We know that the neoliberal policy exploit our economic crisis as a means to privatize public property and execute austerity programs. The 2008 economic financial crash was a new era. There is the issue of recurring specter of debt default. We know that the financial oligarchy and their proxies in the government of many core capitalist nations have used an economic coup d'état against the people. This is unprecedented. This coup d'état have included massive privatization of the public sector, the usage of neoliberal austerity economics, etc. There has been a radical redistribution of resources from the bottom to the top. This reality is not heavily discussed in mainstream economics. The neoliberal economists and politicians have supported brutal assaults on the social safety net programs. That is not unusual. What is regrettable is that the liberal/Keynesian economists' and the politicians’' glaring misdiagnosis of the evil of austerity economics. They solely blame the reactionary Republicans or the Tea Party. When the truth is that it is both them and the White House (including the Democratic Party establishment even the labor bureaucracy) that have a responsibility in this affair spanning decades. The austerity economics and privatization of public property continues. We know that the abandonment of the New Deal and other social democratic economics contributed to our issues. Reagan's supply side economics and neoliberal ideology from the University of Chicago have contributed to our recession. Yet, we see that class policies of capitalism also have to do with economic problems. Neoliberal policies were advanced more overtly by the Republicans while more via stealth by the Democrats. That is why the current White House served the interests of the financial oligarchy better than Ronald Reagan, because of the appearance of reform. We have our economics and constitutional/individuals rights violated under Republican and Democratic Presidents. Ronald Reagan did not sugarcoat his love of the evil neoliberal supply side economics. We all know what he stood for and he organized his strategies accordingly. The White House overtly hates the neoliberal austerity policies, but he supports that agenda as it feels that it has no other option. There is record economic inequality and the numerous unemployed in the world including the underemployed. The Democrats and the Republicans now want to touch Social Security and Medicare trust funds as a means to justify austerity cuts. For example, this agenda is found in his proposed federal budget plan for fiscal year 2014, initially released in April 2013. Some Democrats want these cuts including corporate tax rate cuts from 35 percent to 28 percent. Now, we still have the sequester cuts. The elite used the 2011 debt-ceiling panic, the 2012 “fiscal cliff” and, more recently, the 2013 debt-ceiling/government shutdown crisis as a means to slash vital social programs. Interestingly, when Wall Street speculators needed trillions of dollars to be bailed out, or as the Fed routinely showers these gamblers with nearly interest-free money through the so-called quantitative easing, debt hobgoblins were/are nowhere to be seen. The crisis only allows more cuts to social programs. The elite want to frighten people to want additional austerity cuts in Medicare and Social Security. The leadership of both parties has been financed by Wall Street financial titans and their influential lobbyists. The Republicans rally their extremists into ideological battle, while some Democrats are demobilized and some use compromise as a bulwark against blatant fascism. So, the elite advance the lie that social programs drag the federal budget. Even assuming that this claim is valid, the “problem” can easily be fixed (for many years to come) by simply raising the ceiling of taxable income for Social Security from the current level of $113,700 to a slightly higher level, let’s say, $140,000. Our crisis comes from the uncontrollable and escalating health care cost, the equally uncontrollable and escalating military/war/security cost, the massive transfer of private/Wall Street debt to public debt in response to the 2008 financial crash, and the considerable drop since the early 1980s in the revenue side of the government budget, which is the result of the drastic overhaul of the taxation system in favor of the wealthy. That is the point. Neoliberal policies have grown the debt. There has been tax cuts for the wealthy and spending hikes for the military industrial complex, which harms the people (which causes cuts on nonmilitary public spending). We have trillions of dollars sent to Wall Street, so we do have money for jobs, education, health care, Social Security, Medicare, housing, pensions, etc. The massive cuts in employment, wages and benefits, as well as in social spending, have resulted in an enormous transfer of economic resources from the bottom up. The wealthiest one percent of Americans now own more than 40 percent of the entire country’s wealth; while the bottom 80 percent own only seven percent. Likewise, the richest one percent now takes home 24 percent of the country’s total income, compared to only nine percent four decades ago. We have the wealth, but the wealth is concentrated heavily into the hands of the financial oligarchy.
