Ranting, Raving, and Rocking by Sal Canzonieri

This was my thirteenth column in AMP magazine. This one Rants on the Neo-Con New World Order and destruction of the Middle Class in USA, Raves on Brutarian pop culture magazine, and Rocks on about NJ's The Dark Brothers!

Welcome to my thirteenth column for AMP magazine.

This month’s Rant:

The Bushit administration continues to exploit September 11 to justify endless domestic spying, unprecedented deficit spending, and a permanent state of war. Thanks to 9/11, it laid the Golden Egg: The Department of Homeland Security (what a nice Nazi name).

So, Homeland Security, what exactly has it done to make this country safer? No one can name anything at all that they have done. What they have done though is gave out MILLIONS of dollars to local police departments. And, you know what that means. Suddenly police departments all over are finding "suspects" everywhere, or else they don't get any part of the giant pot of gold that Homeland Sec. is handing out.  What a total joke, and another insult on the American people's intelligence that they Bushit administration is doing. Where there's money to be had, people will find an excuse so that they can get some of that free money. Free money, our TAX MONEY that is, our hard earned money being doled out like candy canes at christmas. Enemies will be found everywhere, you bet. Since 9/11, half a billion dollars has been funneled into building up local and state police intelligence units, with little oversight - and the result has often been questionable spying on American citizens. According to an investigative report by U.S. News & World Report, after four years of handing out homeland security grants to police departments, federal officials released guidelines for conduct only last year - and the standards are voluntary! You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. According to one law enforcement official in the U.S. News article, "The money has been moved without guidance or structure, technical assistance, or training".
"You've got all this money and all this equipment," he said. "You're going to find someone to use it on."

Among the incidents cited in the U.S. News article:

-Police in DeKalb County, Ga., arrested two vegan activists handing out anti-meat leaflets in front of a HoneyBaked Ham store and demanded that they turn over notes that included the license plate number of an undercover car. Activists in Fresno, Calif., learned that their antiwar group had been infiltrated by a local sheriff's deputy after he died in a car crash and his obituary appeared in the local paper.

-Two plainclothes sheriff's deputies from Contra Costa, Calif., monitored a protest by striking Safeway supermarket workers, identifying themselves as homeland security agents.

-Authorities in Texas identified 2,052 people as "potential threat elements," including members of biker gangs, militia groups and "save the whales" environmentalists.

-In Minnesota, State Rep. Mary Liz Holberg was classified as a "suspect" because of a neighbor's old complaint about where she parked her car.

Like I said before, this War on Terror is against us, we are the ones being terrorized by this "war". Little by little they are trying to turn this country into a National Socialist state that bullies its people into shutting up and taking what they dish out. And who is this "they"? It's not some crazy conspiracy. Nope, it is an out in the open organization of the richest people in the world, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), who openly publish policy papers for the government to follow. So many members of the CFR are part of the Bushit administration that it has become insane. Some of the members are: Dick Cheney (who was ticketed twice for DUI voilations by the way), Don Rumsfield, Dan Pearle, Wolfgowitz, Condi"ment" Rice, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Henry Kissinger, and many more people we all know (and hate). Since the organization started back near the end of WWI, through their magazine "Foreign Affairs" and their papers and the books written by their members, they have clearly spelled out their plans. A plan of pure greed where they as the elite "experts" run a one-world government with a one-world economy. One there were is a rich elite in power to guide the masses (the newly poor) and where the middle class is gone for good.

If you are reading this right now, more than likely you are a member of the middle class, the poor and the rich surely wouldn't be reading a political column in a alternative music magazine, that's common sense. The middle class is the main group of people that do all the real work of this country. The upper middle class work in all the lower and middle mangement jobs. The middle middle class is also the merchant class that imports and exports products for sale in local stores and runs non-multinational non-corporate local businesses that we frequent every day. The lower middle class is also the people that work in stores and factories. The middle class is the main part of this country that pays the most taxes and is the most ripped off, getting none of the government hand-outs that are freely given to the rich and the poor. Obviously we the reader is a member of the middle class, which economically today is the part of the country that makes between $30,000 to 200,000 dollars a year in salary (yes, you can make a million dollars a year and still be part of the middle class because of a lot of other factors). So, don't think for a moment that nothing will be effecting your life, because there are very real plan under way by the CFR that will destroy the middle class and fast!

