Minimum Wage for a Minimal Citizenry

To those harping about the minimum wage, your rhetoric fails to take in the full picture. The latest CBO report shows that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour could kill up to 1 Million jobs by the time it is fully implemented.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that around 3.6 Million people are paid minimum wage. A large portion of those are young people, with much less education and experience than their higher paid counterparts.

So, even if the CBO report is totally wrong and a minimum wage hike results in ZERO job cuts, this is still only benefitting about 1% of the total workforce.

The bigger issue here is twofold. Firstly anytime the minimum wage has increased, consumer prices rise proportionally. Secondly, chances are all of the hourly workers making around $10 an hour won't see a proportional rise in their wages. So all that is really accomplished is a large swath of jobs that used to be considered "well paying" or at least decent now become bottom feeding minimum wage jobs. If this happens the left will surely grandstand and go on and on about how they have lifted all of these people out of poverty, while neglecting to mention that the poverty line should slide upward with a rise in consumer prices, so in reality they have created more poverty not less.

But the politicians and the media know that the average citizen knows little to nothing about real economics, so the poor will demand a larger portion of the table scraps which they have become accustomed to surviving on, unaware that these actions will do nothing but increase their numbers while nobody really gets ahead at all.

I understand that young people need to get by, and because of this horrible job market "AKA wonderful economic recovery according to our dear leader" that more and more older workers have had to take minimum wage jobs just to try and make ends meet. However, for whatever reason the left never wants to admit that these jobs were never meant to be careers, they were meant to be an "entry level" opportunity for young people to get experience and work their way up. How the left rationalizes prosperity as wallowing in a combination of low wages and government assistance is beyond me.

If we are really going to attempt government investment as a way to spur job growth, (a shaky idea to start with) shouldn't we be investing in ways to pull these people up to the next rungs of the job market, instead of trying to force burger flipping to be higher up the food chain than it should be? Couldn't just the money spent on government studies about wages be used to fund better job training programs and trade schools?

You can't force prosperity and success on people. The people have to want it and go get it. Otherwise it's not really prosperity or success it is only a handout.

So the real question becomes: Why all the fuss over such a miniscule percentage of the total workforce? The easy answer being perceptions and votes. This being an election year, it is pretty obvious that this is the Democratic Party's attempt to take back the House. The plan being to get the Republicans to go on record as voting against the minimum wage increase, and then lambasting them with attack ads all summer long proclaiming that the Republicans hate the poor and only cater to the top 1%.

The reality of course is not nearly so cut and dry. Sure, the so called "progressives" love the poor, but only to the extent that they are politically expedient. They love the poor to stay poor and to grow in number. The progressive movement makes its political hay out of taking middle class tax dollars and turning it into entitlement programs for the poor. Their policies expand the lower class and in turn they continue to vote for the progressives and their promises of "free stuff". They play on the people's insecurities and talk about "class warfare" trying to make it poor vs rich. When in reality it is really the ruling class vs everyone who doesn't make them richer and more powerful. It really is what can only be described as Neo-Feudalism. Their idea of progress is to take us back into serfdom. They want you as distracted and uneducated as possible so that you will just take their word as gospel truth.

So we see that for all of the supposed good intentions, when it comes to politics there are always hidden motives behind everything. The sooner the powers that be are held to account, and their lies and motives exposed, the sooner we can start moving toward real economic growth and prosperity.

The Economics of "Change"

Ok so we've obviously seen that Obamacare has raised health care costs... Obama also said that under his energy plan electricity rates would skyrocket... Food prices are nearing record highs... And he wants you to believe that minimum wage is the problem...

Well over here in reality, it is not hard to see the cause and effect between the Fed dumping gigantic amounts of cash into circulation, and that cash therefore being worth less overall...

If income inequality really is the biggest problem, why is Obama ensuring that only the top 0.01% benefit most from all of the Quantitative Easing?

