The gap between the haves and have- nots in the U.S. is being drawn along geographic lines, Census Bureau data showed yesterday.
The number of counties where median household income decreased is almost 10 times the number that saw an increase, according to a Bloomberg analysis of Census figures comparing an average of the years 2005-2009 with 2000. The government figures also showed a concentration of wealth and education in coastal states.
“The dispersion of income is larger than it’s ever been,” said Douglas Besharov, a professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy. “There used to be a much wider spread of incomes within geographic areas than there is now. There’s much more of a clumping together.”
Phi Beta Iota: In the 1970's an era when “whole systems” thinking tried to flourish only to be crushed by the emergent merger of the two-party tyranny and Wall Street, there was a vital comparative international studies reference, “Banks & Textor,” or more properly, Arthus S. Banks and Robert B. Textor, A Cross-Polity Survey (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1963). We strongly suspect that today the USA would be qualified a failed state, certainly so if the 1% of the population hoarding the bulk of the wealth were isolated as an extraneous factor contributing little of value to the larger economy while siphoning off one fifth of the asset value through legalized financial crime. There is clearly a need for a return of the Banks & Textor model, but with the added sophistication of distinguishing between negative factors of domestic production (excessive concentration of wealth, legalized mortgage clearinghouse fraud, Wall Street derivatives fraud, and Federal Reserve fraud, prison factories and prisons, hospitals, and marginalized enterprises among others).
The state of civil liberties and national security in the United States is alarming.
In the American Empire, the former are routinely crippled or lacerated in the false name of the latter. Trust in government plunges. Dangers are magnified manifold to wound constitutionally venerated freedoms. International terrorist suspects who have never attempted to kill an American are treated as existential threats to U.S sovereignty. Predator drones employed off the battlefield in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Yemen are spawning more enemies than are killed. Habeas corpus is suspended. Military commissions denuded of due process and which combine judge, jury, and prosecutor in a single branch of government are substituted for independent civilian courts. Time-honored privacy rights are trampled. Torture or first cousin enhanced interrogation techniques are endorsed. Congressman Peter King (R. N.Y.), slated for the chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee, insists that prosecutions of alleged international terrorists in civilian courts are intolerable because guilty verdicts are not guaranteed. The worst violations are dared by few, willed by more, but tolerated by virtually all.
The nation needs a new birth of freedom dedicated to the proposition that the life of a vassal or serf — even in absolute safety — is not worth living.
At present, procedural safeguards against injustice are jettisoned for the counter-constitutional dogma, “Better that many innocents suffer than that one culprit eludes punishment.” A craving for a risk-free and comfortable existence fuels the nation's war on individual freedom. Acceptance of risk, however, is the lifeblood of a free society. Every human sports DNA capable of anti-social behavior — even the saintly. The United States is headed for the same ruination as Athens for the same reasons penned by historian Edward Gibbon: “In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all — security, comfort, and freedom. When…the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free.”
Contrary to longstanding orthodoxies, civil liberties and national security are more aligned than opposed. Scrupulous respect for freedom works hand-in-glove with national security by evoking unbegrudging loyalty among citizens eager to risk that last full measure of devotion to foil opponents and to maintain government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Patriotic soldiers are superior to mercenaries. Hessians were no match for the Minutemen in the American Revolutionary War. A military that fights more for love of country than fear or money will triumph. And love of country is elicited by the government's securing unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
On the third Wednesday of every month, the nine members of an elite Wall Street society gather in Midtown Manhattan.
The men share a common goal: to protect the interests of big banks in the vast market for derivatives, one of the most profitable — and controversial — fields in finance. They also share a common secret: The details of their meetings, even their identities, have been strictly confidential.
Drawn from giants like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the bankers form a powerful committee that helps oversee trading in derivatives, instruments which, like insurance, are used to hedge risk.
In theory, this group exists to safeguard the integrity of the multitrillion-dollar market. In practice, it also defends the dominance of the big banks.
The banks in this group, which is affiliated with a new derivatives clearinghouse, have fought to block other banks from entering the market, and they are also trying to thwart efforts to make full information on prices and fees freely available.
