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Showing posts with label America no longer a democracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label America no longer a democracy. Show all posts

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Are We on the Verge of Another Financial Crisis? We have too much stuff, More


 

Poor Man Survival

Self Reliance tools for independent minded people…


 

ISSN 2161-5543

A Digest of Urban Survival Resources

 

"Politics doesn't work. Look at the parts of America where government has had
the most power, where government has spent the most money. Look at the housing
projects we've got the poor people in."

-- P. J. O'Rourke


 

Civil War, Anarchy, Breakdown of Society?

 


We are on the verge of a great financial crisis which will cause economic conditions in our cities to deteriorate rapidly…civil strife is likely and the White House has preparations in place across the nation’s police departments to deal with it via martial law.  Why do you think so many local police agencies have been armed by the Feds to the point where they more closely resemble paramilitary groups?

 
Bill O’Reilly suggests there are a lot of people out there that actually want to turn [Ferguson, MO} this into a full-blown war.  Some want a race war, some want a “war on cops”, and others just seem to want a general excuse for crime, looting and mayhem.

 
So many of our elected officials and bureaucrats seem so far out-of-touch with the anger and frustration the average person feels about the coerciveness, incompetence, the high cost and lack of good will toward the people they supposedly serve.

I subscribe to John Whitehead’s newsletter and I think he summarizes it well in one of his recent commentaries

For those of us who have managed to survive 2014 with our lives intact and our freedoms hanging by a thread, it has been a year of crackdowns, clampdowns, shutdowns, showdowns, shootdowns, standdowns, knockdowns, putdowns, breakdowns, lockdowns, takedowns, slowdowns, meltdowns, and never-ending letdowns.

We’ve been held up, stripped down, faked out, photographed, frisked, fracked, hacked, tracked, cracked, intercepted, accessed, spied on, zapped, mapped, searched, shot at, tasered, tortured, tackled, trussed up, tricked, lied to, labeled, libeled, leered at, shoved aside, saddled with debt not of our own making, sold a bill of goods about national security, tuned out by those representing us, tossed aside, and taken to the cleaners.

As I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, we’ve had our freedoms turned inside out, our democratic structure flipped upside down, and our house of cards left in a shambles.

We’ve had our children burned by flashbang grenades, our dogs shot, and our old folks hospitalized after “accidental” encounters with marauding SWAT teams. We’ve been told that as citizens we have no rights within 100 miles of our own border, now considered “Constitution-free zones.” We’ve had our faces filed in government databases, our biometrics crosschecked against criminal databanks, and our consumerist tendencies catalogued for future marketing overtures.

In the grand scheme of things, most people are not paying attention.  In most regards I feel I am surrounded by the mundane, the trivial, the trite, the bland, and the superficial when it comes to television, government and an ill-informed citizenry who have their collective noses buried into a cell phone, oblivious to the world around them.

 

If you are among the thinking, what are your thoughts?

 

 


We Have Too Much Stuff!

My husband and I decided that the best way to get rid of the cost and inconvenience of storage, as well as things we had "stuffed" into our small house, was to consign our items to auction. The auction house sent a team of people to pack up and move the items from the house as well as the storage. For a fair percentage of the total sale, everything was done for us. Individual items often don't sell at expected prices at auction, but others can be very exciting. I had an old brass planter that I bought for $40 at an auction only three years before our move. It sold at auction for $350. In all, we avoided the hassles of a garage sale, got rid of a storage fee, made space in the house, and made a fine profit. I have one caution. Most auction dealers will offer to purchase your goods outright. My experience is that the price they quote will be quite a bit lower than what you could make by consigning. It was worth the risk

NOTE: When cousins of mine from Germany and Poland spent time visiting me in the US they often commented on how much stuff Americans have to the point where we are often unable to use our garage to house our vehicles because they’re already over flowing with STUFF!

 

 


Resources you can use and share…

 

Cheap Composting
Composting is definitely not a case of garbage in, garbage out. Your garbage going in will magically cheapest way to fertilize a garden is to make your own organic compound by composting. Even if your property only has shrubbery and not a garden, homemade compost has many benefits.

 

Reduce your water bill, and your impact on the environment with these water-saving tips.
 
A passive solar oven system is a handy tool to have in your preparedness kit. When it's sunny out, you can use your passive solar oven for fuel-free cooking. You can even use it to boil and purify water... it really does get that hot!

Repurposing items for your garden and outdoor living space
read more here

 


 


 


 


 

 

Yours for a life fulfilled

[or, is the future useless]?

Bruce ‘the Poor Man’

 

 Books, Art, Video – the saucy, the odd, the retro, even the practical…

 


 

 
A Shallow Planet Production

Friday, November 7, 2014

Why is the US Middle Class Collapsing?


