Paul Craig Roberts ~ Washington Is Humanity’s Worst Enemy

PaulCraigRoberts  April 13 2014

PaulCraigRobertsHow does Washington get away with the claim that the country it rules is a democracy and has freedom? This absurd claim ranks as one of the most unsubstantiated claims in history.

There is no democracy whatsoever. Voting is a mask for rule by a few powerful interest groups. In two 21st century rulings (Citizens United and McCutcheon), the US Supreme Court has ruled that the purchase of the US government by private interest groups is merely the exercise of free speech. These rulings allow powerful corporate and financial interests to use their money-power to elect a government that serves their interests at the expense of the general welfare.

The control private interests exercise over the government is so complete that private interests have immunity to prosecution for crimes. At his retirement party on March 27, Securities and Exchange Commission prosecutor James Kidney stated that his prosecutions of Goldman Sachs and other “banks too big to fail” were blocked by superiors who “were focused on getting high-paying jobs after their government service.” The SEC’s top brass, Kidney said, did not “believe in afflicting the comfortable and powerful.” In his report on Kidney’s retirement speech, Eric Zuesse points out that the Obama regime released false statistics in order to claim prosecutions that did not take place in order to convince a gullible public that Wall Street crooks were being punished. http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/09/65578/

Democracy and freedom require an independent and aggressive media, an independent and aggressive judiciary, and an independent and aggressive Congress. The United States has none of the above.

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Obamacare: The Final Nail In The Coffin For The Middle Class

EconomicCollapse  November 17 2013

obamacare_PixieDust

If there were any shreds of hope left that the stunning decline of the middle class could be turned around, Obamacare has absolutely destroyed them.  Over the past decade or so, the middle class in the United States has been absolutely eviscerated.  The number of working age Americans without a job has increased by 27 million since the year 2000, median household income in the U.S. has fallen for five years in a row, and the poverty numbers in this country are spiraling out of control.  And now here comes Obamacare.  As you will see below, Obamacare is causing millions of Americans to lose their current health insurance policies, it is causing health insurance premiums to explode to absolutely ridiculous levels, and it is systematically killing jobs even though the employer mandate has been delayed for a while.  All of this is creating a tremendous amount of stress for millions of middle class families that are already stretched extremely thin financially.  According to CNN, a survey that was conducted earlier this year found that 76 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.  Most of those families simply cannot afford to pay much higher health insurance premiums for new policies that also come with much larger deductibles and significantly increased out-of-pocket costs.  Millions of those families will ultimately end up choosing to do without health insurance altogether, and that will create a whole host of new problems.  This is a disaster that is so enormous that it is really hard to put into words.  If the U.S. health care system was a separate country, it would be the 6th largest economy on the entire globe all by itself.  And now Obamacare is going to bring the entire U.S. health care system to its knees.

Obamacare: Since October 1st, The Number Of Americans With Health Insurance Has Fallen By Nearly 4 Million

Last week, Barack Obama decided to allow Americans to keep their current health insurance plans for one more year.

Isn’t that generous of him?  Especially considering the fact that he promised us over and over that if we liked our current health insurance policies that we would be able to keep them permanently.

The funny thing is that Obama is not actually changing the law.  So if your health insurance company allows you to stay on your current health insurance plan that does not meet the requirements of Obamacare, it is technically breaking the law.

And if you continue to stay on that current health insurance plan that does not meet the requirements of Obamacare, you are technically breaking the law.

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Big Food Lobbying Group Spends Millions To Keep Consumers In The Dark

EWG  October 1 2013

Coca-Cola

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Environmental Working Group (EWG) today called out the big food lobbying group, Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), for dropping an additional $5 million into a campaign to defeat a popular Washington state referendum initiative to label genetically engineered food.

Recent polling shows the measure is supported by the majority of people in the state, who want the same right that exists in more than 60 countries around the world.

“The GMA claims to be the voice for more than 300 food and beverage companies that depend on consumer trust and loyalty to stay in business,” said Ken Cook, EWG’s president. “Yet GMA is spending millions on behalf of those companies to deny consumers the right to know more information about the food they eat and feed to their families. Clearly some big food companies want to keep their customers in the dark about what’s in our food. Now they also want to hide millions in campaign contributions to defeat the GE labeling measure on the ballot in Washington state this November.”

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Paul Craig Roberts ~ Washington Thinks You Are Stupid

Paul Craig Roberts August 6 2013

There’s the old saying that if the government fears the people, there is liberty, but if the people fear the government there is tyranny. The criminals in Washington not only do not fear us, they do not respect us. Washington looks upon Americans as stupid sheeple.

Washington believes that it can tell the population anything and the people will believe it. For example, the official line is that the recession that began in December 2007 ended in June 2009. Many Americans believe this even thought they have not personally experienced economic recovery. Indeed, they are sinking further into poverty and near poverty.

And don’t forget those nonexistent weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein was alleged by Washington to possess. Or the Gulf of Tonkin fake event when Washington claimed that its warship was attacked by North Vietnam. Really, the list of official lies is very long. Anyone who believes anything that Washington says is too naive to be let out of the house alone. But Americans believe the lies, because that is what they think patriotism requires.

Relying on the proven gullibility of the bulk of the US population, Washington claims to have uncovered an al Qaeda plot to attack US embassies across North Africa and the Middle East. To foil the plot, Washington closed 19 embassies for the past week-end and for this week also.

Washington has not explained how closing the embassies foils the plot. If al Qaeda wants to blow up the embassies, it can blow them up whether they are open or closed.

If al Qaeda wants to kill the embassy personnel, they can kill them at home or on the way to work or later in the embassies when the alert passes.

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Lawlessness Is The New Normal

Paul Craig Roberts July 5 2013

In various articles and in my latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism And Economic Dissolution Of The West, I have pointed out that the European sovereign debt crisis is being used to terminate the sovereignty of the countries that are members of the EU. There is no doubt that this is true, but the sovereignty of the EU member states is only nominal. Although the individual countries still retain some sovereignty from the EU government, they are all under Washington’s thumb, as demonstrated by the recent illegal and hostile action taken on Washington’s orders by France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Austria against the airliner carrying Bolivia’s President Evo Morales.

Flying back to Bolivia from Moscow, Morales’ plane was denied overflight and refueling permission by Washington’s French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese puppets and had to land in Austria, where the presidential plane was searched for Edward Snowden. It was a power play by Washington to kidnap Snowden from Bolivia’s presidential airliner in defiance of international law and to teach upstart reformers like Morales that independence from Washington’s orders is not permitted.

The European puppet states went along with this extraordinary breach of diplomacy and international law despite the fact that each of the countries is incensed that Washington is spying on their governments, diplomats, and citizens. Their thanks to Snowden, whose revelations made them aware that Washington was recording their every communication, was to help Washington capture Snowden.

This tells us how much morality, honor, integrity there is left in Western civilization: Zero.

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