Back to the CFR, whose website is www.cfr.org . The problem with relating the purpose of the mission of the CFR to the understanding of the average American is explaining just how and what the organization has done in the past 80 years, what it is doing today, and what it proposes to do tomorrow, will affect our freedom, security, and even our money.  Soon after World War I, after the failure of the League of Nations, some prominent Americans got together to from their own private club to discuss world problems and attempt to bring their influences to bear on solving world problems. The organization took the name of Council on Foreign Relations. Membership in the CFR is by invitation only, and although the membership is not a secret matter, deliberations and decisions are secret. Article three of the CFR's bylaws states: "If you are a member, and reveal any of the secrets of the meetings, you will be disbarred or asked to leave." What they are pushing for is a New World Order, they say, that will result in a one-world government AND that will END the sovereignity of ALL nations, especially the USA. In July 1948, Sir Harold Butler wrote an article that appeared in the CFR's Foreign Affairs publication titled, "A New World Takes Shape." CFR coined the phrase "New World Order," and it appears throughout the organizations pronouncements, publications, and speeches of principal proponents, dating back into the 1920's. James P. Warburg, CFR member, told a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee: "We shall have world government, whether or not we like it . . . by consent or conquest." On September 13, 1949, Senator Glen Taylor of Idaho stated: "We would have to sacrifice considerable sovereignty to the world organization to enable them to levy taxes in their own right to support themselves." Get that? WORLD TAXES so that the CFR can support themselves from it! Most of the CFR members are socialists that became anti-Soviet communism. Edith Kermit Roosevelt (granddaughter of President Theodore Roosevelt) wrote in the Indianapolis News (12/23/61): ". . . the best way to fight communism is by a one world socialist state governed by 'experts' like themselves (CFR) . . . policies which favor . . . gradual surrender of United States sovereignty to the United Nations."

In 1954, the Rockefellers anointed a rising political star, Henry Kissinger, to lead the CFR as a shepherd in international diplomacy, to lead sheep nations into the greener pastures of the NEW WORLD ORDER. In 1972, Dr. Kissinger saved Saddam Hussein when the CIA deserted the Kurds in exchange for a lucrative oil arrangement with Iraq. Dr. Kissinger was doubtless behind the Oslo Agreement which saved Arafat. As Joseph Alsop once observed regarding Dr. Kissinger's diplomacy: ". . . so somber that it is close to anti-American. The American view is all optimism and all morality . . . That is not the way Henry Kissinger thinks. He never expects any nation to put morality above the chance of great gain" (Daily Oklahoman 9/11/73). According to the April 30, 1989, edition of the New York Times, Kissinger and the rest of the CFR represent 30 multinational companies, including American Express, H. J. Heinz, ITT, Lockheed, etc. Dr. Kissinger's role as the most powerful international business lobbyist in the world also gives him vast political power, enabling CFR to also expand its goals for the so-called New World Order. Kissinger's clients include those doing business in oil producing countries of the Middle East, manufacturing, merchandising, agriculture in South America, Central America, China, Japan, Micro-Asia, etc. The CFR keeps memberships, or associate memberships, in such international units as the Trilateral Commission, Club of Rome, and Bildebergers. CFR membership is also inclusive of West Point Superintendents, Allied Supreme Commanders, Secretaries of Defense, and Military Policy members. Media memberships include Time, New York Times, Newsweek, Washington Post, CBS, NBC, ABC, etc. Federal Government memberships include presidents, State Department, National Security Council, Ambassadors, Senate, and the House. The CFR also exerts influence on United States personnel at the various United Nations agencies, which is natural, because UN goals usually parallel CFR's goals.  Furthermore, many presidents of the various Federal Banks are members of the CFR.  If one group is effectively in control of national governments and multinational corporations; promotes world government through control of media, foundation grants, and education; and controls and guides the issues of the day; then they control most options available. In the New World Order of the CFR, we would essentially be back under feudalism, with everyone working for the lords that own all property and all things.

The goals of the CFR have been well publicized over the past seventy years. Some thing done and said out in the open is not a conspiracy, is it? It is something in full effect, already happening. According to the well documented statement of goals by prominent CFR membership, CFR consensus is to surrender national identity and constitutional authority to a world government WHEN the time is convenient. CFR consensus proposes this is the only answer. The means are justifiable as long as this international state is realized at the end of the all political and economic efforts. CFR "experts" write scholarly pieces to be used in decision making, the academics expound on the wisdom of a united world, and the media members disseminate the message. Since the 1970s, the middle class has been slowly getting screwed in as many ways as possible. In 1972, Zbigniew Breshinsky and other CFR members published a book that clearly stated that in order to maximize profits for corporations US wages needed to come down to half of what they were then and that some kind of 'pearl harbor' type of catastrophie was needed to hasten the acceleration of acceptance by the masses of the CFR's goals for the future. Well, they got their 'pearl harbor' with 9/11, didn't they? How convenient!!! 