Poor Man Survival

Self Reliance tools for independent minded people…


 
ISSN 2161-5543

A Digest of Urban Survival Resources

“A smaller government reflecting the needs of the middle class and poor is superior to a big government reflecting the needs of the privileged and powerful.”
Robert Reich

 

Why is the Middle Class in the US Collapsing?

 

The U.S. dollar is progressively buying less and less. The middle class and savers are impoverished…

 

When I was growing up, my father was able to support his family of five on a single income. And when he was growing up, his father could do the same.

This sort of security simply doesn’t exist anymore.

These days, it typically takes two working parents just to be able to afford a comfortable standard of living. And even then, just barely.

Today people have to borrow on their credit cards just to get by. And young people are forced to indebt themselves decades into the future simply to pay for an increasingly worthless university degree.

 
A  typical family suffers from inflation—retail price inflation.

This is when the cost of goods and services outpaces their wages year after year.

People easily lose track of this. But enough time passes and they find that now two parents have to work just to afford a basic lifestyle, quality food, medical care, and education that one parent used to provide.
 

Just since 2005 we’ve lost 40% of our purchasing power because our monetary system has been put into overdrive printing more and more fiat currency [in reality, digits on a computer].  Since our own government has given up control over our currency, we’ve lost 95% of the value of our dollar since the Federal Reserve was created!

 

A new report just released by two academics at the London School of Economics and UC Berkeley shows just how rapidly the middle class is collapsing in the Land of the Free.

The top 0.1% (160,00 families with total net assets of more than $20 million in 2012) owned 7% of all wealth in late 1970s. That jumped to 22% in 2012.

The bottom 90%, on the other hand, went from a 36% share to a 23% share in the same period.

 

Thanks to the Federal Reserve, the middle class is slowly being suffocated by rising food prices.  Every single dollar in your wallet is constantly becoming less valuable because of the inflation the Fed systematically creates.  And if you try to build wealth by saving money and earning interest on it, you still lose because thanks to the Federal Reserve's near zero interest rate policies banks pay next to nothing on savings accounts.

 
  The Federal Reserve wants you to either spend your money or to put it in the giant casino that we call the stock market.  But when Americans spend their paychecks they are finding that they don't stretch as far as they once did.  The cost of living continues to rise at a much faster pace than wages are rising, and this is especially true when it comes to the price of food.

 
The Land of the Free used to be a place where you could work hard and build wealth for yourself, either by starting a business, taking some investment risk, or working your way up the chain.

Yet today, authorities chase away children who have the audacity to operate a lemonade stand without a permit.

The nanny state legally bars most grown adults from investing their own savings in lucrative private enterprises, forcing the masses into overheated, central bank- manipulated stocks and bonds.

And today you’re lucky to work for the same company for more than a few years. As a colleague told me a few months ago, few people have careers anymore.

Instead, human beings are ‘rented’ by companies to perform tasks. There’s no longer a career track, growth, or significant advancement.

 



This is dreadfully, terribly wrong.

The people in charge of this system have completely broken what capitalism is supposed to be. And they’ve replaced it with a new form of feudalism.

This is something that can’t possibly last.

All the technology and tools already exist for individuals to take the power back and divorce themselves from this reality.

You no longer have to live, work, and play in the same country where you were born.

You no longer have to hold the heavily manipulated, degraded currency that they destroy, or use the banking system that they control.

You no longer have to educate your children in the state-controlled school system, or feed your family the genetically-modified crap that the corn lobby bribes onto the store shelves.

You can break free. It’s a matter of choice.

 
Condensed from a post by Simon Black


 

 


When the autopsy is written on the death of the middle class where will you be?

 

The Social Security Administration has just released wage statistics for 2013, and the numbers are startling.  Last year, 50 percent of all American workers made less than $28,031, and 39 percent of all American workers made less than $20,000.  If you worked a full-time job at $10 an hour all year long with two weeks off, you would make $20,000.  So the fact that 39 percent of all workers made less than that amount is rather telling.  This is more evidence of the declining quality of the jobs in this country.  In many homes in America today, both parents are working multiple jobs in a desperate attempt to make ends meet. Our paychecks are stagnant while the cost of living just continues to soar.  And the jobs that are being added to the economy pay a lot less than the jobs lost in the last recession.  In fact, it has been estimated that the jobs that have been created since the last recession pay an average of 23 percent less than the jobs that were lost.  We are witnessing the slow-motion destruction of the middle class, and very few of our leaders seem to care.