The mocking of black people by white racists is nothing new. Many whites folks are just sick. Now, we know that 3 white racists used blackface and other means to mock the Trayvon Martin tragedy. This evil culture of mocking black humanity is related to the days of slavery as well where there was colonial violence, invasions, occupations, and the disrespect of black humanity. The racists used Halloween as a means to express their twisted, inaccurate views. White supremacy is a huge evil that we should fight. Racist caricatures existed back in the day by racist Europeans. Our people were victims of oppression by the oppressor. The white racists celebrated the killing of Trayvon Martin. This recent example of blackface is evil. It has been done by a young Australian woman who was ignorant of Africa. In the Netherlands, the Sinterklaas festival features a mythical character called Swarte Piet or Black Pete. Dutch men and women paint their faces black and wear afro wigs. This retrograde custom is racist. Many of the Dutch want to promote this garbage. Are you kidding me? They try to compare Satan to a black image. They (or some of you know who) are the ones who exemplify satanic behavior for centuries. That image is blatantly racist. Brothers and Sisters from the Netherlands have every right to protest this situation. We ought to not to tolerate dehumanization and the mocking of our image at all. Our black image is beautiful, strong, and diverse. Black is beautiful. In this time, we have every right to confront haters and racists who seek to devalue the beauty of BLACKNESS. So, we know that white racists are sick, demonic, and abhorrent. They hate us, but many of them want to be like us. So, we know what the deal is. The deal is that they or the enemy tries to present a false image of black humanity, but the truth is something different. The truth is that the black image is great and it is of TRUTH. The truth is that black males and black females have every right to show their confidence in the world and to fight for justice. The truth is that black image is wonderful, holy, beautiful, and great. Therefore, many whites want to maintain control over people of color. They want people of color to submit to their ideologies no matter how offensive they are to people of color, especially to black human beings. Even one Republican state legislator in Nevada said that he would vote for slavery to be brought back if his constituents wanted him to do it. Italian fashion designers and Quebec comedians have used the racist blackface image, so we are at war psychologically against white supremacy. Ironically, a recent Huffington Post poll shows that 43 percent of Americans love to mock and insult black human beings with a blackface while 37 percent of Americans disapprove of such an action. That poll shows all that I need to know. It is never right to mock or ridicule black human begins at all. This is going on in Mexico and the Dominican Republic's government just stripped Dominicans of Haitian ancestry of their legal status unless their families' status in the DR pre-dates 1929. That is a disgrace. I do not hate any human of any background, but I love my black people. Now, we have every right to advance dignity as black people strongly and in a progressive fashion. We have the right to advance true black liberation and black pan-Africanism as well.
Now, there continues the American undeclared drone war on the people of Pakistan. The nine year old Nabeel aur Rehman is from the North Waziristan in the remote tribal region of Pakistan. She came to tell her own personal story to the nation. She did so in front of the U.S. Congress and the national media. She talked about drone horrors and savagery of America's secret assassinations overseas. She was with her family. She told about the day that her grandmother, 67 year old midwife, was killed by an US. drone strike while tending her garden. Some have talked about financial compensation to the family, but the U.S. officials do not want to express an admission of guilt for the situation. There is a new "NGO" to handle U.S. drone compensation funds. Direct payout to the victims might upset certain Pakistani officials, because such restitution would bypass the main financial beneficiary of U.S. counterrorism in Pakistan (like the corrupt factions within the Pakistani security services and military who've already received billions of U.S. dollars over the last decade in order to assist Washington in its famous War on terror). The drone attacks in Pakistan are evil. Pakistani officials have admitted that at least 67 innocent civilians have been killed by U.S. drones since 2008. One UN investigator puts the number at 400 since 2004. Some human rights groups put the number even higher. The White House tries to exonerate these criminal actions by saying that they have legal justification. The testimony of a 9 year old girl refutes their arguments completely.
