Month: January 2016

The Self-Serving Apologists for Student Debt-Serfdom

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degreesCharles Hugh Smith – Everyone who isn’t blinded by self-interest sees that the cost of higher education in America–and the way we pay for it, by turning students into debt-serfs– is unsustainable. Those benefiting richly from the bloated, ineffective bureaucracy see no alternative, of cours27e; their self-serving handwringing would be laughable if it wasn’t so destructive to the nation and the economy.

Greg Mankiw, professor at Harvard, recently offered up a typical helping of self-serving handwringing:  Three Reasons for Those Hefty College Tuition Bills. Mankiw squeezes out a few insincere (but necessary for PR purposes) alligator tears over the soaring costs of a college degree, and then trots out the usual justifications for maintaining the status quo, which just so happens to reward him so well.

Let’s dismantle his bogus justifications one by one.

1. Mankiw predictably trots out the Gold Standard of justifying the absurdly high cost of an often-ineffective and useless college degree: those with college degrees earn $1.5 million more over a lifetime of work than those without degrees.

On the face of it, this offers plenty of justification for $120,000 piles of debt for degrees in Critical Studies, etc.: that extra $1.5 million will easily fund the cost of a 4-year degree.

But this data is completely out of date. Yes, a college degree offered substantial lifetime wage increases back when four years of college cost about as much as a new car, not a new house, i.e. the current cost; but as recent graduates have discovered, a four-year college degree offers little advantage, and substantially under-performs journey-person wages for skilled trades workers such as pipefitters, plumbers, etc. Continue reading →

Top Scientist: UN “Climate Finance” Is Subsidy for Kleptocracy

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ClimateAlex Newman – The international wealth-redistribution schemes of the United Nations, justified under the guise of battling alleged man-made global warming, are really a massive subsidy to kleptocrats ruling poor countries paid for by the poor and middle classes of wealthier and freer nations, according to internationally renowned physicist Dr. Fred Singer.

On top of that, the professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia said, the burden of proof in attributing climate changes to human activities is on man-made global-warming theorists seeking to regulate and control carbon dioxide, and not on skeptics. And so far, the alarmists have failed to demonstrate that mankind is responsible for any measurable impact on the climate, he said.

Speaking at the Heartland Institute’s “Day of Examining the Data” conference in Paris, which took place during the UN’s COP21 climate summit last month (link), Singer and other scientists from around the world denounced the global-warming alarmism coming out of the nearby UN confab. Among other concerns, the experts said there was no climate crisis — much less a man-made one — and that the real agenda of the UN involves primarily money and power, not the climate.

Dr. Singer, an atmospheric and space physicist with unassailable scientific credentials, told The New American in an interview after his speech that climate science was far from settled, and that taxpayer money distributed by governments was buying the cooperation of scientists. He also suggested that human impacts on the climate, if there are any, are likely to be so tiny as to be completely insignificant.

“The climate has always been changing — warming and cooling, warming and cooling,” Singer said. “So we assume that this is a continuing process. The fact that we are now fairly well advanced in the industrial revolution — it has no influence on natural forcing, we don’t affect what the sun does, we don’t affect the volcanoes. So the null hypothesis, which means the normal way events go, we would assume that all changes in climate, even today, are due to the same kinds of natural forcing.” Continue reading →

Corporate Fascism, The Vatican and the 21st Century

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Vatican

Katherine Frisk – The Vatican is the prototype of a Corporate Fascist entity. It answers to nobody. It pays taxes to nobody. Its Bishops and priests have diplomatic immunity all over the world. It even has its own embassies. It owns more real estate than any other entity on the planet.

It was never about God, Jesus or Christianity, it is about power and control and “fashion statements. “

The Vatican has major shareholding in all the top corporations. Lockheed Martin and Bank of America being two examples.

But who and what is the Vatican really, behind their elected men dressed up in red Prada shoes ( The Devil wears Prada) , one of the biggest pedophile rings on the planet, money laundering, drug running entities and illegal arms trade industries in the world?

The Vatican is a front for the Black nobility of Europe, Zionist Bankers and the Wahhabi sect under the control of the Saudi Royal family.

It does not believe in Democracy and certainly not the framework of a Republic. It advocates monopolist, political tyranny, hegemony and a hierarchical framework where in their own courts they have trial by ordeal, not a free and fair trail with witnesses to speak on their behalf.

For the last 1,000 years, their goal has been to take over Russia, which has determinedly remained Orthodox Christian in spite of a communist invasion funded by Wall Street Bankers, and not succumbed to the dictatorship of the pope nor in their advocacy that the pope owns the planet, all bodies on the planet and all souls. An Apostolic Church based on all twelve disciples, as opposed to Peter, who is the only person referred to in the Bible as Satan, is more in alignment with a Federation of States, a Republic and Democracy. Continue reading →

Just Get There, Whatever You Do

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Zen Gardner – As is often said, there are many ways up the mountain. The same can be said for ways of escape. That’s a bit more defensive and reactive, but such is the reality in this remarkable time we’re living in right now.

Just get there.

way

All of this going on around us now is happening before we can even begin to identify what it is we’re going through or where we’re headed. It’s very much like we’re flying over and around new rocks in a raging cataract and shooting down even more unexpected rapids.

In less turbulent times, grasping what’s going on is usually possible to some degree and we’re used to having that luxury. But no longer. We’re being swept into new and exciting places with some sort of cosmic urgency.

And we just need to flow with it.

Feeling for It

The beauty of losing control is that our heads and minds can’t get in the way. It’s too late and too immediate for that. We might have a few instinctive reflexes to try to keep our balance and heads above water but our old footing is gone. Completely gone.

And that’s a good thing – a real good thing. Continue reading →