The "average" yearly wage in America last year was just $43,041.  But after accounting for inflation, that was actually worse than the year before...

American paychecks shrank last year, just-released data show, further eroding the public’s purchasing power, which is so vital to economic growth.

Average pay for 2013 was $43,041 — down $79 from the previous year when measured in 2013 dollars. Worse, average pay fell $508 below the 2007 level, my analysis of the new Social Security Administration data shows.

In recent years, the number of men that are struggling to find work has reached new heights.  In fact, the inactivity rate for men in their prime working years (25 to 54) is now at the highest level that has ever been recorded.

It has been estimated that it takes approximately $50,000 a year to support a middle class lifestyle for a family of four, and so the fact that 72 percent of all workers make less than that amount shows how difficult it is for families that try to get by with just a single breadwinner.

The way that our economy is structured now, both parents usually have to work as hard as they can just to pay the bills.

American people don’t believe that we can have economic collapse followed by economic and social chaos. They suffer from normalcy bias.

 

 
Yours in freedom,

Bruce ‘the Poor Man’

 

Got a News Tip or Resource to Share With the Poor Man?


 

A Shallow Planet Production

Friday, July 18, 2014

The Illusion that Defeats Us


Poor Man Survival

Self Reliance tools for independent minded people…


 

ISSN 2161-5543

A Digest of Urban Survival Resources


 
 
 

 
 
 
 

"Democracy and liberty are not the same.
Democracy is little more than mob rule,
while liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual."
-- Walter E. Williams

Without massive compliance from citizen drones, there would no longer be government that strangles our freedom and bankrupts our nation…even many big corporations, such as Walgreens, are giving up their US citizenship to avoid our unfair tax system. 

Governments Wage War on their Own Citizens

In 1928, Edward L. Bernays, the “father of public relations,” wrote in his book, Propaganda:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …

[I]n almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons… who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind…

There is a trap in the mind of the average person, like a steel box or a great wall, which prevents him from rationally considering the premise of organized evil. For one reason or another, it is far easier for him to process the darker actions of men and governments as random consequence, as merely a symptom of wild greed, ignorance, stupidity, miscalculation, jealousy and confusion. Destructive tendencies and institutions are seen as nothing more than a chaotic afterthought of the self-centered human ego. Our ailing society is viewed as a victim of its own malicious nature, a self-deprecating edifice. In the minds of the unaware and uneducated, the world is a cannibalistic beast, rather than the crippled victim of a foreign parasite.

This mentality is a product not only of naivety, but of fear. If people fear anything more than death, it is the idea that the reality they have always known is just a thin veneer, a deceptively simple wallpaper covering something eternally complex and potentially horrifying. The common mind is not prepared to handle the unrecognizable. Normalcy bias becomes god, and blind assumption becomes truth.

It is in this vast fog of the unrecognizable that a cabal of power cultists thrive, a cabal that many people in our culture refuse to believe exists.

They feed on prejudice and bias. They are empowered by apathy and nihilism. They revel in the condescension of the academic. They are invigorated by the arrogance of the self-serving. They twist facts, manipulate world views, hold humanity back from its better potential and terrify or kill the defiant. They do this in concert. They do this as a choir. They see themselves as almighty engineers, as architects with a “pure insight,” as philosopher kings. They are often referred to as “globalists.” And their goal is, and has always been, a “New World Order.”

If you do not understand that this directed and organized effort exists, then you cannot possibly comprehend why global events happen the way they do. If you really believe all tragedy and so-called triumph is random, then you become nothing but debris in the wake of a massive tsunami of time and tide. For the most part, the overwhelming firestorms of history are nothing more than plot points in a carefully crafted screenplay. If you know how the writers of our global theater think, then it becomes much easier to predict how they intend our story to progress. Even the tales of “philosopher kings” become contrived as they attempt to force an obsessive narrative.

These men (and women) are not necessarily ingenious. They don’t have to be. They are born into a world of stolen wealth and philosophical nepotism, and they are bound together by fear as much as zealotry. They are a hive of insects who believe themselves to be gods. And though deluded by theirown hubris, such organized malevolence is still a terrible force to be reckoned with.

Here are just a few of the strategic methods they commonly use to survive, thrive and keep the masses in the dark.
 
 

The Illusion Of Separation

In Tragedy and Hope, Carroll Quigley, member of the Council on Foreign Relations and mentor to Bill Clinton, wrote:

It must not be felt that these heads of the world’s chief central banks were themselves substantive powers in world finance. They were not. Rather they were the technicians and agents of the dominant investment bankers of their own countries, who had raised them up and were perfectly capable of throwing them down. The substantive financial powers of the world were in the hands of these investment bankers (also called “international” or “merchant” bankers) who remained largely behind the scenes in their own unincorporated private banks. These formed a system of international cooperation and national dominance which was more private, more powerful, and more secret than that of their agents in the central banks.