Through war powers enshrined in the National Defense Authorization Act(NDAA) and revelations leaked from a confidential Justice Department memo, the US government has been on the biggest extrajudicial killing spree of our time. One such memo states, “The condition that an operational leader presents an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.” That means that even if such specific evidence is not there, then the U.S. can still kill innocent human beings. They want kill folks if they think that they are a threat in the future. This is Orwellian, fascist stuff here. We know that they have murdered U.S. citizens without due process of law (who are the alleged AL-Qaeda operative Answar Al-Awlaki and his 16 year old son). This shows that Washington wants the power of life and death over any U.S. citizen, anywhere on Earth without due process. White House spokesman Jay Carney and National Security spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden defended counterterrorism actions as compatible with the law. We know that is a lie. US officials claim to have killed 2,160 ‘militants’ during the period of 2008-2013, and as per usual, the public is expected to simply take the Pentagon or the CIA’s word regarding how many actual ‘militants’ or ‘Al-Qaeda operatives’ were killed on any occasion. Aside from the fact that it’s not at all in America’s legal or political interest to ever admit that an innocent person was killed during a drone strike, the public is well aware by now that it is common practice for their government to cover up any military escapades that would paint a war in a negative light. These drone strikes against innocent civilians constitute war crimes. Through their access to the Pentagon via Capitol Hill, military contractor giants like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Atomics have lobbied hard for their new products to be adopted as a central part of the US military industrial complex, and have seen their sales jump to over $5 billion in only a few years since modern prototypes have been launched. Whereas today’s drones are manned remotely by a human military operator stationed deep inside the US on a base in Nevada, or closer to the conflict theatre from the US CENTCOM base in Qatar, or from the US AFRICOM station in Djibouti, East Africa, tomorrow’s drones may not be controlled by humans at all. Defense contractors are already in the advanced stages of implementing artificial intelligence (AI) control of unmanned fleets, in what they are labeling ‘Autonomous Intelligence Systems.’ Reading its own data of heat signatures, and with additional visual and location data, the computer will be tasked with making the value judgment about which targets are ‘high value’ and which ones will be spared. The future is here.
Blaming the poor for poverty is one of the most evil actions of any human being. We know that unrestrained free markets destroy the poor and the middle class. It can push working human beings down the economic ladder and concentrate wealth at the top. Hyper capitalism dominates the U.S. media debate, so many in the media love austerity and blame the poor for poverty. The reality is that much of the poverty in America had been manufactured by financial elite as a means for them to adhere to free market ideals (and the fermenting of neoliberal economic policies). These policies are all about cutting taxes to the wealthy, eliminate fiscal and other business regulations, shred the social safety net, and harm middle class stability (while lecturing us on self-reliance and individual responsibility). There is a discussion about how many poor human beings are in America. The CPS or the Current Population Survey mentioned that government official figures as of 2012 that 15 percent of the population (or 46.5 million people live in poverty). The rate for children under 18 living in poverty is higher in about 21.8 percent. The U.S. government measures poverty in monetary terms. In 2012, poverty was figured as yearly total income of $23,050 or less for a family of four. The figure is adjusted for individuals or other size families. There is a sad fact that, “most Americans (58.5 percent) will spend at least one year below the poverty line at some point between the ages of 25 and 75.” There is deep poverty as well. Deep poverty is defined as having an income that is 50 percent of the official poverty level. This part of the population is growing. Deep poverty in southeast Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey has the percentage of deep poverty being from 5 to 19 percent depending on the county. Some social service and charity workers mentioned that many folks have given up hope and given up on finding jobs. Our economic situation is horrible on many fronts. That system allows 48.5 million human beings to high rates of unemployment or underemployment, poor performance in school and at work (when it is available), poor nutrition and eating habits, high instances of drug abuse, high crime rates, homelessness, high rates of preventable diseases, shorter life-spans, and all the other vicissitudes typically associated with a life of poverty. Yet, the sick neoliberals and their allies would not blame society, but the