Phi Beta Iota: Derivatives are legalized financial crime, and a major reason why these criminal assets inflated in value seventeen times while asset-based values only went up five times during the same period addressed by William Greider in his latest book, Come Home America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country. Any government that permits derivatives trading is itself complicit in this crime against humanity.
Harnessing Collective Intelligence to Save Democracy
“The most durable and dangerous ‘special interest’ – the only one that can directly traduce the Constitution – is the political class.” George F. Will
Robert David Steele (Vivas) has produced a significant, but short, political essay for the Huffington Post, titled, “Citizens Fiddle, Obama Dances.” The central argument of the essay is that there is a ‘confrontational convergence’ of major proportions set to occur in the U.S. presidential election year of 2012 between a set of negative and positive forces that Steele has been able to identify and summarize. At stake is nothing less than the constitutional government of the U.S. and the continued prosperity of the U.S. and probably the world.
To put it another way, the current U.S. Political System has two major problems that threaten the Constitutional Foundations on which it is built:
First to a greater extent than anytime in U.S. History, the U.S. Government no longer effectively represents the interests of the majority of its citizens, but is actually controlled by a very wealthy minority (an oligarchy–many would say a kleptocracy).
Michael Lind
Michael Lind in a perceptive article “Nobody Represents the American People,” at Salon, makes this point most clearly. And he correctly, I believe, noted that this control was not the result of a vast conspiracy against popular democracy, but was due to a systemic problem. The way the U.S. Political System is structured and operated, wealthy individuals and institutions have gained inordinate influence over both political parties and the politicians that they sponsor. The people who pay the bills have the ability to direct legislation and guide policy formulation. As the result, politicians of both parties will pay lip service to the popular will during elections, but in the end it is the people who actually pay for their campaigns who own their allegiance. Lind somewhat overstates his case for the decline of mass participation in public affairs, but basically he is correct.
Second political power is addictive and in the absence of real safeguards, the Republican and Democratic Parties have colluded to exclude any other parties from threatening their hold on government.And since they are controlled by the same set of wealthy patrons their policies are essentially identical, a fact concealed by political rhetoric and a highly suspect public media. They form a duopoly that has been able to hold on to power for forty years and to marginalize non-duopoly candidates by manipulating election laws, election districts, political debates and, of course, the print and broadcast media. As a toxic by-product of duopoly control of government, civil liberties as guaranteed by the Constitution have been steadily eroded usually under the guise of public safety. In the elegant prose of Michael Lind, “The disconnect between the actions of the government and public opinion is the central fact of American politics today. It doesn’t seem to matter whether liberal Democrats or conservative Republicans are in power. Only minor, marginal reforms ever take place.”
So what is the solution to these dangerous, I use the word advisedly, problems? Well Steele with the aid of some collaborators has devised what he correctly suggests is the “Magna Carta’ of the 21st Century, the Election Reform Act of 2011. This is a one page document that is presented among other places in his Huffington Post essay Electoral Reform (1 Page, 9 Points). If enacted it would break the power of the duopoly and its wealthy patrons and truly return power to the people. But would it ever be enacted by a congress controlled by a power addicted duopoly which in turn is employed by a wealthy oligarchy? The original Magna Carta of 1214 (CE) was forced down King John’s throat by a consortium of land barons and wealthy merchants who gave him the choice of acceptance or abdication. Does the U.S. citizenry have similar leverage over congress? Certainly not now, but Steele believes that a
Tom Atlee
movement started by thought leader Tom Atlee, with the meme of “Change the Game,” may be able to mobilize enough voters to force congress to pass the act and the executive branch to enforce it.
Atlee heads an Oregon based outfit called the “Co-intelligence Institute”, which to date has not been co-opted the U.S. oligarchy. The Institute in essence is trying to create a collaborative movement among the voters that will be a force for change through the power of the collective intelligence of its participants. Among other things Atlee hopes that as the movement grows, natural leaders will come to fore who will use integrity and decency to turn the movement into a politically powerful force.
