Showing posts with label voting doesn't matter. Show all posts

Thursday, March 24, 2016

Why Your Vote Has Never Really Mattered in National Elections

Poor Man Survival

Self Reliance tools for independent minded people…

www.poormansurvivor.net

ISSN 2161-5543

A Digest of Urban Survival Resources

While campaigning a politician is one who offers the voter a nice dinner but once elected he or she steals the dinner along with the utensils, the table and the chair! >>The Poor Man

The Washington-Wall Street Cartel & Why Your Vote Really Doesn’t Matter

For more than 25 years I’ve told my readers [via my various newsletters and columns] that your vote is a waste of time. The main objective of the power elite which runs our country is to enhance their wealth and power at your expense. It should be apparent that NOTHING has changed for the better in this country despite boatloads of meaningless promises.

Our standard of living has fallen, the purchasing power of dollar has declined, inflation has caused everything to skyrocket while wages have fallen while politicians and bureaucrats continue to make more money and enjoy more benefits.

In my previous issue I suggested watching the movie The Big Short, which demonstrate how the self anointed on Wall Street shape economic reality while enjoying the revolving door of Washington cabinets and regulatory agencies [or lobbying firms]. It reminds me of George Orwell’s tome, Animal Farm where some are more equal than others and keep in mind, not since the Great Depression has there been such a huge divide between the haves and the have nots in this country!

Main street citizens have become collateral damage from what is commonly called the Mugging of American by dishonest politicians and corporate robber barons which have continually undermined wages and benefits of American workers. When Bill Clinton repealed the Glass-Steagall Act no one in this country seems to notice or care – nor has anyone done anything since to repair the damage.

The same families and people, just under different administrations continue to benefit while the average worker continues to have a difficult time making ends meet or saving for a decent retirement. Politics and finance are driven by those whose relationships keep each other in power – this pwer-politics-finance tripod shapes global and domestic economics.

No matter who sits in the oval office, things will remain the same.

US presidents have close multigenerational connections with bankers [the ones who have helped rig the system for generations…[JP Morgan, Chase, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley} and these financial elites have altered the very nature of the financial system so they can run the world.

President Eisenhower warned us of the military-industrial complex and its influence in Washington. We’ve gone far beyond that. Wall Street now controls the political elite at the state and the federal level. Consider that after more than 10 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan Wall Street needed another profit center so they bribed politicians to buy their technology so the NSA could spy on ‘terrorists’ which in reality meant US citizens vis vis passage of the so-called Patriot Act.

Politicians Can Always Count on the American Sucker

Whenever Wall Street needs a bailout [or the auto industry or in MI a $100 million failed jail construction project in Wayne County, or the "Bridge to Nowhere,"a bridge in Alaska connecting the town of Ketchikan (population 8,900) with its airport on the Island of Gravina (population 50) at a cost to federal taxpayers of $320 million] the ignorant taxpayer can always be stuck with the bill without any vote or questions asked!

We’ve All Been Sold Out

An article from CNN titled "Foreign Governments Are Dumping U.S. Debt Like Never Before."

"In a bid to raise cash, foreign central banks and government institutions sold $57.2 billion of U.S. Treasury debt and other notes in January, according to figures released on Tuesday. That is up from $48 billion in December and the highest monthly tally on record going back to 1978. It's part of a broader trend that gathered steam last year when central banks sold a record $225 billion of U.S. debt."

For years, I've been warning that the low interest rates can't last forever. And that the federal debt (currently $19 trillion and rising) couldn't keep growing without the interest rate they (actually you and I) pay rising. Other nations selling U.S. debt is the next step down the path to higher rates. The time when paying the interest on federal debt crowds out other spending (fill in your favorite program here) is coming… sooner than we think.

Governments and banks have essentially removed all pretenses of a free market and they no longer bother to deny it. What astonishes me even more is how the public seems to blindly accept it without a word or a whimper. It is as if most of them have collectively bent over, spread their cheeks, handed over the Vaseline and shouted “have at, go ahead and screw me!’

Public debt-to-GDP ratios have increased domestically and throughout the world and it is not been done through productivity but through the nonsensical quantitative easing [a slick trick initiated by the Fed and ‘helicopter Ben]. They won’t be able to keep the shell game afloat a whole lot longer in my opinion.