THINK: those who attempt to abolish our national sovereignty and overthrow our Constitutional government are committing acts of treason!!!  Senator William Jenner warned in a speech: "Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system, another body representing another form of government, a bureaucratic elite which believes our Constitution is outmoded."  All that is needed to effectively control a government is to have control over the nation's money: a central bank with a monopoly over the supply of money and credit. Thomas Jefferson wrote: "The Central Bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our Constitution...if the American people allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." Does that not describe the situation in America today?

The U.S. managed to do without a central bank until early in this century, when, according to Congressman Charles Lindbergh, Sr., "The Money Trust caused the 1907 panic, and thereby forced Congress to create a National Monetary Commission." Headed by Senator Nelson Aldrich, father-in-law of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the Commission recommended creation of a central bank. Though unconstitutional, as only "The Congress shall have Power...To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof..." (Article I, Section 8, U.S. Constitution) the Federal Reserve Act was passed in December 1913; ostensibly to stabilize the economy and prevent further panics, but as Lindberg warned Congress: "This act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth...the invisible government by the money power, proven to exist by the Money Trust investigation, will be legalized." The Great Depression and numerous recessions later, it is obvious the Federal Reserve produces inflation and federal debt whenever it desires, but not stability.  Congressman Louis McFadden, House Committee on Banking and Currency Chairman (1920-31), stated: "When the Federal Reserve Act was passed, the people of these United States did not perceive that a world banking system was being set up here. A super-state controlled by international bankers and industrialists...acting together to enslave the world...Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers but the truth is--the Fed has usurped the government."

The Federal Reserve pays the Bureau of Engraving & Printing approximately $23 for each 1,000 notes printed. 10,000 $100 notes (one million dollars) would thus cost the Federal Reserve $230. They then secure a pledge of collateral equal to the face value from the U.S. government. The collateral is our land, labor, and assets... collected by their agents, the IRS. By authorizing the Fed to regulate and create money (and thus inflation), Congress gave private banks power to create profits at will. The Federal Reserve is able to create inflation whenever the trusts want inflation.  They can unload the stocks on the people at high prices during the a period of excitement and then bring on a panic and buy them back at low prices.  That day came in 1929, with the Stock Market crash and Great Depression. And again in the stock market crash of the 1980s, and again in the crash of the late 1990s (when Bushit came in).  One of the most important powers given to the Fed was the right to buy and sell government securities, and provide loans to member banks so they might also purchase them. This provided another built-in mechanism for profit to the banks, if government debt was increased. All that was needed was a method to pay off the debt. This was accomplished through the passage of the income tax in 1913 (after the US Supreme court has declared an national income tax as unconsitutional in 1895). THINK: today we have the biggest deficit, government debt, that the world has ever seen, which profits these banks!  With the means to loan enormous sums to the government (the Federal Reserve), a method to repay the debt (income tax), and an escape from taxation for the wealthy, (charitable foundations), all that remained was an excuse to borrow money. By some happy "coincidence," in 1914 World War I began, and after American participation national debt rose from $1 billion to $25 billion. The rich get richer during wartime, hence we are in this "perpetual' war on 'terror' (yeah, terrorizing the middle class!). During the 1950s, government investigators examining the records of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a long- time promoter of globalism, found that several years before the outbreak of World War I, the Carnegie trustees were planning to involve the U.S. in a general war, to set the stage for world government. Why do the rich want a world government? As John D. Rockefeller, Sr. had said: "Competition is a sin," and global monopoly fit their needs as they grew internationally.  Antony Sutton, a research fellow for the Hoover Institution for War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University, wrote of this philosophy: "While monopoly control of industries was once the objective of J.P. Morgan and J.D. Rockefeller, by the late nineteenth century the inner sanctums of Wall Street understood the most efficient way to gain an unchallenged monopoly was to 'go political' and make society go to work for the monopolists-- under the name of the public good and the public interest."