The real 800 pound gorilla in the room is fascism. Don't be misled, this is not the same outwardly overt, "Kill all the Jews" style fascism that our grandparents fought in Europe. This is a slow, creeping, "under your nose" kind of fascism. However, it still holds true to Mussolini's definition: "The merger of State and Corporate powers"

Greenspan told you as much, he stated that "There is no other agency of government that can overrule actions taken by the Federal Reserve". Combine that with the fact that the Federal Reserve is nothing more than a revolving door for the heads of the 6 Mega Banks, who ensure that their board members end up on the Fed's board with the express mission of protecting the interests of the Mega Banks. Is the picture a little clearer? 
As much as the left loves painting the free market capitalist system as only leading to the Bernie Madoffs of the world, in reality it is the moves we've made away from capitalist principles which have done the worst damage.

Although the Federal Reserve has been causing havoc in the economy for the past 100 years, up through even Reagan we still had some protections in place keeping us on the right side of capitalism. There is much more to be learned about the Fed itself, and I would point you toward the book: "The Creature from Jekyll Island" by G. Edward Griffin

As the end of the 20th century approached, the rhetoric of the day moved toward terms like "modernization". It was all too easy of a scapegoat. "To remain competitive in the coming century, we must adjust our laws to align with global standards" which really meant "Give the banks unprecedented power and access create and manipulate markets, and in turn the banks will ensure that the politicians will be set for life"

Enter what Max Keiser so eloquently calls "The Casino Gulag". Part of this "modernization" was to repeal a law known as Glass-Stegall. Basically this law kept commercial banking (i.e. loans, savings, checking, etc.) separate from investment banking (i.e. Stocks, Bonds, Commodities, etc)

This change in law allowed for all of the shady dealings that caused the crash of '08 to take place. This stuff makes "The Wolf of Wall Street" look like a boy scout by comparison. Market manipulation, price fixing, interest rate rigging, "special investment vehicles"... All things these bankers knew that the general public couldn't even begin to fathom. They also knew that if it all came crashing down, that they would have already made their fortunes and would be set up in offshore tax havens.

Even when it did finally crash, all of the big time players just hid behind scary terminology like "too big to fail". The regulators and the DOJ were scared to death to try and prosecute any of this. Partially because everyone was screaming that if you arrest the bankers, you take down the entire global economy, and partially because the changes in law had moved all of this malfeasance into a legally gray area that would have been tough to prosecute. Mainly because it would be impossible to get a jury to understand what the banks were doing, let alone explain exactly how it was illegal.

So along came Obama. His "Hope and Change" platform swept him into office like few before him. But while the average voter heard "Hope and Change", some of us saw that he was ultimately just another puppet. However, a much more dangerous puppet than anyone before because he was able to be a front man for the banks and the status quo, while publicly grandstanding as a "man of the people", and the people bought it. Hook. Line. Sinker.

So now we come full circle back to the question of the Fed and QE. Obama started his attempt at economic recovery with "stimulus packages". Later it became apparent that the jig was up, and no other countries were going to buy our bonds and perpetuate this nonsense.  So the Fed decided to just flip on the printing press, and leave it on. This has continued with next to zero press coverage to the point where the Fed now owns more of our country's debt than anyone else.

Presumably, the Fed intends to sell the government bonds they bought up at a premium, and actually make money in the process. Unfortunately the dirty little secret is that nobody wants to buy them, and probably never will.

This has led to the conundrum we find ourselves in today. The Fed keeps claiming they want to "Taper" or slowly stop buying the $85 Billion in bonds every month, but every time they even hint about it, the markets tank by a couple percentage points.

The market has become addicted to this Quatntitative "heroin". Every month, more money is printed, and our dollar becomes worth less. This doesn't effect the rich, as they have millions to spare. But when a dollar won't buy as much as it did last month, it always hurts those who only have a dollar to spend.

The public at large loves to jump at the idea of "free stuff" (healthcare, food stamps, unemployment, higher minimum wage, etc), but they fail to realize that each time one of those programs expands the printing press is fired up, the value of the dollar sinks, purchasing power is lost, and the cycle is perpetuated.

So we see how the status quo is stacked to keep itself, and there will never be any kind of real substantive progress unless we make real moves to reign in the "Casino Gulag" and take steps back towards a true free market system.