In fact, much of what government does is nothing more than a shell game, designed to screw the public much like the bill of goods no fault insurance has become. Initially sold as a means of lowering auto insurance premiums, states such as Michigan where it was implemented now boast the highest premiums in the nation. Obamacare, another fiasco, was huge for insurance and pharmaceutical mergers because beg national insurers received more captive customers and bought their competitors with the extra premiums AND it failed to offer Tort Reform or eliminate Workers Comp costs for small business!

If Hillary wins the presidency as is expected [the GOP has spent too much time shooting itself in the foot over Trump to achieve a win in my opinion], you can expect the status quo to remain the same – it will be like Bill Clinton’s third presidency and Wall Street will be singing all the way to the bank [that $640K Goldman Sachs paid Hillary will be repaid in spades].

If for some reason Trump wins the defense industry will come out a big winner and most likely, the American people will too…after all, Trump knows what it takes to run a business. Not so Hillary who is better known for her rudeness and carpetbagger ways.

No matter who wins, Wall Street will come away smiling as no one will break up the banks, stop rampant speculation, revamp the tax system, force Wall Street to pay decent wages or do much of anything to upset the apple cart.

My suggestion for most folks…take most of your money out of the markets and banks to the greatest extent possible and use that money for real estate, perhaps investing a small parcels of farmland as I have along seeds and long term food stores of food. The banks are not paying interest on any instruments and the stock market is a crap shoot. I would also advise investing in silver US coins – I caution against buying gold, instead, obtaining a variety of denominations of pre-1964 ‘junk silver’ coins. If you do invest, do so in businesses that help people or serve people, preferably on a local level.

As citizens we’re powerless to change the state of affairs, our democracy and election process is a façade designed to make citizens think they are making a choice but in reality, elections do little to change the dynamics of how this country is operated. After 50 years of witnessing how the power elite promise much and deliver little while bankrupting the nation, I feel I’m on mighty firm ground. I have the academic and business background to feel safe in making this call.

Damned Good Resources You Can Use & Share

Adjusting to Sudden
Economic Changes

The sooner you accept whatever your new normal is and learn to live within it, the better off you'll be. And when life does improve, you'll be positioned to enjoy the better times when they do come. Read more.

The following group of how-to materials is among the most useful you will anywhere & I’m offering to you free of charge. I would appreciate a donation, if you’re so inclined-just use the donation tab at the top of the page. The average donation is $10

How to Survive the War on the Middle Class

14 of the best reports I’ve assembled on protecting your freedom…Here is the download link.

--A sampling”

· Final Days of the Dollar

· The Big Book of Free

· What You Should Know About Inflation

· Guide to Self Reliance

· Middle Class Survival Guide

· Becoming Self Sufficient for Six Months

· The Big Drop

· How to Survive the War on the Middle Class

· A Man’s Right to Happiness

Simply go here and you can download each of these PDF ebooks to your computer

http://1drv.ms/1d9kfiU

Yours for better living,

Bruce ‘the Poor Man’

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

http://RetroGuy.net

A Smoking Frog Feature, Shallow Planet Production

Friday, October 24, 2014

What Good is Freedom if No One Uses it?

Poor Man Survival

Self Reliance tools for independent minded people…

www.poormansurvivor.net

ISSN 2161-5543

A Digest of Urban Survival Resources

When you change the way you see the world, the world you see will change.
- Dr. Wayne Dyer

What Good is Freedom if No One Uses it?

Although I don’t have my own talk show on Fox News, enough people have suggested I should. My place as a political pundit is nevertheless assured. More than 78% of you have given me your ‘thumbs up’ on Yahoo News Groups and other polls. The Poor Man has retained his place in the Top 50 Best Self Reliance Sites as well…our fourth year running!