With the end of the war and the Versailles Treaty, which required severe war reparations from Germany, the way was paved for a leader in Germany such as Hitler. Wilson brought to the Paris Peace Conference his famous "fourteen points," with point fourteen being a proposal for a "general association of nations," which was to be the first step towards the goal of One World Government-the League of Nations. The League of Nations was established, but it, and the plan for world government eventually failed because the U.S. Senate would not ratify the Versailles Treaty. These rich bankers realized that America would not join any scheme for world government without a change in public opinion. After a series of meetings, it was decided that an "Institute of International Affairs", with two branches, in the United States and England, would be formed. The British branch became known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, with leadership provided by members of the Round Table. Begun in the late 1800's by Cecil Rhodes, the Round Table aimed to federate the English speaking peoples of the world, and bring it under their rule. The Council on Foreign Relations was incorporated as the American branch in New York on July 29, 1921. Founding members included Colonel House, and "...such potentates of international banking as J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Paul Warburg, Otto Kahn, and Jacob Schiff...the same clique which had engineered the establishment of the Federal Reserve System," according to Gary Allen in the October 1972 issue of "AMERICAN OPINION."  As corporations went international, national monopolies could no longer protect their interests. What was needed was a one world system of government controlled from behind the scenes. This had been the plan since the time of the League of Nations, and to implement it, it was necessary to weaken the U.S. politically and economically.  Since 1934 almost every United States Secretary of State has been a CFR member; and ALL Secretaries of War or Defense, from Henry L. Stimson through Dickhead Cheney.  The CIA has been under CFR control almost continuously since its creation, starting with Allen Dulles, founding member of the CFR. Dulles is the one that protected Bush's grandfather and great grandfather after it was found out that they were supporting Hitler's war efforts with their banks and also using the jewish prisoners in Auschwitz for labor in the steel plants they owned, not to mention bringing in german spies into the USA (as congressional papers from the National Archives have shown to be the case). Also, nearly ALL presidential candidates on both sides have been CFR members, oftening running against each other (either way the CFR won). We have also had CFR members Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, (though his name strangely disappears from the membership list in 1979) CFR director (1977-79) George Bush, and last but not least, Bill Clinton.

Admiral Chester Ward, a member of the CFR for over a decade, became one of its harshest critics, revealing its inner workings in a 1975 book, "Kissinger ON THE COUCH." In it he states "The most powerful cliques in these elitist groups have one objective in common: they want to bring about the surrender of the sovereignty and national independence of the United States." As stated in the 50th anniversary issue of "Foreign Affairs," the official publication of the CFR. In an article by Kingman Brewster, Jr. entitled "Reflections on Our National Purpose." Our purpose should be, according to him, to do away with our nationality, to "take some risks in order to invite others to pool their sovereignty with ours..." And, RIGHT NOT, right on our doorstep we have this very thing poised to happen by 2010. How you ask? Well listen:

The CFR has just let the cat out of the bag about what's really behind our trade agreements and security partnerships with the other North American countries.  A 59-page CFR document spells out a five-year plan for the "establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community" with a common "outer security perimeter."  The CFR's "integrated" strategy calls for "a common economic space ... for all people in the region, a space in which trade, capital, and people flow freely" and  "a more open border for the movement of goods and people." "Community" means integrating the United States with the corruption, socialism, poverty and population of Mexico and Canada.  "Common perimeter" means wide-open U.S. borders between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. The CFR document lays "the groundwork for the freer flow of people within North America."  The "common security perimeter" will require us to "harmonize visa and asylum regulations" with Mexico and Canada, "harmonize entry screening," and "fully share data about the exit and entry of foreign nationals."

This CFR document, called "Building a North American Community," asserts that George W. Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox, and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin "committed their governments" to this goal when they met at Bush's ranch and at Waco, Texas on March 23, 2005.  The three adopted the "Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America" and assigned "working groups" to fill in the details. The CFR document calls for creating a "North American preference" so that employers can recruit low-paid workers from anywhere in North America.  No longer will illegal aliens have to be smuggled across the border; employers can openly recruit foreigners willing to work for a fraction of U.S. wages. Just to make sure that bringing cheap labor from Mexico is an essential part of the plan, the CFR document calls for "a seamless North American market" and for "the extension of full labor mobility to Mexico."   The CFR plan calls for massive U.S. foreign aid to the other countries.  The burden on the U.S. taxpayers will include so-called "multilateral development" from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, "long-term loans in pesos," and a North American Investment Fund to send U.S. private capital to Mexico. Ah yes! The banks again! Force us to make more money for the banks! Yes, indeed!

