I. Homelessness and Bankruptcies
For example, in the last few years anti-homelessness laws have been passed across the United States, some going as far as making it illegal to feed the homeless. As if that wasn’t enough, to deal with America’s homelessness problem (2), some government representatives have turned to violence:
“Remarkably, this vigilante isn’t just some random Hawaiian, but five-term State Rep. Tom Brower (D).
“Noting that he’s ‘disgusted’ with homeless people, Brower told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser about his own personal brand of ‘justice’: ‘If I see shopping carts that I can’t identify, I will destroy them so they can’t be pushed on the streets.’ Brower has waged this campaign for two weeks, estimating that he’s smashed about 30 shopping carts in the process.
“‘I want to do something practical that will really clean up the streets,’ he explained to Hawaii News Now as he showed off his property destruction skills:”
The ignorance and ruthlessness of those in office should be considered a crime since they do not seem to realize that recession-induced homelessness skyrocketed after the 2008 economic crisis. Something that they are directly responsible for considering that it was our government representatives that passed the 2005 Bankruptcy Bill - its passing coinciding with the largest economic crisis in contemporary history. The reforms that were introduced made it much harder and more costly for Americans to file for bankruptcy protection.
Report Shows Bankruptcy Reforms Raised Costs For Consumers and Creditors
“According to Professor Lupica the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA) has resulted in higher costs for consumers who wish to file for bankruptcy and, consequently, lower returns for creditors.”
After years of lobbying, the “dream bill for credit card and financial service companies” finally came into effect. The bill was “the biggest rewrite of U.S. bankruptcy law in a quarter century”. It was also conveniently or inconveniently, depending on your perspective, introduced at a time when U.S. household debt was at an all-time high.
click to enlarge - source - additional data
Further information on the 2005 Bankruptcy Bill and its implications at:
II. Economic Warfare and Wall Street
“It's the economy, stupid” is a catchphrase used by politicians and those in the business of manipulation to try and garner support for their cause. Its purpose is to emphasize that the health of the economy trumps all other concerns. A strategy from the playbook of Inverted Totalitarian States:
“In Inverted Totalitarianism economics trumps politics, which is different from classical Totalitarianism where politics trumps economics.” - Chris Hedges
Chris Hedges on the 'inverted totalitarian' corporate state that is the US
For example, in the following segment from a panel discussion presented by The American Center for Democracy and its Economic Warfare Institute – an organization “dedicated to exposing and monitoring threats to the national security of the United States and other Western democracies” – the speaker states that one of the biggest threats to the economic health of the United States is terrorism through “wildland arson”.
“Perhaps the most simple form of economic warfare is wildland arson. That’s just setting fires in U.S. forests, grasslands. So, for any terrorists that are determined to inflict significant damage with very little investment or risk, fire is an extremely high leveraged weapon of mass effect….
“There is reason to believe that the U.S. is under attack. The bad guys are waging fire wars right now, but we as a people aren’t fighting back, and that’s primarily due to an ingrained out of date mindset where we still treat fires as a land management issue and we should be treating it as a national security issue….
“So America, I think, is under attack by terrorist waging economic warfare by fire….”
Economic Warfare Super Panel - William Scott
The absurdity of the above is absolutely mind boggling considering that indefinite Federal Reserve stimulus has allowed the markets to rise to historic levels during times of austerity economics. Quantitative Easing by centralized banks – “fundamentally a regressive redistribution program that has been boosting wealth for those already engaged in the financial sector or those who already own homes, but passing little along to the rest of the economy” – has caused economic disparity across the United States.
Economist: Record High Stock Prices Driven by Squeezing Workers' Wages
“Affluent households typically have their assets concentrated in stocks”, so indefinite stimulus is basically the transfer of wealth from Main Street to Wall Street:
“In terms of types of financial wealth, the top one percent of households have 35% of all privately held stock, 64.4% of financial securities, and 62.4% of business equity. The top ten percent have 81% to 94% of stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and almost 80% of non-home real estate. Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the United States of America.”
click to enlarge - source
As Chris Hedges has pointed out, they have “reduce(d) roughly two-thirds of this country to subsistence level” and turned America into a tinderbox.
Chris Hedges: "America is a Tinderbox"
Further information on the economic demise of the citizens of the United States at:
-
- “Why Stocks Have Risen: Stimulus, Stimulus, and Indefinite-Stimulus, i.e., Transfer of Wealth from Main Street to Wall Street”, and
- “Government Shutdown and Appointment of Janet Yellen Guarantees Flow of Funds to Wall Street: They are reducing “two-thirds of this country to subsistence level”, Chris Hedges”
III. NSA and NDAA
So what are citizens of the United States doing about this disparity? The poor are getting poorer and closer to revolting while the rich are spending millions hunkering down:
“Paranoid? Perhaps. But also increasingly commonplace. Futuristic security technologies–many developed for the military but sounding as though they came straight from James Bond’s Q–have made their way into the home, available to deep-pocketed owners whose peace of mind comes from knowing that their sensors can detect and adjust for, say, a person lurking in the bushes a half-mile away.”
Private Armies for the One Percent
Citizens of the United States should not fear each other - shadows in the dark. They should be concerned with the loss of their civil liberties and their privacy, the destructive nature of their foreign policy, their emerging police state and the prison profiteers (2, 3), how their government has been using brute force to quash peaceful protests and criminalize democratic dissent, and their government’s secrecy and its unprecedented attack on whistleblowers.
Americans should not fear homeless people “lurking in the bushes a half-mile away”, but the National Security Agency (NSA) and the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) - just two of the elephants in the room.
"I'm Just a Mom!" Daphne Lee Gives Powerful Speech Against NDAA in Clark County, Nevada
People Against the NDAA (P.A.N.D.A.)
Chris Hedges: NDAA Lawsuit Update
Guardian's Alan Rusbridger Home Affairs Committee Testimony Re: Snowden/NSA Leaks
The End of Internet Privacy? Glenn Greenwald On Secret NSA Program to Crack Online Encryption
click to enlarge - original artist unknown (if you know who it is please let me know so I can source it, thank you)
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