US Goverment 2011 Revenue, Costs, & Debt–Two Party Tyranny Lies Straight Up, Media Goes Along

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Sense-Making, Key Players, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy
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UPDATED 29 May 2011 to add top-level link:

Seven Promises to America–Who Will Do This?

Let's start with the state of inequality in the USA today–the concentration of wealth would make Hitler proud.  The middle class is the Jews, the blue collar class is the working Poles (the ones allowed to live), and Congress is the appeaser and co-conspirator.  The White House is the SS for Hitler (Goldman Sachs and Wall Street).

Source of Graphic (Mother Jones)

For the US media to be consumed with a less than $100 million budget cut at a time when the US Government is borrowing, WITHOUT JUSTIFICATION and WITHOUT CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY, one third of its operating budget, over a trillion dollars a year, is grounds for the impeachment of the President, every Senator, and every Member of Congress.  This is a Demo-Publican Co-Conspiracy of insane criminality.

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The fraud inherent in the government shut-down “confrontation” and the craven collaboration of the mass media, particularly the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Bloomberg, and CNN, is breathtaking.  The lunacy continues.

To the left is a simple chart of where the federal, state, and local governments get their revenue.  The fact that one third of the federal revenue is DEBT is itself breathtaking, and grounds for impeaching every Senator and Representative now serving.  Source Online

Below is more interesting.  This is a pie-chart that shows the current (tiny) slice of revenue sources in relation to the total economy and the much, much larger “pie” that has been ignored by the US Government because the US Government at the political level is CORRUPT and so is the corporate media that refuses to do holistic accurate reporting on what is and what could be.

Below the Line: APT Tax and Real Military Budget

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Secrecy News: CRS Reports on Debt Limit–Congress Does Not Want CRS Reports Made Public

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Government

THE DEBT LIMIT: HISTORY AND RECENT INCREASES

A statutory limit on total federal debt has been in place since 1917.  In the past decade, Congress has voted to raise the debt limit ten times and it will now have to do so once again.

The history of the debt limit and its current implications were discussed in a recently updated report from the Congressional Research Service. See “The Debt Limit: History and Recent Increases” (pdf), March 7, 2011. And see, relatedly, “Reaching the Debt Limit: Background and Potential Effects on Government Operations,” February 11, 2011.

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$500 Billion in Cuts is Minimal Mandatory….

03 Economy, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency
Michael Ostrolenk Sounds Off...

Responding to the question in The Arena, with respect to whether budget cuts are a good deal for taxpayers.

12 April 2011

If the deficit and debt are real problems that can only be addressed by cutting government spending as the Republicans claim than the budget the Republicans agreed to is a joke. It shows that the Republicans either don't believe their own rhetoric about the need to drastically curtail government spending or that they are just politicians and not statesmen. They might say the “right” thing to the tea party movement but in practice they wont lead us out of the mess that they caused in the first place starting under Bush and continuing under Obama.

If the Republicans were serious about cutting the deficit and the debt, they would do at least three things. First, they would follow the lead of then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who on Sept. 10, 2001 held a press conference at which he called for a war against wasteful Pentagon spending. He said that there was $2.3 trillion dollars unaccounted for in the Department of Defense. So what the Republicans should do is call for a full and transparent audit of the Pentagon.

The second thing they should do is support Sen. Rand Paul's moderate $500 billion in cuts as a starting point for the discussion. The third thing the Republicans should do is take a serious look at the costs of having 1,200 government organizations working on counter-terrorism. Between weeding out waste at the Pentagon, rethinking our counter-terrorism organizational strategy and Sen. Paul's cuts, the Republicans would at least be taken seriously as fiscal conservatives.

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Reference: Internet Freedom–and Control

03 Economy, 04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Autonomous Internet, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, InfoOps (IO), IO Multinational, Methods & Process, Mobile
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Freedom on the Net: A Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media

Freedom House 30 March 2009

As internet and mobile phone use explodes worldwide, governments are adopting new and multiple means for controlling these technologies that go far beyond technical filtering. Freedom on the Net provides a comprehensive look at these emerging tactics, raising concern over trends such as the “outsourcing of censorship” to private companies, the use of surveillance and the manipulation of online conversations by undercover agents. The study covers both repressive countries such as China and Iran and democratic ones such as India and the United Kingdom, finding some degree of internet censorship and control in all 15 nations studied.

Phi Beta Iota: Although somewhat dated, the report is worth a look.  If overlain with the countries where poverty makes Internet access or control moot, the global picture is clear: despots and poverty are coincident with the physical and digital impoverishment of the people.  The emergence on multiple fronts of movement to create the Autonomous Internet using the Open Source Tri-Fecta is encouraging.

Iceland Gets It Right: Say NO to Bank Bail-Outs

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, IO Sense-Making
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Iceland Rejects Deposit Repayments to British, Dutch

By CHARLES FORELLE

Wall Street Journal, 10 April 2011

For the second time, Icelanders voted down a deal to repay Britain and the Netherlands billions of euros lost in the island nation's 2008 financial collapse—at once a bold popular rejection of the notion that taxpayers must bear the burden for bankers' woes and a risky outcome that will complicate Iceland's efforts to rejoin global markets.

Read more….

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Arabian Revolt & Inequality in the USA

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Analysis, Communities of Practice, Corporations, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Policy, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Chuck Spinney Recommends...

Below are two opinion pieces.

The first is “A revolution against neoliberalism” by Abu Atris, it appeared in Al Jazeera on 24 Feb. The second is “Of the 1%, by the 1%, and for the 1%” by Joseph Stiglitz.  One is about the Arab Revolt in Egypt and the other is about income inequality in the United States … they raise stunningly similar — and very disturbing — themes when compared to each other.  I urge readers to read each carefully and think about the likenesses and differences between them.

EXHIBIT A

A revolution against neoliberalism?

If rebellion results in a retrenchment of neoliberalism, millions will feel cheated.

‘Abu Atris,’ Aljazeera, 24 February 2011

EXHIBIT B

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.

By Joseph E. Stiglitz, Vanity Fair, May 2011


Moving beyond teachers and bosses

03 Economy, 04 Education, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process

Seth Godin Home

Moving beyond teachers and bosses

We train kids to deal with teachers in a certain way: Find out what they want, and do that, just barely, because there are other things to work on. Figure out how to say back exactly what they want to hear, with the least amount of effort, and you are a ‘good student.'

We train employees to deal with bosses in a certain way: Find out what they want, and do that, just barely, because there are other things to do. Figure out how to do exactly what they want, with the least amount of effort, and the last risk of failure and you are a ‘good worker.'

The attitude of minimize is a matter of self-preservation. Raise the bar, the thinking goes, and the boss will work you harder and harder. Take initiative and you might fail, leading to a reprimand or termination (think about that word for a second… pretty frightening).

The linchpin, of course, can't abide the attitude of minimize. It leaves no room for real growth and certainly doesn't permit an individual to become irreplaceable.

If your boss is seen as a librarian, she becomes a resource, not a limit. If you view the people you work with as coaches, and your job as a platform, it can transform what you do each day, starting right now. “My boss won't let me,” doesn't deserve to be in your vocabulary. Instead, it can become, “I don't want to do that because it's not worth the time/resources.” (Or better, it can become, “go!”)

The opportunity of our age is to get out of this boss as teacher as taskmaster as limiter mindset. We need more from you than that.

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