the Times notes, “Obama, … dismissed the idea as a “risky” giveaway to mortgage companies. “Taxpayers shouldn’t be asked to pick up the tab for the very folks who helped to create this crisis,” he said at a rally two days later in Dayton, Ohio.”

In truth, Obama’s chief economic advisors, Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, opposed ANY additional spending on housing. They simply did not want to help the victims in this massive mortgage-ponzi-fraud at all. In fact, according to the Times, “Mr. Geithner told Mr. Obama that if even if an additional $100 billion were available, he still would not spend it on housing.”

That says it all, doesn’t it? The people who are actually pulling the strings are opposed to helping ordinary working people whether they have the money or not. Isn’t that what you call class warfare?

So now the economy is in the toilet, (and probably headed for recession) mainly because Obama and Co. didn’t have the balls to stand up for what’s right. That’s not to say that the carpetbagging Romney would be a better choice for president. He wouldn’t be. But let’s not delude ourselves about Obama. He is not the man he pretends to be.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.

The Flight of the Young Chicken Hawk

The Flight of the Young Chicken Hawk

How Mitt Dodged the Draft

by H. BRUCE FRANKLIN

May 1966. Mitt Romney is just finishing his first—and only—year at Stanford. I’m a 32-year-old ex-Strategic Air Command navigator and intelligence officer, now an associate professor in Stanford’s English Department and something of an anti-Vietnam War activist.

(Franklin would be fired from his tenured position at Stanford University because it was believed (by the powers that be) that his political view points were so far afield from the then "mainstream" that he could not be sufficiently "cured" of his "non-mainsteram" views that termination rather than re-orientation was required.)

 

About a quarter of a million young American men are already being abducted each year to fight the rapidly-escalating Vietnam War. Many college students, however, are protected by their 2S student deferments, which blatantly discriminate against all those millions of other young men unable to afford college. As if this privileging of the relatively privileged were not sufficient, an outcry about “inequity” arises from administrations of some elite universities. Since the 2S deferment is contingent on relatively high class rank (meaning, of course, academic class rank), they argue that this unfairly discriminates against some of the “best” students, i. e., all those attending schools like Stanford. A man in the bottom quarter at an elite university might end up being drafted, even though he might be more “intelligent” than a man in the top quarter of some state college.

To address such claims of injustice, the Selective Service was rolling out that month the College Qualification Test, a.k.a. the Selective Service Examination, an “objective” assessment of each test taker’s verbal and mathematical skills, to be used by local draft boards, together with college grades and class rank, to determine who was entitled to that precious 2S deferment and who should be shipped off to Vietnam. But this deferment test actually spotlighted the true inequities of the draft. It also offered an opportunity for direct action against the war itself, right on the college campus.

One of the many myths that have buried the true history of the Vietnam War is that the anti-war movement was motivated by selfish desire, especially among college students, to avoid the draft (a view that conveniently ignores the movement’s throngs of female participants, whose gender automatically exempted them from the draft). Quite to the contrary, students demonstrating against the draft deferment tests were specifically undermining and targeting their own privileges and exemptions, which, as they passionately argued, came at the expense of poor and working class people. At Stanford, a number of people actually disrupted the test. The young men involved thus proved that their goal was not to avoid the draft but to end it, since they had been explicitly warned that their actions would jeopardize their own deferments. When students filed in to take the Selective Service test, other demonstrators handed them the SDS “alternative test” on the history of U.S.-Vietnam relations. About ninety students organized a sit-in in the President’s office. In a manifesto issued from the sit-in they denounced their own privileged status: “We oppose the administration of the Selective Service Examination . . . because it discriminates against those who by virtue of economic deprivation are at a severe disadvantage in taking such a test. . . . [The] less privileged, Negroes, Spanish-Americans, and poor whites, must fight a war in the name of principles such as freedom and equality of opportunity which their own nation has denied them.” “Conscription,” they declared, has throughout American history “invariably been biased in favor of the wealthy and privileged.”




Enter young Mitt Romney, right on cue, waving a sign denouncing the anti-war students. He, like his fellow almost all-male participants in this pro-war demonstration, fervently argued in support of the war and the draft. But not, of course, for himself.

When Mitt enrolled at Stanford back in the spring of 1965, the official and overt U.S. war (as distinct from the previous forms of proxy, clandestine, and “adviser” warfare waged in Vietnam for more than a decade) had just begun. Operation Rolling Thunder, the sustained U.S. bombing of the north, had started on March 2. The first officially acknowledged U.S. combat units were the Marines who went ashore at Da Nang on March 8 (joining the 24,000 U.S. military personnel already fighting in Vietnam). Draftees were not yet being used in combat. So Mitt and his dad clearly intended the fall of 1965 to be the beginning of a fine four-year career at Stanford for the young man. But Mitt’s last month as a Stanford student was May 1966. Why?