Quick word on the Coke commercial

In case you missed it, during the Super Bowl last night there was a commercial for Coca Cola that has a lot of people talking.

The commercial involved the singing of America the Beautiful in several different languages. So obviously we already have battle lines drawn between the "right wing" "Keep America American" crowd, and the left wing "let's call everyone a racist" crowd.

As usual I come in with my 2 cents somewhere in between.   First off, both sides are being totally insufferable, and doing nothing but hurting their own causes. The right wing crowd should know better by now. America is a nation of immigrants, and you just add fuel to the race baiting fire by attacking the ad.  This was a trap waiting to happen, the left knew immediately that there would be controversy, and the right has once again fallen for it.

Illegal immigration is an entirely different issue and there are no shortages of arguments to be had on either side, but this commercial was really quite benign. It had more to do with celebrating America as the 'melting pot' of cultures that it has always been, rather than a pro illegal immigration message that some have tried to paint it as.

Anyway, that's my quick thoughts on it. It just proves to be another example of how polarized everything in this country has become. It seems like if you don't like Obama you are being pushed far right, and if you like Obama, you are off the far left deep end.  The middle ground has been eroded away into a deep partisan chasm.

If we could just get back to those 5 words that have always made America great... Liberty and Justice for All

Common Core: The Demoralization and Dehumanization of our Youth Part 1

The Obama Administration has been busy. President Obama promised that he would "fundamentally transform" America, and he was dead serious. One of the latest moves has been largely ignored in the mainstream media. Common Core is the Obama Administration's overhaul of the public education system, and it's turning out to be just as much if not more of a disaster than even Obamacare. But unfortunately this goes way beyond just Obama and the American Progressive movement. Here I will attempt to follow the money and find out just what this new set of standards and curriculum is all about. Make sure to follow all the links provided here, as they can provide much more info than I can fit in this article.

For starters, the first question we must ask is "What is Common Core?" and how did it begin? Well, it goes all the way back to before Obama was even in office. In June 2008 The Hunt Institute for Education Leadership hosted a conference with the National Governors Association to discuss writing a common set of standards for public schools. This was funded by 2.2 Million Dollars provided by The Gates Foundation. Take note of that, because Bill Gates has his fingers all over this. Of course the stated goal was to "Make America a global leader in education", which just like any other progressive initiative sounds like a noble endeavor.

Following this conference, The NGA and the Council of Chief State School Officials (CCSSO) began accepting grants to fund the writing of the Common Core standards and curriculum. In December of 2008, during the transition of power from Bush to Obama, the NGA and CCSSO provided the Obama Administration with their plan. Titled "Benchmarking For Success", the plan outlined state adoption of a "Common Core" of international standards, and assured that state textbooks, curricula, and testing would reflect these standards.

In February of 2009, as part of The American Recovery and Restoration Act, Obama signed into law the "Race to the Top" program, and announced that 5 Billion Dollars had been allotted for these education incentives. Acceptance of Common Core was an "Absolute Priority" for states to get in on this funding.

Fast forward to the end of 2010, and 41 states and Washington DC had adopted the Common Core standards, with 5 more set to join by the end of 2011. So far as we've seen, this was all sugar coated with feel good language about "preparing our youth for the global marketplace of the 21st century". But as with anything the federal government does, the substance of how this all affects you is far beneath the surface of legalese and rhetoric. To date, The Gates Foundation has pumped $150 Million into the Common Core program.

As I briefly mentioned, Common Core is aligning our education system with a global set of standards. When anything is involved with international standards, obviously the UN is involved, and along with the UN comes their Agenda 21 program, which is much more of an involved subject than I can get into in this article alone. However I will attempt to connect some of the dots as to how Common Core relates to this

As much as this all has been buried by the mainstream media, those who have been paying attention have had some ample warning of this. Charlotte Iserbyt, who is a former high level employee in the Department of Education has done several excellent interviews on the subjects of education and how globalized standards will in reality serve to indoctrinate our youth to Agenda 21, and the leftist ideology.