The experience of the European Union and the World Trade Organization makes it clear that a common market requires a court system, so the CFR document calls for "a permanent tribunal for North American dispute resolution."  Get ready for decisions from non-American judges who make up their rules ad hoc and probably hate the United States anyway. The tribunal is to be a North American Supreme Court that is ABOVE the US Supreme Court! Can you imagine that! Again, I repeat: those who attempt to abolish our national sovereignty and overthrow our Constitutional government are committing acts of treason!!!

The CFR document calls for allowing Mexican trucks "unlimited access" to the United States, including the hauling of local loads between U.S. cities.  The CFR document calls for adopting a "tested once" principle for pharmaceuticals, by which a product tested in Mexico will automatically be considered to have met U.S. standards. Holy Shit! Just imagine the poison that will be allowed to be sold as legal, bypassing the FDA!!!!! Furthermore, the CFR document demands that we implement "the Social Security Totalization Agreement negotiated between the United States and Mexico."  Which amounts to putting illegal aliens into the U.S. Social Security system, which is bound to bankrupt the system. And, dig this: U.S. taxpayers are supposed to create a major fund to finance 60,000 Mexican students to study in U.S. colleges! What the fuck? To ensure that the U.S. government carries out this plan so that it is "achievable" within five years, the CFR calls for supervision by a North American Advisory Council of "eminent persons from outside government . . . along the lines of the Bilderberg" conferences. By 2010! Four years from now, in essence, North America will operate as one area, with three self governing sections! 

So, with all this cheap labor coming across the no longer existing borders, cheap labor and some even eventually college educated, what need will there be for the expensive labor of the present US middle class? You guessed it! The middle class will have to be eradicated! That's you and me and everyone that you know. The middle class will be squeezed with higher prices, lower wages, high energy costs, higher housing costs, until we are all on the verge of bankruptcy. Today's middle-class parents are suffering from an unprecedented and totally unexpected economic meltdown. The financial decline of the middle class families began 30 years ago (when the CFR first proposed lowering the standard of living and wages of the middle class) and continues to this day. The average two income family earns less today than one person earned thirty years ago, in 1973! The primary reasons of it: fixed expenses. Those expenses which are constant and "come in every month" has increased substantially in the last 3 decades. Today's two-income family earns 75% more money than its single-income counterpart of a generation ago, but actually has less discretionary income once their fixed monthly bills are paid. More income means more taxes. The middle class pays most of the taxes in this country, the poor and the rich certainly do not! There are no tax breaks for two income middle class families.

Also, property values supported with gargantuan mortgages are pushing debt ratios beyond the 38% considered the maximum safe and acceptable limit. Housing prices have outpaced wages significantly. Insurance premiums are constant and steady expenses that take a higher percentage of income today than in previous years and they too, are necessities. Taxes have risen to mammoth proportions and take major chunks out of hard working families hard earned paychecks. Education costs have risen dramatically more than wages. The bidding war for housing and education that has quietly engulfed America's suburbs, along with ever rising energy expenses, has increased credit card debt, to a huge extent, eroding the savings of the middle class. The financial industry (thanks to uncapped interest rates) in effect is preying on the hardships and vulnerabilities of middle-class families. The two-parent middle-class working family is on the brink of financial disaster. Both incomes today are significantly committed to necessities, such as mortgage and car payments, health care costs, insurance premiums, and children's and adult's education costs. When an unforeseen event such as serious illness, job loss or divorce occurs, families have no discretionary income to fall back on.  When so many families are dependent on two incomes to survive, families are at a frightening risk should any financial crisis arise in the family. The number of families declaring bankruptcy or receiving a foreclosure against their house has shot up dramatically. The two income family is two and a half more times likely to go bankrupt than a single income family. In the book: The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke, the authors recommend a number of useful societal solutions to get families out of this trap, such as legally prohibiting credit card companies from charging grossly unfair interest rates and exposing banks that employ a loan-to-own strategy that steers minority customers to higher mortgage rates with an eye to future foreclosures. Warren and Tyagi point out that families buy homes they cannot afford in order to live in a neighborhood with better schools. They propose that the culprit is in large part the ever escalating cost of housing and education in America's suburbs. As many parents chase the better schools in an attempt to assure their children the best possible education, real estate prices in areas serviced by those schools rise and with it the cost of the homes. The authors propose open-access public schools as a remedy.

