Afternoon News

The House Republicans did another huge error again. Most of them voted to approve the dropping of millions of Americans from food stamps. They approved nearly $40 billion in cuts to the food stamps program Thursday evening in a tight 217-210 vote. Fifteen Republicans defected to vote no on the measure. The measure is projected to kick millions of human beings off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates Thursday's cuts will bump at least 4 million and up to 6 million people out of the program, and even the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that 3.8 million would lose benefits next year with an additional 2.8 million losing them each year on average over the decade. The bill passed on Thursday. It seeks to pare back food participation by changing the eligibility requirements in a few different ways. Also, it will add work requirements that are modeled on the reforms that helped to cripple the efficacy of welfare. The Republican bill ends something called "categorical eligibility" whereby people enrolled in other low income safety net benefits can skip much of the bureaucracy and paperwork involved in applying for food stamps. While categorical eligibility reduces administrative costs in the program, Republicans argue that it makes federal anti-hunger spending too generous. The program provides about $133 per month on average and it is already scheduled for a significant cut in November as a stimulus provision expires. Furthermore, constraining eligibility for SNAP will mean some hungry human beings will be hungrier. Nearly half of the country's 50 million hungry people have pre-tax incomes high enough to make them ineligible for SNAP without categorical eligibility according to Feeding America. Nearly a third earns more than 185 percent of the federal poverty level income. The House cuts amount to about 5 percent of the projected ten year cost of SNAP, which currently serves one in seven Americans as the jobs crisis brought on by the financial crisis continues. Enrollment in SNAP tracks with the health of the economy, as safety net programs are designed to do, but Republicans have repeatedly insisted that there is something untoward about the rapid expansion of the food stamp rolls in the worst economy the country has seen in about eight decades. SNAP is one of the three most effective anti-poverty programs the government has, keeping 4 million people out of poverty last year alone. The cuts Republicans propose are likely to create greater costs down the road than what they save the government in the near term. Now, the House and the Senate must reconcile their positions on SNAP, which the top agricultural policymaker in the Senate has warned will be very difficult on the shortened timeline House leaders has created by waiting until mid-September to act on food assistance. The Senate's farm bill included a  $4 billion cut to SNAP, meaning that cuts in some amount are likely should the two chambers manage to strike a deal. Republicans will be Republicans. The reality is that teen pregnancy rates have gone down massively since 1991 in the black community. National crime rates have gone down. The violent crime rate in the United States was actually three times higher in 1973 than it is today. We have a lowering deficit for the first time in a while. So, this action will do nothing for long term or short term economic relief. Also, most blacks do not have food stamps and most blacks use these assistance programs for a temporary period of time. The Republicans even refuse to advance a jobs plan (or end the war on terror as a means to rebuild America). That can grow millions of jobs. Even Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wanted a national job creating plan and other ways to fight against poverty like a guaranteed annual income. Real Strong Sisters like Fannie Lou Hamer defended the poor day in and day out in her life. Not to mention that you have strict requirements now on who can get food stamps. The poor needs justice not scapegoating since Wall Street criminals have done worse economic damage than the poor. They or food stamps (which are not free stuff as the Tea Party crew lies about. They say nothing on the massive subsidies sent to Wall Street or to the 1 percent at all. They say nothing on imperialism and its costs to America but economic including moral costs) from SNAP are not given arbitrary to anyone at any circumstance at all. Economic inequality is still here. The 400 richest people in America increased their wealth by 17 percent in 2013, with their collective hoard rising from $1.7 trillion to just over $2 trillion. The wealth of these 400 individuals is more than twice the amount necessary to cover the federal budget deficit, which is being used as the occasion for slashing Food Stamps, education, housing assistance, and health care programs. There are 48 million people in the US without health insurance, and that in four US states—Mississippi, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Arkansas—more than one in five people live in poverty. Nearly one third of the US population experienced some period of impoverishment during the years 2009-2011, according to the report. The report is entitled, “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2012.” So, we should continue to fight against the great, evil scourge of poverty.

