“Leaks” can be whistleblowers exposing government wrongdoing, but many actually are government agencies manipulating the public or punishing enemies, as is playing out in today’s Trump/Obama “leak war,” says Rick Sterling.
Phi Beta Iota: a useful but incomplete survey of punitive leaks versus public interest leaks.
The new American Health Care Act has been unveiled, and critics are calling it more flawed even than the Obamacare it was meant to replace. Dubbed “Ryancare” or “Trumpcare” (over the objection of White House staff), the Republican health care bill is under attack from left and right, with even conservative leaders calling it “Obamacare Lite”, “bad policy”, a “warmed-over substitute,” and “dead on arrival.”
The key institutions of Western societies have lost their credibility. They fail to merit either the respect or loyalty of the domestic populations they purport to serve.
The assassinations of the entire elite level of progressive leadership in the United States during the 1960s (JFK, Malcolm X (image right), MLK & RFK within a 5 year period). In Europe this includes the later assassinations of Aldo Moro and Olaf Palme.
Following is but a partial list of the crimes of the U.S. empire (with the routine complicity of many Western European governments) over the decades since the end of WWII. It is important to briefly review them as the intersection of these orchestrated criminal actions casts light on the lack of legitimacy of Western governments and institutions:
An estimated 44% of U.S. households will pay no federal income tax in 2016. Some individuals or households do not pay federal income taxes because their income was below the filing threshold. Other individuals or households filingfederal income tax returns pay no federal income tax due to either structural features or special provisions in the tax code. A 2011 analysis found that of nontaxable “tax units,” about half were made nontaxable by tax expenditures (special provisions in the tax code such as credits and deductions). The other half were made nontaxable by structural features of the income tax system, namely the standard deduction and personal exemptions.