The fiscal outlook is bad, still. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the 2014 federal deficit rings in at $486 billion. That’s 2.8 percent of gross domestic product—the federal budget deficit’s smallest share of the economy since 2007. (It was nearly 10 percent in 2009.) Should President Obama and federal lawmakers pat themselves on the back? Megan McArdle summarizes the rest of the story:

Congressional Budget Office projections currently show the deficit beginning to grow again in 2016, just in time for the presidential election. By 2019, it’ll be above its historical average, where it will stay until the end of the forecast window – and that historical average is itself a bit high, as it includes the post-war record deficit of the Obama administration, which ran close to 10 percent for several years.

If the growth in health-care costs continues to moderate, that may help a bit, but mostly, the rising cost of health care is not the problem. The problem is the rising number of aging citizens who will require Social Security benefits, Medicare and, eventually, Medicaid to pay for their nursing homes. For the next decade or so, it is demographics, not compound cost growth, that will account for most of our budget problems. And you can’t fix the demographics by directing providers to charge 2.9 percent less for their senior citizens. […]

As the Fed tightens up on monetary policy, our borrowing costs are going to rise, not just for the new debt we take on, but also for the debt we already have. As old debt matures, we’ve been borrowing at record-low interest rates, which has helped hold down the deficit. But as the Fed tightens, that party will end, and the numbers will start moving in the other direction. [Bloomberg View, October 14]

Locked doors only keep honest people out. Prying into ALL of our private affairs demonstrates that our government is not honest.

The reason the deficit has come down slightly is not that spending has moderated. Rather, as the CBO reports, tax revenues are up 9 percent—$239 billion over last year. [“Monthly Budget Review for September 2014,” Congressional Budget Office, October 8]

Starting in 1999, the Poor Man had created a case and strategy to reform our antiquated tax system which would include a flat tax system, the elimination of taxation on the first $25,000 of income for seniors and others, the elimination of many tax breaks and more…

· Long-term reforms of US tax system required to stop 'deserters'

Spare a thought for the poor US multinational. It has had a horrible time lately and been called lots of beastly names…

It would be nice to see our president and other politicians begin practicing that archaic art of telling the truth…

Here’s what we still know about stupidity in government. The government has, in recent months, been:

conducting warrantless surveillance of law-abiding citizens and the media;
arresting law-abiding citizens guilty of nothing more than criticizing government policies;
labeling military veterans who stand strong in defense of the Constitution as potential domestic terrorists;
carrying out military drills, complete with black-ops helicopters and tanks, in small towns and cities across the country;
distributing an arsenal of military equipment and amassing hollow-point bullets for domestic use;
and authorizing local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to use drones equipped with weapons and surveillance devices.

That’s just a small sampling of the countless tyrannies being exercised against the American people right now, tyrannies that have no place in a republic such as ours.

An overwhelming majority of voters in the most competitive 2014 elections say it feels as if events in the United States are “out of control” and expressed mounting alarm about terrorism, anxiety about Ebola and harsh skepticism of both political parties only three weeks before the Nov. 4 midterms. The accumulation of disparate fears has created a sense of pessimism and frustration across the midterm landscape.

The most dangerous element freedom faces are incompetent and/or corrupt politicians who are polluting our Constitution and bankrupting our nation.

What good is freedom of speech if no one is listening?

What good is a free education if no one uses it?

What good is democracy if no one participates?

What good is our Bill of Rights if politicians and law enforcement community can ignore them?

All I know is if you’re God fearing or Godless, we’re all in this together. I care about our freedom but apparently many other citizens do not. After all, what good is freedom if no one uses it?

The "economic recovery" that we all keep hearing about is mostly just a mirage. The percentage of Americans that are employed has barely budged since the depths of the last recession, the labor force participation rate is at a 36 year low, the overall rate of homeownership is the lowest that it has been in nearly 20 years and approximately 49 percent of all Americans are financially dependent on the government at this point.

To say that the U.S. economy is in trouble would be an understatement. According to Shadow Stats economist John Williams, we may be on the very cusp of a crisis so severe that it promises to re-write the entire paradigm…many international investors [the ones who continue propping up Wall Street] are getting nervous – I am too but as usual, the majority of people and the press is asleep at the wheel.

I’m starting to get old for some of this stuff…still full of piss but not so much vinegar. By year’s end I will have either sold or transferred all of my Poor Man sites and inventory…then I’ll go play with old women and sell kids to gypsies.