It seems that some in Israel are allying with Syrian jihadists. Israel's Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren has confirmed suspicions that Israel has taken the side of the Syrian rebels in the bloody civil war. Israel wants President Assad to fall even if that turns Syria over to al-Qaeda linked jihadists. There are still extremists that are trying to make President Barack Obama to agree with a military strike against Syria. Israel is united with Saudi Arabia as a means to harm Syria, so Iranian influence can be undermined in the region. “The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc,” Oren told the Jerusalem Post in an interview scheduled for publication on Friday but excerpted by Reuters on Tuesday. Saudi Arabia now is sphereheading the military and intelligence assistance for the Syrian rebels. The Saudis are concerned about the Shiite crescent extending from Iran through Iraq and Syria (as Hezbollah enclaves are in Lebanon). The Saudis follow a reactionary form of Sunni Islam, which is seen by some as the geopolitical bulwark against the Iran led Shiite coalition. Ambassador Oren is considered very close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is cited in the Reuters article as saying that while Israel favors the more moderate elements among the Syrian rebels. Israel wants Assad's ouster even if it results in radical Sunni Islamists coming to power in Damascus. “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran,” Oren said. Reuters added, “Oren, a Netanyahu confidant, did not say in the interview whether or how Israel was promoting Assad’s fall.” Yet, Oren's decision to lift the veil on Israel's behind the scenes role in seeking Assad's removal is certain to fuel suspicions that some recent events in Syria may have manipulated by the sophisticated intelligence agencies in Riyadh and Tel Aviv. Saudi intelligence is now headed by Prince Bandar bin Sultan or the former ambassador to the United States. Though Saudi Arabia and Israel have historically been enemies, the two countries in recent years have been their interests align (especially in their hostility toward Iran as well as in their preference for an authoritarian regime in Egypt over the populist Muslim Brotherhood). It appears that they also have been on the same page regarding Syria. In complementary ways, Israel and Saudi Arabia are masters of soft power geopolitics, both with world class intelligence services and with the ability to influence the actions of other global players. Saudi Arabia and Israel are not total friends, but they ally in functioning in the favor of Western interests during the war on terror. They want to have a grip of oil and political including economic resources in the region. So, Saudi Arabia and Israel are strong American allies. Russia doesn't want Saudi intelligence support for the Islamist terrorists in Chechnya and in other places in the Russian Federation during next year's Winter Olympics in Sochi. Israel uses overt and covert intelligence dealings via spying, etc. Saudi intelligence use major covert funding for various operations like the Afghan war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, an effort that gave rise to the scion of a Saudi fortune, Osama bin Laden, and al-Qaeda. The Saudis also have a history of financing violent jihadists whose actions are directed against the United States and the West. According to the 9/11 Commission report, 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi nationals and the one part of the report blacked out addressed the issue of Saudi financing for al-Qaeda. Syria is trying to handle their chemical weapons, yet Israel refuses to ratify the Convention against Chemical Weapons. Saudi Arabia, with its near-bottomless pit of money, also could have arranged for the rebels to get Sarin gas or other chemical weapons along with rockets to deliver them, if that’s what its intelligence agency decided. There could be a peaceful resolution among all sides where no war with Iran could come while Syria handles their chemical weapons cache, which Syria is beginning to do now. They don’t need to be massive military strikes in Syria by the West at all. The elites are trying to make President Barack Obama to be backed into a corner where he could issue a more reactionary, militarist response. The future will tell what the end result of this. Now, it is important to know that many Israelis, Saudis, and others are trying to do the right thing. There is a profound difference between the corrupt actions of governments in the world and legitimate people in those nations that want freedom, justice, freedom, and equality. So, I want to make that perfectly clear.