Although the Selective Service Exam radically reduced the chances of college men, especially those with the test-taking skills of most Stanford students, to be conscripted into the Vietnam War, it was no guarantee of long-lasting deferment. There were other, surer, escapes from the Vietnam nightmare. One of the very best was the ministry. In 1966, young men flooded into divinity schools, embarking on careers to be ministers, priests, and rabbis. The Mormons had an even better deal than most religions, because The Church of Latter-Day Saints required each and every one of its young men to become, for at least two years, a “minister of religion.” Thus all Mormon young men could claim deferments as ministers. When the inequity of this arrangement became too blatant, the Selective Service entered into an agreement with the LDS that required the church to specify just one “minister” for each geographical district. Since there were relatively few Mormons in Michigan, and Governor George Romney had considerable influence in the church, Mitt quickly received an official appointment as a Mormon “minister of religion,” consecrated by a draft deferment from the Selective Service. So instead of returning to Stanford, Mitt went off to become a Mormon missionary in France, where he would spend the next two and a half years—while Vietnam became a slaughterhouse for the Vietnamese and many Americans drafted to slaughter them.

So who says that Mitt Romney is inconsistent? After all, what may have been his first recorded public political act was supporting the draft for ordinary Americans, forcing them to participate in a war waged in the interest of his own class.

H. Bruce Franklin is the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University. His most recent book is The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America.

Signs of Extreme Distress

Weekend Edition Aug 31-Sep 02, 2012

Signs of Extreme Distress

Why You’re a Lot Poorer Than You Thought You Were

by MIKE WHITNEY

You’re a lot poorer than you thought you were.



According to a report by Sentier Research “real median annual household income… has fallen by 4.8 percent since the ‘economic recovery’ began in June 2009.”



That’s worse than the 2.6 percent decline that took place during the recession itself. (between July 2007 to June 2009) All told–from the beginning of the slump in 2007 until today–median household income has dropped an eyewatering 7.2 percent. (“Changes in Household Income During the Economic Recovery: June 2009 to June 2012″, Sentier Research)



Like I said, you’re a lot poorer than you thought you were.



The Sentier Research report comes on the heels of a similar report from the Fed which was released in June showing that middle class families saw a nearly 40 percent decline in their net worth between the years 2007 to 2010. The Fed’s 80-page tri-annual Survey of Consumer Finances, points to the Great Recession as the putative cause of the overall decline in wealth, but the Fed’s lopsided policies could be as easily blamed. Low interest rates, lax lending standards and outright fraud generated asset-price bubbles that wiped out 2 decades of economic gains for working people in the US.



The Fed’s survey found that the median net worth of families in the US fell by 38.9 percent between 2007 and 2010, from $126,400 to $77,300. Also, the median value of a US home dropped by 42 percent, from $95,300 to $55,000 in the same period. Plunging housing prices have increased the burden of mortgage debt leaving more than 20 percent of all homeowners with negative equity which greatly increases the probability of default.



Is it any wonder why consumer confidence is at its lowest point since November 2011? Or why mom and pop investors are still fleeing the stock market in record numbers 4 years after Lehman Brothers failed? Or why the yields on 10-year Treasuries are still hovering below 2 percent? Or why bank deposits now vastly exceed loans?



All of these are signs of extreme distress, which is why working people have grown so gloomy about the future. Did you know that (According to the Pew Research Center) 61 percent of all Americans were “middle income” back in 1971, while, today, the number has been shaved to 51 percent? That explains why 85 percent of the people surveyed said “that it is harder to maintain a middle class standard of living today compared with 10 years ago.” The majority of the people also admitted that they’ve had to reduce their spending in the past year.



What all of these reports indicate is that the US middle class is being drawn-and-quartered by economic policies which serve to enrich the few at the cost of the many.



Of course, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke is going to “put things right” by launching another round of quantitative easing (QE) which is supposed to boost growth and lower unemployment. Unfortunately, QE doesn’t really work like that, in fact, the Bank of England just released a report that proves that central bank asset purchases disproportionately benefit the rich. Here’s a clip from an article in the Washington Post:



“The richest 10% of households in Britain have seen the value of their assets increase by up to £322,000 [$510,000] as a result of the Bank of England‘s attempts to use electronic money creation to lift the economy out of its deepest post-war slump. …



The Bank of England calculated that the value of shares and bonds had risen by 26% – or £600bn – as a result of the policy, equivalent to £10,000 for each household in the UK. It added, however, that 40% of the gains went to the richest 5% of households.”



It’s not hard to see why this happens. One way the bank’s quantitative easing program works, in theory, by pushing up asset prices in order to support the broader economy. And, according to the Bank of England, the median British household only holds about $2,370 in financial assets. So the direct benefits largely accrue to wealthier households.



What about the United States? Much like in Britain, the distribution of financial assets are also heavily skewed. …. So any move by the Fed to push up asset prices is likely to increase wealth inequality in the short term.” (“Will the Fed’s efforts to boost the economy only benefit the wealthiest?”, Washington Post)



So QE is just a scam to line the pockets of the investor class. Imagine that! It took 4 years and a research team of financial geniuses from the BOE to figure that out.