Labels and titles are often designed to deceive. The insidious lie that many people, including some in the liberty movement, have been led to believe is that a concrete separation exists among international bankers along the lines of nationality.

I find it fascinating that some otherwise insightful researchers still cannot grasp the fact that there is no distinction between different central banks or globalists acting within various governments. All central banks are front organizations for private international banks. All central banks act in concert with each other. All central banks are centrally tied to the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of International Settlements. This includes the central banks in countries like China and Russia. Any country infested with a central bank is dominated by that central bank and, thus, dominated by globalists.

If Vladimir Putin, for instance, were actually opposed to the corruption of international banking cartels (as he is often painted to be), then he would have abolished Russia central bank long ago and cut off ties with the IMF and BIS. Instead, Putin continues to promote centralization under the IMF and the use of the IMF’s world currency, the Special Drawing Rights (SDR).

The globalists are known by many names under many institutions. They hide behind such fronts in order to confuse and distract the curious, while conjuring false paradigm conflicts like that brewing between the East and West today.

False Nationalism

On July 20, 1992, Strobe Talbott, who was at the time a columnist for TIME and who went on to become President Bill Clinton’s deputy secretary of state, wrote:

I’ll bet that within the next hundred years (I’m giving the world time for setbacks and myself time to be out of the betting game, just in case I lose this one), nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. … perhaps national sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.

I cannot stress this point enough: Globalists do not possess a sense of loyalty to any one nation or culture. International bankers see countries and societies as tools with limited usefulness. The usefulness of the U.S. for instance, is now ending. That’s why a vast shift in the global economy is taking place, which will end the dollar’s reserve status and the American financial system in the process.

There are no “American” globalists or “Chinese” globalists. They are all members of the same banking establishment with the same goal: to end all sovereignty and construct world economy as well as world government. Globalists use national affiliations to create international wars and fiscal calamities that can be exploited to further centralize power under a single authority, which they hope the peoples of the world will accept without question.

War As Psychological Conditioning

In February 1920, Winston Churchill wrote an article that appeared in the Illustrated Sunday Herald, stating:

From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognizable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.

Whether cold wars or hot wars, what we are told about the motivations behind international conflicts is almost always untrue.

Wars are not fought over resources. They are not fought over territories. They are not fought over assassinations, dictatorial conquests or human rights abuses. If you believe that Libya was about freedom, Iraq was about oil, Vietnam was about the spread of communism or that the Civil War was about slavery, then you have bought into the facade hook, line and sinker. There are hundreds of excuses for war. But in the end, all wars — save the ever so rare revolutions of common people — are triggered deliberately in order to achieve psychological transformation.

War and economic collapse are the two faster methods to achieve full spectrum change in a society’s principles and loyalties. War allows for the trampling of freedoms, the accumulation of wealth and political authority, the destabilization of the average person’s means of survival and the desperation of the population, leading to the centralization of control in the name of safety and security.

Governments do not wage wars against each other; they wage wars against their own citizens.

It is difficult to exaggerate the quasi-religious zeal with which the War on Americans is waged. Two years ago, a video surfaced of a training lecture on regulatory enforcement by the head of the EPA’s Region Six office, which oversees Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. This senior administrator, who was appointed by President Obama in 2009, cited the Roman Empire as the inspiration for his mode of operation: “The Romans used to conquer little villages in the

Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw, and they’d crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.” The same year he gave this talk, his office charged in an emergency order that a

Fort Worth-based…more at:


“Countless people … will hate the new world order … and will die protesting against it.” —H.G. Wells, The New World Order (1940)

 

The solutions to surviving the war on the Middle Class can be found in our new e-book.

 



 Discover life-saving ways in which you can survive and prosper during The End of the Monetary System As We Know It. This is the information that your financial advisor, your doctor, your police precinct and your government hope you never discover…plus learn how food is your best investment!


 

Free - *10 Ways to Take Back Your Liberty

*Rules for Radicals-by Saul Alinsky…the Playbook President Obama uses

*Atlas Shrugged  by Ayn Rand

Compliments of the Poor Man Survival Crew!


 

 

Yours in freedom,

Bruce ‘the Poor Man’

 

Got a News Tip or Resource to Share With the Poor Man?


 

A Shallow Planet Production

Sunday, July 13, 2014

This isn't the country I was born in...


Poor Man Survival

Self Reliance tools for independent minded people…


 
ISSN 2161-5543

 

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
William Somerset Maugham


 

This Sure Isn’t the Country I Was Born in!

