Theodore Roosevelt took on the trusts… Franklin D Roosevelt took on the banks… who’ll take on the Five Percenters and the oligarchs? Don’t be afraid… we did it before and we CAN do it again!
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Firstly, here’s the link for the entire article:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/09/three_cheers_for_decline?page=0,0
Note this:
Defence cuts would allow the United States to tend to a few other priorities, which just might take Americans’ minds off the fact that their country is no longer Number One. Perhaps, the United States could focus on constructing a high-speed rail line or two, or maybe even finish the job on extending health care. After all, of the large economies that enjoyed a AAA rating from Standard & Poor’s last week, the United States ranked at the bottom of the list in terms of life expectancy, and it was the only country without universal health care. Perhaps, America could also spend a little more on basic education; the United States was at the tail end of the AAA club when it came to believing basic scientific truths like evolution, and it scored lowest out of all those countries on international tests of students’ math skills.
The end of Britain’s imperial ambitions allowed the country to abandon national service and just relax a little. Similarly, with less need to flag the martial spirit through adrenaline-pumping threat alerts and wars on terror, the United States could find a moment to reform its criminal justice system; another international indicator where the United States remains in the lead, after all, is in its percentage of its population behind bars. Once America accepts that it doesn’t need to work every waking hour to keep up with the Soviets, Japanese, or Chinese, perhaps, it could take time for a vacation. At the moment, there is no statutory minimum for paid leave in the United States. Even Singapore provides seven days, and the rest of the AAA club gives employees minimums ranging from 18 to 30 days.
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Republicans are forever screaming that those of us calling for a return to New Deal Social Market policies are calling for “class warfare” and “income redistribution”. I beg your pardon! The Five Percenters declared war on the rest of us in the Reagan era, and they’ve been doing their damnedest to overturn every reform of the New Deal… they call them “entitlements” and they’ve vowed to eliminate them. The top Five Percent has tripled to quadrupled its share of national wealth since 1981… if that’s not income redistribution, I don’t know what to call it. That’s CLASS WARFARE… of the most gross and iniquitous sort. They wish to dismantle the social safety net to transfer the national wealth into the hands of the most affluent Five Percent… and give them a larger proportion of that wealth than even the Gilded Age plutocrats wielded. If we were to halve our war expenditures, and, concurrently, raise taxes on the affluent effluent via a European-style “wealth tax”, there’d be NO “entitlements crisis”… NONE.
Let’s stop distorting our history. A semi-socialist administration won the greatest victory in US history. Do slobbering and ignorant yobbos want to call you a “socialist?” Well… let them! Wear it as a badge of HONOUR! We CAN defeat the Five Percenters, but we have to ignore their name-calling and their boobish rants. Have you ever heard Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or Michael Savage on the radio? One wonders who listens to such tedious and boorish bloviating. What’s also amazing are the pitches on their shows for get-rich-quick schemes or crackbrained notions such as “food insurance” (you can get the same amount of dehydrated foodstuffs on your own from reputable firms at half the cost, by the way… one wonders how much these paladins receive to shill such rubbishy twaddle).
It’s time for us to join the civilised world. If the Five Percenters complain… don’t listen to their babyish tantrums. I’ve got an aside for Orthodox people… His Holiness Patriarch Kirill is on the side of economic fairness and justice (he’s called the “Free Market” a massive fraud), he is one of the good guys, he wears the “white hat” in more than one sense, kids. On the other hand, Paffhausen and his konvertsy cheerleaders are on the side of sinful greed, heedless gluttony, and dissipated rapacity through their support of the money-grubbing rightwing. Yet, they have the god-damned gall to dribble on incoherently about “morality”, dontcha know, as they applaud the covetous Five Percenters through their support of the Tea Party fanatics (they also support the abominable “War on Terror”… you should hear that Webster character).
You can follow Christ or you can follow Mammon… I didn’t say that… HE DID! Check out your Bible…
Barbara-Marie Drezhlo
Thursday 18 August 2011
Albany NY
Voices from Russia 
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