Common Core may only be the tip of the iceberg of Agenda 21, but it is central to the movement towards global socialism. This is mainly because education is obviously compulsory for our youth, and if they can get a grip on our children in their youngest and most impressionable years, they will have a stranglehold on the future of our country. The higher education system in America has already become infested with thousands of professors who are spouting hard left communist ideologies on a daily basis, but this agenda seeks to begin the indoctrination from Kindergarten all the way through University.

In the interest of not getting too long winded, I will finish up part one with a few examples of how these standards are subscribing to an agenda of an all out assault on the moral fiber of America, with a goal of desensitizing our youth to the most radical fringes of society.

One of the most shocking things I have found in my research has been a movement toward the overt hyper sexualization of our children. Not just middle school and high school kids, but elementary and even as young as kindergarten students are beginning to see sexual indoctrination. In New York, there was an especially grotesque example of this, where children logging on to the Common Core test prep website were linked to a page with extremely vulgar sexual personality quizzes. While this was eventually pulled from the New York Common Core website, it just goes to show how the progressive movement is testing the waters and pushing the boundaries to see how much you will put up with.

This is obviously a large, in depth subject with a lot of moving parts, so this will probably end up being a running series of articles so we can attempt to cover as much as possible and hopefully educate ourselves together. There are many groups who are standing up and fighting back against this, and we are definitely not going to roll over to this agenda. The UN wishes to impose its will on us and establish global rule through fiat and backroom agreements and treaties. There is much to learn and they have a head start as they have been working this movement of globalization since its inception after World War 2. This just means that we have to arm ourselves to the teeth with knowledge. This is truly an information war, and truth is our main weapon.

Bringing all of this into the light of the public eye is our best defense. The social engineers can accomplish much by tucking these initiatives into the back pages of thousand page bills that Congress is not reading anyway. I will work to unmask the true intentions of the ruling class, and I hope you will stand with me.

Where do we draw the line between compassion and dependency?

It's a very tough question to address, let alone answer. Of course government aid programs come from a host of well meaning thoughts full of good intentions, but the problems quickly become apparent that it is nearly impossible to keep these programs under control and prevent them from turning into a mass of fraud and abuse.

Just in the last few days we've seen reports showing just how out of control these welfare programs are.

Firstly, how can we ever expect unemployment numbers to drop in any substantial way when in many states it actually pays more to collect welfare than it does to work 40 hours a week at minimum wage? Combine those statistics with the fact that Obama has removed the limits for how long people can collect welfare, and you can begin to see how these policies are accomplishing nothing but breeding more perpetual dependence on these programs.

Food stamp programs have surely helped many families and countless children to keep themselves nourished during tough times. Unfortunately, along with this we have reports showing that the government overpaid food stamp recipients by 2.1 Billion dollars last year. New USDA stats also show that a record 20% of all US households received SNAP benefits during 2013. That's 23 Million households! In some states the numbers are as high as 30+%! With no true work requirements we move deeper down the road of total dependence.

Sure they claim that you must be actively seeking employment while receiving these benefits, but there is also nothing stopping people from basically sabotaging their own chances of landing a job by purposefully doing a shoddy job of filling out job applications, thus completing the requirements of job seeking while simultaneously ensuring the flow of free money continues.

All of this is happening alongside the government cutting off unemployment benefits which actually is a better system because there is at least a bit more accountability when it comes to seeking employment. But the government wants you dependent, especially the liberals who grandstand as being the compassionate ones, while the reality is they are really acting more like drug dealers, giving you the "potent" stuff, (ie free "benefits" making you feel like you're getting something for nothing), extending these programs indefinitely and meanwhile the people are failing to realize that the longer they milk the system, the harder it becomes to get gainful employment.

Do you think a prospective employer will be impressed by an application that basically says you've been sitting around for the past 2 years collecting a check paid for by that employer's tax money? He probably would be and rightly should be offended. So this cycle continues to grind forward, spitting out the poor saps that bought into the nonsensical idea of a perpetual free lunch.