Imagine living in a country where armed soldiers crash through doors to arrest and imprison citizens merely for criticizing government officials. Imagine that in this very same country, you’re watched all the time, and if you look even a little bit suspicious, the police stop and frisk you or pull you over to search you on the off chance you’re doing something illegal. Keep in mind that if you have a firearm of any kind while in this country, it may get you arrested and, in some circumstances, shot by police.

 
If you’re thinking this sounds like America today, you wouldn’t be wrong…

If You Are Tired of the Government Scam

Most already know we no longer have any privacy ever since passage of the un-Patriot Act.  Now, ALL YOUR PRIVATE FINANCIAL BUSINESS has the government looking over your shoulder.  Even pre-paid debit cards are now required to grab your socialist slave number.  Providers such as PayPal are now required to turn over your financial dealings on eBay, for example, to the government so they can track your finances.

You can no longer travel to Mexico or Canada without a passport, make cash transactions over $10K, buy money orders from the post office in excess of $3K without having that information turned over to the IRS and now even your health insurance will be monitored by the IRS.

We now live in a nation which more closely resembles Nazi Germany or the old Soviet Union.

Personally, I advise those in our groups to hijack the system to their own advantage whenever possible.  Use their own rules against the system, learn guerilla techniques for screwing the powers that are screwing us.

Guerrilla warfare has been employed throughout history on innumerable occasions and in different circumstances to obtain different objectives. Lately it has been employed in various people's wars of liberation when the vanguard of a people have chosen the road of irregular armed struggle against enemies of superior military power. Asia, Africa and Latin America have been the scenes of such actions in attempts to obtain power in the struggle against feudal, neocolonial, or colonial exploitation. In Europe, guerrilla units have been used as supplements to native or allied regular armies.

We need to employ similar tactics to fight the ‘system’ as they present a superior challenge and have overwhelmed our rights and freedom.

 

Tools at Your Disposal-How to Fight Back and/or Disrupt the System

·        If wronged by a bureaucrat or law enforcement, consider launching a counter offensive by publicly denouncing the act of stupidity in the local press, internet, boycotts, door-to-door campaigns, church group support etc.

·        Community shunning like the Amish and other groups practice is useful – stop providing any kind of services to offenders [dry cleaning, oil changes, haircuts, etc.].

·        Everyone needs to learn about Jury Nullification – we have far too many stupid laws which punish innocent people.  Do a Google search or look at our legal research pages at our main site.

·        Stop all financial support to both major parties.  They’ve done nothing except the cheat the little guy out of jobs and rob them of their rights.

·        The Washington-Wall Street Cartel expects you to support them via consumer or buying behavior.  Become self sufficient, stop using credit whenever possible, stop supporting excessive college tuition – learn a trade instead.  Become debt-free.

·        Grow your own food; store up long term supplies of food and other supplies.

·        Learn how to barter – foster this practice in your neighborhood.

·        Recycle, repurpose, reuse, loan/borrow/share things that you need.

·        Learn about community money to save money and to help local economies and businesses (see our full section on alternative currency at our website)

·        Support and get to know local farmers.

·        For all things possible, seek ways to get food stamps, welfare, Section 8 housing assistance, free medical care, utility assistance.  Generations have used this strategy and if it works for them to help undermine the system, should you be any different? [Our government won’t secure our borders or deport illegal aliens and provides them all of the above and MORE despite the fact they have never paid a dime into the system…over the past decade 85 California hospitals went bankrupt providing free medical care to illegals.]

·        Monkey wrench the system – every time I see anything suspicious, such as loose luggage at an airport, I call the authorities.  If enough people saw something remotely suspicious and called authorities, it could overwhelm the system.

 


Are you willing to bet your future on promises made by our politicians?

 

Compliments of the Poor Man Survival Crew!

 

Free - *10 Ways to Take Back Your Liberty

*Rules for Radicals-by Saul Alinsky…the Playbook President Obama uses

*Atlas Shrugged - by Ayn Rand

*Emergency Preparedness

 
http://1drv.ms/1kDV3ER

 

Hopefully, you are among the few who actually give a damn about what is happening to our nation and are willing to do something about it…Start by sharing this information.

The Patriot Act, which few in Congress ever read prior to signing, is the single most anti-American, anti-freedom Act ever signed into law…

Sign the Petition to Repeal the Patriot Act

http://wh.gov/lfgGf

Yours in freedom,

Bruce ‘the Poor Man’

 

P.S.  Please share this with others who might benefit

 

Got a News Tip or Resource to Share With the Poor Man?


 

A Shallow Planet Production