And here’s something else that’s worth mulling over; working people are getting totally screwed in the deal. Not only are savers and fixed-income retirees being robbed of the puny gains they would have seen if rates were in their normal range instead of zero, but also the prospect of more QE has sent gas futures spiking, while food prices are sure to follow. This is from Bloomberg in an article titled “Bernanke Boosts Oil Bulls to Highest Since May: Energy Markets”:



“Hedge funds raised bullish bets on oil to a three-month high on signs that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke will take measures to bolster U.S. economic growth and spur a rally in commodities.



Money managers increased net-long positions, or wagers on rising prices, by 18 percent in the seven days ended Aug. 21, according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Commitments of Traders report on Aug. 24. They were at the highest level since the week ended May 1.” (Bloomberg)



Higher prices at the pump. That ought to rev-up consumer spending, don’t you think?



Still, Bernanke and his fellow doves at the Fed aren’t going to be deterred by something as inconsequential as the travails of working people. Oh no. After all, he has his real constituents to consider, the parasitic Wall Street robber barons. Their needs come first, and what they want is another round of funny-money so they refill the larder at the Hamptons with Beluga and bubbly. That’s why members of the Fed have already started chirping for more “more accommodation”. Here’s what Chicago Fed President Charles Evans had to say last week in his ominous-sounding bulletin titled “Some Thoughts on Global Risks and Monetary Policy”:



“Finding a way to deliver more accommodation… is particularly important now because delays in reducing unemployment are costly. An unusually large percentage of the unemployed have been without work for quite an extended period of time; their skills can become less current or even deteriorate, leaving affected workers with permanent scars on their lifetime earnings. And any resulting lower aggregate productivity also weighs on potential output, wages and profits for the economy as a whole. The damage intensifies the longer that unemployment remains high. Failure to act aggressively now could lower the capacity of the economy for many years to come….



Given the risks we face, I think it is vital that we make such moves today. I don’t think we should be in a mode where we are waiting to see what the next few data releases bring. We are well past the threshold for additional action; we should take that action now.”



What gall! Does anyone really believe that a Fed president gives a rat’s ass about lower unemployment? It’s a joke.



And where’s the proof that QE lowers unemployment, increases wages or benefits the economy as a whole? Nowhere. Evans idea of “accommodation” is just another way of shoveling money to his rich friends.



Now get a load of this in the Wall Street Journal:



“During the recession, people who lost long-held jobs struggled to find new employment and often took substantial pay cuts if they did find new work. Little appears to have changed after the recession ended, a new Labor Department report shows.



From 2009 to 2011, 6.1 million workers lost jobs they had held for at least three years. Just over half — 56% — of them were reemployed by this January, the department found in its latest survey of displaced workers. Two years ago, the survey found that 49% of people who lost such jobs from 2007 to 2009 were reemployed.



People lucky enough to find new work are often taking steep wage cuts. Of the displaced workers who lost full-time wage and salary jobs from 2009-2011 and were reemployed by January, just 46% were earning as much or more than they did in their lost job. A third of them reported earnings losses of 20% or more.” (“New Jobs Come With Lower Wages”, Wall Street Journal)



So even the people who were “lucky enough to find work” are worse off than they were before. Hey, but at least they found a job, right? What about the people who weren’t able to find work at all? What will happen to them?



No worries. Obama and his deficit-slashing buddies in the congress have that all figured out. As soon as the election’s over, President Socialist is going to start kicking people off extended unemployment benefits as fast as humanly possible leaving millions of working people without enough money to house or feed their families. Here’s how it’s all going to go down:



“Over 500,000 people have lost extended unemployment benefits since the start of the year, and two million more are scheduled to lose their benefits on January 1, 2013…. Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC), is scheduled to end completely on January 1, ending unemployment payments for 2 million more people overnight.



With the start of the new year, there will be no part of the country that offers more than 26 weeks of unemployment benefits. This is far less than the average duration of unemployment, which has hovered near 40 weeks for over a year…..



Despite the disastrous impact of the cuts, it has been largely ignored both by the major media and in the US elections. Moreover, the Obama administration has already let it be known that it will not seek a renewal of extended jobless benefits.” (“Extended jobless benefits end for 500,000 US workers”, World Socialist web Site)



Can you see how nicely this segues with Michelle’s anti-obesity campaign? The administration plans to increase worker “flexibility”, by putting millions of jobless people on a crash diet.



And, don’t kid yourself, unemployment is just one of the many programs that Obama plans to eviscerate following the vote-count. He’s also going to zero-in on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They’re all on the chopping block, every last one of them. That’s what the so called Fiscal Cliff is all about; it’s a public relations hoax to conceal Obama’s plan to dismantle the vital programs that provide medicine, shelter and a meager retirement for the sick, the needy and the elderly, you know, the folks the Republicans refer to as “useless eaters”.



All of these reports (Sentier, Pew, the Fed’s Survey of Consumer Finances) underline the same point, that the middle class is embroiled in a war-to-the-death with carpetbagging vermin who plan to deprive them of work, strip their assets, foreclose their homes, and leave them penniless to face old age. It’s just good old class warfare–and as Warren Buffett opined–his class is winning.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.