If Atlee can reach enough citizens through other means, such as GroupOn (originally a citizen democracy idea by founder Andrew Mason), the National Council on Dialog and Deliberation (NCDD); and what Steele calls the “eight tribes” of intelligence, he–Tom Atlee–may be offering us all a last chance at regaining true political freedom and restoring the Republic.
Robert Steele, a truly important and original thought leader himself, has somehow managed to retain his sanity and integrity in spite of living within spitting distance of the nation’s capital. He now is pleading for monetary and participatory support for Tom Atlee and his institute; I think this plea should be heeded.
Richard Wright
From the Heartland
12 December 2011
Phi Beta Iota: $25 is the norm, send more if you can, this is the one person in the USA who is absolutely without question working on behalf of We the People. Donation Link Here. Below is from the Co-Intelligence Institute donation page.
Why should I donate to the Co-Intelligence Institute rather than some other charity or cause?
We hope that you will donate to the Co-Intelligence Institute if you believe, as we do, that our work offers a very high potential for positive change.
We believe that our current social systems — especially our political and governance systems — are dangerously unresponsive to positive change, and even actively block the very changes we need to survive and thrive in the 21st century.
No matter what other issues concern you (and there are a huge number that concern us), we suggest that the existing system will not handle them well. The Co-Intelligence Institute is currently focusing on changing the political system so that it will handle every other issue wisely — and inspiring a movement of conscious evolutionary agents to catalyze cultural shifts, systemic evolution, and technological development into more co-intelligent forms.
To the extent we succeed at that, we'll get the world we all want, because we'll be able to freely and wisely co-create it, using these more responsive and wise democratic systems. We invite you to consider the logic of this and — if you agree — support our work.
If you believe, as we do, that our work offers a very high potential for positive change, we hope that you will donate to the Co-Intelligence Institute.
Around 60 countries worldwide are viewed as “systemically corrupt,” and with globalization multiplying the avenues by which corrupt practices cross borders and span the globe, experts are debating the nature of corruption and how to stop it.
By Robert Coalson for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)
ISN ETH Zurich 10 December 2010
EXTRACT: Systemic corruption cuts across key state institutions, runs from the top to the bottom, and is fundamentally political in nature. University of Colorado political scientist Christoph Stefes, who studies corruption in post-Soviet countries, says systemic corruption is qualitatively different from traditional notions of case-by-case malfeasance.
I am sick to my stomach with “progressive” and “liberal” leaders hurling the insult of “hypocrites!” at the rich.
“Hypocrite” is a word used by men in suits and ties. “Hypocrite” is even used by people who think this Obama deal on the extension of unemployment benefits is one dandy mitigating factor, in the injustice of it all.
What about our Christian (etc.) Brothers and Sisters—the “99ers”–the American human beings who have reached the 99-week limit, and are now ruthlessly spit into poverty. Millions of them, thousands every day.
“Hypocrites” is a word that is used by rich people and Progressives who think that poor people are statistics. Too bad, we can’t take care of these devastated American souls… “After all,” many of employed think secretly or not, “They should go get a job.”
Do you understand this simple fucking fact—there used to be three men on a garbage truck. Two threw in the garbage and one drove. Now there’s a driver with an expensive, giant, robotic, steel, throwing arm. Those other two guys are out of work, and, now, out of luck. Tough nuggies.
What happened to the garbage men has happened to millions of people. It is called structural unemployment. Industry got more and more efficient with better machines and cheaper labor (from wherever). The structure of how we make things has changed. We use fewer citizens and more machines. We need educated people, not public high school drop-outs. Fuck ‘em.
When things are not going well, until you get the truth out on the table, no matter how ugly, you are not in a position to deal with it. — Bob Seelert, Chairman, Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide (New York), 2009
A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry. – Thomas Jefferson, circa 1776
Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. — James Madison, circa 1776
The truth at any cost reduces all others costs. — Robert Steele, 2010
In recent years, months, weeks, and days the confrontational convergence of 2012 has emerged with startling clarity. The key negative trends are these:
Bruce Fein