There may not be a jobs plan among much of the political establishment, doesn't mean that we should not advocate one. Many economic populists have advocated such plans for years. If many industrialized nations have better health care, education, and economic equality than us in the States then we can do that the same. We just need the will and the effort to do so. Massively cutting SNAP now will cause more mental illness, more distress, and more violence in communities already suffering. Folks will starve since many children need it to survive. The SNAP are sent to the most vulnerable Americans not the majority of Americans. Therefore, cutting these benefits will do nothing to solve our economic situation long term or short term. Australia has a higher minimum wage than us and they have many better economic indicators than us. Many folks are advocating a slight higher minimum wage in conjunction with the fluctuations of inflation not almost 20 dollars an hour at all. We should trade with other nations. Since just because some Indians and some of the Chinese (not all) pay low wages to some workers doesn't mean that we ought to do the same. No, we should not. We have the right to embrace our individuality and make policies that benefit the middle class and the poor more since the rich including Wall Street interests have record profits, record benefits, and record subsidies. This is unprecedented. Eric Cantor ignores the fact that the vast majority of the poor work all of the time and they are mostly not lazy not all. We have a gold standard now. It is just not recognized by the gold bugs and others. The world is on a gold standard. In 1971, the USA closed the gold window. It began a new era of global fiat money reference pricing that has been unprecedented in history. The world has operated on the basis that no countries having a currency tied to something with intrinsic value like gold. The ‘petro-dollar’ – a US dollar exchange rate based on the deal struck between Saudi Arabia and America – for the US to buy their oil and for the Saudis to buy US dollars and bonds in return – started a period of oil companies (with the military machinery in their pocket) bullying the world into buying US dollars or getting cut off from oil and dollar supplies led to our current political situation with the US now involved in multiple wars in various oil dependent economies and their satellites. Some feel that gold had no role, but recent events prove these assumptions wrong. The Federal Reserve will not taper their bond buying QE program. We later saw a precipitous drop in the price of gold. The Federal Reserve can't taper at this point without eliminating their Ponzi scheme. This will cause every major bank in the world to instantly collapse. We will see if the price of Gold trade down. Yet, the FED including the bankers of Wall Street including the City of London are actively managing the price of Gold (along with stocks, bonds, and currencies). The FED is implicated in many major market rigging scandal covering Forex, energy markets, and credit default swaps. It would make an announcement that would cause a buying panic in Gold (that they are going to debase the currency more). It could go into the market and drive the price of gold down ahead of the announcement or risk seeking gold pop to new all-time highs of $2,000 or more. Max Keiser admitted the following information: "...Surprisingly, a few days later Warren Buffett made the same observation. He said the ‘Fed is the most successful hedge fund in history.’ For Warren this is true. He is on the receiving end of the biggest transfer of wealth in history from workers and savers to borrowers and speculators. But for those not on the Fed’s list of recipients of hundreds of billions worth of interest free loans that never have to be paid back the fact that the Fed is a giant hedge fund is devastating. It’s no coincidence that the day after the ‘no tapering’ of ‘food stamps for bankers’ aka QE was announced the government announced that food stamps for the non-recipients of the Fed’s free money were told that they can expect a ‘taper’ in the form of a cutback...The huge price drop in Gold before the taper announcement is ‘smoking gun’ proof the Fed does exactly what Warren Buffett says they do: operate like an enormous hedge fund; making free loans to ‘friends,’ manipulating markets with impunity, disrupting price discovery with high powered algo trading fraud and pressuring governments to submit to various extortion schemes like TARP (created by Goldman Sachs alum and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. In effect, if you know what to look for, the world is on a gold standard now. The price of gold is telling you that the Fed Ponzi is running at full tilt and that the ravages of having such a destructive mechanism at the heart of the economy are unraveling. Because even with all that effort, the trend of the price of Gold is still higher and at some point the ability to keep it down will fail and then; as Warren Buffett also said; ‘You can see who’s not wearing a bathing suit when the tide goes out..." So, economic history is very dynamic.