Living the middle class lifestyle that our parents had just one generation ago is very much out of reach. What one generation could do with one income is more than what a two income family can do today!
Middle-Class life under Bush republicans: Less Affordable and Less Secure. President Bush’s record of fiscal incompetence and mismanagement, and Republicans’ close ties with special interests, have helped lead to both lower wages and skyrocketing costs for basic necessities like gas, health care, and college tuition.  Unfortunately, instead of producing solutions to the problems facing the middle class, Congress is ignoring them and pushing for policies that will make matters even worse.  It’s no wonder 68 percent of Americans say that things are getting worse for the country under President Bush. (CBS/New York Times poll, 5/10/06).  In addition to tightening the squeeze on families, Republican policies have made our entire nation less secure economically.  Republicans have pushed to increase our debt to nearly $9 trillion and have insisted on spending billions of dollars every year on budget-busting tax breaks for special interests and multi-millionaires.  Recently, the Republican Congress protected $5.1 billion worth of corporate tax loopholes for Big Oil companies, but failed to extend deductions for college tuition, teachers’ expenses, and the savers credit that help millions of middle class families. The Bush Administration also continues to compromise our economic security by increasing our reliance on foreign investors in China, Japan, and Dubai. 

What the Bushit years have brought the middle class so far:
1 - a 68% increase in gas prices,
2 - an over 70% increase in health care premiums,
3 - a 57% increase in college tuition,
4 - a 14-year low in housing affordability,
5 - a sharp decline in wages (Median weekly earnings have fallen 0.9 percent since 2001 compared with 7.3 percent growth in the last five years of the Clinton Administration.),
6 - the worst overall job creation record since Herbert Hoover more than 70 years ago (Overall nonfarm payroll employment has increased by 2.6 million during the Bush presidency compared with 22.7 million during the Clinton presidency. (Joint Economic Committee Democrats, 5/5/06). Overall employment growth has averaged just 41,000 per month under President Bush—much lower than the 135,000 to 150,000 jobs needed each month to keep up with population growth.  It was not uncommon to see monthly job gains of 300,000 and even 400,000 during economic expansions under previous Administrations. (Economic Policy Institute, The Boom That Wasn’t, 12/19/05),
7 - unemployment has increased and long-term joblessness has nearly doubled (The number of long-term unemployed has nearly doubled since President Bush took office. (U.S. Census Bureau; Bureau of Labor Statistics).
8 - deficit-financed tax cuts have widened the income gap between millionaires and middle-class workers (Bush’s capital gains and dividends tax cuts will cost $197 billion over ten years, with most of the benefits going to multimillionaires.  In an analysis by the New York Times, “Among taxpayers with incomes greater than $10 million, the amount by which their investment tax bill was reduced averaged about $500,000 in 2003, and total tax savings, which included the two Bush tax cuts on compensation, nearly doubled, to slightly more than $1 million…Those making less than $50,000 saved an average of $10 more because of the investment tax cuts…few taxpayers with modest incomes benefited because most of them who own stocks held them in retirement accounts, which are not eligible for the investment income tax cuts.” (New York Times, 4/5/06).
9 - More American families and children face severe financial problems.  (The number of Americans who are living in poverty has increased each year of the Bush Administration and is now nearly 17 percent higher today than in 2000.  Thirty-seven million Americans were living in poverty at the end of 2004, an increase of 5.4 million over the 2000 level.  Poverty has hit America’s children particularly hard.  According to a UNICEF report on child poverty rates in 2005, more than one in five children in the United States live in “relative” poverty. (U.S. Census Bureau).

This November, when voting for Congress remember this:

President Bush turned record budget surpluses into record deficits.  President Bush inherited a unified budget surplus of $236 billion from President Clinton, the largest surplus in American history.  Budget surpluses were expected to continue for another ten years when President Bush took office in January 2001.  By 2002, however, the unified federal budget had returned to a deficit of $158 billion and has since reached record highs.  This year, the budget deficit is expected to reach a record $423 billion. (Office of Management and Budget) President Bush is the most fiscally irresponsible president in history.  President Bush has presided over the largest explosion of debt in our nation’s history.  When President Bush took office, the total national debt was $5.6 trillion.  The federal debt has increased 54 percent since President Bush took office, from approximately $5.6 trillion at the end of 2000 to an estimated $8.6 trillion at the end of 2006.  By 2011, the President’s budget would increase the public debt to $11.8 trillion. (U.S. Department of the Treasury, Bureau of Public Debt) Enormous trade deficit is undermining U.S. competitiveness.  Each year since 2001, the U.S. trade deficit has increased at double digit rates and in 2005 set an alarming record high of $725.8 billion—twice the size of the trade deficit in 2001.  Even more troubling, our trade in Advanced Technology Products, a strong indicator of U.S. competitiveness, which was in surplus as recently as 2001, experienced a deficit of more than $44 billion in 2005. (U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Economic Analysis)
Debt owed to foreigners climbs to record levels.  In order to finance record budget deficits, the United States has had to borrow at unprecedented rates from foreigners.  In the five years of President Bush’s tenure, the United States has accumulated more debt to foreigners, approximately $1.2 trillion, than this country had accumulated in its first 224 years.  By contrast, during the last three years of the Clinton Administration, the United States paid off more than $200 billion in debt to foreigners. (U.S. Treasury Department, Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities; Federal Reserve Board) Record government and personal debt levels threaten economic future.  Record federal deficits and debt create record interest costs.  In 2006, interest costs on the federal debt will total nearly $400 billion and this figure will grow to nearly $597 billion by 2013. 

Record levels of personal indebtedness also limit choices and keep many Americans on the financial brink.  In the last two quarters of 2005, Americans had the worst ratio of household debt and mortgage debt to disposable income in over 25 years.  These record levels of personal debt cast an ominous shadow over the economic outlook for 2006, a cloud made darker as millions of adjustable-rate mortgages will reset over the coming year, forcing consumers to pay significantly higher interest rates. (Congressional Budget Office; Federal Reserve Board) Erosion of employer-provided pensions threatens Americans’ retirement security.  Workers should be able to count on the retirement promises made by their employers.  Increasingly, that is not the case.  An analysis by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), the federal entity created by Congress to protect employee pensions, found that nearly 10 percent of pension plans halted benefit accruals in 2003 alone, the latest year for which complete data is available.  According to PBGC Executive Director Bradley Belt, anecdotal evidence suggests that this number has been even higher since then.  Unfortunately, Bush Administration proposals to expand tax-favored savings accounts that primarily benefit the wealthy risk further pension plan erosion.

What can you do? The middle class, and thus our children and the future of this country, is doomed UNLESS we all finally do something, which is VOTE out all the CFR people in our government, contact our local congressmen and demand they not support these CFR initiatives, and demand that Congress strengthens federal disability insurance, create tax breaks for ANY kind of savings for middle class families (not the big tax breaks they vote yearly for the rich. Every decade or so, Congress "simplifies" the tax code which effectively sticks it to the tax base - the working families). Lowering your taxes now and immediately will have a much greater and more practical impact on working families. Also demand that congress re-regulates the banking industry, which commits highway robbery on uneducated lenders who don't know their rights. Allowing banks to charge very high rates only encourages them to make loans they know people can't afford to pay back. They set people up for later foreclosure. Watch this exactly happen as the housing bubble breaks as interest rates are raised by the Federal Reserve every month. Banks (who are run by CFR members) have created a condition where the sale of actual goods has to a large extent now become a sort of financial sideline to where the real money is made, which is charging interest on the purchase.

Work on protecting ourselves on the local level, by electing (and running for) local representation that will work to protect the middle class interests of your local neighborhood and remove some financial burdens, such as creating public preschools and daycare. Get to know your local representatives, and work with them. End this movement to destroy the country as we know it. Public policy changes take place when collective and coordinated societal "thinking" changes.


This month's Raving:

Brutarian magazine! One of the unsung heroes of Punk Rock n Roll indie fanzines. Every issue amazing cover art is done by the best illustration artists around. Each issue is full of great interviews and articles, and reviews for records and other stuff that are actually good!

Brutarian has been around about fifteen years now (just about as old as the Punk Rock & Roll scene!), when it was founded by Dominick Salemi and friends. Essentially, Brutarian is a pop culture magazine the covers the weirder side of things.  Each issue features cool stuff like articles on exploitation and drive-in movies, interviews with obscure and new punk and garage bands, reviews of strange books and comics.  Kind of like a cross between Weird Tales (they publish a lot of strange fiction), Psychotronic, and Punk magazine!

That's it for this issue! Click here to read column #14

Sal Canzonieri - www.electricfrankenstein.com / www.myspace.com/electricfrankenstein
salcanzonieri@att.net