Then we come to probably the toughest program to pin down in terms of drawing a line, and that is SSI/Disability. West Virginia in particular just has gone through a big fiasco with disability judges and corruption and that's definitely not making this issue any easier to pin down. Obviously it's a noble thing to want to provide for those who physically cannot provide for themselves, but it is painfully obvious that this system is probably the worst breeding ground for fraud and abuse. This leads to people who genuinely are in need of help having to fight like dogs and pay a hefty price for legal representation to navigate the system, and also leads to things happening like addicts, alcoholics, and cases of mild depression getting paid, while people with much more debilitating (and not self inflicted) conditions being left to fight an increasingly uphill battle.

I definitely don't claim to have the answers to these problems. They have become so pervasive, so deeply entrenched in our culture that even if we made a commitment to work towards reform today, it would likely take years or even decades to find solutions, let alone implement them.

Complicating all of these matters even further is the growing income gap as the middle class is being increasingly squeezed, while those at the top can afford to buy politicians and procure huge amounts of corporate welfare. The richest of the rich are able to procure endless supplies of easy money at near zero interest and exponentially compound and centralize their wealth through derivatives, high frequency trading, and countless other market manipulations that the vast majority of people can't even begin to fully understand.

So once you step back and look at the bigger picture, it begins to become clear that what is touted as compassionate and love for the less fortunate is in reality nothing more than a shell game to transform what used to be our wonderful system of free market capitalism into nothing short of crony corporatism.

I implore all who read this to do your own research, learn all you can about these systems of control and together we can pick ourselves up and restore our republic to the great bastion of liberty that our founders envisioned.

Gov. Cuomo thinks you are Loco

For the Governor of New York to speak about people who are against infanticide with such disdain like being Pro Life is some kind of dirty, evil position to take isn't just sad, it's borderline criminal... 55 MILLION of our unborn have been snuffed out since Roe v Wade, as if that's something to be proud of, as if we've saved those women from the burden of giving life... Sure, some of those babies would have had tough childhoods. Some of them may have grown up to be murderers or rapists, but how is that any reason to not give them at least a shot at life? Would you like to be judged for things you might do in the future? That's the kind of precedent being set here.

You can't really get the whole picture of how grotesque Mr. Cuomo's comments are without listening to the audio for yourself. The hatred and disgust in his voice is more than apparent. His tone is thick with rage, and you can almost feel his lust for the blood of the unborn.

These are the kind of people we have allowed to gain a stranglehold on power in this country. Those who not only love to belittle the value of human life, but also would have you believe that murdering babies is empowering and liberating women. But the Governor's comments didn't stop there. He went on to attack all conservative viewpoints in general, also showing equal disgust and disdain for anyone who is for the 2nd Amendment and the basic right of self defense. While that viewpoint isn't all that surprising coming from a leftist, he went on to say that if you hold these conservative viewpoints, then you have no place in the state of New York.

Sure, we can write this off as a left wing loon who has no grasp of our Constitution or the idea of unalienable rights, but the reality is far more dangerous and dark than that.

Conservatives have allowed this kind of thinking to become not only pervasive in our culture, but also very powerful. For those same leftists who hold these radical viewpoints have been extremely effective in stifling dissenting voices by viciously attacking conservatives. Not only are we constantly portrayed as racist, homophobic, anti-women, backwards ignorant redneck bigots, but the leftists have also become adept at using our own government against us.

When conservatives try to organize they are audited and constantly harassed by the IRS. The DOJ and NSA target conservative journalists and commentators. The left has a giant, well oiled and well funded propaganda machine dedicated to reading and attacking all conservative media. Groups like the SPLC and the ADL have an unlimited warchest and are always on the warpath. Even our own President has the audacity to insinuate that if you are against his policies that must mean you are racist.

The race card is an extremely effective one too, because it automatically puts people on the defensive, and forces them to dispel the accusation instead of being able to argue the merits of one position or another.

While all of this may be discouraging, to me it lights the fire in my gut to stand up. Because the radical left has no fear in their positions, they have become emboldened over the last decade. So too we should have no fear in standing against them.

So be daring my fellow Americans, dare to stand in the face of tyranny, stand in the face of the labels and name calling, stand up, for the only other option is to lay down and be trampled.