 

 

Now, we know the truth and we know many solutions as a means to handle our business in the world. We see that the Democrats and the Republicans in its leadership do not like the will of the majority of the American people on many issues. We know that by a 70 percent to 30 percent margin that big banks and corporations – rather than average Americans – have benefited most from Obama's economic policies. 2 years ago, 74% thought that the bailouts helped Wall Street more than the people. Most Americans want to break up the big banks, which I have no issue with at all. We should allow the government to get tougher on prosecuting Wall Street fraud. Most Americans want to end or substantially rein in the Federal Reserve. They are right. Many of the big banks are still committing massive crimes. Not all banks are criminal enterprises. The wrongdoing of a particular bank cannot be attributed to other banks without proof. But – as documented below – many of the biggest banks have engaged in unimaginably bad behavior. We know that a whistleblower HSBC employee on the banks' laundering for terrorists and drug cartels. The whistleblower says that the giant bank is still laundering money, saying that: "...The public needs to know that money is still being funneled through HSBC to directly buy guns and bullets to kill our soldiers...Banks financing...terrorists affects every single American..." Many corrupt big banks have laundered money, cut pensions of human beings worldwide unfairly, manipulated gold prices, manipulated markets, and have been involved in other forms of fraud as well. Also, much our stimulus is not being used in the right way. The right type of stimulus is giving money to the states, extending unemployment benefits, buying more food stamps, and rebuilding America's manufacturing base. Even Dennis Kucinich is right to write the following words: "...We have to realize what this country’s economy has become. Our monetary policy, through the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, privatized the money supply, gathers the wealth, puts it in the hands of the few while the Federal Reserve can create money out of nothing, give it to banks to park at the Fed while our small businesses are starving for capital..." Yes, Congress has just thrown twenty billion dollars at jobs and the states, but it is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the many tens of trillions of dollars in handouts to the giant banks. Most Americans oppose a war against Syria. Most of us are sick and tired of wars in the Middle East for years. So, I disagree with arming Syrian rebels who have killed Christians, Muslims, and others. It is right for us to disagree with the broad warrantless spying currently being conducted by the NSA and other government agencies. We should have our civil liberties and freedom in general restored since on many times the government went too far in passing unconstitutional or immoral, unjust laws. The Director of Intelligence James Clapper perjured himself on spying issues. Also, the overwhelming majority of Americans support genetically modified food. We should have poisons kept out of our food and water. Regardless if how we think about NSA leaker Edward Snowden, he should not be a victim of extrajudicial assassination at all. Elections should be fair as well. Even some aspects of the Affordable Care Act are a feeding frenzy for big healthcare companies despite some of their good parts. Even some Democrats realize the similarities between the administrations of President Barack Obama and the ex-President Barack Obama. Some Republicans are waking up to the fact that the GOP leadership lied to them. We want corporate welfare to end. It is a shame that big government and big business have been intertwined in a malignant relationship which has hurt the little people for decades including centuries in the States. We have to address economic inequality, rampant fraud, the corruption found in big banks, poverty, jobs being shipped overseas, out of control derivatives, and high levels of unemployment in the world if we want to be truly free. We have to advocate the creating of real, useful services for the people, saving more money, and investing money that can be used not only for productive businesses (that deals with making more things or provide needed services that humanity needs) but to fight poverty too. We need revolutionary changes in the world.

 

 

I do not agree with Catholicism theologically. I believe in the freedom of conscience and the separation of church and state. I will not call a grown man Holy Father and I will also not venerate images. I will not call the Eucharist the Lord Jesus Christ literally at all. I believe that all believers are likening unto a priesthood of believers today. I believe there is only one sacrifice on the Cross and after that, it is over. I believe that any religious clergyman or any religious clergywoman can be married if they want to. Now, we should have religious freedom for believers and human rights for non-believers alike. I think that economic justice is a moral spiritual ideal. When you have record income inequality in the States alone, then that is a disgrace (and we should do something about that). When you have imperialism and unjust wars, then we have the moral and spiritual imperative to do something about it. When we have murder, violence, racial discrimination, gender discrimination, and oppression in the globe, we should also speak truth to power. As for other social issues, we can agree to disagree peacefully as human beings. We can find ways to reduce abortion rates via fights against poverty, compassion, and education. We can advance human dignity while at the same time advance religious liberty where no religious body (or any individual human being) should be forced to act in contrary to their conscience or religious tenets.

 

By Timothy