individual poor for this reality. They believe in the lie that the poor live in a free, great economic environment and that makes his or her choices and must live with the consequences. That is an inhumane way of seeing the reality. Poverty can be fought against with government action and dealing with the market. In the 1960's, human beings marched for jobs and freedom. Lyndon Johnson issued his War on Poverty programs. These programs lowered poverty significantly, but this momentum did not last. They didn't last because of the murderous war in Vietnam and the neoliberal economic policies that came afterwards. We are still in the Middle East with the same destructive neoliberal economic agenda. Poverty harms society and harms real choices for liberation and freedom. The latest research to show this was published in August 2013 in the journal Science and is titled “Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function.” The gist of the argument is, “Poverty captures attention, triggers intrusive thoughts, and reduces cognitive resources.” In other words, the more preoccupied one is with troubles, the less able one is to muster the “cognitive resources” necessary to rationally “guide choice and action.” That is why eliminating poverty can increase the standard of living, improve education, and other things. The environment of poverty itself can harm some human beings. We need less stress in the lives of humanity, so they can increase their power to develop and apply their cognitive strengths. So, the poor should have less stress, more assistance, and more inspiration as a means for them to have economic justice in their own lives. We need another War on Poverty or a Poor People's Campaign as a means to destroy poverty. We need to fight income inequality, increase overall health, advance social stability, and lessen crime. Just this week the House of Representatives voted to cut the Food Stamp program by some $40 billion. That is neoliberal economics in action and proof positive that ideology and prejudice are stronger than scientific research when it comes to policy formulation. We have the right to have justice for all of humanity.
Some of those prosperity gospel preachers are desperate. The truth is known. They talk about Jesus having haters. What does this have to do with the argument that the premise of their view (that wealth, money, etc. are signs of spiritual enlightenment). They always want to equate legitimate dissent with hate. For the record, just because many may adamantly dissent with religious deception doesn't mean that folks hate them. The last time I have checked, these men are not infallible. They would be respected more if they would call for radical changes from their pulpits, and if they would expose the massive forces causing poverty and economic inequality in the world. They could expose racial discrimination, imperialism, and discuss about real, salient issues from their pulpits. Yet, some of them want to go and create a reality TV show. Notice, the attention is placed on themselves. The attention is not placed on other human beings constantly, on real issues, or on exposing the establishment completely. Yet, they want to be included into the establishment that exploits us, that lies about us, and that uses mainstream religion as a means to stifle black progress (via the prosperity gospel, advancing white supremacist faux theologies, etc.). Human beings have the right to believe in God or not. On the other hand, just because some may disagree with the extravagance of the prosperity Gospel doesn't mean that someone is a hater. TD Jakes is allied with this movement, yet he is criticizing the Preachers of LA show. I remember when Eddie Long hugged George W. Bush (and we all know about his reactionary agenda from his response to Katrina to the Iraq War). True spirituality is the opposite of some in the mega church crowd are doing. The beauty of the Gospel is that it is simple without fanfare or corporate sponsoring. It is just there with its strength and instructive qualities. What is popular and what is flashy is not necessarily what is right. Technology can be used for good and evil. So, we should have balance in our lives as a means to handle our daily affairs and to take time to appreciate love, to appreciate our families, etc. We should be patient with love since sometimes love is not grown automatically. True LOVE is very powerful and it is just about goodwill and doing legitimate actions. It is about caring and being compassionate with each other. When the church merges with the states, it readily leads into the bad results of theocracy, tyranny, oligarchy, and a suppression of basic human freedoms. Although, we must have religious liberty. Many innocent human beings in the world have been tortured, killed, and abused because of their religious faith like Christians, Sunnis, etc. That is why we must not hate religious people. We should hate oppression, discrimination, poverty, environmental pollution, and injustice. We should continue to fight for liberty and harbor compassion for humanity. As for me, I still believe in God. I believe in God. That is my right as a human being.
By Timothy
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